Political Persistence

I spent time this past weekend at the state board meeting for the League of Women Voters of

Pennsylvania. One of our goals was to revisit vision and values.

Vision draft:  informed, engaged voters; effective, responsive government. 

Values listed: non-partisan, respectful, fact-based, trusted, persistent.

We will need to be persistent indeed if we hope to realize the vision. Only informed, engaged voters will make possible an effective, responsive government. Only an effective, responsive government will create space and motivation for informed, engaged voters. It’s a chicken and egg sort of construct. And both chicken and egg are in very bad health.

This week was the 100th anniversary of a parade in Chicago asking the Republican party to include a plank supporting women’s right to vote.

In spite of a heavy storm, over 5,000 women showed up to march in the rain, while inside the convention hall, a group of anti-suffrage women testified that women did NOT want the right to vote. According to a Chicago paper:

As if timed to the instant, through the doors of the hall came the drenched and bedraggled marchers for suffrage. They pushed up to the platform, they massed down below, they scattered out over the hall and still they came pouring through the doors…as the shock of surprise yielded, several of [the delegates] on the platform smiled in understanding amusement, as if the incongruity of that outworn charge had at last been comprehended.

 The Republican Party did adopt a suffrage plank, as did the Democratic Party two weeks later. Four years after that, the 19^th Amendment, extending the right to vote to women, was finally ratified.

That change was the fruit of over a century of work led by a persistent, passionate, very brave band of women.

The gathering in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 is often listed as the start of the suffrage movement, but read the biography of Lucretia Coffin Mott and it’s clear the work began decades before. 

As a young teacher at a Quaker boarding school in New York, she learned that the fee "for the education of girls was the same as that for boys.” Yet, “when they became teachers, women received but half as much as men for their services.”

“The injustice of this was so apparent," Mott recalled in an autobiographical sketch, "that I early resolved to claim for my sex all that an impartial Creator had bestowed."

Married at 18 in 1811, Mott became a Quaker minister in 1821 and spoke often and passionately about the systemic immorality of slavery. When shut out of the American Anti-Slavery Society by white Christian men, she helped found the Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, one of the first racially mixed organizations in the country.

While organizing to end slavery, the group also worked to build literacy and leadership skills in black communities, provided shelter to runaway slaves and raised funds to improve living conditions for impoverished black families.

That work was done under the constant threat of violence from white males attempting to silence them. 

Mott's persistence awes me. Her courage inspires me.

I’ve posted before about my work for redistricting reform in Pennsylvania. We had a setback this week, as the Government Reform Caucus decided not to endorse the bills we’re supporting. Pennsylvania politics as usual.

The next day I had a long conversation with an older man who wanted to make clear change is not legislatively possible: “The Republicans have had that legislature LOCKED DOWN for fifty years.” 

He repeated the phrase “locked down" with gusto multiple times: it’s locked down, it won’t change, and any Republican who votes for reform is committing political suicide.

Maybe so, but at last count the bills we endorse had 13 Republican co-sponsors.

And as I reminded him cheerfully: I’m part of the League of Women Voters. We don’t think change is easy, but we tend to be persistent.

Even so, I find myself marveling at the persistence and sacrifice of Lucretia Mott. She did not like politics, based as it inevitably is on moral compromise.  Yet she saw the connections among the issues that concerned her: freedom, literacy, peace, alleviation of need.

She was 47 when she was forced to sit – in silence - in a separate women’s section at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London. 55 when she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized their own women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848.

She was 71 in 1864 when she helped found Swarthmore College, one of the first coeducational colleges in the country. She was 73 in 1866 when she helped organize and became the first president of the American Equal Rights Association, formed “to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex."

She was 87 when she died in 1880, three decades before women finally received the right to vote.

Next weekend I’ll be attending the national League of Women Voters Convention in Washington, DC. On Saturday morning I’ll be leading a caucus on building coalitions and finding allies for redistricting reform.

Reading through the history of the work is a little discouraging. Lots of names. Lots of bills. Only a few states where real change has been accomplished.

In his farewell speech in 1989, Ronald Reagan said that “high on his agenda” would be “talking up the need to do something about political gerrymandering. This is the practice of rigging the boundaries of congressional districts. It is the greatest single blot on the integrity of our nation’s electoral system, and it’s high time we did something about it.”

