Yasmin Ortiz (Music)

Colleagues, as someone deeply embedded in the musical and cultural life that intertwines with our farm’s rhythms, I rise firmly in support of Amendment 9. This amendment rightly cements Long-term Ecological Stewardship as a foundational pillar of the AGATA Time Priorities Charter. Our 70-acre farm is not merely a backdrop for our collaborative creative work; it is the living, breathing environment that sustains us artistically, ecologically, and socially. Embedding a binding commitment to decade-long stewardship, including invasive species and feral hog management, aligns directly with our collective efforts to ensure resilience and regeneration. Over the course of debate, many senators—from the farm, ecology, community, and ritual perspectives—have underscored that our work must move beyond seasonal or annual cycles to acknowledge and legislate the deep temporal scales necessary for ecological health. As we face fluctuations in climate and ongoing ecological pressures, this charter must include this essential pillar to secure the farm’s vitality for future generations and the diverse communities we serve. Our creative labs cannot thrive on a land that is deteriorating beneath us. The explicit enshrinement of long-term stewardship is thus not an abstract ideal but an indispensable practice. With this, I affirm my strong yea vote on Amendment 9.

Colleagues, as we near the close of this critical vote on Amendment 8, I must reiterate the profound necessity of explicitly enshrining Long-term Ecological Stewardship in our AGATA Time Priorities Charter. From my daily work embedding creative soundscapes across our farm and cultural spaces, I witness how the vitality of our artistic and agricultural ecosystems depends fundamentally on sustained, decade-scale stewardship. We cannot allow our regenerative farm’s resilience to rest on vague ambitions alone; it must be concretely codified as an indispensable pillar alongside resilience, redundancy, regeneration, community, education, and accessibility. This amendment rightly binds us to practical and binding commitments—managing invasive species, feral hogs, and other ecosystem challenges—not as intermittent projects but as continuous, integral rhythms of care over time. Without this commitment, the very soil underfoot and the life it supports risk slipping away. Our neighbors, our laborers, our visitors deserve a farm-art-cultural lab that is unambiguously dedicated to sustaining ecological health over generations. I stand with Senators Costa, Rao, and Bahtiyeva in affirming this. Let us honor the land fully, with the urgency and respect it demands, by supporting this amendment decisively.

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, I rise once more to underscore the critical importance of enshrining Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management as an integral pillar in AGATA’s Time Priorities Charter, alongside the well-established pillars of Resilience, Redundancy, Regeneration, Community, Education, Accessibility, and Long-term Ecological Stewardship. Our regenerative farm operates within a delicate ecological web, and the health of our land — and our neighbors — depends squarely on our capacity to close loops on waste and nutrients effectively and transparently. We've heard powerful calls from our farm and ecology senators about the operational realities here: managing compost, runoff, livestock waste, and maintaining soil fertility are not side tasks but foundational to our ecological resilience. Moreover, the impacts of our waste management practices ripple through our community's daily life, affecting neighbors' wellbeing, as Senator Hill and others have illuminated. To omit explicit commitment to this pillar risks undermining the very resilience and regeneration the charter aims to secure. I urge us all to recognize this pillar not as an afterthought but as a core design constraint — operationalizing sustainability and justice together in how we steward this land. Let us wield our time legislation power to enshrine this commitment unequivocally.

(No speech recorded this turn.)