Bathroom Politics

Right now I'm sitting in my guest bathroom. It is the safest hidey-hole we have. We are under our second tornado warning of the day. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a deep-seated fear of storms. While I sit here though, I can't help but concentrate on the sentiment just uttered by my firstborn, "Mommy, these tornadoes are attacking our world!"

As quickly as he said that, I thought...No, I know what is attacking our world; and, just like that, as a gift to me from him, he gave me my out. I am no longer concentrated on the storms that beat my country home. Right now, I am on my internal soap box.

I'll tell you right now what is attacking our world. It's apathy. People don't give a shit. I'm guilty too often of this. People don't care if others are discriminated against or wronged or run over in some way. We largely don't care to let our government have the reins without holding them accountable or asking questions, or let's face it...without giving two shits what happens once less than fifty percent of those eligible have decided to vote for an R or a D.

Thomas Jefferson warned against this. He said in as much that we need ideological rebellion by the citizenry every twenty years. So, it's been a long time since the Civil Rights movement, two cycles of supposed-to-be-rebellion, with nothing. Are things so great that no one is moved to action? For eight years we unwittingly sat back and allowed Cheney and Rove to sit at the helm with their arms stiff up W's backside.

I got a C on a paper in my Comp. II class a few years ago on an opinion paper. My paper at one point equated the struggles of homosexuals to the struggles faced by African Americans during the Civil Rights movement. Apparently, that was a very un-Democratic thing to say, and because of my opinion, I was given bad marks. In fact, in the margin of the word document that I had submitted, this was the professor's only criticism, "How can you compare what African Americans have gone through to what the gays are going through?"

Right then, I realized that this almost passive in-fighting and this desire to keep things copacetic is what undoubtedly keeps people from participating in democracy. Jefferson also said that in order for democracy to work, the citizens have to be active participants. I'd been thinking about this for weeks, and then this happened:

In one of my education classes, this guy was telling about one of his student teaching lessons. He told us the subject matter, Africa in a ninth grade World Geography class at Tupelo High School, and he told us his teaching strategies: a PowerPoint presentation, asking leading, thought-provoking questions, and my favorite, class discussion. He opened it up for questions. No one spoke, not even the young Hermione Granger-ish girl that ALWAYS has something to offer. He wondered if he had done something wrong, when Hermione raised her hand and handed him a piece of notebook paper. It said, "I'm really sorry. I have taken a vow of silence. We are protesting the bullying of gays in our school."

Upon reflecting on this, I have hope. Those students (many of them) were taking the opportunity to participate in their democracy. They had seen injustices and were not going to stand for it. Jocks and cheerleaders and geeks and drama kids and goths and gays united one day to say, "This is bullshit, guys." It makes me nostalgic for Bobby Kennedy and the 60s; though, I was not there. It makes me a bit less cynical, and it makes me feel like--even if it's only a group of fifteen-year-olds in North Mississippi, somebody gives a shit.