When my dad was sick and dying of cancer, his fundamental Christian neighbor stopped in to see him and asked genuinely, “Sam, are you right with the Lord?”
My father responded without missing a beat, “Same water, different cups,” and that ended that discussion. When the minister from the Presbyterian church where my dad had served as a deacon (mostly to set a good example for his four kids, because he was more joking than religious about anything he did), my dad had my mother, my sister and I traipsing all over the house looking for just the right Buddhist, Taoist and Bible passages that would be fitting for his funeral. No matter what we brought, it just wasn’t quite the right verse. We could see by the slight smirk on his mouth that he was enjoying the exercise.
My dad is the one who took me when I was twelve or so to the “ghetto” parts of Columbus to show me how the priorities of “poor people” were “screwed up,” as he put it—they had large TVs and nice cars but lived in terrible conditions at their homes. It backfired on him, because all I could think was, “Someone needs to do something to help people who are living like this.” And that was the beginning of how and why I became a Democrat.
Yesterday I spoke at the FDR breakfast for the Marion County Democratic Club in Ohio. Before the breakfast began, I listened as the conscientious county chair spoke to me a bit fretfully about a primary in the city council races, and I responded that perhaps that is healthy for the party. After the breakfast, I listened to a hard-left activist, who now describes herself as independent of a party, relay how years ago she was conducting a head count for a demonstration in Michigan. Even today she still bears a scar on her temple from being hit, leveled and bloodied by a right-wing extremist couple who were carrying “pro-life” and “pro-gun” signs and were quickly absorbed into the crowd after their dirty deed. As she put it, “I didn’t even have time for that ‘Oh, sh**!’ moment.”
She is disillusioned with partisan politics, having worked in government as a professional who suffered when she had to let good people go for political reasons. She wanted to know when the law would change so that anyone could vote in a primary or serve as an election official, even if unaffiliated with a party.
I was not-too-subtly challenged by a long-time labor-turned-city councilman-Democratic party leader, who still can’t get past my run against the party establishment for a U.S. Senate seat last year, and who managed to speak before me just a little too long and throw out a last-minute poke, hopefully well-intentioned, but pretty much characterizing me as a trouble maker.
There were the quiet ones who came to the breakfast because they are loyal and they care. There were early Obama-supporters-turned-Democrats who had managed to get me there in the first place and who get more things done through their grassroots networks than seems imaginable in this semi-rural community visibly affected by this extended economic downturn.
This is my Democratic Party, and this reflects what my dad could never quite embrace, even though today, I wear his mother’s gold donkey necklace. She scandalized her family by going door-to-door for FDR and later hung a picture of John F. Kennedy in her parlor and served religiously as a precinct election official in the small rural town where she raised my father.
Yesterday, in the hometown of famed, Teapot Dome Scandal Republican Warren G. Harding, I pondered this group of Democratic Americana. I could see the schism reflected in our party all over Ohio and this country. Here’s what I saw, and here’s what I know about the future of the Democratic Party and all political parties for that matter.
Those of us who are Democrats are so because we care deeply about the plight of our fellow humans—individually and collectively. We care for what the Bible refers to as “the least among us.” This is not to say no other party does, but we have trouble explaining away their plight as some fault of their own.
Some call us bleeding hearts. Others call us liberals. We have been described as the “big tent” party and criticized for it as greedy opportunists. We have been called the party of big government and big spending. And we have run from all of these labels, afraid to stand up and say, “And what’s wrong with that?” And we have failed to adequately explain just why we do what we do. The independent woman who wants to be a poll worker pointed out to me that our compassionate nature seems to make us recoil from a fight.
My message to the Marion County Democrats was that we must be more inclusive. (In my book, that would make us more fully Democrats.) Soon we will be faced with documented, demographic changes in the human composition of our country. Last week, I worked with a group of William and Mary law school students who were competing to create a new redistricting plan in a statewide competition in Virginia. One student asked me, “Should we base our numbers on people eligible to vote or all the people in the state?”
“Great question,” I thought.
Slyly, I said, “all people, and not just people eligible to vote” knowing that the anti-immigration, conservative answer would have been diametrically opposite. I said, “If something isn’t done about immigration reform, then maybe this will help push them to do it.”
Inclusive—that’s where we need to go. Our politics is changing. The 2008 Obama campaign kicked up the dirt, but the dust cloud is just starting to rise up to a full-fledged storm, threatening to leave nothing the same. And maybe that’s what we need. We have changed.
