It Can't Happen Here....

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It can't happen here, in little ol' Fargo...until it does. How about your hometown?

After the debacle of Florida 2000 and the chicanery in Ohio in 2004, the issue of voting and voting rights has been a hot button for me. So I've read the reports of the Indiana picture I.D. and the Texas "voting fraud" and the proposed Missouri voting rights changes--all targeting likely Democratic constituencies--and been, well, too complacent about good ol' Fargo, North Dakota.

After all, our 80- and 90-year-old nuns don't have to worry about being denied the right to vote in North Dakota for want of a driver's license with picture i.d.

But it turns out, maybe they...and other elderly and disabled and economically disadvantaged persons do need to worry...about getting to the polls.

Here's the backstory: some months back, the powers-that-be decided to remove polling places from our neighborhood schools [homeland security, anyone?] and simultaneously consolidate all the polling places into larger multi-precinct voting centers.

In rural North Dakota, that can mean now-daunting distances for people to travel to vote. In Fargo, that may mean the polling places have moved just a few blocks, as is the case in my neighborhood.

But a Sunday letter to the editor, "Fargo's precinct changes unwelcome" in our local newspaper, The Forum, brought me up short. Bruce D. Brovold reminds that for some, a few blocks change [from the community room of the high rise for elderly and disabled to the Civic Center] can be as daunting as rural miles. [unfortunately, the letter is not available on the website at the time I write this]

"...once again the poor, the elderly, the disabled and the handicapped have to be put out in order to save a little money... To move the voting site to the Civic Center is not a long way for most people, however for the elderly, disabled and handicapped, it could just as well be 100 miles.

I would hope the election officials reconsider this move next year, after they discover the lost percentage of voters who will not vote in this year's election in this precinct, compared to past years."

I hope even more that whether we're seeing here the law of unintended consequences in action or the chicanery of partisan politicking to squelch voting groups, that those of us committed to progressive change recognize we cannot afford to be complacent. Not anywhere.

And that we can't just wait 'til Election Day in November to go and try to vote. We must ramp up now.

In Fargo, for example, heavily funded campaigns are pushing a big business agenda to elect, on June 10, a city commission candidate and to advocate for a sales tax to support "economic development." Once again the working class is being asked to subsidize the uberclass. Whatever the merits of the case for or against doing that, the real question is:

If a group of voters is disenfranchised,
is the "common good" for all of us being served?

If that matters to you, don't wait for election day and stroll into your voting center, join the process now. Work in the primaries, work in the city elections, work for the campaigns that represent your values. Talk up the candidates who deserve our support.

And every election day, don't just vote for yourself, help the other guy vote, too.

[Cross-posted today at North Decoder]

Thugs Walk Among Us

There’s a sorry videoclip making the rounds of YouTube—a deputy tipping a quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair, facedown so he can see it coming, onto the hard concrete floor.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it. Our family knows what it is to be wheelchair reliant, and frankly it’s a little like gawking at an injury accident scene along the highway. I just can’t look.

But I can listen, and this morning I heard the defense attorney for the deputy lamenting that all that YouTube coverage means his client can’t get a fair trial.

Cry me a river.

I want an outraged jury. I want them to look. And decide based on the cold hard facts. Not let the woman off the hook because the facts show her for the thug that she is. And no better are the sniggering deputies around her.

We live in a thug culture these days. It starts at the top. A little shoot an old guy in the face and get away with it here. A little waterboarding and Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and other tortures there. And gaming the legal system. Trying to backdate the laws, skirt the responsibility, withhold the evidence, rationalize the blame—boogga-boogga, ticking timebomb anyone—and you’ve got a whole societal norm that extends from the Oval Office right down to the local sheriff’s office saying, hey, we’re the law, we get to do whatever we want. And get away with it.

And look where it gets us.

The media play no small role in this situation. This morning, instead of telling us anything about FISA, for example, the Morning Mouths are giving us More Hill, Less Bill, then proceeding to wallpaper Bill all over the airwaves.

When there were voices loudly crying out against the use of torture, including voices of WW II vets and professional interrogators saying it does not work…including a Senator who has lost his way who knew first hand torture did not work…those voices were given short shrift for more of the BushCo spin. And media consciences were shut down for whatever reason they told themselves—bad for the corporate bottom line; it’s unpatriotic; it’s treason; oooooh, it’s hard and it gives me a header… but no reason excuses such compliance.

Meanwhile, who watches the watchdogs when they’ve been so watered down and hamstrung and w-ussified by Bushie that they’ve lost their will? The Congress, the media are both complicit in the thug culture. But so has been the rest of the country. Fear worked, for a while.

It’s not just the Congress that needs a spine, it’s every last one of us. We’re working on it, and so far, we’re looking pretty fair. And Congress may even be sitting up and taking notice.

And it’s important cleanup work we have to do. Because when a country is debased, when people are made beasts, then they have lost their claim to leadership and honor in the world community…and in their own hometowns.

Accountability matters.

So give that deputy her day in court. If I were on the jury, I’d sentence her to every payday for the rest of her life write out a check to that man in the wheelchair. Doesn’t matter the amount so much, it could be one dollar. Let him collect a bigger compensation from the government that failed him…and all of us. Let's all of us wheel a mile in his shoes.

