Letter to the Editor: Forming a More Perfect Union

A wake-up call for the Morongo Basin and an invitation

Aug 10, 2025

Community activities organized by +More Perfect Union (+MPU) chapters include hiking and neighborhood giveaways. (Photos from +MPU website)

Note: Due to the cancellations of Twentynine Palms City meetings, Desert Trumpet continues its light summer schedule. See our summer meeting recap for the updated meetings list.

By Ray Kennedy

Independent Voter News (IVN), whose mission is “to raise the level of civil discourse to a place where solutions are more persuasive than talking points, and participation is not conditioned on your party affiliation,” recently published an urgent wake-up call:

From the assassination attempts on President Donald Trump to the brutal murder of Minnesota’s former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband; from Molotov cocktails hurled at a pro-Israel rally to the firebombing of a Republican headquarters in New Mexico—the pattern is unmistakable: Political divisions are no longer confined to rhetoric; they’re manifesting as violence.
…. America’s growing polarization is not just a cultural or electoral crisis. It is a matter of life and death.

While the Morongo Basin has been fortunate not to have experienced similar violence to date, we’re not so isolated that we can afford to ignore this warning; political violence hasn’t been confined to big cities.

What can we do about this extreme polarization?
Last year, I became aware of +More Perfect Union (+MPU), a group that along with IVN, and hundreds of other groups, is part of a broader movement to address toxic polarization here in the United States. +MPU was created in 2020 by veterans returning from overseas deployments and finding a country that wasn't the one they thought they were fighting for. +MPU’s founders set out to create a new type of organization that would bring community members together around the three pillars of service and social and civic engagement regardless of political persuasion, background, or ideology. Their goal is to encourage a more unified America where democracy thrives, freedom is shared, and every citizen has a voice in shaping a more united future.

After going through an application and interview process for +MPU’s fellowship program, I attended a recent training event in Montana along with more than a dozen other participants from around the country—eight men and six women, half of them military veterans, four of them African American. We heard about +MPU and other organizations working around the country to bridge divisions by strengthening communities through social connection, community service actions, and civic engagement. I’m now in the process of launching a local +MPU chapter here in the Morongo Basin.

I'm looking at three possible focus themes for our chapter:

a. Environment / Conservation / Animal Welfare

We’ve had any number of wild animals killed while trying to cross Hwy 62, most recently a black bear at the entrance to my neighborhood in Morongo Valley. I know that Morongo Valley is a very animal-friendly place, with any number of animal rescues and lots of large, small, and even exotic animals throughout the community. My sense is that the rest of the Basin is also very concerned with animal welfare. The care for the environment shown at the May 31 Finding Balance event that I attended in Twentynine Palms was a good example of the issues that community members have and included suggestions for ways we can move forward.

b. Emergency Preparedness / Response

I recall having seen the Sawtooth fires blazing in the hills back in 2006 and evacuating during the fires in 2020, and I ended up helping someone from Twentynine Palms who was looking for sandbags in preparation for the imminent flooding there in 2024. Morongo Valley only has Hwy 62 for evacuations, so we need to be well prepared for any emergency that might come our way. Some of our other communities may have an easier time evacuating, but we all need to recognize how vulnerable we are and how limited the resources available to us actually are.

c. Engagement with County Government

More than a decade ago, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors established the Morongo Basin Municipal Advisory Committee (MAC) to advise them on issues related to the unincorporated communities in the Morongo Basin. A county ordinance requires that MACs be dissolved whenever a supervisor is replaced or when district lines are redrawn, which led to the MAC being dissolved after its November 2021 meeting. The Board passed a resolution on April 26, 2022 reestablishing the Morongo Basin MAC, but as of December 15, 2022, the county’s “Board Roster” for the MAC showed all five seats vacant.

Appearing on the Up Close Show in February 2023, Supervisor Dawn Rowe stated that no action would be taken to eliminate the Morongo Basin MAC for at least six months.1 Then only three months later she introduced a resolution to dissolve the MAC effective May 23, 2023.2 In January 2025, she established two new MACs elsewhere in the 3^rd District—without taking any action to reestablish the Morongo Basin MAC.

An invitation
If we’re not going to have an official MAC, perhaps we can establish a parallel organization that would do much of what a MAC would do. I invite any Morongo Basin residents interested in joining +MPU Morongo Basin to contact me at ray.kennedy@mpu.us or sign up via the +MPU homepage.

Initially, I’m looking for a few people to be part of the chapter’s leadership team; once that’s in place, we’ll focus more on recruiting members and planning events.

The expectation from +MPU HQ is that each chapter will organize from three to eight events per year, more or less evenly divided between the three pillars (service, social, and civic engagement), with each event incorporating an opportunity for dialogue among the participants. +MPU events can range from informal coffee chats to food drives to hiking outings to just about anything we can imagine, as long as it brings together a diverse group and gives them an opportunity to talk about our community.

Ray Kennedy has been working in the field of international electoral assistance since 1990 and has held senior leadership and advisory positions with the United Nations in East Timor, Mexico, Afghanistan, Liberia, Sudan, Jordan, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea. Since moving to Morongo Valley in 2020, he has been involved in a variety of community efforts, including advocating for greater road safety and a voice in county governance for the unincorporated communities in the Basin. He currently serves as a member of California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission, which passed its new maps unanimously in December 2021.

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