Sunday, November 02, 2008

From Denver (via New York) With Love

Directly following my return from Africa, I found myself on a plane headed across the country to Denver to work at the Democratic National Convention.
I had signed up to volunteer back in April, when it looked like there would be fireworks on the podium and a delegate melee on the floor. That visceral part of me loves a good fight, and the primaries were shaping up to stage a genuine competition of historic proportions. Not seen since Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican Party in half or Lincoln debated Douglas for 11 hours on the principals of abolition have we seen a convention with such possibilities.

As I flew off to the Mile High City, it was probably no coincidence that the muses pointed me towards a poignant article by Peter Godwin in September’s VANITY FAIR, a stirring and straightforward portrait of Mugabe's Reign in Zimbabwe.

Take a moment to read these last two paragraphs:

“Zimbabwe’s runoff election was scheduled for June 27. Morgan Tsvangirai [the opposing candidate] and the M.D.C. withdrew from the contest a few days beforehand, unable to compete in safety or with any guarantee of fairness. The party had effectively been prohibited from campaigning. Rallies were banned. Tsvangirai himself was arrested and detained five times. Mugabe’s slogan in the runoff election was “The Final Battle for Total Control.” With no competition he won handily.

By then the body count from Mugabe’s pre-electoral spasm of violence stood at a hundred, with another 5,000 people missing, many of whom must be presumed dead. Bodies have been found collecting at the spillway of a Harare reservoir. Others have been found in the bush, sometimes mutilated, hands or feet cut off, eyes gouged out. In the months leading up to the runoff some 10,000 people had been tortured. Some 20,000 had had their homes burned down. Up to 200,000 people had been displaced.”


That night, I reached a chapter in my book, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, which echoed the same chords as current day Zimbabwe.

Part of the action takes place 20 years after Gandhi’s success at gaining Independence, part of which included an idealistic vision of a caste-free society in which all people would be able to vote in general elections for their choice governmental and rural leaders.

Despite his valiant efforts, Gandhi’s dream was thwarted for decades by Brahmin upper caste landowners who bullied their lowers to blot a fingerprint and thereby allowing the decisions of power sharing to fall permanently into their hands. These landowners kept the lower castes in check by hanging dissenters upside down, putting hot coals in their mouths and dragging them naked through the streets until their death, ultimately refusing their corpses a proper burial so that their souls would never be at rest.

My first night in Denver, I was hired to work an event celebrating the 68th anniversary of the Women’s Right to Vote.
Embedded in key note speaker Senator Clinton's speech was a reminder that the achievement of the 14th Amendment carried its own traces of blood. Alice Paul was tortured by electric shock until President Woodrow Wilson was shamed into enacting the promise President Grover Cleveland made to Susan B. Anthony sixty years before.

Indeed, many countries continue to engage in violent struggle, violence people continue to endure in order to exercise their inalienable rights, rights we are granted by merely being citizens of the United States.

Both Zimbabwe and India’s tortuous and bloody images remind me that despite our differences as Americans living in a two party system, we live in a relatively thug free society. And let me define “thug” because I know that some of you will equate thuggery to robo-calls and smear campaigns.

No one in a government issued uniform, state or federal, is going to beat you to death, burn down your house, cut out your tongue, or carve a backwards “B” into your cheek, on your way to the local polling center. At least not anymore.

With the growing consternation and constant criticism surrounding us, one can become blasé in the blink of an eye about the political process. Or, as a friend’s husband believes, that your quotient of the 12th, 15th & 19th Amendments, the right for all Americans to vote, doesn’t matter.

Anti-War Protesters in Denver.


We may despise the political landscape we have become; we may be mired by a press that loves to stir up trouble, conjecture and fear, including a quest for who is “pro-American” and who is not. And this blog may very well be one of those propaganda messages that are prevalent during election periods, but reading Godwin and Mistry in the wake of that historic convention compelled me to remind myself and my peers of the great privilege we have. A privilege we can choose to act upon without the threat of violent repercussions. And that matters to me.

We cannot be afraid to engage in intelligent discourse with each other about the state of the country or increasing tax rates for the upper income sector or re-implementing regulation or Roe Vs. Wade. Like crosswords, an exchange of ideas keeps the mind sharp.

Frankly, I’m with Chris Rock on this one, “We are all a little conservative and little liberal”.

Walking from the Pepsi Center after an inspiring evening, I was greeted by staggered 6-foot posters of the "Anti-Choice" variety with angry, shouting individuals, telling me that I was a murderer, and how I would surely be going to hell.

While they didn't know my position about choice, they exercised the 1st Amendment, their right of free speech and protest. Although I can't agree that it was peaceable, I was glad for it.

** As Ghandi said – “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” **

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find life experiences and swallow them whole.
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meet many people.
go down some dead ends and explore dark alleys.
try everything.
exhaust yourself in the glorious pursuit of life.
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read much and often

Cleopatra: A Life
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Never Let Me Go
The Angel's game
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Bel-Ami
Dreaming in French: A Novel
The Post-Birthday World
A Passage to India
The Time Traveler's wife
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Kite Runner
Eat, Pray, Love
Slaughterhouse-Five
Les Misérables
The Lovely Bones
1984
Memoirs of a Geisha


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