The League of Women Voters, in states across the country, has been working on this since at least 1990. That’s three rounds of redistricting ago.  If the practice was a blot on the integrity of the electoral system back in 1989, it’s now a spreading, smothering stain.  

With the constant improvement of mapping systems, the fine-tuning of data mining and the millions of dollars invested by both parties in capturing state legislatures, gerrymandering has made competitive elections almost impossible and has eliminated real choice at almost every level.

Reform coalitions have come and gone as invisible funding sources co-opt good intentions and inevitable discouragement saps energy and interest. 

Even so, there are redistricting reform coalitions in more than a dozen states. I’m hoping to meet the leaders during my time in DC.

We’ll be voting at the convention on a new redistricting position, created by a national task force that has studied the problem, researched solutions and drafted recommendations.

The position recommends an end to the conflict of interest that allows politicians to draw their own maps. It endorses adoption of independent commissions with strong standards for transparency, public input, fairly drawn lines.

I’m sure it will pass with strong support.

At the same time, I don’t envision anyone marching in the streets. Redistricting reform is a complicated issue and most Americans have trouble focusing past the first bullet point.

Somehow Lucretia Mott was able to make the connections clear: faith in God, confidence in the equality of all, reverence for life, sacrificial hospitality, literacy, voting rights, a longing for peace.

We are fractured, distracted, easily swayed by sound bites and simplistic answers.

Captive to an entrenched system that offers us little choice and pays little attention to the real needs, hopes and dreams of the average citizen.

In Pennsylvania, we have crowded jails, crumbling roads, immigrant families held in substandard detention facilities. We have the two most underfunded school systems and the most inequitable school funding structure in the country, outrageous property taxes, overlapping jurisdictions, a bloated, expensive government that accomplishes little and captures national attention for its incompetence and corruption.

Not long after the convention in Seneca Falls, Mott wrote: "Any great change must expect opposition, because it shakes the very foundation of privilege."

We are in a time of great change, and it’s hard to say where that change will lead.

As I worked on this post, I heard the sad news: fifty dead in Orlando.

The sixteenth time our current President has addressed the press to speak of a mass shooting.

Our electoral systems themselves make it less and less possible to come to agreement on issues like guns, immigration, taxes, war.

Anger feeds anger; hate breeds hate.

Violence encourages greater violence.

Will the foundations of privilege be shaken, as Lucretia Mott prayed, or will the foundations of democracy be fractured instead?

From where I sit today, it’s hard to say.

Shale

It was shale, specifically,shale gas drilling for natural gas, that pulled me into the land of politics.

Up until fall 2011, I was only vaguely aware of elections, candidates, public policy.

I’d enjoyed Pete Seeger’s lyrics when he sang in junior high assembly.

I’d been part of a sit-in in high school – dragged along by friends.

And I watched some of the Watergate hearings with my much more politically savvy college roommate.

After that - I voted. Yes. Took my kids to the local polling place, pulled levers. Made sure they got “I voted” stickers to wear on their jackets.

Paid no attention until the next election.

Then shale.

I voted for Tom Corbett, our current governor, because he had the proper views on the few key issues Christian voters pay attention to.

I didn’t know – and probably wouldn’t have cared -  that his largest supporters were gas and oil companies.

Or that he had signed the Grover Norquist “No Tax” pledge.

Or that he would invite those with most to gain from expanding shale gas drilling to set the rules and recommend fees as part of his Shale Gas Advisory Commission. 

Why would any of that matter? Who had time to pay attention?

Somehow, during the summer of 2011, information seeped through my complacency.

News of toxic waste water released into Pennsylvania’s rivers.

Reports of wells contaminated by fissures far underground.

Analysis of the untaxed profits.

In September 2011 I found myself feeling like someone who has been sleeping in a backyard hammock, only to wake and find her house on fire. Were we really defunding environmental protection agencies at the same time we were handing over permission to shatter the linings of subterranean aquifers?

Were we inviting shale gas companies to a free-for-all that rivaled the western gold rush?

I went to a community screening of Gasland, and watched Josh Fox walk through creeks and rivers like those I love most. Watched the green wastewater slide into quiet streambeds. Watched him light the water from homeowners’ taps.

