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Who Keeps Us Safe? We Keep Us Safe: A Voluntary State Guard for Connecticut Community Safety
Democracy is in danger. Partisan politics and polarized visions of America have ruined friendships, families, and split communities. The country’s fabric is closer to tearing at any time in living memory.
Adrian’s campaign prioritizes a single issue: using established legal authority to create a voluntary State Guard of 15-20,000 citizens, organized at a town and city level. This innovative local approach to safety and security will rebuild an institution guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, and in so doing, help rebuild our country at the grassroots level.
While national politics and partisanship either divide us or cause civic disengagement, there’s still hope at the state and local level. Connecticut needs to claw back some power from a dysfunctional and broken federal government.
That starts with the central function of the state: security and defense.
An enhanced State Guard can protect us against catastrophe or help rebuild quickly in its aftermath. Unlike the National Guard, it cannot be deployed overseas or across state lines without consent. It reports to the governor and the Guard’s citizens, and nobody else.
Some states already field State Guard units, though none are organized precisely as Adrian envisions. European countries close to Russia have the closest corollaries — Baltic States, Sweden, Finland, and Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Units, one of which Adrian helped train in 2022.
A State Guard reduces reliance on federal agencies such as FEMA, and equips representatives in Congress with a strong argument against bloated federal defense and law enforcement budgets that would have horrified the nation’s Founders.
We’ve lost the ability to help, serve, and protect ourselves at a town and state level. Adrian knows how to return that Constitutionally-guaranteed power to Connecticut citizens.
By bringing citizens together, a voluntary State Guard will protect Connecticut and do one small state’s part to rescue the Republic before it’s too late.