The Color of Hope

It’s as unlikely as anything else that has happened this year, that a set of colorful pens would be my political and emotional salvation, but that’s where I am – returning gratefully from despair and, worse, anger, to a sense of purpose and forward motion.

In the beginning of this political cycle, postcards left the house in stacks, aimed at politicians who surely, I reasoned, would be swayed by my volume, my arguments for right and decency, and my serious, black ink. The fact that my efforts have proven naïve and useless, makes it too easy to give up. What can I do? Wait? Close my eyes? Whenever I think about blogging here about anything but politics – such as the glorious garden behind my new home, and the testament to love that is in the offing (after 50 years, my best friend John and I are marrying) – I feel guilt at my own pleasure when everything around me has turned to crap. Everyone but me is suffering, and it’s only getting worse. On the one hand, I’m told, silence is surrender (‘what would you be doing if this was 1939? Exactly this – nothing’), on the other, I’m told that my efforts are at best, those of a privileged white woman who hasn’t got a clue or an ounce of courage. And this, from the people who agree with me about the dangerous hole that we are falling into.

Worst of all, on every side, I see a meanness emerging in our culture and discourse more open and naked than I can ever remember, and it scares me, because it has been creeping into my own heart, too… Until, that is, I bought the pens in bright and optimistic hues.

It’s not that I’ve stopped paying attention, doodling my way blithely to a state of denial. It’s not that I’ve curbed my addiction to the nightly news. It’s not that I’m giving up righteous indignation at the lying, greed, cynicism, ambition, ignorance, and cruelty dancing on the political stage, but I’m not going to live in anger anymore. I will, as long as I am able, resist sinking into the ugly muck where others want to take me. My pens have helped me make a start.

I have switched now to writing to voters, those who ultimately have the power to bring democracy back on course. Nearly ever week there is a special election somewhere in the country, with courageous, optimistic, hard-working Democratic candidates who want a chance to serve. Changing the players is the only way out, and I am volunteering through an organization called Postcards to Voters to help. We send out friendly, cheerful reminders to individual Democrats in the affected local districts to vote in these important, off-season state and national races.  Our postcards, of course, are not the only factor in the outcome, but there is evidence the strategy is working and candidates are now attesting to the power of our silly pens. In some cases, districts have actually flipped. In others, the turnout is not quite enough, but shows gains in double digits. That’s why it’s important to keep going. It takes so little effort to reach out, and it feels so dang good.

Every day I hang my pretty cards on the mailbox and think about them wending their way towards someone who will appreciate the connection and will gain strength from the reminder that, though we may be thousands of miles apart, we are not in this alone. There is something we can do to resurrect the values that have made this country great.

Over 10,000 volunteers are now using the Postcards to Voters app to connect with individual voters. They provide you everything you need. If you would like to join us, go to www.PostcardstoVoters.org or email join@Tonythedemocrat.org.

On Becoming Californian

Wood smoke, historically, has evoked for me a sense of peace and quiet, safety, even… a snug cabin in the snowy woods, a pile of leaves after we’ve had our fill of jumping, the sweet sparks and embers soft and reassuring.

This smoke is different. It clogs the city sky, and assaults the lungs. There is no welcome crackle, no reassuring glimpse of modest flame contained. The city reeks. The sun is veiled, shadows gone. This is not our smoke, it is not our fire, but we feel its killing impact all the same, as overhead, wretched residue from forests, homes and vineyards tries to make it from the valley to the sea.

Meandering through the Sonoma hills only weeks ago, it was with a tourist’s eye that I admired the abundant grapes still on the vine, small towns with wooden clapboards, horses on the hills. I felt a guest on some one else’s land and history, a lucky stranger in a sunny haven that did not yet feel anything like home. This week, I watch on television the speed with which that charming landscape has been leveled and I feel for the first time a real Californian, worried about my neighbors to the north.  I turn on the local news now, and scan interactive maps to revisit the gentle hills and valleys whose names I have only just learned, whose landscape felt so foreign only weeks ago. I talk to near-strangers in my Tai Chi class about the smoke in our collective city lungs and the friends who have lost houses. Here, everybody knows somebody affected by the fire - even me - and we don’t know what to do.