Media’s role has changed. Many no longer trust mainstream media as we realize that Walter Cronkite will never be back. We know that large, for-profit corporations own the companies that provide us with our news and info-tainment. Budgets have been slashed, journalistic safeguards and integrity compromised—because the owners of our news outlets must turn a profit. Ward and June Cleaver and the Borax commercials of Ronald Reagan’s days are long gone, left in their land of black and white, as we step into the age of Netflix and iPads.
We now have so many more options. We can speak and listen to each other’s voices, see a flash mob, all nearly instantaneously. Armed with more and better information, we can more intelligently and without fear, act. This can be politics at its best, not its worst. We can gain a better understanding of life as it is and better imagine it as it can be. And we are best positioned to toss aside the frozen snapshot of life as it was and that can never be recovered, recognizing that the world is full of color and moving pictures.
As I watch my Democratic Party start to crumble from the inside when its leaders do not allow for inclusion and organic emergence, I know that it will take many voices speaking out to keep it robust and alive. I started a state political action committee, “ Courage PAC ,” with a motto that, “Every voice matters. Together we’re stronger,” in an effort to get people to learn from each other and to speak out as effective advocates for what they care about in our great but flawed society.
Speaking out requires courage. Courage PAC’s logo bears the paraphrased Thomas Jefferson declaration: “One person with courage is a majority.” Often, all that is necessary to achieve a tipping point is one person who has the guts to stand up and say, “This isn’t right. We need to move in another direction.” Those who have been waiting, frustrated, asleep or disenfranchised are thereby given permission to summon their own courage to join and move forward.
At this time, our party identity and modus vacillate pensively between our past, our present and our future. It’s painful to watch President Obama maneuver the choppy waters of a Congress aided by the wind machine of the media while his administration tries to achieve well-intentioned public policies to serve the greater good. It is painful to watch him and other champions of human betterment be slammed against the rocks as they bear the weight of past years of excess and corruption. But public service requires dedication from any who step up to answer the call.
Our best and most tenacious public servants refuse to let themselves be overcome by roadblocks, wedges and trip lines thrown down by those who are afraid of losing power or sharing it. These public servants are unafraid to take a chance on compassion for those not like them or who would outnumber them. These servants steel themselves against ridicule or punishment. They understand that being called upstarts is based on the failure to embrace the need to break through and lift up others not otherwise blessed with privilege, talent or opportunity.
Yes, there is a large majority of people who know what their values are, but who don't see a way to change what's not working around them. They have lost interest in looking for a better way, except for their own interests.
Others who are less satisfied are waiting for someone to speak up, because they don't have the means, ingenuity or courage to do it. They can't see any way other than trudging through life feeling helpless and harboring a submerged and simmering anger.
We must be willing to speak truth to each other and to speak truth to power, even if it means we temporarily lose power to do so. Someday, in a democratic order, it will be the same. Today, like no other time, just as you’re reading these words, we have the means to begin—each one of us.
What the hard-core "lefties" and “rightists” have in common is that they have already traversed the dock’s edge and are in the water loosening the boat from the dock--they're needed in our democratic society. Crusty boors of the established power structure stand on the shore, trying to convince the disillusioned and tentative masses that there's no need to get into the boat. They give them a thousand reasons against it, pushing the "upstart exhorters" into the water, so the crusties can continue to rule the land and covet the perquisites found only at the top.
The masses are beginning to see and understand that they have power—power over media, military and long encrusted government structures (e.g. Tunisia, Jordan, Egypt and now Bahrain, Wisconsin and soon, Ohio). They are seeing that things can be different and even better. They are beginning to accept the responsibility necessary to walk toward the boat of opportunity and hope, with a greater understanding of their power.
Just like my father quipped “same water, different cups,” there are many ways to climb the proverbial mountain. Each of us has a responsibility to figure the best way to do our part in that climb—for ourselves, our families and others. We have the unprecedented opportunity in the tumult of this day to grasp the power of knowledge, understanding communication and action in a meaningful, dramatic and decisive way. The tools are here to organize, empower and include the diversity that is the hallmark of a peaceful and just democracy. Our prospects for sustained national opportunity and hope depend on this. We must start walking, each in our own way, traveling in solidarity toward that mountaintop. Perhaps that’s why life is called a journey. Let’s get going, and let’s do it together. We can embrace change and change our ways.
To learn more about Courage PAC, please visit couragepac.com