We can build a more inclusive and equitable local society
By David Lionel
From the July-September 2025 issue of Critical Times. Print versions are available for free at WSLR+Fogartyville and other community gathering spaces in Sarasota and Manatee counties.
Sarasota is a virtual utopia for many who live here. But not everyone enjoys the good life. Perhaps it is time for this wealthy community to embrace its possible future by taking care that all residents have an excellent standard of living.
Cultivating the Beautiful Life
Poly, a sculpture by Hou de Sousa, is located at the North Tamiami Trail and 14th Street roundabout.
I arrived in Sarasota from upstate New York to stay the winter in early November, 2008, and observed right away that this area dedicates itself to public art. Thirty-seven statues made of stone, bronze or marble and representing classical or Renaissance themes adorn St. Armands Circle. Fantastic sculptures grace Sarasota’s roundabouts. The cost of the foundation alone for “Poly” on U.S. 41 was nearly $350,000!
The annual Embracing Our Differences exhibit in Bayfront Park is typical of the cultivation of the transcendent that thrives here. I made time on its last day to visit this year’s rendition. The scene was magnificent: boats bobbing on the bay, the sparkling water shimmering behind the inspiring messages on giant placards.
The whole town is dedicated to the beautiful. It is blissful to live in this locale during the cold season. A high percentage of the population is reasonably comfortable, well-fixed.
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals
I’ve been following a rather under-reported public policy initiative signed on to by all the members of the United Nations in 2015. They promised to deliver the 17 Sustainable Development Goals for their entire resident populations by the year 2030.
These provide a model framework for municipal betterment. The SDGs urge quality education for all, guaranteed decent work, equality for women, affordable clean energy, environmentally responsible production and consumption, along with strong local institutions supporting peace and social justice.
The Goals, which include 182 indicators of well-being, are attainable, but they are not yet a serious objective for politicians, locally or globally.
Prosperous Sarasota could take on monitoring fulfillment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals for all its inhabitants. Using these objective criteria, we can connect with each resident to ensure that our community has done its best to improve their quality of life. Civic leaders, clergy, nonprofits, and philanthropic foundations working together could ensure sufficiency for everyone.
Project 180 graduates proudly display their certificates.
A while back at the Ivy League Club of Sarasota-Manatee, a documentary played about Second Heart Homes, showing the nonprofit’s multiple cooperative residences for homeless people. This year’s Sarasota Film Festival included a screening of “The Light They Cast,” a documentary on Project 180 that follows eight men as they navigate re-entry into society after incarceration. These two tremendous examples demonstrate what supporting and believing in individuals can accomplish. The key mantra needs to be: “everybody in, nobody out.”
One of the ways we can build a more inclusive and equitable local society is through the pursuit of community land trusts, which provide homeownership opportunities for low-income people. This route for the same money as the current punishing system will reduce homelessness, incarcerations, crime, hunger, and discrimination.
The well-to-do contributing their fair share as well could enable a comprehensive social adequacy, a general bonhomie.
Once one small city demonstrates to the world that universal sufficiency is implementable, it will begin to happen elsewhere. Sarasota has the potential to transform into that trailblazing municipality.
David Lionel is a veteran producer and editor of advocacy videos from social movements.