Cure For Election Blues

This is the first time I have gotten up on an election day and felt discouraged. I am losing my faith in politics just like I have lost my faith in religion. I was having flash backs to the last two general elections. I am haunted by the memory of waking up on the floor of my living room, around 2 AM, to find that somehow things had changed drastically. Didn’t I go to sleep hearing ABC News announce Al Gore as the winner? I felt the pain of watching John Edwards’s concession speech. I was so sick over that crap; I didn’t go to work that day. I didn’t even call in. Worse, I recently complained to my councilmen about noise in my neighborhood and didn’t even get a response. This morning I was fed up with politics in this country, in this city, in my borough. Just frigg’in mad.

As with any illness, you’ve got to take something or do something to make yourself feel better. So I did several things. Here’s what I did.

1. I thought about Saddam Hussein. I'm glad he wasn’t hung on nation wide television last night as some last minute push for more folks to think the Republicans are tough on Terror. The fact that this didn’t happen gave me enough strength to go get a cup of tea. Well, I would have done that anyway. I exaggerate.

2. I read my emails. One misinformed Forward reminded Black voters that Affirmative Action was on the November Ballot. I sent a response telling the sender that Affirmative Action in on the ballot in Michigan, not New Jersey. I think I’m going to start deleting a lot of forwards. There is always some missing piece of information.

3. I signed CODEPINK’s Voter’s for Peace Pledge.

4. I’m reconsidering my vote for my Senator. Even though I’m all for the “take back the House” mantra I’ve been hearing on liberal radio all afternoon, the two party system is so limiting. Voting for her would take back the house. But take it back to what? She’s just like every one else who promises the moon during the campaign. Once folks are in office they begin to make compromises with those across the aisle to keep their place. Check out her website http://clinton.senate.gov/issues/nationalsecurity/Iraq. Make sure you click on that map of Iraq and watch her video on YouTube.

5. I read an interesting article in the NY Times “Weighing Other Hives Challengers”. Those are my choices? Where is our third party in this country and the folks who back it?

6. Read Greg Palast’s article “How They Stole the Mid-Term Election” which my faithful minister of information, Rich Flanders sent in an email. Don’t get discouraged read the article. It appears in the November 6th edition of The Guardian, UK.

7. I looked through The Civil Rights Movement, A Photographic History, 1954-68. If I couldn’t be inspired by that nothing would do it.

8. I decided to look up my political districts. I knew all my folks when I lived in Harlem, but in Brooklyn I’ve been clueless. I now know who’s who for my local and federal officials. I learned all their positions on various issues, and the committees on which they serve. I’ve placed all their names, office hours and contacts on my bulletin board in my office. This was actually a good exercise. I don’t want to be passive. I’m sick of not knowing. I want to check up on these folks on a regular basis. So expect to hear from me, Edolphus Towns (10th Congressional District of Brooklyn, U.S. House of Representatives) Velmmanette Montgomery (State Legislator), Darlene Mealy (City Council). Searching for the judges who are appointed
in this area is a task for another day.

9. I took a big dose of music. I listened to folk singer Hollis Watkins. I taped his lecture last summer while on the Freedom Summer 2006 tour with ACRES (American Civil Rights Education Services). Hollis Watkins teaches students freedom songs that he led during the freedom rides and jail time to inspire members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

10. Finally, I pulled out the t-shirt I'm going to wear to vote. It’s mustard yellow and has a picture of Denise McNair. Denise McNair was one of the little girls who died in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The shirt says, “Hate stole her choice, You still have yours.”

I think that last one was really the cure.