Nessralla Throws Her Hat In the Ring

Activist and College Student Runs for Plymouth Town Meeting for the 13th Precinct

In this difficult hour for democracy at home and around the world, it is a rare and very heartening thing to report some good news.

I have been personally very encouraged by the candidacy of Plymouth’s Lauren Nessralla for Precinct 13 Town Meeting Member.

At 19, Ms. Nessralla, a current student in the Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Boston, would likely be the youngest Town Meeting Member in Plymouth, but she is no stranger to politics, especially at the local level.

“I am running to be a Plymouth Town Meeting Member in my precinct, 13. I am a citizen petitioner and a strong believer in the power of democracy,” Nessralla recently told me via email.

Successful Effort to Ban Fur Sales in Plymouth

“I led a successful movement, passing a bylaw through Plymouth’s last Town Meeting, to ban the sale of fur products. This proved the testament of a community coming together to make change — in this circumstance to better animal welfare while increasing the status of Plymouth as an environmentally friendly and health promoting town,” she said.

Ms. Nessralla first became involved with pressure campaigns against retailers Neiman Marcus and Canada Goose to drop fur when she was a sophomore in High School. She later worked with the late Plymouth Town Clerk, Pearl Sears, on language for a bylaw to ban fur sales in Plymouth after hearing of a similar measure in Brookline in the Summer of 2021 (like Plymouth, Brookline is governed by a Representative Town Meeting form of government).

Speaking with stakeholders from the Chamber of Commerce to the Plymouth Director of Marine and Environmental Affairs, addressing Town bodies like the Finance Committee and the Board of Selectmen, Nessralla and her coalition successfully shepherded the measure through the Plymouth Town Meeting.

They were even subject to a bullying attempt by corporate lawyers with the American Fur Council, who threatened to sue the Town of Plymouth if it proceeded, despite the clear and repeated judgment of the Attorney General of Massachusetts that bans on fur sales are constitutional and well within a municipality’s legal purview.

A majority of the Plymouth Town Meeting voted to defy the fur industry’s lawyers, and passed the article banning fur sales.

“ I was ecstatic and so proud of my town,” said Nessralla.

Opposed to Animal Cruelty and the Horse Track/Casino

Animal cruelty is clearly an issue which exercises Ms. Nessralla. She described graphically the quite frankly horrific treatment of animals that are “farmed,” for fur, including the confinement of intelligent mammals –- the world’s foremost neuroscientists signed a declaration a decade ago that all mammals and birds had the neural structures that underlay consciousness in humans, and Nessralla notes that animals as diverse as rabbits, raccoons, chinchillas, and minks, are kept in brutal conditions, where they are abused and tortured.

These animals, she said, “are subjected to tiny wire cages where they literally lose their minds from confinement. These innocent animals will spin in circles, self-mutilate, and even cannibalize each other. Then they are killed by anal or oral electrocution, suffocation, gassing, or clubbing — all in the name of a vain fashion statement.”

Nessralla noted that a pound of mink fur is three times as carbon-intensive to produce as the nearest (in terms of climate footprint) natural or synthetic fabric.

Both the moral and humane treatment of animals, and the preservation of our natural environment, are among the reasons Ms. Nessralla finds herself opposed to the proposal for a horse racing facility on the County Woodlot.

I first met Ms. Nessralla at the April 30th rally and standout organized by Planning Board Member and opponent of the Racetrack/Casino Frank Mand, himself a longtime reporter for The Old Colony Memorial (full disclosure: I have quite publicly opposed this idea, including at the rally). She and several of her friends had gathered to stand against the proposal, some traveling from Somerville to be at the standout.

( A sunny day for a rally; Ms. Nessralla, second from right; photo credit — Frank Mand )

( Opponents rally against the Horse Track/Casino proposal, Plymouth, April 30th, 2022; photo credit — Frank Mand )

It is not the Horse Track/Casino alone that Ms. Nessralla finds herself focusing on; she pointed to “a plethora of important issues that will be voted on in the near future, such as what to do with the land by where the nuclear power plant used to be as well as the controversial horse race track proposal. I am running to continue to be a voice for the animals, the environment, everyday people, and to serve as representation for our underrepresented youth.”

Youth Political Participation

Many of the participants at the rally remarked on how positive it was to see young people participating in politics, and it’s a sentiment I wholeheartedly share. I asked Ms. Nessralla what she thought about some of the barriers to the participation of young people — say, 18-34 — in politics.

Her answers were thoughtful, extensive, and illuminating. She remarked that she herself had experienced some of these barriers, both directly and indirectly.

“When I was door-knocking for my campaign,” Nessralla told me, “there were a few adults who questioned my capabilities because of my age. One man said to me, ‘Do you really think you have enough life experience at nineteen to be a Town Meeting Member?’ This is seemingly one of the biggest misconceptions — that in order to try, you already have to know everything first. But our best politicians are not the best because they have lived the longest, they are so great because of their will to stand up for what is morally right, basing their efforts in ethics, logic, and science.”

Beyond some directly questioning her age, Nessralla said many young people face internal obstacles to overcome in order to fully participate in self-government.

“The other barrier is the one that happens more in our minds. There are the looming doubts that we are not smart enough and not strong enough. The lack of youthful political representation only reinforces these ideas that our governments are for grown adults,” said Nessralla.

“But the truth is a lot of younger voters have the enthusiasm, the strategy, and the moral backbone to be effective agents of change, but don’t view our local governments as approachable,” she continued.

”I want to change that. Young people should not just be at the polls, they should be on the ballot.”

The Plymouth Town Election is on Saturday, May 21st. The polls open at 7 a.m., and close at 7 p.m.