We’ve heard for years that all politics are local. My community will be electing city council and school board members next week. But once again I feel I don’t know much about the candidates. Our local paper has, not surprisingly, endorsed the status quo. I’m not satisfied with the status quo, but getting information about the other candidates can be a challenge. One is a perennial candidate who runs largely self-funded campaigns just about any time there is an election. Once elected, he tends to play the role of agitator — not necessarily a bad thing — but his tactics are such that his ability to influence changes is limited.
As a “small blue light in a sea of red,” I find local elections particularly depressing events. In recent years, the school board in a neighboring community was convinced (as a result of a young man attending a single school board meeting!) to add intelligent design to the science curriculum. While a depressing events, this can also be seen as the ability of a single voice to effect change. So that’s the focus of this post.
We progressives need to recognize democracy as a contact sport. Unlike our opponents, we tend to think in terms of national elections. We need to get active at the local level. Naomi Wolf, in “Give Me Liberty,” lays out a road map of how to effect change. President Obama, during the campaign, reminded us that we are the change we’ve been waiting for. That means we need to be at least as active as our opponents have been. And, if democracy is a contact sport, we need to engage at the local level. It’s not enough to vote every four years and think that will do it. Conservatives get it. They’ve been active at the local level — attending city council meetings, planning commission meetings, and school board meetings. If that single young man could make a difference, so can we.
It’s scary to speak up. I understand how much easier it is to write our Congressional representatives. We can be relatively anonymous that way. There’s a certain amount of safety firing off an email or even a hand-written letter or a phone call. Showing up at a local meeting means we have to claim our beliefs. We might get booed, or even shouted down. But in speaking up, we provide evidence that there are other views — not only to the powers that be but also to the others in attendance. If we can make our case intelligently and with conviction, we can have an effect. We need to remind our local representatives that we are watching and voting. And we may affect the others in attendance — showing them an alternate viewpoint and challenging to rethink their views.
Now, have I done this in the past? No. But I’ve become convinced that it is necessary. It’s difficult and time consuming. And it becomes all the more difficult when we have family obligations — dinners to fix, homework to supervise, etc., especially after a long day at work. But here are a few suggestions that will make juggling those obligations a bit easier. Find someone who shares your views and tag team at meetings — divide them between you, take notes and share them. Find someone who can’t attend meetings but who will research the issues. Watch the meetings on your local access station and then follow up with letters and phone calls to local officials. Make your voice heard. When election time comes around, host candidate meet and greet events so that you get to know where they stand on the issues. Voter pamphlets, at least here in California, are notoriously poor at communicating much about the candidates. Some states don’t even have them at all. And there are organizations that will, for a fee, send out official-looking “endorsement” flyers that are meaningless when it comes to providing voters with useful information about the candidates. Robo-calls rarely provide much information and are more often push-polls designed to damage the opponent or calls from someone in a higher office endorsing one or more of his cronies.
While there is gang activity here, like in many cities, it concerns me when the candidates for school board seem to be focused more on policing in the schools than on curriculum or figuring out how to reduce the dropout rate. To be sure, schools need to be a safe place for our kids to learn. But let’s not forget that most kids will rise to meet expectations that challenge them to be better and to learn more. And engaged kids are less likely to be disruptive. This band-aid approach to treating symptoms is endemic in many areas of society. Rather than doing the hard work, the hard thinking, about what causes a particular problem, it’s easier to apply a band-aid, regardless of whether that will do anything to remedy the situation.
More Light Than Heat 