Bury the Hatchet: Cass Epstein townhall musical accompaniment

There is a depth of emotion for many of us trying to stay engaged in what has come to feel like a battle that is the tip of an iceberg bigger than health care reform though that is the particular struggle we're focused on right now.

I am convinced this is another step in a long process that has been going on a long long time. We need to draw from lessons learned from what helped communities in the past. Music has always been a part of important human experience. If we are to stay engaged in the long haul we have ahead, we need more to support us than we seem to have right now.

The last week, I've been reminding myself of what I want to do in the face of self righteous anger, with this Cass Epstein song.
http://www.box.net/files#0:f:31169468/Bury_the_Hatchet

Finding Strength at Another Townhall

Finding Strength at Another Townhall

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New Info re Townhall Meetings

Less than an hour after posting a report on a slightly hopeful conduct of a townhall meeting and urging taking a positive stand in the face of hostility, I heard about an increase in the level of serious violence threatened and planned against health care reform supporters at town hall meetings and directly to union supporters. How scared should we be? How tough do we need to be? What are the politicians and commentators who are inciting this level of violence trying to accomplish? Will they, like McCain did during the campaign when it threatened to go this level, reel it back? Can they at this point?

Every time I think I know enough to take a position, every time I thought I had decided how and what I would do, I learn something that rattles my certainty.

How will our leaders respond so our civil right to speak is protected? Hard to believe what I am seeing.

Report from a Townhall: The Difference

Went to my first August town hall this morning—actually was called by our congressman Jared Polis as more of a meeting in front of a local coffee shop but there were many more than the 30 people they expected. The local paper reported hundreds showed up with a video that made it look huge with lots of dialogue. (http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/aug/07/polis-mobbed-morning-coffee-chat-health-care/
A few anti-health care reformers in attendance, a couple anti-reform signs, some out-of-towners, a couple of whom tried to intimidate.

Rep Polis answered a few questions from the crowd before meeting with small groups for short conversations. The last question came from a self-identified conservative who respectfully spouted questionable statistics that sparked intermittent angry reactions from one or two people in the crowd to which the rest of the crowd urged “Shhhhhh.” “Let him speak.” Later I noticed anti reform people engaged in conversations with small groups of pro reform people. Again, I’d hear intermittent charged voices, often though not always, defused by civil responses.

We had a few police standing at a distance with a non-threatening or threatened stance, almost a reassuring presence.

Talking with an OFA field organizer, we reminisced about the ‘happy’ factor we experienced in our work for Obama’s candidacy during the Primary and Presidential campaigns—how our solidarity in believing in hope overwhelmed hostility and attacks. Remember the times ugliness surfaced? There were many trying and painful days back then that foreshadowed the quality of the opponent we face now—the opponent Barack Obama warned us we would need to be organized to face when he became President.

I’m not yet sure what self-righteous screaming and mean spirited insults are accomplishing that work for one side or the other. Will they scare us off? Lead us to sink to the ugliness in ourselves? Just doesn’t sound like a long-term strategy of the powerful but more a crying of the weak. In fact I think it is serving to alarm supporters of health care reform and motivate us to get up again and push hard for our voices to be heard. They are helping us mobilize--more people are asking me what they can do.

So I say to those fomenting this craziness: Though I admit you scare me, I’ll lean on my fellow volunteers to help me resist the weakness of fear and self-righteous anger in reaction to mean spirited insults and threats. We won during the Presidential Campaign with reason, compassion and hope and endless hours of hard grassroots work. People were drawn to that work partly because it felt so good to stand alongside others who imagined that things could be better for everyone. As President Obama said on election night, “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep…. I promise you – we as a people will get there…Yes we can.” http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gGx3Kc

One way I learned during the campaign to manage my fear and anxiety was to take action. And it helped even more when others were there with me. Please check your representatives’ websites for August events you can attend to make sure your voice is counted.

How do we get our way?

I’m watching the campaigns for and against health care reform—watching actions and reactions in myself, and others. Canvassing yesterday there were people whose opposition struck me as so mean-spirited, I felt like crying. I can’t yet even begin to describe my reaction to my fellow citizens being so hateful to me about an effort to get access to adequate health care for everyone. There was no room for discussion and in fact, I felt threatened or at least insulted.

I know I’m overly sensitive these days due to painful health insurance stories I’m carrying around in my mind. I almost thought I couldn’t continue and then a group of protestors against the military action in Afghanistan marched through and I heard them speaking with the same self righteous anger.

I’ve been there in self-righteousness. I understand the pull of it. The certainty leaves no room for fear of what will happen if we don’t get our way. We have to prevail. We are so right!

A friend once told me that he noticed that every time he indulged himself in self righteous indignation it came back to bite him with a reflection of his own behavior similar to what he had decried. I’ve had to eat my words a few times lately so as a practical measure, I’m practicing avoiding it, even in my emails to our senators who refuse to take a clear position in spite of promises that if we supported them they would support Obama’s agenda. Oh! Self righteous indignation is lurking here—sure could be a relief at this moment.

Instead I'm thinking back to so many times during the campaign when fear and doubt loomed because things weren’t going our way. And we won. Did we expect that once Obama got elected, it would be quick and easy to get our way? As much as we are literally fighting a life and death issue for many people, insurance companies and other corporations are also fighting for their existence, as they know it. They know how to put up a fight.

And its an old, an even ancient, fight. We can learn from so many who have gone before us.

1. Saul Alinsky, a grandfather of community organizing and recently a subject of many hateful web posts, his 12 Rules for Radicals and lately, this rule in particular:

RULE 9: "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists' minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization).

2. Biblical story of David and Goliath that is ubiquitous in our culture but still surprises me with relevant details. Check out this New Yorker piece by Malcolm Gladwell: “How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break the Rules.”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell

Or just the story from the Bible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath or http://christianity.about.com/od/biblestorysummaries/p/davidandgoliath.htm

Whatever your battle... health care, education, environment, arts, financial systems, jobs, human and animal rights............
imagine this (metaphorically of course)