Politics Will Break Your Heart

[rm]

Politics will break your heart. If it doesn't, you're probably not doing it right. Either that, or you're damn lucky.

When I was seventeen, I went to North Carolina to campaign for Harvey Gantt against Jesse Helms. I was a freshman in college, had just joined the College Democrats and thought the free eight hour bus ride and miles of walking every day for a few days was a great way to combat the anti-gay insanity of Helms and also make a name for myself in the College Dems. You see, more than anything then, I wanted to one day be a delegate at the Democratic National Convention. Rising in power in a large CD org at a DC school would definitely be a step in the right direction.

I was paired up with a local, put on a fake accent, and went door to door for days. For me, who loathes talking to strangers, even when I'm an invited guest at a party, this was beyond intimidating. But I put on my fake southern accent, screwed up my courage, and somehow, somehow, managed it.

We had guns pointed at us twice. Once, by an old white woman with a shot gun who told us to get our "nigger-loving asses" off her property and once by a black teenager in the projects who saw us as interlopers of the stupidist kind. He may have been right.

There are many things about that trip I only remember faintly, like the motel we stayed in, and walking miles down the highway late one night looking for a gas station because I wanted a candy bar.

But there are other things I'll never forget, like a memorial service I saw there for a Confederate soldier whose remains had been found while digging up the foundation for a new building. Hundreds of men and women in civil-war era garb lined up for the procession in downtown Raleigh, and the men all hoisted period weapoins above their head in a very specific salute. We were in a bus then, going to have pulled pork for dinner at campaign headquarters, and I touched the dirty window and understood this meant something and even if I didn't like it, what it meant was important.

There was also a little boy, with a beautiful dog with a collar on a lead of mere twine. My canvassing partner asked the boy his dog's name.

"Harvey Gantt, sir," the boy said.

"Really?" we asked.

"Yes'm. My dog's Harvey Gantt."

"Well," my partner said, "could you bring this paper about Harvey Gantt to your momma?" my partner asked.

"Yes, sir!" the boy said and ran off.

My partner and I, oh I can't remember his name -- Elliot? Neal? something with e's and l's I remember the feel of it and his smile and perfect hair -- looked at each other wondering if this could possibly be happening.

Harvey Gantt didn't win. I found that out watching a projection TV at a party on campus that the College Democrats sponsored. As the returns came in he went from slightly behind to more and more behind, but as long as victory was numerically possible, we sat there and hoped. We sat there and prayed. And when it was finally over, we sat there and cried.

Politics should break your heart. And if it doesn't, you're not doing it right, and I don't care if that makes me naive.

My sophomore year of university, I got involved in the campus elections for student body president. The LGBT, which only added a Q a year or two later invited all the candidates to come to speak to us. There had been several bashings on campus and a lot of drama and we felt we had real issues that needed speaking to.

Of 11 candidates, only one came. He told us he was straight, and he told us it took courage to come talk to us because he knew it would hurt him with other constituencies on campus, but that he didn't care. This was about what was right, and if that was the message we could help him bring to the election, then we would all have done something that mattered.

And I did. I did. And I don't remember his name either, even as I slept outside one of the major academic buildings with posters, ready to grab prime space the moment we were allowed to put them up.

In the election he came in third. And then he came back to the LGBT and apologized. Not, as we had thought, for not winning. But for lying to us, because he was scared. You see, that boy whose name I don't remember? He was gay too.

Politics, if you're doing it right, will break your heart. And it will be glorious.

In my adult life, there have by and large been a derth of candidates I've been moved by as well as a derth of candidates I've overwhelmingly agreed with. But I have watched every single DNC and RNC, and I have trembled and sometimes cried at the nominating moments, even for candidates I have loathed or clunkers like Dukakis. Because as much as the political convention is an outmoded spectacle of party machinations the average person doesn't give a crap about -- it is also an exercise in audacity, in hope and in will. If it is also an exercise in ego and greed, and surely, it must always be, there is a part of me that has never learnt to care.

As I've gotten older, the thing I have come to understand more and more about our culture in this moment, in the moment of the last ten or twenty or maybe even more years, is that we are scared to be excited about things. It wouldn't be cool, or ironic. It is much better in most people's eyes, it seems, to shrug off a broken system, than to participate in it in memory of hope or in hope of gaining small purchase and change.

This enrages me. Our voter turnout numbers enrage me. But it's not just about politics I feel this way, it's about everything -- this being too cool to take unabashed pleasure in things, or unabashed hope. It makes me want to shout "shut up and dance!" Shut up and dance!

All of which brings us to why I give a shit about Barack Obama and why you should too. I want you to know right here and now this post is not about telling you to vote for him, but it is, in a way, about telling you to vote, for whomever you choose, because of him. Because he is unembarassed and unabashed. Because he has brought people into the political process that we have heard over and over again are the ones least likely to care. Because his supporters seem desperately willing to have their hearts broken and for that, I think they are fucking beautiful.

Because I was trained as a journalist and trained, I mean, in the truest pavlovian obedient sense of the word to aspire to press neutrality, I have never been registered with a political party. Yesterday, though, I sent in my voter registration form doing so, so I can finally vote in my first primary. It feels important. It feels hopeful. It feels glorious.

On the morning we found out John Kerry had lost the 2004 election, I sat on the subway staring at a woman across from me. She had been reading the New York Times, but had it crumpled in a hug to her chest now, the headline of defeat facing out in fanned wrinkles. And she had tears streaming down her cheeks. I promise you, no one had broken up with her that morning.

If you do one thing in 2008, be willing to have your heart broken. If you do two? Vote.

Politics, if you're doing it right, will break your heart. And if you understand that, you'll never give up on it until it's perfect, until you win, until hope is something far more than discarded, until you just shut up and dance.

Comments

[go-orgoahead.livejournal.com]

In college, I was often labeled a naive, liberal idealist. And I say...what's so wrong with idealism anyway? I strive for something, for something better, instead of resigning to the fact that thins will never be perfect. I am out of that culture now, in which I was surrounded by conservative Christian zombies (mostly my fault for choosing to attend that college anyway), and it's incredibly refreshing to no longer have fruitless political arguments with people who are so self-righteous and self-assured that they would argue anything they interpret as biblical even if proven completely and utterly wrong. People need to invest themselves in politics and in the political process, and they need to do so for the right reasons. People need to think and feel and act instead of postulating on the two-party system and interest groups from their couch cushions. Nothing will ever improve if people are generally content in their own lives to let things slide. Sure, people think that we shouldn't be in Iraq, but they allow the system to convince them that they can do nothing to stop it. People need shaking up, and unfortunately, I don't think that will happen unless a complete crisis occurs within the next few years. Invading other countries for unjust reasons no longer counts as a crisis in the American psyche. People need to feel the damage in their own lives. Gone are the days of turning in stamps for food and fuel, of planting your own gardens to help conserve, of hunting for scrap metal to turn in and buying bonds to help fund the effort. Gone are the days of personal sacrifice. Perhaps if the majority of America actually had to give something up for the actions that our nation is taking, people would have more cause for concern. Right now, apathy wins out.

[rm.livejournal.com]

And Americans would have to give something up for the actions our country is taking if we weren't engaged in such intense fiscal and monetary INSANITY right now, but that's a different rant.