by Amy Trask
Some years feel ordinary. This one hasn’t. This year has felt like standing at the edge of a shifting landscape- watching familiar ground move, watching old assumptions crack, watching the distance between what our communities need and what our state delivers grow wider by the month. I’ve spent the past year listening to neighbors, parents, teachers, farmers, small‑town families who are drowning despite doing everything right.
I’ve heard the same ache repeated in different words: people feel the weight of decisions made far from the places they call home. And in that ache, one truth keeps has become impossible to ignore: The local is no longer small. It is the front line. We are living in a moment where the local matters more than ever.
Not in a nostalgic way, not in a “small towns are sweet” way- but in a real, structural, urgent way. The choices made in Tallahassee ripple into our schools, our water, our safety, our autonomy, our ability to raise our kids without fear, our ability to live without fear. State seats have become the hinge points where federal pressures either break communities or are absorbed and softened by people who understand the ground they’re standing on.
This is my final opportunity this year to write to you before the November election- to speak plainly about why I stepped forward, why this district matters, and why the timing isn’t just important, but defining. I hope you’ll read on.
Why Me?
I never thought I’d go into politics. I didn’t have a JD, a PhD, a large bank account, or a list of connections. I didn’t fit neatly into the box of who we’re told belongs in public office. For most of my adult life, I didn’t have the luxury of daydreaming- because that took time away from what I needed now. I didn’t know if I could afford rent or stay in school. I bartended, I served, I worked multiple jobs. I was a single mom and a survivor of domestic violence, barely treading water. My ambitions were to survive the day.
My dream, though, was to become an attorney- to protect people, to defend those who needed a voice. I still plan to be one, because some of the best people I know in public service are attorneys. While I was in college, though, I began to see how fractured and divisive we had become. The extreme polarization mirrored the dialogues I grew up with between my own family’s two sides, one extremely conservative, one very liberal.
I knew I was in a unique position to study civil disagreement because finding solid ground had become a specialty of mine, and I knew I could find a center for folks to see each other on. I knew I could help people hear each other and talk to each other, and sit at the same metaphoric lunch table without throwing food at the other. I’ve spent years, both professionally and personally, studying how communities fracture, how trust erodes, how communication is built or lost, and how we rebuild it.
That work, and that combination of work and lived experience, matters now more than ever.
State legislatures have become the front line of our democracy.
They are where federal policies land either softly or with force. They are where harms from Washington can be amplified or mitigated. They are where families either find refuge or find themselves fighting for air.
I know what it feels like to navigate systems not built for me. I know what it means to survive, to rebuild, to raise children in a world that doesn’t always see them, or me, fully. And I know what it means to refuse to accept that survival should be the ceiling. It should be the floor we build from.
That’s why I wrote legislation- at both state and federal levels- this year. I had two Senate priorities. I worked across the aisle, and with multiple agencies and stakeholders, survivors could discreetly access help and escape violence. HAVEN Act passed and became law. Suddenly, the work that once made me feel disqualified became my greatest tool. I was seen because I refused to hide. I helped others become seen because I forced our legislature to shine a light in their direction.
This moment needs more bartenders. It needs people from all walks of life whose experiences qualify them in ways résumés can’t. Real representation depends on it.
This moment demands people who understand both conflict and community- people who can hold space for both, and can lead in a way that brings people to the table. We’re in a moment unlike any other- and what we do today will define who we become tomorrow. We can continue breaking or we can rebuild with folks that have been on the front lines, with folks that understand the pain points because they’ve lived them.
Why Us?
I tell my kids to be a rock. On its head, I realize that sounds odd, but the truth is: we need more than one kind of rock.
Sometimes we need boulders- the ones that refuse to move and remain strong. They protect what’s behind them from the weather and the storms. These are the people who hold the line, who remain steady when others grow tired.
Sometimes we need pebbles. They’re the agitators, the irritants, the ones who force change because ignoring them becomes impossible. Have you ever had a pebble in your shoe? They are loud, persistent, and necessary. They demand to be seen.
And sometimes we need stones, the kind that skip across water. They’re quiet, sure, and steady forces that disrupt channels and create ripple effects far beyond where they land. One conversation becomes ten. Ten become a hundred. A hundred become a movement.
We are all made of different kinds of rock. We can all be any kind of them. And right now, Florida needs every single one of them.
We need the people who stand firm. We need the people who push. We need the people who ripple outward.
This isn’t a moment for spectators. It’s a moment for us, for all of us, to decide what kind of rock we will be.
Whether you can lead, participate, or pass out flyers in a rally or protest, host a house party, have a conversation, donate, or canvass, we need all the help we can get in November. Change doesn’t happen unless we make it happen. We need rocks.
Why Now?
The climate we’re in now is the one we’ve sworn was coming: it’s a reckoning. This is one of the biggest opportunities we have had. People across the state, and across the country are angry.They feel like their vote bought a whole lot of struggle and not a lot of relief. There’s a swing happening in much of the country, and people are paying attention.
My district, for example, is R +6, roughly. That means, if we keep up what we’re doing- reaching every voter we can- and were to have that swing here, we win. FDP labeled us as one of the “Races to Watch” because this race is winnable, as are many of the races we’re seeing across the state. This is real possibility here. Don’t count us out.
And it’s because we’re under pressure at both levels of government. Local rule is under pressure. Public education is under pressure. Survivors aren’t being heard, while abusers are being shielded. Our autonomy, our natural resources, our ability to afford basic survival- all of it is on the line.
The ways we care for each other, the ways we raise our kids, the ways we build community- all of it is being reshaped without our consent- often by people who have never felt the fallout of the consequences. Much of it is being decided in backrooms by corporations, businesses, and lobbyists. We simply cannot afford to wait.
Every delay is a loss of ground. Every year we sit out is a year someone else decides what our towns, our schools, our families, and our futures look like.
This is the moment where we choose whether Florida becomes a place where people can thrive, or a place where people are forced to endure. This is the moment where we decide whether survival is the ceiling, or whether we build something better, kinder, safer, and more human. This is the moment where we step forward. Together.
As boulders, pebbles, and skipping stones. As neighbors. As Floridians. As people who refuse to give up on each other.
This is our moment. Let’s take it.