There’s a segment of the country that believes dinosaurs walked the earth with man some six thousand years ago. As long as thuggery is ennobled, for whatever excuse, they still do.

Strong at the Broken Places

Because we live with disability in the Sunshine household, Richard M. Cohen's appearance this morning on the Imus show caught our attention. He's touting his new book, Strong at the Broken Places, which recounts the life experiences of five people who live with chronic illnesses.

Cohen himself [Mr. Meredith Vieira of Today Show fame--and The View infamy?] lives with multiple sclerosis and now blindness.

He hit some hot buttons we understand...the disabled are not looking for a hand...or a handout. We, disabled and caregiver alike, just want to be treated like everybody else. With this book, Cohen offers, in fact, a hand out to the "normal" community but more importantly, a reaching-out to others who daily endure the challenges of life lived as fully as possible despite the crap that is disability and chronic illness.

In their conversation, Imus and Cohen amplify a telling point: these are the stories the general public--and doctors!--don't hear enough.

Don't know about you guys, but I'm planning to get this book as soon as the local bookstore opens this morning--and if they don't have it yet, I'll be ordering it online. One for us, one for the local library, one for Mr. Sunshine's doctors, one for.... well, you get the idea. This is a long overdue subject for discussion.

Kind of like the whole business of turning the page on the status quo in politics. Enough of healthcare--and living--being dictated from the top down. Patients and caregivers' voices must be heard, and Cohen offers a much needed catapult to the conversation.

And yes, there's a website. I've already stopped by, and I hope you will, too. Tell 'em Prairie sent you... Strong at the Broken Places

When Nobody's Lookin'

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about honor and dignity. A vow made to us the way a groom promises to his bride on their wedding day. And when the groom turns abusive and instead of honoring his bride and treating her with dignity, he leaves bruises and scars.

Maybe those bruises don’t show on the outside, but they’re there in the spirit and fiber…of a person, of a family, of a nation.

Honor, my dear ol’ dad taught me in childhood, is what you do, how you act, when nobody’s lookin’. These days, it seems honor is in such short supply in some quarters that the nobody’s lookin’ part doesn’t even slow them down.

Senator McConnell’s recent “Nobody is happy about losing lives but remember these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers.” was not an honorable comment. Or attitude.

Down the road a ways here in Fargo is the YWCA’s shelter for women and children. We pass them daily on our commute—all seven minutes of it—from home to Mr. Sunshine’s workplace. The shelter’s bursting at the seams these days, with more women, more children needing shelter day by day. Where’s the honor in that?

Veterans of World War II have been flying from Prairie Country to Washington DC in Honor Flights of late. Spearheaded by local radio talker Tracy Briggs, the trips take cajoling for some of the old vets. Dad never talked much about his Marine years in the Pacific in WW II. But I like to think he would have appreciated the honor his surviving comrades are being shown these days.

WW II vets who did the same intelligence work as is being done today have spoken out against using torture like waterboarding’s controlled drowning as a method to gain information. They honorably serve us all still by speaking out.

Honor means admitting your mistakes, accepting your imperfections while always striving to do better. Senator Edwards says his Iraq vote was wrong. He’s shown both dignity and passion in his campaign to make right that choice.

I have hope right now that the honor I see in talker Don Imus will overcome his mistakes and imperfections. His campaign support for the Boriken neighborhood health care center now exemplifies that honor.

Honor requires thinking. But it also requires an inner spirit of honesty and selflessness that is not valued enough these days. “Greed is good” rules, instead of One America. Changing that will take work. There is much tilling of the soil to be done…not just in Prairie Country, but in Washington and all of America.

We used to value work a lot more than we do now. These days, it’s all about the bravado and the big lie. Talking about the Greatest Generation without living up to it. Like showy annual flowers that wilt at the first drought and die away at the first deep frost.

It’s the deep roots that endure…the well-set roots of community and neighborhood over selfish individuals sucking up all the moisture.

Yesterday, when I drove to my disabled husband’s workplace, a Rochester Armoured Express van was blocking the graded sidewalk. When I waved our disability parking card at him, he ignored me. When my husband wheeled out of the building, and waved the driver forward, he inched ahead.

When I got out of the car and asked the driver to please move, he looked at me and said, “there’s handicapped parking…I’m not blocking that.”

“No, but you’re blocking the sidewalk so my husband can’t get around your van to get to the handicapped parking space.”

The driver stared straight ahead until the courier hopped in next to him, then the van sped away. Honor? None there.

But a man in a wheelchair, disabled and enduring serious diseases, waiting patiently because a driver saw the handicapped parking but didn’t see, didn’t want to see, that he blocked the way…that man in the wheelchair…he has dignity.

There are lots of people in wheelchairs, lots of soldiers with injuries, lots of good Americans treated with dishonor. They deserve better. They deserve our thoughts and our supportive actions. They deserve our honor. It’s not enough to talk about it. It’s time to roll up our shirtsleeves and get back to work.

And that will lead us all back to our own honor and dignity. And the whole country will be the better for it.