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I’ve never held any office in my life and I work at job that is not political, so much so that I was once approached in the parking lot where I work by a supervisor who suggested I remove a peace symbol bumper sticker from my car, as the concept of peace was considered a political statement. “We don’t want to give the appearance that we’re taking sides….”
I didn’t do it.
Now, that may seem like a ridiculous piece of fluff, its not exactly being a member of the French resistance during the German occupation or anything, but for me, it was a quiet protest during the run up to the Iraq war. The fall-out, simply getting the cold shoulder from that woman to this very day every time I have to come into contact with her, which makes me feel weirdly happy and uncomfortable at the same time.
My activism has amounted to attending rallies and speeches and going door to door for local, and during presidential election cycles, democratic candidates. I’ve contributed a few dollars now and then to the democratic party and I am acutely aware that these things are a far cry from all that others do. My political activity would be at the bottom of any organizational chart, I know, but this participation has been something that even on this minute scale has made me feel that I was at least trying to be part of a solution rather than part of the problem.
I’ve fit it in amongst caring for my children, husband, working, and now caring for my father. But I was taught that’s what you do when you believe in something, you make time. From childhood it was ingrained in me largely through just observation that the democrats are the party that will work to solve the problems stemming for the most part from the republican ideology itself.
I was taught through osmosis to always root for the underdog and to the people who raised me, being a democrat signified that. I come from an area full of underdogs, so self-identifying as a democrat also seemed like self-preservation.
Some of my best memories from even my teen years have a political bent, but certainly not because I was out to champion any cause other than my own. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents because both my parents usually had two jobs and when they didn’t, they tried to pick up as many extra shifts as possible. I regularly used politics as a means of distracting my grandparents so I could leave the house with equally wild girls who shared the mutual goal of wasting away the evening hours along with their brain cells.
On these evenings, often just after dinner as my grandparents were sitting back just about to enjoy their Pall Malls, I would bring up a politically oriented topic or a headline from the newspaper that I’d pre-scanned, focusing on whatever unjust, crooked, or general dirty trick republican X was trying to pull this time. I’d wait until the subsequent conversation became sufficiently heated, and then I would expertly pounce.
“Sarah’s mom said I could spend the night. You can call her if you want and she’ll tell you what we’re going to be doing.” My deception typically included holding out a piece of torn notebook paper with a made-up number written on it.
Knowing that they were now fully engaged with cussing the s.o.b in the White house - code for president Reagan who I gathered they believed was at the heart of all republican chicanery, and who strangely enough also starred in one of my grandfathers favorite movies, “King’s Row”, I would announce that I was leaving, I’d receive their blessing, and be out of the house and into the Camero waiting down the road.
I knew that old Reagan movie must have been a favorite of my grandfather’s because after what to him must have seemed like particularly harsh statements about Reagan, he’d chime in with, but he was good in King’s Row. I was a successful delinquent and my grandfather was a very nice man.
Why all this back-story? What you have to understand is the level of importance that being affiliated as a democrat has had. It’s been formative. Watching my grandmother who never drove a car in her life take several buses to work as a volunteer stuffing envelopes at the gubernatorial campaign headquarters of Jay Rockefeller was instructive to me.
That this lady who could barely read and write, who could not have been any further removed in every way from a Rockefeller, believed she had to do her part because he was the democrat in the race, and he would be the most helpful to those who need him. He would, as the democrat, be the look-out, the people’s man.
The democrat would oppose the status quo. She did it because she believed that democrats are supposed to contribute to the betterment of society in any way they can. There was of course distrust for all politicians as they represented a component of the establishment, but if you only have two choices and you know there will be only one winner, a republican or a democrat, you in effect are forced to choose the lesser of two evils.
The alternative is to say the hell with it, both sides are a disappointment and never throw your time or heart into anyone else’s campaign, albeit, in a most modest way again, to stop voting, or start to look more seriously at third parties.
The more cynical among you may look at my grandparent’s actions not as the dealings of modest people who were very politically committed in their own way, but rather as naive people blindly following a party’s lead. But it wasn’t the party, or the man that represented the party -- they come and go. It was the idea of the party, the ideals the democratic party was supposed to typify. The inalienable, the givens, the protections afforded the most vulnerable among us that if adhered to could rise up this nation. A way of believing that I once heard my grandfather describe as coming down to, “the democrats believe in the Golden Rule”.
As a kid I thought yeah, that’s what I believe too. I’m a democrat. After what has been to say the least, a disappointing performance as the majority party, I think there is an ever-increasing chance that voters will adhere to that Golden Rule and do onto others in Congress.
The hasty passage of Bush’s terrorism spy bill is only the disappointment for August 4th. There’s been a litany of ignored or explained away opportunities trailing behind you since you became the majority. It’s your car, you have the keys, and the voters have supplied you with the road map, but you continually veer off to follow Bush down his own private driveway.
Even with that said, I’m not completely disillusioned with the democratic party and this is purely ideologically based. I’m hopeful that at some point a leader will rise up to get the party back where it was meant to be. I’m impugning the representatives not the ideals the party stands for. I’ll end this message with just one more anecdote, basic, truthful, and heart felt.
When my grandparents died just a month a part several years ago, rarely seen relatives swooped into their modest home to go through their belongings. As they squabbled over the quilts and crocks and rifles and numerous stringed musical instruments, a memory came into my mind.
I pictured my grandmother walking towards the house from the bus stop, horror of all teenage horrors, wearing a styrofoam hat shaped like the kind of hats members of barber shop quartets wore back in the day.
It had a Rockefeller bumper sticker stuck to it in the place a hatband would have been on a proper hat. She wore it rakishly cocked to one side, which made it even more mortifying to me. My mistake was letting her know that she embarrassed me in front of my friends by walking through the neighborhood wearing a crazy red, white, and blue styrofoam hat.
This information guaranteed that it would be on her head in public every day of Rockefellar’s campaign. As the relatives bickered, I walked upstairs and took that hat out of my grandmother’s hope chest and announced, “I have what I want”, and I left.
I’m sure they were delighted, but so was I. This hat was symbolic not only as a remembrance of my grandmother as a woman or me as a girl. It was symbolic, as quaint as it may sound, of what she thought was important. And when you in Congress lose the trust of average people like she and I, when the people’s party loses its people, what are you?
I need you to give me something I can hang my hat on democrats.