Then I went to the first Freedom from Fracking symposium in Philly, and listened to Dr. Sandra Steingraber talk about water: millions of gallons per well, removed from the ongoing water cycle, lost in deep fissures in the earth, or pumped back out so full of toxins there’s no way to ever reclaim it.

Water seemed to be a common theme, in a way that reminded me of the poisoned water of Jeremiah, punishment for a culture of dishonest leaders and deceptive practice.

I went back to Philly two weeks later to march in the first Shale Gas Outrage, drove to Penn State to protest outside a natural gas industry Marcellus Summit.

I blogged about it then: Becoming a Fractivist.   And Fracking Hysteria?  And Power.Money.Justice.Love? 

Since then I’ve visited shale gas drilling sites with the League of Women Voters and member of Pennsylvania’sResponsible Drilling Alliance. 

I’ve sat in meetings with activists who believe natural gasdrilling should be banned. Completely. 

USGS: Record Number of Oklahoma Earthquakes

And I’ve sat over dinner with women from states around the country struggling under the burden of shale gas drilling. One told me quietly that the Wind River Valley of Wyoming now has the worst air quality in the country. Another mentioned in passing the earthquakes of Oklahoma, a region with little earthquake activity until wastewater deposits were injected deep into the earth. Her sister’s home was knocked off it’s foundations. “And she didn’t have earthquake insurance. No one in Oklahoma had earthquake insurance."

This weekend the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania is hosting its second annual Shale Drilling and Public Health: Days of Discovery, with experts in environmental toxicology, shale gas impacts on human health, endocrine disruption, occupational hazards for shale gas workers. The resource guide developed from last year’s conference, Shale Gas Extraction and Public Health, has been translated into several languages, and used by citizens in other states and countries looking for ways to understand the implications of shale gas drilling on air, water, land, and human health.

I don’t support a ban on shale gas drilling – not in regions where wells are already in place. Resources will be used, wisely or unwisely, and wells once drilled can cause harm if abandoned.

But I do believe that drilling in key watersheds is too dangerous to allow. The Delaware River is the sole water supply for about 15 million people in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. So far there has been a moratium on fracking in the Delaware River basin, but Governor Tom Corbett has pushed hard for that moratorium to be lifted. In July 2014, he passed a budget that cut Pennsylvania’scontribution to the Delaware River Basin Commission in half, “a move environmentalists and Democrats say is retaliation for the commission's failure to enact rules governing oil and gas development in the basin.” 

I also believe that companies that demonstrate repeated disdain for environmental regulations should lose their license to drill.

Between January 2008 and 2011, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection cited 47 well operators for more than 900 environmental health and safety violations. Chesapeake Appalachia, a division of Chesapeake Energy, had the most, with 109 violations.

In May 2011, the company was fined $1.1 million for a February 2011 Washington County tank fire, and for contaminating several drinking wells in Bradford County. 

David Masur, director of PennEnvironment, questioned the deterrent value of a $1 million fine for the nation's second-largest gas producer, which last year earned $1.7 billion in profits on $9.4 billion in revenue, and whose chief executive, Aubrey K. McClendon, famously earned a $75 million bonus in 2009.
 "This is mostly a slap on the wrist," Masur said. 

Masur’s question of deterrence was validated as Chesapeake has continued to compile violations and fines: $600,000 in Pennsylvania in 2012 for cavalierly destroying a waterfall and wetlands that happened to be in the way; tenmillion in West Virginia the following year for more destruction of wetlands and streams. The company has been repeatedly sued for systematically underpaying royalties to leaseholders, forced to repay $7.5 million to Pennsylvania landholders in 2013, and currently under investigation for a class-action suit claiming the company “wrongfully retained” as much as $5 billion in unjust profits since 2007. Chesapeake is also facing felony racketeering and fraud allegations in Michigan, as well as an antitrust investigation. 

