Early voting matters

On April 3, 2012, citizens of the Municipality of Anchorage voted on a ballot measure that would have granted significant legal protections to LGBT members of the Anchorage community.

And I didn’t vote.

We had already purchased airline tickets for my interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee when I realized that we would miss the April election.

I’ve always been an “election day” voter. There’s something festive about voting with everyone else, walking around wearing an “I voted” sticker, spotting the blue stickers on other people. It’s a citizenship party!

So I had no idea how to vote early, absentee, or any other option.

The municipality’s elections office assured me that our absentee ballots would be mailed out in plenty of time. That they would arrive before Liesl and I left town.

I watched our mailbox anxiously as our departure date grew closer.

And they didn’t come.

We got back to Anchorage on April 4. As we walked through the airport, a headline in the Daily News caught my eye: “Voters reject sexual orientation initiative.”

Our two votes wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but it would have felt better to know we’d done what we could.

Liesl and I have no plans to travel out-of-state on Election Day, but we’re both thinking about voting early. We’ll be in Anchorage next Monday and Wednesday, and there’s a good chance we’ll stop by one of the early voting locations then.

Why not? It’s not like we’re going to change our minds between now & Election Day.

What about you? Are you waiting until November 6? Or, like us, have you begun to imagine some of the things that could disenfranchise you?

I hear there’s a perfect storm headed for the East Coast. It’s anyone’s guess what chaos might break out in your neck of the woods. Here in Alaska, it’s likely to be a blizzard—or worse, an ice storm.

If you know how you want to vote, why not get out there and do it?

Elections matter, and so does your vote.

As soon as you’re ready, go, and make your voice heard.

I hear you still get a sticker, no matter when you vote. I’ll let you know.

 

Photo by Gretchen Fitzenrider.

 

Why I believe in listening

Listening extends, deepens and corrects my thinking.

Sometimes listening is very hard work.  Sometimes the people we most need to hear are those whose voices are the most intolerable.  They are loud, harsh, off-key–and yet, even these discordant voices have truth to tell.

The Tea Party is one of those discordant voices for me.  Just imagining the voices of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann makes me want to cover my ears and say “La-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you” to drown them out.

But Monday’s Weekly Sift sent me to a video by Lawrence Lessig, whose lefty voice is very easy on my ears.  And while my guard was down, I heard something that the Tea Party folks have been saying.

I’ve been really frustrated with the GOP/Tea Party message that government isn’t the solution, government is the problem.  It drives me crazy when conservatives talk about taxes being our money that we give to the government.

My own voice rising in volume, becoming more harsh, I’ve been saying to anyone who will listen, “Don’t you know that WE are the government?  As in, ‘We the people of the United States.’ As in, ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people.’ “

But then I watched Lessig’s video, and heard a helpful corrective.

Liberals are dreamers, idealists.  We love the idea of democratic government so much that sometimes we lose sight of reality.  And the reality is that government is the problem.  Not government of, by and for the people.  Government of, by and for the funders.

Doesn’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?

We don’t have the democratic ideal right now.  We have the age-old tyranny of the rich and powerful, masquerading as democracy.   The ideal isn’t completely gone, but there’s only a thin sliver of it left.

If we’re all covering our ears and shouting at the top of our lungs, democracy is doomed.  But if we can uncover our ears, and learn to listen past our differences, Goliath doesn’t stand a chance.

Sacrificing most of us on a cross of tax cuts

Important lessons await us in the strangest places.

Liesl and I have recently started watching the HGTV real estate show Selling New York.

I’ve read about income disparity, and how the distribution of wealth in this country is more skewed than it’s been since early in the 20th century.

But Selling New York makes it more real.

Here’s how HGTV describes the show:

They are assertive, razor-sharp and always compelling real estate brokers in the country’s most competitive market. In a city of over 8 million people, where the average sale price is over $2 million, the competition to seal the deal is stiff. Now, catch a rare glimpse into a world where a solid reputation at the top of the real estate food chain involves swimming with the sharks, going head-to-head with the best, and rubbing shoulders with the wealthiest and trendiest of New York’s social, political and artistic elite. This is Selling New York.

