OPINION | Now What?

by Lola E. Peters

So here we are. Everything that "couldn't possibly happen" is happening. We have run full-on into the midst of Balkanization. Weather patterns around the planet are challenging our species' sustainability. Our institutions, even those we call the bedrocks of our society, are exposing their fragility and the consequences of their corruption. In this country, people are dying because someone wouldn't hire them or pay them a livable wage based on their age, race, or gender identity, or because they were priced out of the ability to get housing, or had no access to the financial or physical resources that would support their health care needs. Even the best athletes among us are being mocked and vilified. If there is a social/cultural rock bottom, we're damned close.

So. Now what? How do we continue if our country becomes the authoritarian hellscape many fear? What happens the day after Nov. 5, 2024? I have some thoughts.

The majority of us have limited ability or capacity to impact the national goings-on except through our national representatives. Whether representatives to Congress or to party conventions, we give them our power to make effective decisions. While some seem to be in the fight to go beyond sustaining to actually improving our nation's vision of itself, others seem to be invisible, sitting quietly on the sidelines doing who knows what, while still others are determined to destroy our democracy for Christo-fascism. We can impact their actions by making it clear what we want them to do on our behalf and hoping they have the impact we want. If not, we can replace them. But that takes years. What can we do right now?

It's important to remember those representatives, whether city council, school board, governor, or U.S. Senate, are the result of a local pipeline. They become national representatives after proving themselves in other parts of our local systems. Whether as activists, business people, or public servants, they show us who they are long before we give them the power to stand on our behalf.

And that is where we have the most ability to make a huge impact: the local political pipeline.

Sadly, the pipeline has been starved of public servants for several decades. In the 1980s, it became shameful to work for any governmental branch. Where many of the most talented from prior generations chose government work, as community service, over the wealth of the private sector, the bulk of the BMW generation chose to put their skills into the corporate world … to make money instead of serving our democratic institutions. To use their innate talents in pursuit of personal gain without considering the impact on community. And those who chose the public sector were either marginalized or were using it as a stepping stone into the private sector. The "greed is good" generation created a huge gap in talented people willing to hold together the bonds of our democratic institutions. Bit by incrementalist bit, public servants lost the tools and resources they needed to serve. The euphemism of "small government" slowly stripped them of their effectiveness while blaming them for it.

That was no accident. The "Reagan revolution" branded government as bad. Instead of seeing it as public service, an individual's responsibility to the collective whole, it was labeled as the problem undermining individual rights. Only the chronically marginalized segments of our population continued to view public service as an honorable option. Our vision of the American dream was once defined as freedom to live a life without oppression. Meanwhile, those who held the reins of our oppression redefined the American dream as "he who has the most toys wins," a disingenuous measure they knew would only result in further financial and cultural division to their good. Those who owned all the toys were supposedly going to generously mete out their leftover toys to everyone else.

Democratic party leaders, long the champions of the excluded, adopted their opponents' strategy to align with the toy owners rather than the toy makers. Some of the toy makers bought the hype and learned how to hoard toys or convince other toy makers to give away their goods in exchange for promises to consider their needs someday.

There were those — have always been those — like Paul Wellstone, Al Sharpton, and, locally, Roberto Maestas and Sharon Maeda, who pointed out the grift. They were mocked and often marginalized. As we see around us now, they were also right.

The American dream became a hustle, and everyone working toward it became some kind of hustler. Trust, integrity, community, responsibility were thrown out with the very dirty bath water. Our society became all about the toys. Quality of life, health, environmental sustainability; all could be sacrificed for more toys. Instead of banding together to form a strong nation, we pulled apart to form a fractured country.

Government work, public service, became the purview of the sucker or the grifter. Rather than being the reward for years of integrity, commitment, and vision, moving into that pipeline required navigating upstream through sewage. Only rats or the most armored could make it through.

And now we see the results: a pipeline that took decades to push out the old guard. Two old men were able to hold us hostage because so many of those who came after were convinced to pursue the toys and not question the system that was destroying the toy makers; believing they, too, could work really hard as toy makers until one day they would have enough toys.

The pandemic and the public murder of George Floyd should have been enough to reorganize our priorities, and for some it was. But the pursuit of toys continues, and the pipeline, in so many places, is so plugged up with greed, corruption, self-aggrandizement, and selfishness it seems only to produce sewage.