Range Resources, another company that regularly finds itself on the short-list of most frequent violations, was fined 53 times between 2008 and 2012, with 17% of wells drilled reported in violation. Despite a stated philosophy of “Be good stewards for our shareholders and our environment,” Range has been repeatedly sued by landowners for both environmental harm and misreported royalties; in 2013 the company agreed to a $87.5 million lawsuit brought by Oklahoma leaseholders. In September, 2014, Range was fined $4.15 million for violations at six different impoundments

Protecting Our Waters: Black Waters and Broken Promises

For years, critics and concerned observers have raised questions about when and how often wells are inspected, how accurately rates ofviolation are reported, what oversight accompanies disposal of the millions of gallons of toxic wastewater each well produces. Our governor has repeatedly dismissed those concerns, recently approving shale gas drilling in parks and state forests. with assurances about the safety of natural gas, the excellent environmental record, how good it has been and will be for the state.

The recent fines and lawsuits suggest otherwise, as does a sober critique of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection released in July by state Attorney Eugene DePasquale, The report makes clear that there has never been a system for timely inspection of wells, no comprehensive approach to oversight of waste-water disposal, ineffective response to citizen complaints, reliance on industry personel to complete inspections and evaluations, dependence on voluntary compliance with regard to “adversely impacted” water supplies. An executive summary concludes: 

the meteoric growth of the shale gas industry caught the Department of Environmental Protection unprepared to effectively administer laws and regulations to protect drinking water and unable to efficiently respond to citizen complaints. 

Much has been written about the revolving door between the shale gas industry, the DEP,  and Pennsylvania’s legislators.

And about the fact that recent Pennsylvania legislators have received more than their share of shale political contributions, from industry coalitions as well as corporate CEOs.

While those companies, and individuals, have surely benefitted, Pennsyvlania as a whole has seen little of the promised prosperity from shale gas drilling. The few jobs created by the industry  have not kept pace with jobs lost in education and infrastructure, and little of the billions in profit have found their way into state and local budgets (in part due to the “No Tax” pledge that swept current officials into office).  

A key issue in the election next week will be the fact that Pennsylvania, alone among the major shale states has no severance fee on gas extracted, relying instead on an impact fee. In effect, natural gas companies are paying on average less than 1,9% tax  on profits made in our state. Imposing a severance fee of 5% to bring the state in line with neighboring shale states would raise an estimated $1 billion a year in revenue, and would send a message to the shale gas industry that it no longer owns the state of Pennsylvania.

Shale gas is not the first resource that Pennsylvania has been both blessed and cursed with. Lumber, then coal, divided communities, benefited some while leaving others poorer than before, and scarred the environment in ways still unresolved. Shale promises a legacy more damaging than either. Carelessly linedwells don’t get stronger over time. Toxic chemicals leaked into underground fissures aren’t gone, just dangerously forgotten.

We sometimes drive through the ghost town of Centralia, the coal town lost to an underground fire that still burns to this day, half a century from its start in 1962.

No one planned it.

No one prepared for it.

No one paid much attention until it was far too late to manage.

I’ll be thinking of Centralia when I go to the polls next Tuesday.

This is the ninth in a series looking at specific issues of importance in state and local elections, as an extension of my 2012 series "What's Your Platform?"  

Earlier posts:  

What are Workers Worth, September 1, 2014
Back to School Lament, September 7, 2014
Privatization and Elementary Math, September 14,  2014
Who is Allowed to Vote? September 21, 2014
Let the People Draw the Lines, September 28, 2014
A Prayer for the Broken, October 5, 2014
 Dreaming of Home, October 12, 2014
Vote Smart, October 19, 2014

Seeking the Agora

The Corinthian agora

This Fourth of July weekend I've been considering, with gratitude, the freedoms I too often take for granted, and wondering how much longer this experiment in democracy will continue.

During our March trip to Greece I was reminded that while the first democratic governments began in the Greek city-states, for most of the last two thousand years, “demokratia,” literally “people power,” was banished from Greek and its beautiful islands, as various empires, invaders, and monarchies held sway.  

In Corinth, our Biblical Tours guide, Costos Tsevas, made very clear that the “agora,” often translated “marketplace” in English-language Bibles, originally had nothing to do with buying and selling. The agora was the center of political discourse – the place where citizens came to share their views, to make their case, settle disputes, determine policy.

