Digital Ground Game Political Action Award
Hello everyone!
Digital Ground Game is proud to announce Darius Palmer as the latest winner of the DGG Political Action Award!
The DGG Political Action Award is a community-led award intended to highlight members who have done significant real-life political work. Winners receive a Discord shoutout, a pinned Reddit post, an article in the Pragmatic Papers, and a special role on the Digital Ground Game Discord server!
If you would like to nominate yourself or others for this award, please visit the following link: Nomination Form
The award committee selected Darius for founding and leading the Southern Tier Aviation Initiative, a grassroots effort to revitalize New York's Southern Tier by turning it into a regional hub for aviation training and aerospace manufacturing. In two years, he has taken it from a single idea to a regional project backed by local officials, educators, industry, and elected leaders from both parties.
The spark in the dark
During World War II, the factory windows in Sidney, New York were bricked over. The Bendix Scintilla plant there built magnetos for B-17 bombers and all other Allied aircraft, and it was considered a potential target for the Axis powers. Locals called the town "the Spark in the Dark." Nearby Binghamton gave the world the first aircraft flight simulator.
Today, the Southern Tier's aviation legacy is mostly history. At the same time, the country is struggling to train enough aircraft mechanics and air traffic controllers to keep its skies running safely.
Darius Palmer thinks those two problems have the same solution.
Darius is a design engineer at Amphenol Aerospace in Sidney, where he designs mil-spec D38999 connectors used in military and aerospace applications. He's a graduate of Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in Queens, and he grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, in a one-bedroom apartment that at times housed up to six people.
After the 2024 election, Darius decided to get involved in his community. Then two things happened at once: the deadly midair collision over the Potomac in January 2025, and the sale listing of a massive manufacturing facility in Sidney, the old ACCO building. Darius saw an aviation school waiting to happen.
Two years later, the Southern Tier Aviation Initiative has:
- An advisory council that includes the Mayor of the Village of Sidney, a Sidney Town Councilman, the Vice President of Vaughn College, the Provost of SUNY Delhi, and a representative from Amphenol Aerospace
- Bipartisan support, including Democratic Congressman Josh Riley and Republican State Assemblyman Joe Angelino, plus conversations with Senator Chuck Schumer's office
- Support from the head of the New York State Department of Transportation's Aviation Division
- A volunteer team handling research, scheduling, and media
- A clear next step: a feasibility study, estimated at roughly $350,000
Digital Ground Game sat down with Darius to talk about where the initiative came from, why it matters to anyone who's ever boarded a plane or waited on a package, and what it will take to get it off the ground.
The interview
Sixpaths: Tell us about yourself. Who are you, where are you from, and what do you do?
Darius: "I'm Darius Palmer. I was born and raised in Mount Vernon, New York. I grew up in poverty. There were sometimes three to six of us living in a one-bedroom apartment.
I'm a design engineer. I work at Amphenol Aerospace. I design D38999 connectors, mil-spec, military grade. When you're working with military stuff, they don't really tell you all the applications your work is going into. You get enough experience in the field where they tell you the qualifications it has to survive, and then you just know. Oh, this is going into space. This is going deep in the ocean."
Sixpaths: For someone who's never heard of it, what is the Southern Tier Aviation Initiative?
Darius: "It's a project to economically revitalize the Southern Tier region of New York and turn it into a hub for aviation training and aerospace manufacturing.
Aviation is a cornerstone of American culture, and proof of American ingenuity. In less than 130 years we achieved flight, something man has tried to do since the dawn of civilization. And I think aviation, with the state of the industry and the state of this region, is a great opportunity to revitalize this area, especially given its history."
Sixpaths: Why the Southern Tier specifically?
Darius: "Sidney used to be the home of Bendix and Scintilla. They made magnetos, vital components for B-17 bombers during World War II. The old facility had to get its windows bricked up because it was an attack target for the Axis powers. The town used to be called 'the Spark in the Dark.' The first aircraft simulator came out of Binghamton. This region has an aviation and aerospace history. I'm just trying to retap into it and accentuate it.
