Sneak Peek: Uncontemplated
Ten things you can do if you don't want to run for office or hand over cash
You don’t have to run for office to pass legislation. You can do that in blogs, newspapers, posts, and with every legislator you contact. You don’t have to join the military to serve your country. You serve every time you do something to make your community better. You serve our country every time you vote. You hold people - their ideas, their actions, their words, their character - accountable every time you make your voice heard. If you can run for office or become an organizer, do it! If that’s not your thing, you can still make big changes with just a little bit of time invested. If you're on a budget, that’s okay. Turns out, rocking the boat is pretty cheap.
Let’s Raise a Little Hell, Shall We?
The practice of writing Uncontemplated has reenergized my passion for our Constitution. It’s easy for some of us, when things are okay, to settle into our little slice of America. It’s easy to think that. if we are comfortable, others must be too. That’s the nature of privilege. We want to believe that we have moved beyond our old ways. What we are seeing live and in action is that legal protections are easy to change. Constitutional protections have long been thought to be more embedded. The last couple of years have shown us one glaring truth; Constitutional rights are entirely dependent on how the Supreme Court Justices interpret that document. Who those people are, their qualifications and the temperament they bring to the court is dependent on the President who appoints them. And who the President is, is entirely dependent on you. You’re the real leader of the free world.
Look for ways to demand better access to voting for all Americans. Look for ways to remind your friends and family that voting is being squeezed in too many places. In 1972, the first election in which the new 26th Amendment voters - eleven million of them - was the lowest voter turnout since 1948. The rest of the 1970’s and 1980’s hoovered down in the 50% range of eligible voters voting. That won’t do. People must vote. As vote by mail, weekend voting, restorative voting rights, and accommodations for the disabled, elderly, and hourly employees are being reduced or eliminated entirely; look for ways to help. Take a neighbor to the polls. Help someone request a mail-in ballot. Ask your boss if they have a plan to allow employees time off for voting. Ask your preferred candidates about their position on voting rights. Then vote. Celebrate voting in your home. Talk about voting. Vote like America depends on it and don’t vote for assholes.
Go beyond soundbites. “Drain the Swamp,” for example, means nothing. Not really. Because no one sees their particular swamp monster as the problem. It’s just a way for candidates to act like they are above the temptations associated with power. Soundbites are clever because they are easy to pack up and carry with you. They are snappy, visceral, and nearly impossible to disagree with. “Death Panels.” It didn’t matter that there was no such thing. The soundbite painted an immediate, stomach-turning picture. And it was a trap. No candidate wanted to be caught dead - no pun intended - appearing to be “pro-death panel” and for many voters, pro-Obamacare was pro-death panel. Soundbites work because they box candidates into a corner. Who isn’t for “law and order” in their community? Take the time to really think about soundbites. Talk to the people in your life about soundbites, especially the people who have gobbled up those soundbites.
Engage in your local and state issues. Don’t wait until something you disagree with passes. Prevention is worth more than the cure. Even if you can only watch meetings remotely. Even if you only skip to the good parts. Try. From your school board to your city council to your state legislature committee meetings are all online and they are all open to the public.
Anything you find offensive, division, or bad for your community make sure to pass it along to a reporter. The media is only the enemy of “the state” when “the state” is doing something it wants to keep secret. Speaking of secrets, the public records request is a great tool for government documents at every level. Wanna know who's been emailing your city councilman about that new development up the road? Ask. They have to tell you.
If you can’t stop something from passing, you can make yourself heard during public comment. When your city or county passes an ordinance, the council should allow for public input. That probably takes place during their regularly scheduled meetings.
Once a government body passes a bill into law, it has to go through rule-making. Laws are blunt instruments. They don’t dictate how the law is specifically implemented. That’s where rule-making comes in. It’s the scalpel that carves out the details of how the law is going to affect you. It’s a lengthy process that starts with government employees drafting up the rules. Draft rules are then made available to the public for comment. Follow that process. If you comment, the government has to take your comments into consideration. Easier still is to just join an organization that sees an issue the same way you do. They will be following the legislation and its implementation and they will keep you informed.
Check the laws and ordinances that are already on the books. Is there archaic language that needs to be changed? The words in laws matter. They describe who that law protects and when it’s not inclusive, some people are being left unprotected. If you see any language that is exclusionary or out of date, ask your representative to address it. The American Psychological Association, for example, is focused on eradicating stigmatizing language in federal legislation and, often, mirrored in state laws. As Dr. Kathryn A. LaFortune of the University of Tulsa College of Law wrote “remarkably enough, derogatory terms such as "idiot," "lunatic" and "mentally defective" are occasionally exposed in statutes and case law to describe people with intellectual or psychiatric disabilities or mental illness.” If you encounter such language and you don’t have time to address it, send a quick email to an organization that advocates for that particular issue or a journalist specializing in that area. If you want to tackle the challenge yourself, request to speak at the governing bodies meeting. This is a method you could use if you want to expand LGBTQ to LGBTQIA+ in school district documents, for example. This is no small thing. Think about a modern-day America, if our Framers wrote “people” instead of “men.”
When thinking about which candidate deserves your support, research the ratings awarded to them by special interest groups. If that candidate is rated highly by an organization that you agree with, or disagree with, use that to inform your decision. If you want to go one step deeper, you can try to find the candidate questionnaires they filled out to glimpse their position on certain issues. Chances are - at least I hope - candidates are out-and-out lying about their position on an issue but they may be nuancing them. Like “Of course I support this area having access to city sewage…” leaving out that they pledged to the Association of Septic Tank People that the County will provide some special consideration for their members.
We must all question our own internal biases. I was recently called out on Twitter when I commented on a post about Rebecca Felton, the first woman elected to the Senate. The post described the brutality and hypocrisy of her work as a Suffragist while actively and violently working to deny the rights of enslaved and formerly enslaved people. As you might guess, Felton personally benefited financially from the labor of enslaved people. I responded “The former slaves she owned are now citizens under the Constitution. The women she championed as equal are not.” Oh boy. Black women felt my comment erased their fight for justice. “You do know black women exist?” and “Tell me you know nothing about the Reconstruction Era without telling me you know nothing about the Reconstruction Era.” Trans women considered my comment “exclusionary.” Several men remarked that “white women are really something.” My words landed differently than I intended. The exact opposite in fact. Now, I have to reflect on my own bias, in which I assumed that women consider their womanhood over or at least equal to their race when thinking about their identity. To understand how my words were read by people I consider myself to be in allyship with, I have to learn more about how identities intersect.
Use your time and talent to support like-minded people in their pursuit of their civil rights. Don’t fall for the tricks that have proven to divide us for the last century. In America today, there are more people who were not considered under the Constitution as ratified than people who were contemplated by the Framers. There’s strength in that especially if we elect people who don’t dabble in division politics and people we then hold accountable for their words and their deeds.