Here’s the thing. I really do believe in local government. It’s nice having a functioning sewage system. Zoning affects all of us. The parks here in Bloomington are hard to beat. And yet, in spite of all that, I cannot get myself to a city council meeting.

So I wanted to talk with someone who can, someone who was so into city council that they wanted to join it. Last spring, I heard Isak Asare on a local podcast, The 812, talking about what public life means to him. He had just become one of Bloomington’s three At-Large City Councilmembers. So I reached out. In his day job, Isak works at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies as the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education and Student Affairs and as the Co-Director of the Cybersecurity and Global Policy Program.

We talked in May. Isak was only two months into his term as a Bloomington City Councilmember, and he still had that warm glow of optimism most of us have at the beginning of a project. I think he’ll keep it, though, and, in any case, that can-do attitude is we want in our representatives.

Isak and I talked about what public life means, how budgets are moral documents, and about how protocol – which is boring almost by definition (Shall petitioners receive three minutes or five minutes to speak on a topic? Shall councilmembers be required to request permission to ask a follow-up question?) affects who’s able to participate in a meeting. Which is to say, how protocol is intimately intertwined with justice.

Credits

Inner States is produced and edited by me, Alex Chambers. Our associate producer is Dom Heyob. Our social media master is Jillian Blackburn. We get support from Eoban Binder, Natalie Ingalls, LuAnn Johnson, Sam Schemenauer, Payton Whaley, and Kayte Young. Our Executive Producer is Eric Bolstridge.