October 7, 2008

• Democracy in Action

  Last night we had the weekly organizational meeting to elect our candidate. We met at the Democratic Headquarters.

  
  

  I need to backtrack for a minute. Once…many, many years ago, while living in Jackson (one of the two birthplaces of the Republican Party–there is a huge rock commemorating the spot) a coworker asked me if I was voting Republican, and when I failed to register any real enthusiasm for Republicans she told me to meet her at the Democratic headquarters at a certain time (it was after dark, I remember) where, when I arrived, she shoved a list in my hand and a phone in the other and said, “Call these people.” She also mumbled some commentary about little codes written somewhere, but until a Republican skinned me alive over the phone for using democratic words in her delicate ear, I failed to register the fact that the ‘codes’ indicated party affiliation. It was probably a little late for that information by then.

  
  

  Until three weeks ago that was my total political involvement to date. I’ve said, “Rah, Rah,” once or twice.

  
  

  So Nancy came home from work nearly in tears. She has two monumental tasks to perform at work and she has no idea how to do either one of them, and on top of that almost anything that could go wrong did go wrong, she was tired, she was depressed, she was using multiple hands to indicate meetings she is scheduled to attend in the next week, she bought a brand new sewing machine and never gets to use it… Clearly this was a woman in need of downtime. So I said, “Stay home–one of us has to show up, report our progress and promise to do better really soon: how long can that take?”

  
  

  Apparently the amount of time you can spend talking about what you’ve done, what you’re going to do, or even why you haven’t done it yet is pretty much limitless. There does appear to be a Democratic party in St. Joe County, which is comforting, and certain names come up in conversation over and over again. However, this is a rural community with a strong backbone in farming and ninety percent of the conversation last night was about so-and-so and then thus-and-such. I’ve lived here for slightly less than ten years, and I know three of my four neighbors by names because Nancy talks about them (the fourth appeared at my front door to ask about the health and wellbeing of my Obama sign.) I don’t know “What’s his name, oh, you know, his father owns that big farm off Hoffman?” Since that is the primary way people interact in this community–whenever you meet a native, they introduce themselves by explaining who they are in relationship to someone else you might know–I am floating in the wake of the ship steaming off without me most of the time.

  
  

  And I have the sort of mind that seeks order. Okay, obviously this is a subcommittee and somewhere there is an organized governing body who actually knows what it’s doing…go get those people. Now.

  
  

  However, the frightening thing I kept encountering at this meeting is the following thought: even my co-members kept mentioning, ‘well, maybe that’s something Carol’s people can do…’ and our organizer would draw a little ring of protection around us with her finger and say, “we are Carol’s people–right here, we’re it’. I are Carol’s people. Carol’s people are I.

  
  

  Poor Carol.

  
  

  But, to be honest, I have never really gotten into the swing of group meetings. Many many years ago I went to the National Conference of the National Organization for Women and we spent half of the conference debating whether or not we should allow smoking on the conference floor. This issue (which was legal, then) was so irrevocably entangled in discussions about perfume-poisoning, allergies and other immediately-wrought environmental hazards that I finally just found a quiet place where I could bang my head against the wall until it felt better.

  
  

  The lesson remains, however: we will never cure sexism in America until we first determine whether or not we can smoke while we’re doing it. Thirty years have passed since then. Most of us have quit smoking, and those of us who still smoke can only do so in steadily diminishing designated areas–and we have made some profound steps in eliminating sexism, we really have–so perhaps my longing for order and control is just that, a holdover from the distant past. Perhaps candidates really are elected by small, fumbling groups of people, none of who are sure what the hell they’re doing. My favorite is the man who admitted he had discovered a character flaw: in spite of his very best intentions, he discovered he cannot cold call people off a list, even if the list is culled and designed to connect him only to people who will be friendly and cooperative once he dials their number. Specifically, he discovered he would sit down with his list and his best intentions, call two people, discover one had had their phone disconnected and the the second was secretly a Republican, and then his body, independent of his will and desires, would stand up, walk into another room, turn on the TV and watch it for three hours.

  
  

  My body walks into the kitchen and eats something, but I do understand, I really do. 

  
  

  Nonetheless, we stumble on. 

  • 9:45 am
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