How does tragedy transform us from strangers into neighbors? Why does such danger make one feel more vested in a place? How long would I have dangled on the outskirts of this landscape looking in, but for this yellow, choking sky? I don't know, but today, I am on my way to becoming Californian, attuned to the dangers in the wind, and worried about my new compatriots, caught in the fires just beyond these hills. 

I Hear You

Yesterday on the floor of the Minnesota House of Representatives, in a surprisingly frank statement, the Minority Leader chastised her “white male” colleagues for playing cards instead of listening to her female colleagues’ comments on an important issue – the right of citizens to protest in the streets. The ensuing exchange was captured and placed on YouTube. Instead of a gracious recognition of Representative Hortman’s frustration, the video shows a male colleague, obviously distressed, rising and asking her to apologize. But she doesn’t. She says that she’s tired of watching her male counterparts ignore the relatively few females – particularly women of color - in the legislature, mirroring the language I’ve been hearing lately from Black people weary of explaining to whites the concept and implications of their privilege. Congressman Dettmer replies, “I forgive you,” instead of offering the more gracious and hopeful response: “I hear you.” Undoubtedly he will be both yelled at and praised on social media for his part in this unfortunate confrontation. So will Representative Hortman. Undoubtedly, the controversy will escalate over the coming days. But sadly, what’s lost in all this is the chance to examine and solve the complex issues that lie just below the surface. How can we fix the divide if we don’t talk about it… if we don’t listen?

In the US Senate this week, we are about to lose one of the last hopeful signs that our country can be made better through the sharing of ideas, compromise, and the search for real solutions that render government both reasoned and manageable. Real governing has been lost in the cacophony of the times. “It’s their fault for being too political,” both parties cry as, between the two of them, they make inevitable the ‘nuclear option’ that will cement what already is true – no one is listening to each other, and as a result, good governing – and citizenship – disintegrates before our eyes. Common decency is a victim, too.

Surely, our new Insulter-in-Chief has instigated and eggs on much of the fear and incivility that has driven us into separate corners so full of fear and righteous anger. But he would never have been elected if the problem did not already exist. He just gave us the permission and impetus to get louder and less forgiving in our beliefs and language. Rural Americans feel left out of economic prosperity and looked down upon by “elitist” city dwellers; conservatives call the poor ‘lazy’ and ‘entitled’; liberals fear their country is taking dangerous steps toward autocracy and ruin, yet they exacerbate their entrenchment by subscribing to a FaceBook page called ‘Too informed to Vote Republican.’ Meanwhile, immigrants are vilified and scared; and a large contingent of our population continues to remind us, with very limited success, that Black lives matter, too.

The many rifts exposed by the 2016 election and their consequences do not bode well for America, and I fear they will be magnified by the ubiquity and immediacy of social media and ‘fake news’. Yesterday’s video from Minnesota shows just how far we have to go. It is too easy to dismiss – and even avoid - those we disagree with, too tempting to shoot off an insult, instead of showing empathy and offering hope.

I am no saint or impartial bystander. Like everyone else, I have an idea of who’s right and who’s wrong in these political and philosophical debates, and I’m more determined than ever to be vocal about it. I owe it to the many people who have neither the privilege nor the voice that I do. I owe it to my grandchildren who will, I’m afraid, inhabit a world far different than my own. I am distressed, however, to find my own rhetoric becoming less civil as I feel overwhelmed by the reckless behavior that is passing for governing in these dark days. “If ‘they’ can be blunt and uncivil, well then, so can I.”

This video is a microcosm of the problem before us; and it reminds me to retrieve my better self and say, “I hear you,” to both sides, even when I strongly disagree with one of them.  I have already sent a postcard and a tweet to Representative Hortman commending her bravery in speaking truth to power, and I was tempted to send equally brief missives to Representative Dettmer, chastising him for his insensitivity. But instead, I think I’ll write a longer letter to both – without angry words or shaming – that respects where each is coming from and asks them to govern well and listen to each other... to do it for the sake of our grandchildren.