History lessons...Third time's a charm!

Wow. Seriously. Wow.

I do not consider myself to be a political person. I have strong opinions when it comes to politics, but politics has never been a large part of my life. I voted for the first time in the 2000 presidential election. I listened with some interest to the candidates speak during the campaign and I went with the candidate whose words connected with me the most: Ralph Nader. Truthfully, there was no part of me that felt George W. Bush could beat Al Gore (who was my "lesser of 2 evils" that year) and I felt free to cast my vote for a candidate that I knew would never win, but a candidate that at least stirred some passion in me. I felt that my vote was not wasted, it would only have been wasted if I did not vote for the candidate I wanted to win. I voted in Washington State by absentee ballot, as I was scheduled to fly to Austin, TX on election day for a few days work. How could I have imagined the scene I would witness in the following days near the Texas state capitol? Texas voted overwhelmingly for its then-Governor to take the White House, in all districts EXCEPT its liberal enclave of Austin, which was split pretty evenly. I was there to witness the protesters on both sides, waving their signs, shouting their slogans, demanding the TRUE winner be recognized. I was there for 3 days, performing 3 shows a day for hundreds of schoolkids at the Jewish Community Center. The one-woman show, "Through the Eyes of a Friend" (see http://www.livingvoices.org/ for more info), is a story of the Holocaust, and it was scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the "night of broken glass", a country-wide pogrom initiated by the Nazi government in 1938. I was in Austin to remind students of the vast importance of understanding the failures of history in order to keep that history from repeating itself. Little did I expect to be witnessing a piece of history myself. On my second day in Austin, George W. Bush gave a televised address to the nation and his followers, assuring them that the votes would be counted and that he would surely win the election, and for some reason, he chose to give this speech from the JCC. I showed up for work early that morning to find dozens of men in suits and dark glasses looking like linebackers in a wedding party. As I entered the building, I was stopped and redirected, and while it seemed that no one even looked at me, I felt dozens of pairs of sunglass-shaded eyes burning into me. The room felt colder. Quieter than a normal room should be. I managed to find a way into a back room, then to an outside courtyard, again thick with men in suits and shades. I found myself feeling angry, angry at these people for not seeing me, for not recognizing the importance of what I was there to do. Not that they knew anything about the busloads of kids coming to get some of my signature-style schoolin'. I don't know, but between my own feelings about the election and about my work, I felt that George W. Bush had shoved his way into my life uninvited and I wanted him out. This feeling has been with me for 8 years now.
In 2004, I voted in my second presidential election, this time in-person in Astoria, NY. During that campaign, I was really paying attention. Early on, I went to see Howard Dean speak, and I knew that he was my guy. Too bad he turned out to be human and show emotion. So I settled for Kerry. I liked him well enough, and I certainly preferred him to the alternative. This was the campaign season that first interested Alex (now, I can barely pull him away from the 24-hour news channels). He and I watched debates and got ourselves registered in our new town. On election day, we woke up at his dad's cabin in the Pennsylvania Poconos, and I remember driving home, past long lines of swing-state voters waiting to cast their ballots. I remember wishing there was a way we could have voted in Pennsy, really made our votes count. But we were sure it wouldn't matter, there was NO WAY Bush could win again, not with his approval rating decreasing and concern about Iraq growing. Alex and I walked to our voting place, cast our votes, and were back home, all within 30 minutes. No long waits for us (perhaps it has something to do with the demographic of Astoria, in that so many of it's adults are immigrants and unable to vote in an American election). Easy as pie! Then we went home to watch the numbers roll in, sure of the outcome. I mean, I was certain! As much as I couldn't believe Bush could have won in 2000, it seemed impossible that he could win in '04. People nation-wide were unhappy with his job performance, so of course he'd get the boot. Ohhhhhh how wrong I was. While people were unhappy, turns out they were more fearful of switching gears in the midst of a war. Oh, and gay marriage. Bad, sex-crazed, god-hating gays wanting to marry scared people to the voting booths in record numbers. People were afraid of change, the thing they seem to want more than anything now. Go figure. I was very wrong in my optimism in '04, and I felt like I'd been slapped in the face with a 2x4.
