Okay okay Billy - I'll Zen campaign

So I was REALLY looking forward to Billy Wimsatt coming out with his new book and I couldn't wait to go to his reading in Berkeley. I had been waiting. I have worked closely with Billy for years and he has taught me almost everything I know about politics and organizing, so I wouldn't miss an opportunity to support him.

But three days before his reading I found out my friend, Maggie, who is 29 years old, was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. Needless to say I was a total wreck. Between sobs and compulsive google searching for stage four survivor stories I made it to Berkeley. As I sat there and watched Billy try to pump the crowd up about the super movement that will save politics in America I was overcome with the sense that we all just needed to go home and take care of our friends and families, cozy up in our houses and just try to enjoy life while we have it. I didn't want to talk about spending long nights in a campaign office to fight against tea partiers, I mean why does it really matter if any one of us can wake up in the morning with stage 4 breast cancer? I felt so sad and discouraged but this intense feeling of fear and 'we are all screwed anyway, let's just enjoy life' fit perfectly into my plan to sit out the 2010 election cycle.

I had decided I wasn't really going to participate in the 2010 election cycle. I was pondering the idea that politics might be too oppositional for me and I may just bow out completely. In the mean time, I figured I just needed to give myself some time to do joy filled work and focus on the positive in people and not think about the people who act like bigots and put up road blocks on election day. My plan for the Fall was this: work with 350.org on a global day of action (10/10/10) with amazing people across Asia who want to make a positive difference in their communities, meditate everyday to learn more about myself and how to react to all the moving parts of my life with more grace and joy, party with my friends and just continue to love being young and to be a good friend and girlfriend and not being too busy to listen. I like that plan and I am committed to it.

But on my BART ride to work this morning, while reading Billy's book Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs, something clicked, when I read the below excerpt, and I have had to add to my plan.

The Supreme Court's Citizen United ruling (saying corporations can spend with no limits in campaigns- ugh!) was a HORRIBLE decision. But it was a 5-4 decision split across partisan lines. The five Republicans justices voted for the decision. The four Democratic justices voted against it and wrote a blistering dissent. The real lesson of Citizen United is that we need to stop Republicans from taking over the U.S government and appointing right wing extremists to the Supreme Court.

There has rarely been a more clear-cut case of the need to stop Republicans at all costs. If a few hundred more of us had voted Democrat in Florida back in 2000, Bush wouldn't have become president in the first place. Alioto and Roberts wouldn't be in the Supreme Court. We would have a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court against corporations buying elections.

Okay, so my core belief, what I guess I would call my religion, is that all people, if they are being their true selves, are good. So the whole Republicans are evil conversation doesn't sit well with me. I hate US vs THEM. Because truthfully I believe there is just us - people in the world who want to be happy, feel useful, free, loved and appreciated. But the above passage made me realize that holding that belief up as my ticket out of politics will not serve me or the vision I have for the world. I want to live in a world where people are more free, are happier, are more connected to their friends and neighbors, and where decisions that positively affect the people most in need are the ones prioritized by our government.

I can't think about it as Democrats vs Republicans, I think about it as people who support community building vs oppose it. I want to move towards a world where regular people, without a lot of money, have the same chance to organize for their vision of the world as a massive corporation or someone with a well stocked bank account. I believe a few basic things need to happen in order to make that possible: we need to be working together to create an accepting country where people have more or less equal access to good schools, good healthcare, good jobs, healthy environments, protection and acknowledgment under the law, fair elections and, by god, we must limit corporate control of our government and elections. I think we can all agree on that one. We are at a pretty uneasy moment in history where a lot of that is at stake this Fall. So no Billy, I guess won't sit out this 2010 cycle, because I refuse to watch candidates be elected who laugh at jokes like calling our President "Halfrican American", who support the tea party in denouncing Islam, and who campaign on doing away with medicare, privatizing vets healthcare and further privatizing everyone elses' healthcare. To me, those things aren't even Republican or Democrat, those are just bad ideas mixed with extreme ignorance and intolerance. I sat on the BART today and just realized these ideas aren't going to help me organize for the peaceful world I am determined to live in, they aren't going to help Maggie get the best healthcare she needs, they aren't going to help people with different religious views live side by side and they aren't going to help make our streets safer and our communities stronger. And at this moment in my life those things are the most important things to me.

So here is what I am going to do, when I finish this blog I am going to call Billy, ask him the closest races in the country where the extremists have the highest likelihood of winning and I will pool my resources, my time and both people connections and money, to help a better candidate win in that district.

Even writing this blog is hard for me because I don't like to get all worked up about how people can be so mean and say and do such wrong things. But deep breath Heather, they just need help getting in touch with the real them and tapping into that deep reservoir of love and unity every human is born with. Until they do that, I don't want them running our government. So I will do what I can this Fall to give them the opportunity to stay out of DC, so they can get to work finding their inner peace and return to the playing field as a candidate ready to support community and help build the beautiful, accepting country we all want to live in, where people thrive on and embrace our differences.

So this election cycle I will be zen campaigning - staying committed to my own inner peace, being a good friend, girlfriend and listener and having fun while I'm doing it!