A lot of my coworkers live in town. I go to church sometimes and I see coworkers. There are a lot of retired factory workers in this town. Even though this is an economically depressed area, a lot of these skilled people could get better jobs in nicer areas. They choose to stay here because they value and support their community."
Sixpaths: Where did the idea come from?
Darius: "I ended up biting off more than I could chew. Around that time, the plane crash happened in D.C., and a giant manufacturing facility near me, the old ACCO building, went up for sale.
I thought, that's a great place for an aircraft mechanic school, something like Vaughn College, my alma mater. And then one thing leads to another, conversations happen, and things just start inflating. Now I'm here two years later with a large regional project that is slowly getting off the ground."
Sixpaths: What problem is the initiative trying to solve, and why should someone outside the Southern Tier care?
Darius: "This affects your travel times and costs for flying anywhere. It affects how long it takes for your packages to get to you. For you, maybe a new video game arriving a day late isn't that bad. But for a company, getting their products a day early could be the difference between a project failing or succeeding.
There's also the safety factor. If we don't have enough mechanics or air traffic controllers, we're not just slowing things down. We're potentially heading into dangerous territory.
Air traffic controllers are currently being expected to work 60-hour weeks, six days a week, ten hours a day. We're bordering on very dangerous workplace environments. On top of that, they had to revise their projected need for air traffic controllers down, because there doesn't seem to be a way to hit those numbers.
That's where I'm coming in. There might be a way, if we start thinking about this differently and start thinking about it as a system as a whole."
Sixpaths: So what does thinking about it differently look like?
Darius: "Instead of looking at them right out of college, or how do we get them into college to become an air traffic controller, how about we start looking at earlier pipelines? How do we introduce a child to the airport, and to working at an airport?
I'm taking in a lot of information, including an article about the president of my alma mater, Vaughn College, Sharon DeVivo. I'm paraphrasing, but the idea is that we introduce students to aviation at a college fair, when we should introduce them way younger and more repeatedly to this career path, because that has stronger dividends.
What has the most influence on you isn't one big spike. It's the repeated taps into your life. For me, it was video games and anime. They always sparked my imagination. For somebody else out there, it might have been being a pilot, because maybe their dad was a pilot, and every day they saw him come back home wearing that uniform with pride.
So make it mundane. Make going to the airport a more normal thing in a person's life. Make meeting a pilot a mundane thing. 'Oh, my neighbor's a pilot with American Airlines. My cousin's an air traffic controller.' When we turn it from the extreme to the mundane, anybody can see themselves in this career: as an engineer, a pilot, an air traffic controller, a mechanic, in airport management."
Sixpaths: What has it actually taken to build this from nothing?
Darius: "The first year, I had to do almost everything myself. A town councilman was assisting me, but he still had his own family and his own job. I was reaching out to state assemblymen and state senators, reaching across both sides of the aisle. Reaching out to coworkers for connections. Getting companies and businesses on board. That took the entirety of the first year.
I was getting very stressed until I talked to somebody named Synnøve. I described the project to her briefly and said I just need somebody to help me schedule meetings and handle emails. She said she'd help, and she became my strongest soldier. I am so thankful to her.
Then later, as the project got more complicated, my friend Hana said, 'Darius, you might want to reach out to Digital Ground Game, because somebody there has to have connections to help you.'
So I reached out to Sam, the Northeast coordinator, asked if I could talk about my project, and I got eight people interested. A good portion of them stuck around for an extended period. I also got my old friend Joe to join the project. We made a giant research document, and eventually we brought on a social media manager, Bears, who's been excellent. Now we're posting content and interviews, because a project like this lives and dies by whether people are talking about it."
Sixpaths: Who's supporting the initiative so far?
Darius: "We have an advisory council: the mayor of Sidney, a Sidney town councilman, the Vice President of Vaughn College, the Provost of SUNY Delhi, and a representative from Amphenol Aerospace who's representing industry interests. We have county representatives helping us.
