In the spring of 2017, I lost re-election to my seventh consecutive, four-year term on the city council of Savonlinna, Finland, thereby curtailing my career as a local politician. Savonlinna is a small industrial city in an economically depressed region of eastern Finland, located in the infrastructurally difficult and ecologically sensitive Saimaa archipelago. It is increasingly dependent on tourism, although its strategy prioritises investment in environmental technology, with some success. The municipality has high unemployment and is relatively disadvantaged on nearly all social indicators. It has regularly incurred budget deficits, leading to continual cutbacks in social, educational, environmental and recreational services. Nevertheless, it sustains a vigorous cultural life, most notably the internationally renowned opera festival. Recorded levels of citizen satisfaction are consistently satisfactory.

During my tenure, I have served at various times on the culture, environment, technical and education committees and numerous working groups, and chaired my party's council faction for over 18 years. Presently, I am on the scrutiny and auditing committee, as well as being an alternative member of the council. I have held a number of elected posts in my political party, the Green League, at local, regional and national levels, including 10 years on the national central committee and six years on the national council. For an even longer period, I have been active as a member of steering committees or as chair in numerous citizen associations of civil society, dealing with such matters as environmental and nature protection, environmental education, human rights, school and university governance, international and sustainable development, culture and science, land use and urban planning as well as the development and internal cooperation of the third sector. Throughout my career, I have considered myself an anarchist and publicly declared so. In this context, I seek a tentative justification of my participation in the municipality and its civil society. My focus is not so much my contributions to local governance but rather my reasons and purposes as acknowledgement of a personal obligation to nudge public policy towards anarchist praxis. Insofar as my justification is valid, it may indicate spheres of anarchism's ideals which are now obscured by the complexities of local governance and the hostility or indifference of many anarchists to it.