And that is when I stopped watching the news. And reading the newspaper. Seriously. I couldn't take it. I was angry at the media, at all the politicians, I felt lied to and cheated and that I couldn't trust any of them, therefore I'd stop listening. And so I did. The only news I received over the next few years came from Alex (who began watching news with a level of fanaticism that still causes me concern) or from overheard subway conversations or other such outside sources. I sought out no info on my own. I was done caring, I was done hoping, I was done believing. Cynicism seemed to rule the world, everyone was out to serve his or her own self-interest, so I chose to stay interested only in the things that came from me internally. Which worked out well enough, except that I was still working in schools, teaching students of the necessity of looking outside of themselves and reaching out to those in need. I was teaching them to recognize the dreams that flooded Ellis Island with thousands and eventually millions of immigrants in search of the American dream, the same dreams bringing thousands to our country each year. I was teaching them to see the cattle-car journey to Nazi concentration camps in relation to the Middle Passage journey to American slave auctions, to understand that our country has it's own history to learn from. I was forcing these students to look long and hard at the America of this day and understand how we got here, how far we had left to go. But my own choice to ignore politics, and the media which reported it, kept getting in the way. Until I went to grad school and was no longer at the head of a classroom, making it easy to once again ignore the news. I felt a cool separation between myself and my country, almost like the relationship one has with an absentee landlord. I lived according to the law (most of them anyway, but I cannot stop myself from jaywalking when there is no traffic approaching) and asked little in return. Things were broken all around me, but as long as I didn't ask for or expect any improvements, and as long as I paid rent by April 15th, I was free to go about my business and nothing would be asked of me.
I was fine with this arrangement. It was simple. I'd hear the latest numbers coming out of Iraq and have a moment of pause, a moment when emotion might have entered in, but instead I would think only of the statistic, not the lives affected. I'd hear of mistreatment of prisoners at Gitmo, and where once I might have been outraged that AMERICA could do such a thing, I'd find myself thinking, "Well, that's just the way the world works." I let myself be numb, and numbness served me well.
Then one day early this summer, I found myself talking about the campaign with my registered-Republican father. Dad had nothing good to say about Hilary or Obama or even McCain, they were all "pieces of shit". And instead of simply nodding or agreeing or letting the comment go, I began questioning him. Then I began getting angry. I found myself actually yelling at him, I even threw out an F-bomb, a word I have NEVER before spoken in front of my Catholic parents. I found myself telling him that maybe it was okay for him to just give up and be complacent and pissed off but I've got a lot of years left to live and I plan on living them in this country and I'm tired of feeling disconnected from and even embarrassed by my country and I like the idea of a President who wants to reach out to the world community and recognize that we can't do it unilaterally and....
I don't know how it happened, but after years of numbness, something opened up inside of me and started to feel a little glimmer of something that was unfamiliar after so many years, I started to feel a little bit of hope. Yes, hope. The audacity of hope. And with that little bit of hope, I was reborn into my country. Today, I feel embraced by my country, like it has recognized the worth of MY values, instead of discounting them as naive and pie-eyed and idealistic and either dangerous or impossible. My family values may not reflect those of "real" America in some ways, but they are valuable to me. My prayers may not be sent out to the same god as those prayers of "real" Americans, but my prayers are valuable to me. My hopes and dreams might seem petty or selfish or impractical to some "real" Americans, but it was in America that my hopes and dreams were born, and it is in America that my hopes and dreams were made valuable to me. I am so many things: student, teacher, woman, daughter, lover, singer, sister, friend, actor, I am an individual within a tight-knit family within an extended family within a citizenry within the world. My country does not define me, nor do my politics. But they are a part of me, once again. And it is a welcome return. This year, I cast my ballot early in a Las Vegas shopping mall. My vote was one of thousands that helped change the electoral map. My vote mattered, as it always has before, but this time, more than ever, it mattered to me. Win or loss, I was inspired to believe in my country once again. Win or loss, I was inspired to believe that my opinions are just as valid as those of any other citizen of my country. Win or loss, I was inspired to believe that anything is possible, and that Yes, We Can.
And Yes, We Did. I watched President-elect Barack Obama give his speech in Chicago, while I stood in a packed ballroom at the Rio, surrounded by hundreds of men, women, children, all ethnicities, all ages. I cheered as a part of a community of believers, I cried along with a woman who kept saying "yes yes yes" in response to Obama's every word, a woman who was just coming of voting age when her government first gave her the right to vote. I smiled at the children who couldn't understand the history behind last night's history-making election but who clearly understood it's significance. It was a room full of strangers who cheered with one voice, "Yes We Can! Yes We Can!" And I'm so very glad that I was a part of it.
My guy won, which should make for interesting conversation at the annual Christmas gathering with my Republican family. BRING IT ON!!!