I awoke at 4:30. As per my custom, I glanced at 3 op-ed pages, finding in each at least one diary-worthy piece. Colbert King in the Post writes that it is not just Skip Gates, and White Cambridge Cops arresting Blacks, but cops of all colors in DC arresting multiple hues of people for disorderly conduct, with more than half the arrests not resulting in convictions. Derrick Jackson in The Globe writes that seeing 33 Senate Republicans vote against cash for clunkers proves "bipartisanship has no horsepower." Bob Herbert in the Times reminds us that abuse of women seems to be tolerated by our still misogynistic culture, and Charles Blow tells that Republicans are trying to sabotage health care reform while too many Democrats are sitting out the conflict.
My diary is not focused on any of these.
Yesterday I had two exchanges, with people I respect, about danger and futility. First I talked with my wife, Leaves on the Current, about the level of danger I saw as possible - perhaps even probable - in the kinds of demonstrations we have been seeing recently. Via email I had a depressing exchange with a nationally notable thinker on education that we might already have lost the battle to save public schools. Last night my fears on the first were reinforced in listening to Rachel Maddow talk with Frankie Schaeffer about the protests, about the likelihood that they will escalate into violence.
Thus reading these four op eds today in many ways frustrated me. It is easy to see why one might wonder why we take the time here to write about issues that seem to just get worse, as my exchanges yesterday and Rachel's with Schaeffer seem to demonstrate. Further, today I read four notable and well-paid pundits penning words that could have been previously encountered in diaries and comments here. Many people have raised the same issues, sometimes even more cogently than these highly paid writers, on some occasions weeks - even months - ago. Thus perhaps one finds oneself asking the question with which I began - Why do we bother?
Why do we bother to think and write about these concerns? Why do many of us take the time to not only write here, but to lobby politicians and policy makers, to testify before legislative bodies if given the chance, as I have done in the County where I teach on education? Why do we organize, why do we participate in political activities on behalf of candidates who then so frequently disappoint us by seemingly not fighting as hard as we might want on the issues about which care?
I find I cannot right now give an answer to that, even though it is something about which I have recently been thinking hard. Let me explain.
Each year at Yearly Kos / Netroots Nation, we have had a Sunday morning worship service led by Pastor Dan. This year he cannot attend, so a group has been working collaboratively to put together a service. We decided we needed a theme, and ultimately adopted this:
Living our beliefs: Advocacy through Service
There will be readings, music, and three mini-sermons on the topic. We will hear from Chacoune and a second person whom I cannot now recall. I am also responsible for a message. Yesterday, as it happens after the two exchanges, but before watching Rachel, I was wrestling with what I would say. I still am, but now my thinking is further informed not only by that televised conversation, but also by encountering the four aforementioned op eds.
Five minutes - that works about to between 450-600 words, not a lot. Certainly much less than my average overly prolix diary. I wrestle with how to condense down a myriad of feelings to a coherent message.
It may be strange for those without a religious orientation to wonder why advocacy should be part of a "worship" service, although for many Progressives of faith it is a natural process, even as they will acknowledge that the process is subject to abuse and intolerance, as too often we have seen in the recent political discourse of this nation.
And yet, such advocacy by people of faith has also moved this nation forward. Many abolitionists were motivated by their faith. The Civil Rights movement was full of ministers, priests, rabbis, and lay people who felt impelled to their participation by their understanding of their religious traditions. Today people of faith can be found supporting expansion of full rights citizenship to gays, preserving and protecting the environment, addressing the needs of those being left out or left behind - the poor, the aged, the mentally ill, the prisoners, the immigrants documented or not.
Our advocacy can take many forms. Our seeking to make connection with other like-minded types for further action is one reason we may come here - and also next week come to Pittsburgh as we have previously assembled in Las Vegas, Chicago, and Austin.
We seek to explain our own understandings and perceptions. That is a form of advocacy. We seek to understand the concerns of others. We try to find ways of making a difference on things that matter. We write, we read, we ponder, and we also make phone calls, write letters to newspapers and public officials, knock on doors, give money to candidates and causes.
Why do we bother? For some who encounter this question, issues of living out religious faith and belief is of no relevance, and you need not have faith as a motivating factor for your actions for me and and others to respect and honor what you do. Your willingness to engage, to give of yourself is sufficient reason, regardless of how you arrive at that point.
And how I answer that question is almost certainly different from most who encounter these words, just as I am different, a product of a different set of life experiences and influences. That we can come together for common purpose despite those differences is one reason why we bother, why we come here to read, to write, to exchange, to consider what lays before us and what we can - or in some cases must - do next.
For myself, it is in seeking to serve others that I learn the most, that I find value. As a teacher, I have to meet my students where they already are, not where I might wish they would be. In the process of learning about them, I also learn new ways of perceiving and understanding, and since my average class approaches 30 students, usually I learn far more than what I may help them understand. It is similar in my involvement here, and in politics, policy and activism generally. Because I engage I grow - I learn not merely factual information, which may correct my misperceptions. I learn new ways of perceiving, ways that broaden my understanding of the issue at hand, of the world around me, and ultimately of myself.
Why do we bother? Perhaps we are neither so cynical nor so disillusioned to believe that we cannot make a difference. Perhaps even though each of us may be no more than a single drop of water in the vast oceans of people and society, we know that many drops of water can erode massive stoniness, and in our case that can be the stoniness of human hearts.
Why do we bother? Because we know that we can, and knowing that feel that we must? Because we cannot blind ourselves to inequity and suffering? Because we can perceive of a better world? Perhaps, because like Bobby Kennedy, words he often spoke, derived from George Bernard Shaw, speak to us, words that say this:
Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
So let me ask again, and then perhaps offer one more answer:
Why do we bother? Because we can. And because we can, we find we must.
Peace.