By Michael Ryan
WINDHAM - It is a question that has probably never been asked in the history of the town of Windham related to elections and voters.
“Is Windham, NY ready for [an] Anarcho-syndicalist running for town supervisor?” local resident Connor Exum inquires on his website.
“Let’s find out,” Exum says, declaring, “this my official announcement of candidacy for the position of town supervisor of Windham,” aimed at unseating current supervisor Thomas Hoyt in November, 2025.
Exum, a presence on social media, has lately been attending town council sessions, expressing opposition to the potential plan of building two little league fields at the Windham Path.
Hoyt and Exum have engaged in succinct back-and-forth verbalizations that could be colloquially characterized as cantankerous.
“I am here to work with you, not against, to build a tomorrow that we can have today,” Exum states in a July 25 email attachment titled, “Leon Trotsky’s Revolutionary Newsletter.”
“While, I’m a registered democrat and I am poll worker in the elections—my true allegiance is to Anarcho-Syndicalism.
“Simply put Anarcho-Syndicalism is a horizontal egalitarian economic and political system that emphasizes the creation of syndicates (Unions) as the basic form of political and economic distribution of power.
“The idea is to create a bottom up type power structure,” Exum states, offering a “diagram that describes the power structure of the National Confederation of Labor formed in 1910 in the Spanish city of Barcelona.
“Its model is rather effective. And I think we can adopt something like this to Windham’s power structure actually,” Exum states, providing more details within his email including (in part):
“Section I: “Power To The People - The first most critical aspect of changing the make up of the power structures in Windham is creating a more direct democratic model of power in our town.
“I believe the best way to do this is create a [series] of councils: Economic Development Council, Labor Council, Land Development and Use Council (to replace the Town Planning Board), Municipality Worker-Cooperatives and a Parks and Recreational Council
Section II: “More Direct Democracy - The second part of my proposal is to create a zest for democracy in our Town,” Exum writes
“As I stated before I’ve working the polls lately and I can say this: Windham lacks a zeal to vote.
“We have 1708 citizens in the town and perhaps 300 to 400 of them vote in a Primary election, maybe 450 in a general Election total.
“These numbers are low to say the least— I do expect to see an energized crowd for Trump [in the 2024 presidential election] so perhaps we will get 600 voters.
“I would be very surprised if we get more than that number. We’ve allowed apathy to creep into our population because voting seems like a mindless task that benefits no one but the politician. And that is true to a certain extent if we keep voting the way we do now.”
Exum, in his email, calls for: “Transparency In All Town Meetings (This is our town and we are all important), More Involvement Of The People During The [non] Election Years;
“More Direct Voting On Referendums In The Town By The Population, .
All Council Positions Elected By The People.”
Section III: “Building Our Public Infrastructure - The future of our town is going to be a series of necessary Public Cooperative Works. I feel these include the following things: Public Transportation, Utilities Cooperative,
Cooperative Healthcare ,” Exum writes
Section IV: “How Do We Pay For It All? - The solution to paying for these projects is the creation of a policy of full employment in the town that helps to spill over to other parts of the region,” Exum writes.
“As I’ve stated before, the idea behind this concept is twofold; We are removing the extraction of wealth from our community by altering the demand curve from outside resources to local and regional resources. This will put more into our region and stimulate further investments.
“Full Employment: we can use our town’s municipal cooperative as a means of creating a town jobs guarantee that will both help to maintain salary parity with out regions but also provide the needed employment to sustain our steady state system.
“Using Federal And State Grant Money to help jump start our programs. There is always a myriad of funds available to communities…
…Our job as local governments is to seek out these funds and to use them to benefit the community in ways that provide superior services to the community i.e. , cooperative healthcare, cooperative utilities and cooperative broad band ownership for the Mountain Top.
“The paying for this is not as big an issue as the will to Do Things That Are Big! We have the capability to do this do we have the Will?”
Hoyt, contacted for a response to his apparent opponent, said, “we live in a democracy and anyone who wishes to run for public office is free to do so.”
Greater detail on Exum’s platform are available on his website.
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