We have support on both sides of the aisle. Josh Riley and Joe Angelino have been supporters. I've also talked to Chuck Schumer's office. And I recently spoke to the head of the New York State Department of Transportation's Aviation Division, and he's supportive of the project."
Sixpaths: Where does the initiative stand right now, and what's the next milestone?
Darius: "The next big thing we need is a feasibility study. Everything I have has been trying to get this feasibility study started. The estimated cost is roughly $350,000, and that's just for the study, not counting the in-kind time from our advisory council.
Right now it's a federal application, and I'm doing this while working a nine-to-five, so I only have so much time. We had a setback when the consultant I'd requested a proposal from backed down. Instead of moving forward on an application I was bound to fail without an estimated cost, I had to pivot and look for different funding sources.
In the grand scheme of things, this is not an expensive study. A federal grant might take months or even a year. An angel investor could just fund it entirely. Once the study's done, a lot of questions are answered, and then it's just: do we go forward?
I did not want to put the project on hold for a whole year. The industry and the state of this region could be so different by then. We need to strike while the iron is hot."
Sixpaths: What's been the hardest part of doing this work?
Darius: "This is such a unique skill set that I just never had to develop. Leading a team of volunteers. Using my softer skills to get funding, get people's support, get into rooms and meetings I normally wouldn't be a part of. Learning about economic planning and development, regulations, things like that. It's been pushing me to so many levels.
There were several points where I thought the project was over. And then we'd be full steam ahead again. There were so many moments back and forth like that.
You learn very quickly how much your name is worth and how many doors it can open when you're trying to open every single door you can for your project. And also how well you can open doors with other people's names."
Sixpaths: Is there a moment where you felt like this was actually making a difference?
Darius: "When I just offhandedly mention the project, and some random person in a room says, 'Oh, I really hope it succeeds. The town really needs this.' It's stuff like that.
Another time I messaged a woman to set up a meeting about the aviation college project, and she wrote back saying she was trying to get to the bottom of that too. I left it for a day, and then thought: wait, does she think I'm asking her about it as if I don't know about it? I cleared it up: hey, I'm the project lead. And she was like, 'Oh my gosh!'
This is a very small town, and random people are supportive of it. This is the first time in a while I felt like, oh my gosh, this could really change things for the better. This is a major thing that can heavily change the town."
Sixpaths: What would you say to someone who has an idea for their community but doesn't know where to start?
Darius: "Ask somebody what they think about your idea. Ask some random person, somebody you know. Ask a politician, and don't just pitch the idea. Ask them: what are the steps I would need to take to put this idea into action?
Depending on the level of elected official you're talking to, whether that's a town council member, a mayor, a state official, or a federal official, that's how much they can personally help you. With a lot of the state assemblymen and state senators, I just called their office or sent an email, and I heard back pretty fast. Getting to talk with representatives is actually fairly easy."
Sixpaths: What does the initiative need most right now?
Darius: "I need eyes. I need backers. I need people in positions of influence, whether in private industry or the public sector, to come out and say, 'Hey, I want to support this,' or, 'Hey, let's have a meeting together and talk about this.' And I need public support.
As we move forward, I'm going to need researchers. I'm going to need people with media skills. I'm going to need an executive director, and somebody to handle grant writing. Digital Ground Game is fertile ground for finding people who are very willing to try new ventures."
How to Help the Southern Tier Aviation Initiative
The initiative is looking for support in four areas:
- Funding: Investors, foundations, and grant partners who can help fund the roughly $350,000 feasibility study
- Industry and education partners: Aviation and aerospace companies, airports, colleges, and training programs interested in the region
- Expertise: Consultants with experience in economic development feasibility studies, plus grant writers and researchers
- Volunteers: People with media, research, or organizing skills
To get in touch, visit nystai.org/contact or follow the Southern Tier Aviation Initiative on LinkedIn. Digital Ground Game members can also reach out through the #Northeast regional channel on the DGG Discord.
To nominate yourself or someone else for the DGG Political Action Award, fill out the nomination form here.
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