Support the Timberjay by making a donation.

Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Politics is personal; so what’s important to you?

Posted

I remember my first conversation about politics the morning after the 1952 presidential election. I was seven. I asked my parents who were still in bed if the man they voted for had won. When they said, “No”, I asked if they were sad. I don’t remember what they answered.

That personal exit poll, probably my first conscious curiosity about anything political, was strictly personal and self-serving. I was not, at seven years-old, considering the ramifications of an Eisenhower administration vs. an Adlai Stevenson win. I only wanted to know: did my parents get the result they wanted, how did they feel about it and, most likely, how was that going to affect me. Kids do know that a “happy parent” condition is preferred and often beneficial to the next generation.

The growing social consciousness I experienced as a child came not from political campaigns but from church where I heard about the hungry children in distant countries I could barely imagine. What I did know was that my family and friends had plenty to eat all the time. When I carried this distressing information home, thinking I was the herald of breaking news, they confirmed as gently as they could that it was indeed true. I asked, “Then why don’t we feed them?” It made sense to me then and, actually, still does. Broccoli, not bombs, or something like that.

Any burgeoning political consciousness remained pretty much buried with some minor but confused eruptions in college. It was the fall of 1963, a dramatic time on the national scene with civil rights actions and the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), created in 1960, was one of the most important organizations in the civil rights movement. SNCC recruited idealistic, willing volunteers on campuses around the country and I attended a recruiting session at the University of Colorado as a freshman. The recruiter was impassioned, well-trained and effective and I was easily stirred to outrage by the atrocities he described happening in the South. Inspired by brave volunteers enduring beatings and arrests for their ideals, I was determined to leave school and head into the danger of protest marches and freedom rides, ready to get bashed on the head and give my all. I never actually left Boulder. My parents were not very inspired by my willingness to disrupt my schooling and throw myself into danger. The parental veto carried the power of their sincere concern and their pursestrings. My willingness to comply rather than persist in my personal non-violent resistance on the home front was also motivated by a secret sense of relief that I could stay safe.

In my 20’s, I started to connect the dots between the personal and the political with on-the-job training as a first-grade teacher. An idealist to the core with naivete and passion firmly intact, I believed that every person deep down wanted to strive to be the best person they possibly could. Therefore, if a person knew there was something they felt was wrong and needed to be improved, then of course they would jump in to pursue that change.

Within months of being hired, I had jumped in with both feet, heart, soul and all related body parts. I was active in our local teachers’ association affiliated with the National Education Association, secretary on the negotiations team and in subsequent years served as the NEA building rep. I also represented my building or grade level on various district committees dealing with curriculum and programs such as organizational development. I worked many additional hours before and after school and pursued a master’s degree in evening and summer classes at Northern Illinois University, an hour distant. I had long discussions with experienced teachers I respected about issues regarding students, parent relationships and district-wide issues. I heard teachers complaining every day in the faculty room about this, that and the other thing, including the inequity of our pay relative to the high school which was in its own separate school district. So, of course, I thought they would step up to the metaphorical plate, become active participants in the efforts of their NEA representatives to educate the public, the administration and the school board. Boy, was I wrong.

When our negotiating team had successfully challenged the school board and their highly-paid professional negotiator, standing firm on the contract language the members had asked for, we sent out a questionnaire to ascertain the members’ willingness to participate in the next steps through federal mediation. There were choices ranging from stuffing envelopes, informational picketing, to going out on strike.

The results were disheartening to say the least. The nadir of responses was: Maybe I could help stuff envelopes if I have time and nothing else comes up. Then hearing a faculty member say, “The Board will take care of us.” I thought, “Yep, they sure will, but not quite in the way you’re thinking.” Her response showed that she hadn’t been reading the detailed minutes I sent out and that she had no understanding of the negotiations process we were engaged in on her behalf.

That was when the veils were lifted from my eyes, when I quit saying, “I’m really not a political person.” For I realized that politics are personal and that there were layers of political choices and political actions in almost everything in our lives: What do I believe in and value? What is important enough that I will speak my mind out loud, speak truth to power? What is significant enough to me in my personal life, work, community, region, nation and world that I will take action to create change?

The answers are different for each of us and none of us can do it all. I’ve worked in various ways throughout my life to provide food for people who do not have sufficient resources. Others focus their efforts on housing needs. Yet others focus on protecting the right to vote, the right to education, the right to health care, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of choice. There is never a shortage of ways to use our passion and our talents.

The special election to fill our state representative’s seat is a refreshing experience in grassroots politics on a smaller scale. Even though our district is the second largest in the United States, we have had opportunities to meet all the candidates in the DFL primary election, hear them speak and ask questions. This abbreviated, focused campaign period seems much saner than the presidential campaign extending for 18 months with everyone and their brother tossing their hats in and throwing way too much money around in ways that seen designed just to irritate you and me.

Politics is personal. So what’s important to you? What’s third or forth on your list, beyond the obvious ones that everyone thinks about the candidates? Do you know how the candidates would represent you on those issues? Have you thought about giving them a call? I believe our actions and our votes can still actually make a difference. If that makes me terminally naïve, so be it. But you do have to remember to vote: Tuesday, Sept. 29 for the DFL primary.

Quick political trivia quiz, just for kicks: What do John Starkman, Henry Lodge and William Miller have in common?