Second-grader Dylan Strickland has plans for a new political party with himself serving as president.
By Nora Fleming / Special to The Malibu Times
Seven-year-old Dylan Strickland already has a plan to make his way onto the 2044 presidential election ballot. He has even designed a campaign platform, a new party and picked his vice president.
In May, Strickland took the first step of his 36-year planned path to the White House when he sat at the Malibu City Council dais as “Mayor of the Day.” Among a few of his duties that day were banging the gavel and bringing the meeting to order, making a motion to vote and giving a speech.
The fact that Strickland has cerebral palsy has not impeded his quest in politics.
Born three months premature, Strickland was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at the age of two. At the time, his parents were working on Phuket, Thailand teaching scuba diving. The family moved back to Malibu so Strickland’s needs could be met more readily, said his mother, Suzy Klong.
In his early years, medical professionals told Klong there was a chance her son would not walk.
Despite that dire prognosis, intensive physical therapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy have enabled Strickland to not only walk to Point Dume Marine Science Elementary School on a daily basis (when school is in session) with his mother, but has also helped him to be mainstreamed into all regular classes at the school. While Dylan still receives the aid of therapists after school, he learns alongside students without disabilities.
Chris Cullen, a first grade teacher at Point Dume elementary, said that although he is only seven, Strickland has developed a keen interest for politics, geography and the environment, and has voiced concern in the classroom over global warming and endangered species. One of her favorite memories of Strickland, Cullen said, was when he read his Mayor for the Day speech to the first-grade class.
“In his speech, Dylan was able to pinpoint exactly where he believes Malibu has problems,” she said. “Just as Dylan has done this year in class with his own challenges, he was able to do for the City of Malibu by coming up with solutions to the school system, pollution and fighting wildfires.”
In an interview with The Malibu Times, Strickland said Malibu has many changes that need to implemented, and hopes when he becomes mayor he can build dime stores, stop the sale of endangered species in the grocery store and use a “fog net,” which, he said, would extract water from foggy air to help solve some of the city’s water problem, an idea stimulated by watching Eyewitness Weather.
Strickland received a set of World Book encyclopedias as a present from his grandfather and now reads them avidly, memorizing facts the average seven-year-olds would not be aware of, his mother said.
Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich, a neighbor of the family, said Strickland warned her of purchasing and eating certain foods from grocery stores, such as imitation crab, which, Strickland told her, is made with orange roughy, a fish quickly becoming susceptible to endangerment.
“Dylan is a remarkable young man who inspires me everyday,” Conley Ulich said. “He is bright and optimistic about the future, and teaches me about the world in a common sense way to put knowledge into action.”
Klong noticed her son’s interest in politics around the age of five. During a car ride one day when Strickland was in kindergarten, he told his mother he wanted to write a letter to the governor about the environment, which he dictated and she wrote and mailed.
Strickland receives a great deal of his political stimulation from his father, Klong said, who has kept his son up to date with the 2008 election. Strickland was a John Edwards supporter early in the presidential race until the Democratic candidate dropped out, but has now rallied behind Barack Obama. Klong said he was also interested in the local City Council election, and was aware of each of the candidates and could pinpoint differences.
For Strickland’s future candidacy as president, he said he plans to create a new party called the “Neutralists.”
“Everybody is tired of the Democrats and Republicans arguing and arguing,” Strickland said. “[The party] will be small government when large government isn’t needed, and large government when small government isn’t doing good.”
His 36-year path to the White House includes future roles as Mayor of Malibu, state governor, a seat in the House of Representatives and later the Senate, and finally the Oval Office.
Cullen said, in just a year, Strickland has made tremendous progress in overcoming his own personal challenges, partially due to being aware of what they are and trying to develop a plan to work through them, and he has made personal strides in working with his peers and adults.
“He is always willing to try out the solution or ‘give it a go,’ even though I might have been asking him to work just a little beyond his comfort zone,” Cullen said. “I see [overcoming challenges] as a lifelong journey for him. He is at the beginning stages of figuring out how to develop the tools that will work through his challenges and be successful.”