Thursday, August 21, 2014

Brutality in the Neighborhood

No one could remember a time when such terrible things happened. Or when so few seemed to care. Sure, there had been crimes before, but this was different. The murders happened all the time now. No one seemed able to stop them. Honestly, to people who lived elsewhere, it seemed like no one was trying.

I’m not talking about Ferguson, Missouri. Or Chicago's South Side. I'm talking about the United States Congress. In the quiet and sacred capitol, crimes of legislative brutality have become the norm. Like the victims of police brutality, the people harmed are the ones least able to protect themselves, hardworking citizens holding two or three jobs, others looking for work, wondering how they will feed their children.

No actual members of Congress have been harmed in this legislative mayhem. They still have bean soup and cornbread in the Senate Dining room, steam rooms and saunas in the House gym. And excellent healthcare plans. They are safe and prosperous.

In Ferguson, Missouri the people are up in arms over police brutality. They’ve taken to the streets. Angry words and bottles have been thrown. Even the Attorney General has gotten into the act. You have the feeling that something is going to be done, that some justice will be offered. You have the feeling that things will get better in Ferguson, even if only for a while.

But in the United States Congress, there is little cause for any such optimism. Republicans hope to capture a Senate majority this fall. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Minority leader, vows that if they do they will work with the House, which will almost certainly continue to be controlled by Republicans, to pass legislation to scale back government and reverse or restrict President Obama's achievements like the Affordable Care Act and consumer financial protections. If the president vetoes their spiteful fantasy of small government to serve the few rather than the many, they say they will shut the whole thing down. You can't get smaller than that, literally or figuratively.

When an unarmed boy is shot by police in your neighborhood, it makes you mad. When it happens often enough, at the hands of what you perceive to be a racially prejudiced police force, it drives you to the barricades. It happened in Ferguson. It happened in Watts in 1965. Burn, baby, burn. 

But it doesn't seem to happen in response to the murder of legislation that would offer a helping hand to the poor and disadvantaged. It doesn't seem to happen in response to the mugging of education spending and infrastructure investments that provide the platform for equal opportunity. Why is that?

There are lots of reasons, I suppose: Congress seems remote and isolated, impossible to influence if you are an average citizen. Voting is not as cathartic as throwing bottles. No one person's vote matters anyway, right?

No. Not right.

Our vote is our molotov cocktail. We have to throw it. We have to try to light the fire. It’s our form of peaceful revolution. If we don't use it, we may blame Congress for being unresponsive to our needs, but in truth it is we who are not grappling with the problem. Ultimately, politicians do what they have to do to get elected. It's up to us to tell them what that is.

So if you don’t like what’s happening, or not happening, in Congress, don’t get cynical, get mad. Pick up your flag. Grab your friends. Join the crowd in the street. Vote.

3 comments:

  1. Love this Mac. These are fighting words of love.
    xo

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  2. Absolutely, Mac!! I love this larger vision of what's happening in this country. People fight on local levels, and that is good; yet all of us MUST fight on the level of legislation. We can't give up or turn our eyes away. Thank you for such wise and inspiring posts --- you give me courage!

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  3. I love it! Let's go even further. Let's reduce the size of this oppressively large and unresponsive government and it's elitism, and give the power back to the people..........POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!
    David

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