Why We Campaign

All of us at CNE did some campaigning on our own time this week, and spent lunch Wednesday talking about the highlights.  For me, it is always the amazing people I meet.  Until 2004 I was a registered Green, always voted, never helped out with elections.  Then I decided to give life with a major party a shot, quickly found myself going to the state convention, and headed back to my hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania for the weeks leading up to the election. 

Erie is a town of immigrants, where everyone has a last name that outsiders don't know how to pronounce (mine was Schaaf) and no one is interested in your pedigree.  It wasn't until I moved to Colorado 11 years ago and saw the "native" bumperstickers that I thought about it and calculated that I was a fifth generation native Erieite, a fact that has no bearing there.  A manufacturing town on Lake Erie, it has seen better days (picture Flint, Michigan of Roger and Me), and yet there is still much to love there.  For example, someone once asked me how I got the idea to do the kind of work I do at CNE, and I shrugged and said in second grade I wrote that I wanted to be a naturalist.  They asked me how I knew what that was, and I said, well, I went on the hikes that Ginny, the naturalist at the peninsula, led, and thought it would be neat to live in a lighthouse like she did.

Flying home to Colorado after the 2004 election I tried to capture some of the powerful campaigning experiences, and to work out a reason for hope, both in general and in our work.  There was a lot of sadness in there, but here are some excerpts of the bright spots and wonderful people I met then.

these are good things to fight for:  blessed are the meek, the last shall be first, blessed are the peacemakers, turn the other cheek, be stewards of the garden....
    Easter Moody invites me into her home.  Franklin Terrace.  Former election judge.  Even the grown up boy-men lounging on their dirt bikes who "don't vote" encourage me to wait for her - she's been sick - she'll vote for him.
    I wait, unconvinced, and the door finally opens to her large presence.  Clutching her robe, whiskered chin, I follow her in.  She needs a ride.  Her aide - sitting comfortably, watching TV, talking on the phone - briefly offers but no specifics.  Easter gives me a look, "You better give me a ride."
    ...Tina Rickard with her clear blue eyes, sitting on the steps genuinely saying, "I'm so glad you're here."  Recovering alcoholic, four kids, she is upfront and angry - and willing to fight.  Against the war.  Against the loss of funding for treatment programs.  Against the loss of her savings.  Against the losses of the last four years.  She will bring her kids door to door on Tuesday....
    Don Wright, wielding his cell phone to demand enfranchisement, and prevailing....
    Looking across the sea ice of clouds below, again the pangs of beauty.  And the waitress who set the plate down, "Here you go, baby."  And the one who said, "It makes it seem impossible."
    I am flying home to my amazing husband and my devoted dogs and my good job and my family who all cares for each other and a remarkable freedom from want.  Yes, a good life.  But what is its meaning if the backdrop is injustice?  What about the German families who lived good lives in the 30's?
    Wiesel lays it on me, "There is a response in responsibility."
    And Ann Richards, "Sometimes when I'm walking on the beach with my grandkids I think - this is a pretty good life.  And I long to leave the rest behind.  But as long as I live and breathe I cannot enjoy my own life if someone else is suffering - I must fight for them."
    And His Holiness the Dalai Lama - "For as long as space endures and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide to dispel the misery of the world."
    And Gandhi's active Ahimsa:  "To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself.  And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life.  That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means."
    ....The best news this week is that the wolves are eating the deer in Buffalo.  And pileated woodpeckers still drum at Presque Isle.  And someone is voluntarily saying, "Biodiversity is awesome!" at the peninsula.

My 2006 experience again linked me with folks I would never meet otherwise who humbled me with their passionate devotion to a better world.  In two days I was paired up with four people:  Emily, a take-charge CSU student studying agricultural economics listening to her ipod while dropping literature; Joyce, a retiree with perfect hair and makeup who had been volunteering with the campaign since March, who came straight from a luncheon with her sorority sisters (including the Hungarian who defected during the 1956 Olympics); Josh, a sixteen year-old who has been volunteering with campaigns since 2002 ("I didn't do much for the 2000 election, but I was 10."  "Since I can't vote yet, this is the best way I can make a difference.") - when asked if his parents got him started campaigning, he said yes, them, Saturday Night Live, and The Daily Show; and Mike, another conservationist working to keep the Colorado River flowing, who works out of our old building and who wore out one of his flip-flops dropping literature.

Even though our candidate lost, we made a difference, and I have new reasons to be inspired to keep on keeping on.  I hope many of you out there also found ways to be engaged this election season.