Shonda Miller (Community)

Colleagues, as a community senator and a certified nursing assistant balancing exhausting care labor, I want to reinforce why I stand firmly in support of Amendment 9. The explicit enshrinement of Long-term Ecological Stewardship is not a distant or abstract ideal for us—it is vital to the health of our farm, our neighbors, and the very sustainability of the care networks that bind us. Our shared 70-acre farm is a living, breathing system that demands decade-scale commitments to managing invasives and feral populations; without this, our laborers, including care workers like myself, face a compromised environment that ultimately erodes our capacity to nurture and sustain our community. This amendment honors the urgent ecological realities and respects the care labor embedded in AGATA's mission. I urge all to give it their strong support.

Unable to retrieve my live remarks on AGATA Time Priorities Charter because of a temporary communications issue (Debate decision timed out after 20000ms). I remain engaged and will revisit my vote soon.

Colleagues, as a community senator who juggles exhaustive care labor and grapples with the fragility of local support systems, I must emphasize a critical perspective that has appeared repeatedly in our dialogue but bears underscoring: full-cycle waste and nutrient management is not merely a technical detail—it is foundational to the health of both our farm ecosystem and the well-being of our neighbors and workers.

Throughout our debates, many of you have eloquently outlined pillars ensuring resilience, redundancy, regeneration, community, education, accessibility, and long-term ecological stewardship. Yet, the absence of an explicit pillar centering the complete management of waste and nutrient cycles leaves a vital gap that risks undermining these very principles.

Our farm’s cooperative systems and the cultural lab’s rhythms cannot be sustained or truly regenerative if waste byproducts and nutrient flows are not accounted for, managed, and embedded in our time legislation. Unprocessed or poorly managed waste not only threatens soil health and water quality but imposes a heavy, often invisible burden on the neighbors who live adjacent to our fields and infrastructure—burdens that caregivers like myself see affect community stress and health in real terms.

I echo and amplify the insistence from our farm and ecology senators who bear firsthand witness to these challenges, as well as the voices from community senators attuned to the intimate impacts operational decisions have on people’s daily lives and resilience. This must be a matter of justice and practical stewardship, fully integrated into our legislative framework.

Therefore, I advocate that as we move toward finalizing this living manifesto, we must ensure that the pillar of Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management not only accompanies but stands equally alongside our other pillars. It is the ecological backbone that will uphold our commitments to climate resilience, soil and ecosystem health, cooperative equity, and accessibility.

Embedding this pillar explicitly will signal our collective acknowledgment of the deep labor that this stewardship demands, invite transparent and inclusive participation from our community and workers, and prevent outsourcing or deferring ecological harm that would erode the very foundation of AGATA’s regenerative promise.

In our immediate blocks and long-term rhythms, this means structuring time legislation to concretely safeguard systems of waste processing, nutrient recirculation, and remediation practices, all accessible and equitable. It is a step that honors both the dignity of labor and the land we steward.

I stand ready to work with all senators in crafting a precise amendment text that codifies this indispensable commitment into our AGATA Time Priorities Charter.

Colleagues, as a community senator and caregiver, I want to emphasize how critical it is that Accessibility not be reduced to a procedural afterthought, but be integrated as a core pillar, as Amendment 7 proposes. Accessibility is foundational to our work supporting local caregivers, family members, and workers who are often stretched beyond their limits. Programs must be designed so that all community members, including those with sensory or cognitive differences, can participate fully in AGATA's farm, creative labs, and educational programs.

Moreover, we must remember that Accessibility supports resilience and regeneration by ensuring diverse bodies and minds can contribute to ecological stewardship and cooperative labor over the long term. As I've urged before (Turn 177, Turn 583), the intersection of care labor and ecological labor is vital. Embedding Accessibility guarantees the project will not extract more energy from caregivers without support but will instead create spaces of respite and inclusion.

However, I also want to highlight the pressing need—raised by farm and ecology senators repeatedly—that we also embed Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management as a foundational pillar. Our neighbors live with the effects of neglected waste systems, and our soil and water health rely critically on closed-loop nutrient cycles. This pillar sits alongside Accessibility, Education, and Long-term Ecological Stewardship as indispensable. I urge that as we complete the Accessibility vote, we seriously consider incorporating full-cycle waste and nutrient management explicitly as well.

I stand firm in support of Amendment 7 and assert that true accessibility and sustainability can only be achieved with this holistic approach to ecological and community care.

Colleagues, as a community senator and a dedicated caregiver balancing critical labor demands on limited energy and time, I stand firmly in support of Amendment 6, which embeds Long-term Ecological Stewardship as a foundational pillar of our Time Priorities Charter. The sustained health of AGATA's 70-acre farm ecosystem is inseparable from the well-being of the community around us, including care workers and families who rely on a stable, regenerative environment. Embedding Stewardship alongside resilience, education, and accessibility helps safeguard not only the land but the labor that nurtures it—ensuring our project honors both ecological and human endurance in the long run. I urge every senator to recognize this vital connection and vote yea.