For four hundred years, roughly 800 to 400 BC, over a thousand city-states rimmed the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Black Sea shores, “like frogs around a pond,” according to Plato. Some of these were monarchies, some oligarchies where power was held in the hands of the powerful few, but many were governed by versions of direct democracy.

By the time of Paul, Greek democracy was just a memory, swept away by King Philip 2 of Macedonia and his son, Alexander the Great, then by the Roman empire. Yet even in Paul’s day, the agora was a place for sharing ideas, celebrating victories, and condemning traitors. Paul was accused, beaten, then released in the agora in Corinth, accused, beaten, and sent to prison from the agora in Philippi.

In Athens, I spent a morning wandering by myself through the ancient agora, far larger than the Roman agora that later took its place, far grander than the marketplaces that sprang up around it.

Where is our modern agora?

At first, I found Costos’ insistent distinction between agora and marketplace perplexing: so what?

Stoa of Atalos in the ancient agora, Athens

But the more time I spent in the agoras of Corinth, Philippi, Thessaloniki, and Athens, the more I began to wonder: which is more important, separation of church and state, or separation of commerce and state?

In a way, neither is fully possible. As humans, our beliefs, economics, political views are interwoven so tightly we can never separate them.

But what happens when the marketplace drives our common life and shoves aside all discourse about the common good?

And what happens when there’s no gathering place for dialogue, for sharing vision, for confronting challenges as fellow citizens?

In early June I attended the national convention of the League of Women Voters. The League is a non-partisan organization formed on the eve of women’s suffrage in 1920 to study issues, educate voters, and create space for dialogue outside of party lines.

For almost a century now, the League has been hosting debates, providing voter’s guides, and looking for ways to understand issues on a deeper level.

A repeated concern expressed at the convention was the influence of money in every stage of the political process. Corporate lobbying shapes regulation; deep pockets sway local elections; global industries place invisible pressure on trade agreements and foreign policy decisions.

Many observers suggest American democracy is already dead, supplanted by a transnational plutarchy (power in the hands of a wealthy few) cut free of national allegiance. Author Chrystia Freeland analyzed this increasingly dislocated group in Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, (summarized in a similarly titled TED talk). The inordinate power held by this small group has helped fuel protest movements from Occupy Wall Street to a recent March for Democracy in California, which proclaimed:

The history of this country is marked by the tragic contradiction between its rightly esteemed principles—of fairness, freedom, equality, and the pursuit of happiness—and the destitute behavior of its government, ever willing to exploit, oppress, and make war on behalf of a tiny economic elite. Simply stated: We do not live in a democracy. This is a plutocracy, government for and by the wealthy. 

Other observers argue we need a new term to describe the current political situation: corporatocracy. As defined by The Oxford Dictionary:

NOUN (plural corporatocracies)
A society or system that is governed or controlled by corporations: in this age of corporatocracies, the money goes not to the inventor, but to the company.

For the League of Women Voters, the issue is important enough to warrant a major two-year study on the constitutional amendment process (are amendments needed to block corporate influence in elections or to clarify the difference between the rights of people and corporations?), the use and abuse of money in politics, and the role of redistricting.

One of our convention speakers was Peter Levine, professor of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Tufts University, author of several books on the future of democracy, most recently “We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For.” In his convention remarks, and his book, he describes the troubling failure of key American institutions:

We have put 2.2 million of our own people in prison, far more than any other nation in the history of the world. . .  Yet imprisoning millions of Americans does not make us safe. Our homicide rate remains at least three times as high as the rate in any other wealthy nation in the world.

We spend more per child on K-12 education than almost any other country in the developed world, yet one-third of our young people drop out before they compete high school.

We spend far more on health care per citizen than any other country in the world . . . Even if the Affordable Care Act of 2010 meets expectations, we will still have the most expensive system in the world, with some of the worst health outcomes for poorer people.

 Levine’s assessment:

Plainly, our institutions do not work. Their failure is not just wasteful: it is deadly. They are not just broken: they are corrupt – making some people rich and comfortable while failing the rest of us.

The solution Levine offers is not that we need better government, but that we need better citizens: the kind of engaged, informed, actively involved citizens that gathered in the ancient agora to share concerns, debate solutions, then go build walls or gather boats to carry out the shared conclusions.

