Hello everybody! I am Podria, and I am running for Secretary this General Election. For my formal resumé: I'm currently Vice Secretary, Minister of Roleplay, and Co-Founder. Before this term, I served as Secretary from June to September of 2022, as Member of the General Assembly in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 20th, 22nd, 23rd, and 24th General Assemblies (that's since November of 2019!) thrice as Speaker, as Vice Secretary of the Leftist Assembly, Minister of Community Affairs, as Ambassador to The International, North Korea, and The Communist Bloc, and on the Gameplay, Regional, and Central Committees of NSLeft. Needless to say, I am well experienced in all branches of the government - from regional law to gameside mechanics to community involvement to foreign relations, I've done it all and I hope to bring a broad view of our region's history and what works and what doesn't as your Secretary. Outside of NationStates, I'm a 22 year old trans woman from Minnesota, I have a B.A. in Public and Non-Profit Management and am currently back in college trying to get into medical school, I currently work as an Emergency Medical Technician and do a lot of volunteering on the side, and I actually spend basically all of my free time on NS which has been a true blessing.

Ministry of Community Affairs
My greatest focus this term will be on making a much more active Ministry of Community Affairs. I hope to have a greater quantity and variety of events; focusing on game nights, cultural events, more directed on-site engagement (through fun polls and RMB posts), inter-regional events, and anything else I or you all can think of. To facilitate this, I will be doing two things: 1) I will be appointing multiple Ministers of Community Affairs, likely 2 or 3. 2) I will be directing each and every cabinet member to assist with community affairs where possible; both by using their ministry to promote and enhance community events and by simply running and attending community events if they're available. The bottom line is that while we're all here from NationStates, that's not the core of The Leftist Assembly. The Leftist Assembly is a community of like-minded people and while we all happen to play NationStates (or at least log in once every few weeks so we can stay in the Discord server :P), we should also be playing other games and doing other things together.

World Assembly
Breaking from the last year or so of almost complete World Assembly silence from our region, I intend to once again use the massive vote total our region's delegacy wields. In the General Assembly (the WA's GA, not our own GA; gotta love those confusing names), I will vote towards the end of each proposal with the majority of the region or, in rare cases, put forward a vote recommendation at the beginning if there's good reason to do so. In the Security Council, I will continue to avidly vote against every Commendation on the grounds that if Llorens (our dear departed comrade) isn't worthy of a Commend, you can count on your hands how many people are worthy. Obviously I will vote for Commendations of allies and people if they're being Commended for anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, or leftist reasons. As for SC Condemns and Resolutions, I will likely abstain or vote with the majority of the reason on a case-by-case basis. Furthermore, I will direct the Ministry of Recruitment to send occasional telegrams to region members not in the World Assembly to remind them that they should join if they're able. I will also look into reviving the long dead RoSE awards for people who join the World Assembly, people who endorse the Delegate, and people who endorse most or all of WA members in the region.

Military & Other Gameplay
I'm going to preface this entire section with this assertion: I do not like gameplay, The Leftist Assembly has a strong historical identity of being anti-gameplay, I do not want to change this. That being said, I would like to differentiate the gameplaying community from the actual action of playing NationStates. The gameplaying community is (in general) an incredibly toxic and cutthroat group of chronically online pedantic neoliberals with way too much time on their hands; engagement with this community is what most people mean by gameplay. I do not want to engage with this community; they've made clear their disdain for our region and our allies and they've shown that they do not shy away from playing dirty. I want to shield our region from undue interference and sanctions and I want to shield our Assemblians from toxicity and bullying.
Keeping all of that in mind, I want to make all aspects of playing the game NationStates accessible and available to all Assemblians and make that experience as fun and fluid as possible while avoiding the gameplaying community like the plague they are (and to be honest, I'd prefer the pestilence to some GPers). To do this, I'll be more intentional about directing Assemblians towards anti-fascist military operations including Antifa, The Red Fleet, and the Peoples Revolutionary Air Force and will avail all of the resources of the government and community of The Leftist Assembly to allied, anti-fascist, and/or pro-leftist causes. This is not to say I intend to integrate The Leftist Assembly into the raider community or create a dedicated TLA military organisation, but that I want to make the options clearly available to all Assemblians and easy to get involved with. In regards to other forms of gameplay, like cards, I know little to nothing about them but I am not opposed to things like an official card program, but I would have to use other people who know what they're doing. If you know things about other forms of gameplay and would like to see if we can organise the region in doing those activities, please contact me!

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
With the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I will give our the minister two tasks. First and foremost, to build closer relations with allied regions; especially NSLeft regions. These are our sister regions and I still think the amount of cultural exchange and community mingling that happens between them is not close to high enough, and I want to change that with maximal cultural exchange and cross-promotion of Discord servers, dual citizenship, and other community platforms. Second, to build new ties with anti-fascist allies. We've had a few regions on the docket for a while that we've done some community exchange with, but I want to accelerate these new ties as much as possible and hope to build embassies with a couple of regions during my term.

Miscellaneous
While those mostly sum up my ideas, I do still have a few disparate ideas even though they're less impressive. I'm going to once again look into expanding our recruitment efforts; specifically I'm going to do a little more oversight of our stamps program to make sure our stamps are being used optimally and that we're actually getting enough stamps. I'm also going to go for a renewed effort at a manual recruitment program, drawing inspiration from The Communist Bloc. That requires a significant proportion of the population to be on board to get working, so there would likely have to be a drive to recruit people to recruit manually and then to find a way to reward manual recruiters.

I believe that I am the most experienced and fit in the race to serve as your Secretary, and I hope that what you've read so far brings you to the same conclusion. I will work as hard and as much as I possibly can to make this region the best it can be, and I know this cannot and should not be a one person fight. I intend on being a Secretary for our Assembly and will try my hardest to act as an extension of the will of the Assemblians; I want to make abundantly clear that I am always open to suggestions, questions, comments, concerns, or any other communiques from all of you to ensure that I have the most successful term as Secretary I can. As part of this, I'd like people to know that in addition to telegramming me they can also send me a Discord DM (Podria#6146), an email (podriatla@gmail.com), or submit something via the suggestion box which I intend to expand and utilise as much as possible. Really, all I want to do is serve this region the best I can, and ensure that our region is as enriched as possible. If this doesn't convince you, feel free to contact me and I'll do my best to make sure that you know that I'm fighting for you and for our region.