The Impossible Will Take a Little While

I have an admission to make: I had a hand in Scott Walker's victory last November. No, I didn't vote for him and I did vote for Tom Barrett, the Democratic candidate. But voting was all I did last fall. An act that added up to about 10 minutes of my time -- walking the one block to my neighborhood polling place, filling in my ballot, and walking home. Walker won, and I went around saying, "How bad can he be?" In reality, I was despondent and had disengaged from the process. 8 years of GeeDubya compounded with the disappointment in Obama. (YES, I AM disappointed, and I'm not afraid to lose friends on Face Book for stating that. Obama is a big disappointment to me.)

Well, February came and we learned very quickly how bad Walker could be. All of a sudden virtually everything that I had taken for granted here in my beloved home state of Wisconsin was in danger. Much has changed, and it is uncertain that we will be able to get it back. The recalls did not gain a majority of Senate Democrats, though they did slim down the margin enough for one Republican who shows signs of retaining a sliver of his humanity (all the rest have sold their souls to the corporate devil, as far as I can tell) to perhaps be able to step across the breach.

Like many of my fellow Wisconsinites, what our state's "Arab spring" did was to shake me out of my despondent stupor, and get me to put my shoulder to the wheel of change. You see, for 10 years I've been singing, "Come back Woody Guthrie …" and wondering where the leaders were. Where were the charismatic and eloquent people who would lead us Americans out of the wilderness? I was waiting … and waiting … and nobody was stepping up. I am a child of the sixties who grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, one of the hotbeds of anti-Vietnam War protests. I knew what my leaders should look and sound like, and they just weren't forthcoming. And I was losing hope.

The protests of February and March were exhilarating, galvanizing, and inspiring. What I realized was,
We the People are the leaders, the agents of change. "Be the change you want to see" is more than just words. We are the ones who must turn the wheels of change. And it's not easy. It takes work. It takes time. It takes you out of your comfort zone perhaps. Puts you in danger of arrest (or in some places, worse.) But it is the only thing that makes things better. And those rights that we hold so dear? They can, will, indeed have disappeared in the blink of an eye, because the powers that be -- all of the powers other than the power of We the People -- don't really believe we should have those rights. They have always been precarious. We were lulled into thinking that they were a given, but they're not … unless we fight for them.

There are leaders -- politicians and whatnot -- who will help us fight for our rights, but it is my responsibility as a citizen to be out there being a leader. What can I do? I am required to teach my students social studies … civics! Sure, I teach the larvae, the kindergartners, but there are appropriate ways to teach them important concepts that lay the groundwork for being good citizens. Ta dah!

We've got the big recall coming up -- the puppet himself, Scott Walker. With the gerrymandering and the voter suppression (yup, I believe that's what it is) getting voters to the polls is more important than ever, and it is a tangible place to put energy.

I'm not asleep anymore. I am not despondent. I've made me some hope. It was civil rights activist Bayard Rustin -- look him up if you don't know him -- who said that hope wasn't something you find, you have to make it.

Today my dear friend Chuck sent me this article -- the inspiration for my post. I hope that it inspires you the way it did me.