It’s easy to sit at home and denounce the evil dunces whose policies we’ve heard caricatured on the evening broadcasts that share our political leanings.

It’s harder to understand the complexities of the problems around us.

Even harder to find ways to engage in practical solutions.

We’re busy.

We’re distracted.

We’re deeply divided.

And we are less and less willing to listen carefully to other points of view, less willing to participate in any kind of group that doesn’t share and endorse our own perspectives, less willing to engage constructively in civic organizations.

I go back to the Apostle Paul’s encounter with the Athenians in their place of assembly.

He took time to listen and observe.

He saw the obvious: temples to a wide array of gods.

But he also observed the less obvious: an altar to an unknown god.

He listened carefully, and gave credit where he could: “I see that in every way you are very religious.”

He stated his own point of view without personal attack, while making clear that he had heard and considered other voices, quoting and validating what he could:  ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.

He introduced points of difference, but saw no need to have the final word, and stopped speaking while at least some listeners wanted to hear more: “When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.”

As we head into a new election season, I’m planning to blog again on issues that confront and divide us. But as I do, I want to hear from people whose views are shaped not by party politics, Fox News or CNN, but by their own experience in the complexities of daily life.

I want to dig more deeply into the possibility of being salt, light, or a voice of hope or wisdom in places mired in anger or confusion.

I want to suggest ways to engage, not just by signing a survey, or making a phone call, but by serving our communities in love while helping to renew a web of compassionate engagement.

This is the last in a series of reflections, Texts in Context, revisting two formative weeks spent in Greece in March 2014. Earlier posts:  

Texts in Context: Yassas!

Mysteries

Proclaim Freedom 

Covering Shaven Heads

Life Lesson from Lydia

Fragments on Philopappos Hill

Running the Race 

And it’s the first in a new series - yet to be named -  exploring issues that confront and divide us.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Just click on   __comments below to see the comment option.  

Courage, Hope, Generosity

No, no, there is no going back.

Less and less you are

that possibility you were.

More and more you have become

those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you. . .

Now more than ever you can be

generous toward each day

that comes, young,

to disappear

forever, and yet remain

unageing in the mind.

Every day you have less reason

not to give yourself away.

  (Wendell Berry,

         The Timbered Choir)

I spent this past weekend in the company of women of great courage, hope, and generosity.

I have been on an interesting journey, and most recently it’s been leading me into political engagement with the League of Women Voters. I’ve been working on a national agriculture study, leading caucuses and workshops about food and farming, and have just been voted onto the local and state League of Women Voters boards.

So, this past weekend, I went to the biennial state convention of the Pennsylvania League in the lovely town of Lewisburg, PA.

The start of the weekend was a wild caravan ride to see some natural gas drilling sites in the hillsides near Loyalsock State Forest. Guided by a local member of the Alliance for Responsible Drilling, our group drove down steep back roads, stopped along roadsides, counted waste water tank trucks in caravans of their own, then hiked across a muddy field for a birds-eye view of six active fracking wells.

One of the members of our group, a woman well into her seventies, carried a small note pad and jotted notes at every turn.

Another, just weeks after hip surgery, gratefully accepted a hand to climb a slippery slope, eager to see and understand further a topic she’s been studying for years.

The conversation never stopped: How many gallons. What happens to the waste water. How far is the nearest stream. How many trucks per day.

From there we went back to our convention site, for meetings about judicial reform, industrial farming, the broken party system, how best to advocate for more open primaries.

Some of those in attendance were younger than I am (57, if you’ve been wondering).

Many were older.

Some much older.

One woman spoke of working for thirty years to find a way to promote a more impartial, well-prepared judiciary.

Another has been studying Pennsylvania politics for almost as long, looking for possible points of reform, showing up for hearings, offering testimony, meeting with legislators, tireless in pursuit of something approaching a more open democratic process.

I sat several times next to a woman working to protect lakes, farms, and a fragile wetland area from the dangers of fracking wastewater being dumped into old, crumbling wells just miles from her home, not far from Lake Erie.

I spoke with another woman working hard to ensure adequate funding for education in rural schools far from any center of political power.

At one meeting we talked about the Pennsylvania Justice Bell and the 1915 statewide referendum on women’s rights. While my county and many western counties voted for women’s right to vote, the majority of state voters (all men) voted emphatically “no.” We were reminded of the 72 years between the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, hosted by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the final ratification of the 19^th Amendment in August, 1920.

