Outside your door, beyond the glowing screen : Democracy
Yesterday, I did something new, something I've never done before.
Rather than reading and commenting online, I was one of many new activists who got out the door to attend Massachusetts Democratic Party caucuses around the state. I wasn't elected as a delegate, but statewide the Deval Patrick campaign attained a sweeping victory over the Mass. Democratic Party machinery's favored candidate, with delegates committed Deval Patrick leading delegates for Tom O'Reilly by 2-1. The decades long dominance of the Mass. Democratic Party has led, some would say, to institutionalized corruption and even the shrivelling of the Democratic spirit in the Bay State.
Now there's new hope, a fresh wind - and just in time. Mass., one of the states targeted by the Christian right, is historically one of the leading liberal states for its tradition of launching movements and ideas that have formed the vanguard of social and political change in America.
Progressive politics in Mass. must arise and prevail, I say.
Mass. must be dealt with and neutralized, says the Christian right.
[ Image : my backyard, before the snow all melted. But there are actual people in my town too, people who do politics. Democrats, progressives even ! I know they're real - I met some of them yesterday. They were very welcoming to me. NOTE : my diary title is intended as more a goad to myself than to anyone reading this. ]
Mass. now serves as a laboratory for an experiment unprecedented in US history: gay marriage. The Christian right must stop gay marriage in Mass., or all its claims an the alleged evils of legal gay unions will be proven for what they are : wildly false and hateful. The Christian right knows it must not - indeed, it cannot - allow the current experiment of legalized gay marriage to continue in Mass. [ see: The Coming Storm in Massachusetts] , and it must knows it must neutralize Mass. as a center for progressive politics : it cannot, must not, allow progressive to do what it did through 1990's - take over the GOP from within. The forces of Christian supremacy know they cannot allow progressives to retake the Democratic Party.
Rekindle Democracy in America for minutes and pennies a day !
What if you and I - we - by setting aside a few hours of our precious time, by turning off our televisions or computers, by learning about and engaging with the world that lies just outside of our doors - could join with others in a project that many consider enjoyable and fun, and change the leadership and behavior of a large corporate entity so that it gave financial and institutional aid for some of those many brilliant ideas - on how to improve and change the world - which otherwise languish in obscurity or die on the vine for lack of material support ?
What if that power lay before us ? Would we forgo our extra hour of sleep on a Saturday morning, our TV shows, social events or shopping trips ? Would we continue to watch history unfold as spectators at a movie or a play, passively, or would we spend the time and energy of our lives in support of our values - that which we say we hold dear ?
We say we value "democracy" or "religious liberty", "the environment" or "reproductive rights", the rights of minorities in society, "World Peace...... on and on. The list of our values sounds so grand, so noble in the abstract. Do we work and fight for these values we say are ours ? Do we get out the door to fight for those ? Or do we wear them like a stylish suit of clothes - to be tossed in a closet or dumpster one day ? If our actions do not support our values, are they really our values to begin with ? Or merely words ?
If we bemoan the state of the World in which we live, would we make small sacrifices in order to wield the power to change our collective reality ? And, would we change ourselves to change the world ?
We will. Here's how. Let me tell you a story : of how an initially small, determined group remade the face of politics in America
A handful of years ago, in America, a group of people decided that their values were not well represented in American government and politics or in the public face of American society. They were frustrated, they felt marginalized. So what did they do ?
Now, they could have gotten together for coffee and pie around kitchen tables and at local town restaurants, to kvetch, bemoan, and wring their hands over the sorry state of affairs they felt the world around them had fallen into. They did not do that. They could have decided simply to repress their feelings, suck it up, and collapse into their Laz-Y Boy recliners and couches, to watch television. They didn't do that either. No, they jumped into politics.
They learned about how their political party chose party officials and political candidates, and then they showed up in strength at party caucuses. Now, it had been a long time since citizens had actually been engaged in the political process at that level, and so they routed the old party factions. In 1986, James Ridgeway wrote - in the Village Voice :
" Scheffler himself has little experience in political organizing. He previously ran unsuccessfully for state office in Iowa; then last summer he took a training course in political organizing...This past winter in Des Moines, Scheffler became the catalyst...
"So many times we holler, but we don't take a stand," Scheffler told the Dallas County group. "If we want [ our ] values returned, we have to get out of the pew."
[ they ] caucused informally.... and, taking Scheffler at his word, broke into 22 groups, one for each precinct in the county, decided who to nominate at the upcoming caucuses, and discussed possible platforms. Having shown their strength at the precinct caucuses,[ they ] moved on to the county conventions and, in Dallas County, easily established dominance."