If you want to see footage of our own Gilded Age (happening right now, while the rest of us suffer from the Great Recession), this show will give you that.   It’s mind-boggling.

Meanwhile in Madison, far from Madison Avenue, the Grand Old Party’s tax cuts have pushed Wisconsin into a fiscal crisis.  The New York Times is not alone in wondering if the intent of those tax cuts was to create an opportunity for union busting.

A lot of people my age are cynical about politics.  They say that both sides are crooked.  Maybe there’s some truth to that.

But maybe it’s also true that there’s a small segment of our population that’s doing quite well, thank you very much.  And they’d like us to stay cynical, to stay out of the fray, to stay home.

They’d like us to keep on ignoring the tax cuts going to people buying opulent $3 million dollar condos in LA–that they’ll use just a few weeks out of the year.  They’d like us to lull us into believing that teachers, firefighters, police officers and factory workers are the real crooks–not those Wall Street credit swappers.

Rise up, people!  Shrug off your cynicism and join the Prairie Populists.  Study up on Gene Sharp and his 198 Methods of Non-Violent Action.  Number 22 is “protest disrobings.”  Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Almost as fun as the Wisconsin Democrats hiding in an undisclosed location!

Wahoo!  Aren’t these interesting times?

Early morning with Erroll

Early last Saturday morning I walked out the front door of the International House at the University of Chicago, beginning the long trip home.  Waiting for me was the Go Airport Express shuttle van.  The driver loaded my bags, and I climbed in.  Joining us were an international student returning to Columbia, and a friend accompanying her to the airport.  They settled into the back seats of the van, telling us that their English was “very small.”

Erroll–the driver–and I talked non-stop on the way to O’Hare.  Among other things, I learned that he’d met Barack Obama when he worked in Chicago as a community organizer.  When I asked about his impressions of the younger Obama, he said that clearly Barack was headed places.  He also said that another impressive person he’d encountered in those days was Rep. Luis Gutierrez.  They were, he said, laughing, “Two flavors of the same person–chocolate and butterscotch!”

We talked a bit about politics.  I expressed my thoughts about how hard it is for Obama to hold onto his “not blue and red states–United States” message in a highly partisan time.  We agreed that sometimes it’s frustrating looking at the big picture, when it feels like no one of us can effect the big changes that are necessary.

Erroll said, “You’ve got to look in the mirror every day when you’re brushing your teeth, and tell yourself, ‘I’m going to be the best me I can be.’  That’s all we can do.”

Not a bad philosophy of life.

And not a bad way to think about ministry, and the mission of our congregations.

How would it be if we asked each other, “What do you need in order to be the best you?”  And how would it be if we tried to provide what people need?

You can’t always get what you want.  But if you try, sometimes you might find, you get what you need.

What do you need?

Medicine, politics and religion–an update

Today my partner and I went back to the overtly political and religious clinic for the shots she needs for Africa.  Yes, we went back.  Not because we were trying to be particularly righteous.  It was just easier than starting over.

The “Indivisible” booklets were still there–and they had attached one of them to the wall in a prominent place, with a sign posted next to it, inviting people to take one home.

There were other additions as well.  Right next to the front door, and at the check-out counter, there were posters about “Obamacare,” flowcharts that looked a bit like this.

We’re done there now.  My partner will get her follow-up shots somewhere else.   And we’ve learned a lot about choosing doctors–and how we want to be in our own lives.

A few weeks ago I had a chance encounter with one of the doctors in the UU congregation where I’m a member.  Without knowing my story, this doctor said, “I don’t do political signs.  Not at the office, not at my home.  I wouldn’t want any of my patients to feel uncomfortable.”

I said, “Thank you.  Really.  Thank you.”  And I told our story.

It was meaningful for me to hear a doctor take such a principled stance, and it was meaningful for the doctor to hear that patients appreciate such efforts.