At another meeting we recognized fifty-year members – women who joined the league to work for Civil Rights, to advocate for the still-unpassed Equal Rights Amendment.

I was struck by the energy and resolve of these women, and the endless hours they give, showing up to register new voters, writing letters, making calls, trying to understand issues. One meeting paused over a motion about sales tax: Who is harmed by higher sales tax? Who benefits? Why should it matter?

Listening to the passionate discussions over morning coffee, over lunch, between meetings, late into the night, I found myself thinking about this month’s Synchroblog topic: ordinary courage. 

“In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown has this to say about ordinary courage:

'The root of the word courage is cor—the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant “to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.'

“The great thing about ordinary courage is that it leads to wholehearted living.”

We live in a world that encourages us not to care: 

Don’t vote, they’re all the same. Give up, things will never change.
 It’s all too complicated, so why bother?
 Look out for yourself, it’s the best you can do. 

It seems unwise to engage our hearts, to let ourselves care too deeply. Somehow it’s okay to be passionate about a TV show, a new restaurant, a hairstyle. But keep your voice level when you talk of politics. Don’t say too much about poverty or prison reform. Don’t offend, don’t insist, don’t dig too deeply.

Please, don’t think too much.

 

This past weekend, one of the women I was with spoke laughingly of a reporter who wrote of “whip-smart women in comfortable shoes.”

Well yes – it’s hard to visit fracking sites in anything but comfortable shoes. Or to run down hallways lugging laptops and projectors in a pair of narrow high heels.

What kind of culture is more interested in women’s shoes than in what chemicals are in our water, what toxins are in our food?

I’m reminded of a passage from Wendell Berry’s essay “On Difficult Hope”: 

"We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species. The list of its undeniable abominations is long and hardly bearable. And these abominations are not balanced or compensated or atoned for by the list, endlessly reiterated, of our scientific achievements. Some people are moved, now and again, to deplore one abomination or another. Others . . . deplore the whole list and its causes.
 "Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvements and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protestors who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal.  .  .
 "Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.” (Wendell Berry, "On Difficult Hope") 

Both hope and courage are qualities of the heart, essential to whole-hearted living, worth preserving no matter the stupidities of the age.

Yet, as I think of the women I came to know this past weekend, I see in them something beyond the  the perseverance Berry describes. I turn back to the poem I started with: the idea of generosity.

What motivates these women of courage is the wish to give something better to those who come

behind us.

The woman living near the waste-water wells, organizing town meetings, writing the EPA, protesting, once again, a dangerous practice she fears will do great harm, said emphatically:

“It’s not about us. Or even our children. It’s our grandchildren. And the children after them. What happens when those well-linings break? What happens when those chemicals leach into the water table, into the lake?” 

It takes courage to look past the economies of today, to spend time, energy, resources tirelessly, generously, in hope of passing on something of value to generations to come.

In a world of self-protectiveness, of turning inward, of looking out for number one, I admire, celebrate, and am happy to walk with those tireless, fearless, generous women who refuse to settle for a life in stylish shoes. 

Every day you have less reasonnot to give yourself away.

This post is part of the June Synchroblog. There are lots of links this month - take some time to visit them and join the conversation.

This Is Courage by Jen Bradbury
Being Vulnerable by Phil Lancaster
Everyday Bravery: Overcoming the Fear of Being Wrong by Jessica
Moving Forward Takes Courage by Paul W. Meier
How to Become a Flasher by Glenn Hager
Ordinary Courage by Elaine Hansen
The Courage to Fail by Wendy McCaig
The Greatest Act of Courage by Jeremy Myers
Sharing One’s Heart by K. W. Leslie
All I See Is Rocks by Tim Nichols
I Wonder What Would Happen by Liz Dyer
What is Ordinary Courage? by Jennifer Stahl
Loving Courageously by Doreen A. Mannion
Heart Cry: The Courage to Confess by Elizabeth Chapin
The Act to the Miraculous by VisionHub
the spiritual practice of showing up & telling the truth by Kathy Escobar
It’s What We Teach by Margaret Boelman