Still, we see some who have made their way into and through the pipeline. Most of them come from traditionally marginalized communities because those populations have always required armor to navigate this society. Astounding as it seems, rather than coming through the pipeline covered in sewage, they come through polished and burnished, champions for the original American dream of freedom toward "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Raised in an activist Democratic family, I believed it would be my lifelong party. In 1990, I gave up. The party-wide infusion of people like the Clintons, what we have come to call "neoliberals" but knew then as "Goldwater Democrats," stripped the party of its roots in the lives of everyday people. They adopted the mythologies of Wall Street as the measure of economic success. Despite repeated warnings by activists, they adopted NAFTA and other corporate-based policies, slowly undercutting the survivability of middle-income individuals and devastating the traditionally marginalized and those with no access to generational wealth. I learned then to pick my representatives carefully.

When I evaluate a candidate, I do the standard things of checking out their proposed policies and the like. But too often, I've been disappointed in what they promise and what they actually deliver. So I've set up another standard of evaluation: Who do they surround themselves with; do they welcome new ideas; are their stated policies consistent with those in their inner circles?

I look at the current cabinet. A Black woman attorney as vice president. A young gay veteran as transportation secretary. An Indigenous woman as secretary of the interior, managing all public lands. A Latino man as secretary of homeland security. A Black former four-star general as secretary of defense. A young British Pakistani American attorney as chair of the federal trade commission. And more. Like Barack Obama before him, Joe Biden built a team with fresh ideas gleaned from the 21st century. It's a team I have learned to have confidence in. Together, they've done some amazing things, like saving millions of lives with rational health and financial policies, staving off a recession, bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., and strengthening workers' rights. Do I wish they'd done more to, for example, strengthen voting rights? Oh, yes.

But I stand this team up against any other team, and I'm willing to put my vote in their corner. And I see in their ranks some highly burnished armor ready to lead. It may be late in coming, but the potential is there.

I look in the GOP corner and I see a bunch of old men and their sycophants leaning on tried-and-failed policies and practices of the past.

As we get through this complicated business of the next four to seven months, we need people to start entering the pipeline who have a new vision of what the future can be. Whether we continue with a two-party electoral system or modify it to something that will serve us all, it will take individuals who knowingly step into the pipeline, combined with those of us willing to go before and sweep away the accumulated detritus, to move us all into a progressive future. Just as the GOP was transformed step by step into the cesspool it is now, the Democratic Party needs people who will reverse the neoliberal nightmare and fight for the true American dream of freedom from oppression.

But it will never happen without community engagement and accountability.

So what to do next? Vet candidates wisely. Do they have a history of self-service or community service? Who have they supported in the past? Who do they include in their inner circles? What do they have to gain personally? Do their actions match up with their words? Do they make the world around them a better place or do they use invective and bully tactics to achieve results? Who stands against them, and why?

Next, do what I wish I had done long ago: Get yourself into the pipeline. Whether you put mashed potatoes or buttercream into a pastry bag, if the tip is star-shaped, everything that comes out of the bag will be star-shaped. If you don't like the people who are showing up as candidates in your party, get active in the party yourself. Bring a contingent of like-minded individuals along with you. Each political party is a private organization with its own rules and channels for success. Get in there and learn the rules. Change them. Redesign the pipeline so it produces candidates more in tune with your vision of the future. Learn to live with the discomfort and contention of change. If you see people already in the pipeline who share your vision for the future, support them, protect them, advocate on their behalf.

Most of all, DO. Go beyond conversations and take productive action. Yes, give money if you have it, but most of all, give your time and talent.

And vote. Always vote, even if you have to hold your nose to do it while you're roto-rooting the pipeline.

THIS is the assignment.

Resources

• Emerge America: Training for Democratic women who want to run for public office.
• King County Democrats: As the website shows, they need help.
• 37th District Democrats: This is a very active group serving most of the South End.11th District Democrats: This group serves from Skyway south to Kent.

The South Seattle Emerald is committed to holding space for a variety of viewpoints within our community, with the understanding that differing perspectives do not negate mutual respect amongst community members.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the contributors on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the Emerald or official policies of the Emerald.

Featured Image: A King County voter drops off their ballot for the Aug. 6, 2024, primary at a drop box at the White Center Library. (Photo: Megan Christy)