Election Day

It's Election Day here in the US. 

It should be a national holiday, although not necessarily to give every working person the time and space to go to the polling place to cast their ballot. Early and mail in voting has given most of us the flexibility to vote from home on our own schedule. It should be a holiday because it's a day to celebrate.

When I was in college, one of my summer jobs was working for the Oregon State Public Interest Group (OSPIRG), a consumer rights organization founded by the political activist Ralph Nader. We were paid minimum wage (which was under $4 at the time) to go door-to-door, canvassing for donations and memberships. We travelled around the central part of the state and I found myself knocking on the doors of all shapes and flavors of my fellow Americans. If you know anything about the Reagan era and/or Ralph Nader, you might think that I tended to do better with so-call "liberals," and I did, but I signed up plenty of "conservatives" as well. Most of my conversations on people's doorsteps were civil, friendly even. Our big initiative at the time was passing what we called "The Lemon Law," meaning that if the new car you bought had to be repaired more than a certain number of times (I think it was three) in the first year it could be labeled a "lemon" and the buyer was due a full refund. Everyone liked that idea.

This period of my life greatly shaped my political values. This is when I learned that democracy was neither easy nor tidy, and, to be honest, no one has ever suggested it should be. I learned that very few of us are purely dogmatic in our ideas, values, and beliefs; there are always, if you get curious, nuances. This is when I learned that most of us are frustrated with the flaws in our political system, wish we had "better" choices, and hope that we can somehow get to a place of peace and prosperity. I learned that when it comes to community (and also, interestingly, persuading strangers to part with their money) listening is far more important than opining. 

Every now and then, I was invited in for a sit and a deeper conversation. This put a crimp in my productivity, but I never declined. At a ranch house outside of Bend, Oregon, I ate sponge cake and drank tea with a tough-as-nails widow who told me I was the same age, and "just as misguided," as her beloved son. I left with her signature on my $1 donation list and a promise that she would pray for me. In Coos Bay, an aging hippie musician whose claim to fame was that he had played with Country Joe and the Fish, gave me a tumbler of straight rye whiskey, then called his wife in to perform a set of original songs. I left, quite tipsy and done for the day, with $30 (the price of membership for the couple) and his new CD full of pro-union songs.

One of the most significant changes since the early 80's when it comes to politics is the advent of the internet. The ability to find like-minded people, no matter how few or far between, is both a blessing and a curse. Of course, it's wonderful for connecting and organizing marginalized groups, but at the same time, it also traps too many of us inside self-contained bubbles, targets for misinformation, and rarely interacting with those outside. Humans have always had a tendency toward tribalism, and the internet has accelerated that to the point that far too many of us see our neighbors, our actual neighbors, the people who live next door to us, as enemies. 

This is the real tragedy of this era. We may disagree with our neighbors, but we can't allow ourselves to see them as enemies. We fight enemies. We create community with neighbors, even if we disagree with them. And creating community, like any form of self-governance, is messy and difficult. That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. It doesn't mean we can stop listening. Indeed, listening is the superpower that allows even the least among us to change the world.

My time working for OSPIRG was impactful, but even more so was my two decades working in the Woodland Park Cooperative Preschool. For those who are unfamiliar, a cooperative school is one that is owned and operated by the parents who enroll their children. This means that the parent community is responsible for everything that goes into making a school operate, from the administrative to the janitorial. The parents even worked with me as assistant teachers. Whenever there were important decisions to be made or challenges to be addressed, it required all of us, as equal owners, talking and listening. We gathered together at least once a month, often more, to hash things out. It was often emotional, messy, and fraught. Every now and then, someone would storm off, but for the most part, we just kept talking and listening, talking and listening, talking and listening. This is what self-governance looks like.

I'm aware that we live in divided times and I'm not above getting sucked into it. I've done plenty of ranting (sometimes even here on the blog) over this or that plan, policy, or pronouncement. But the reason that this is a day for celebration is that despite its messiness and difficulty, despite the fear and anxiety, this is a day upon which we attempt, yet again, the outrageous experiment in self-governance. 

Yes, there are bad actors in this process, people who lie, manipulate, and propagandize. Yes, it would be tidier and "easier" if we just had a strongman dictator to get those damned trains running on time. Yes, the internet has divided us up into warring tribes. And yes, this time, like every time we go to the voting booth, might be the last time, but so far, no matter how messy and difficult, we've come through.

But today is a holiday for me because it is the only day truly devoted to the collective us. When the dust settles, we will have winners and losers, but today we are striving, one vote at a time, to figure out this historically brave experiment in self-governance. 

In many ways, this is why I work with children the way I do. I want them, even as young as two and three, to experience what it means to take part in the talking and listening that characterizes any strong community. It's why I have always had an open door for parents and siblings and friends and others to join us. It's why I insist that the children make their own, not rules, but agreements with one another. It's why I strive to not command children like a dictator, but rather offer informational statements, statements of fact, that allow them to think for themselves. It's why I want them to know that it is not just their right, but their responsibility to question authority and speak up about their opinions and beliefs. And it's why I value listening even more than talking. This is the promise of community and, in a larger sense, democracy.

We're going through a tough time right now as a nation. My wife and I have a joke that we tell one another whenever the going gets rough: "This is the critical phase." It always makes us laugh because it's always true. Life with the other people is always messy and difficult. It's always a tough time. As the 17th century philosopher, physicists, and inventor Blaise Pascal wrote, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." Indeed.

Election Day is the day we celebrate the blessing and the curse that none of us can sit quietly in a room alone. It is a celebration of the messy and difficulty, of the outrageous, pie-in-the-sky proposal that we the people can govern ourselves.

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Our preschools can be models of what it means to be self-governing, especially when we expand our idea of our community of children to include their families. If you're interested in learning about what you can do, right now, to create a learning village that parents not just support, but help create, I've developed this 6-part course called The Empowered Educator: Partnering With Parents. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For the over 20 years, I've worked in a place that puts the tri-cornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. How would it be to have parents show up as allies? Click this link to register and to learn more. Discounts are available for groups.

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