( http://www.villagevoice.com/... )
In successive states across the US, these new political activists quickly became a potent force to the extent that they began to be the dominant force in their party at the state level, and only a few years later they were a powerful force in national politics. At the start they were not heavily funded, and they were amateurs. They were simply engaged citizens, and they learned along the way as they built what now is likely the dominant coalition in American politics. Money and corruption followed, yes, as it surely always is close at the heels of political power. But money did not build the movement, nor did vote rigging and dirty tricks. Engaged citizens - who wanted, passionately, for their values to be represented in politics and realized in legislation - built the movement. They started small, learned, persisted, and built. It took over two decades. [ for another lens on this, see Joan Bokaer's 4 part series at Talk To Action : parts 1, 2, 3, 4
And here we are.
Who were these upstanding pillars of American Democracy who had become politically engaged while much of the nation's citizens became divorced from and apathetic about the political process ? You may have figured out already. You might call them "the religious right" or "the Christian right" . You might accuse them of wanting to impose "theocracy" on America. You may object that the movement they built has become corrupted by money and that it now works to subvert the democratic process.... but those objections - even if true - would miss the central lesson of my story :
Most of success is simply showing up, and most Americans, during the last two or more decades, abandoned the playing field of the democratic process. They stayed home.
Democracy is a process - of engagement, of learning, of persuasion - and even conflict. It is also a negotiation among the political factions of a democracy, debates, quarreling, bickering, horse-trading, bar-brawlling process by which impassioned citizens shape the political process that shapes their world.
Then, there are the others who simply stay home.
____
The leadership of Massachusetts' two US Senators - in leading the attempted filibuster against the Alito nomination - was no accident : Mass. is currently the leader in progressive social change in America.
The Christian right has been using the alleged threat of legalized Gay marriage to rally its base, to split apart the big mainline Protestant Christian denominations, and to provide another to rallying point - along with opposition to abortion rights - for the forces of retrograde social conservatism in America. While virtually no one in America has been audacious enough to mount a frontal assault on the validity of such claims, Massachusetts has done something even more audacious : it has legalized gay marriage - which is alleged by some Christian leaders to lead inevitably to the destruction of the traditional family and Western Civilization itself. Well, life in Mass., goes on exactly as before. That is a threat to the Christian right.
What is even a greater threat is this : that progressives in Masachusetts might wake up and realize that democracy is a process, something to do every day even, and that they can unite to transform the Massachusetts Democratic Party and rekindle the spirit of progressive politics, to breath new life and new vision into Massachusetts politcs and serve as a guiding inspiration to progressives around the nation.
So, I went to my local town Democratic party caucus yesterday to attend the Democratic Party caucus, and it meant nothing in itself. But I met some folks engaged in my local town politics, and I may become involved at that levelmyself. Further, the caucus was a small step in a long process I'll be undertaking, of developing basic political literacy.
I'm awfully late to the game, yes. But I'm beginning the process, and I know I'm not alone - I know I'm part of a growing movement of Americans who have woken up, as if out of a trance, to recognize that we've failed the basic requirements of citizenship in a Democracy : we've treated our democracy as if it were a spectator sport, viewing optional. We don't know how the darned thing works, we don't know who the relevant political players are. We're ignorant on geography, we don't know the rules of the road.
Well, that's too bad - because we'll get out the door and show up nonetheless, and we may make fools of ourselves but we'll also learn. And, by persisting, we'll figure out in time how to be politically effective. We'll do that because we realize our values are at stake.
When we do prevail, to the extent that we can replicate the success of those Christian conservatives who took over the GOP, through the 1980's and 1990's to infuse it with values they held dear, we will have tangible power : the power of the purse.
In 2006 the State of Massachusettsis, it is estimated, will collect 26 Billion dollars in revenues. Now, in percentage terms little of that money is open for discretionary spending but in absolute terms it's a huge amount. I've heard the figure or two billion dollars, but whatever it is the sum is large indeed. Two billion dollars a year, spent wisely and creatively, can have a huge impoact on the state and the World.
Yet - oddly - given the current levels of political disengagement in Massachusetts, a few hundred part time activists statewide exert a tremendous influence on the election of the state representatives and the governer who spend those funds.
Beyond money though, we'll work to turn Massachusetts away from its reargaurd retreat in the face of encroaching right wing politics, towards its historic role as a national leader vigorously advancing a progressive politics which is more than a moribund shell because of the people who make up the political process, who drive it and infuse it with life.
Will Mass. wake up ? Will the circling forces of the Christian right keep the left in Mass. dispirited and confused so that they fail to realize their untied strength ?
One big thing is clear - the Deval Patrick campaign is on the march, the first major battle won. And, one big thing is clear to me : the Internet is a fine tool, yes, but it is not the only route for politics nor the best one. Politics can happen via the Net, sure. But - at base - politics is about shaking hands, looking real humans - not virtual ones - in the eye to suss them up and form alliances. Politics starts - above all - with getting out the door.