When George W. Bush was elected,
I knew I had to do something.
I decided to be, as William Ury puts it, response-able to playing a part in helping this country become the best version of itself. Of course I didn’t know that at the time; but as I look back, that’s what was motivating me.
And there was something else: I had just recovered from thyroid cancer, and in the process of cutting across my larynx, I was informed there was a possibility I could lose my voice. So this was personal. I knew how valuable one’s voice is, and that it shouldn’t be taken for granted.
At the time, word on the street was that youth weren’t participating in politics — -and I wanted to do something to heal this broken link in our democratic system. I wanted to help youth see that voting today is using your voice to take care of your future self; that voting is a way of participating in shaping the world that will one day influence how you live out your everyday lives in the future.
So I started a nonprofit called The Performance Initiative that was committed to utilizing the arts for social change, and the first event produced was called ENGAGE —
Because I wasn’t interested in telling youth to just go vote.
I wanted to understand why youth weren’t voting, and why they didn’t believe that their voice mattered in shaping the future of our country.
I became so obsessed with the initiative and using my life force in the fullest expression of where the genius flowed through me (of course I didn’t know that at the time) that I attempted to quit my job so I could work on the production full time. But my boss (bless her ten million times) told me I was insane, and was worried I wouldn’t be able to feed myself, so we found a way to incorporate this vision into my job as a local community organizer.
I was able to raise enough money to hire a Broadway director and four actors and we set out to create something that would honor our vision of a healthy democracy as well as nourish our community.
We walked the streets and went to malls with a video camera, ready to listen to anyone who would speak to us: we listened to Republicans, we listened to Democrats, we listened to Libertarians, we listened to old people and young people, and I fell in love with each and every one of them as they shared their stories about what they cared about.
The large scale multi-media performance was performed outside and was free to the public. It was lined with over 20 nonprofit organizations: so if people felt inspired to ENGAGE afterwards, they could connect with those working on subjects they cared about. We had pro-life groups and pro-choice groups and everything in-between because we believed that a healthy democracy includes diversity of thought. Something that still warms my heart is that one of the patrons of that production held different political views than I did, but together we created something that strengthened our whole.
The interviews revealed that one of the reasons young people didn’t engage is because they didn’t feel like political leaders wanted to hear what they had to say. So we set up community dialogues with our local congressman to meet with young people and listen.
I don’t know if what we did made a difference.
I don’t know if people started engaging more in politics and community organizing and voting because of what we did.
I do know that filmmakers, photographers, directors, actors, community activists, community organizers, and politicians all came together with the intention of doing something good in the world and we had a lot of fun responding to the things that we didn’t want to see in the world.
And I do know that, by participating in politics, it was no longer about what those people were doing to my world. I had entered into the story of US.
WE were doing something to create the world we wanted to live in.
After the chad debacle in Florida, once again distraught by the state of our political system, I knew I had to do something. This time I joined a group called Video the Vote and volunteered as the Western States Coordinator. On election day, I monitored reports about voter suppression or intimidation and coordinated with the ACLU and filmmakers who then went to those polling stations and delivered those stories to the local news stations in real time.
One more step toward protecting our democracy.
I don’t know how many votes were saved.
I don’t know if we made a difference.
I do know what it felt like to take my concern about the state of our country and turn it into action, how invigorating it was to do something tangible, and how collaborating with other people who also cared fed my life force and nourished my soul even when my body and mind were exhausted.
Those two projects eventually led me to working with Current TV on one of Al Gore’s projects called Viewpoints: an initiative designed to amplify the voices of all perspectives on television as we set out to democratize the media (for context, this was before webcams).
While there, I implemented an inspired initiative called #HackTheDebates where for the first time ever, we put the voice of the people in front of the pundits as we placed comments from Twitter on the screen during the debates. (This was the first time Twitter was ever seen on TV.)
I don’t know if we made a difference.
I don’t know if people seeing their words on television made them feel more engaged or created a space for them to feel like their voice mattered.
I do know that on that harrowing night of elections, we had something to do as we placed our focus and intention on taking care of our democracy. And even though we were exhausted and sleep deprived and tired, our souls were fed and my life force was nourished and I had more energy to go on.
For better or for worse, all of that time working in the media and on political issues inspired me to maneuver into other fields of work. I don’t feel like speaking to my grief about these broken systems — because there is a larger and perhaps even truer story that our life is a book filled with chapters and I am in my own next chapter.
The only concrete participation I have had in this election is to vote.
In comparison, this feels passive. I barely feel like I’m participating in caring for the country I love so much.
For me, where the energy for the soul, and the fuel for the spirit, and a hope for democracy lives — is not in the election itself this time around. Because no matter who wins, the great work of healing our country will begin the day after the election through the path we pave towards healing the divide that has become too apparent during this presidency.
While our country has so many different stories and versions of what we want this country to become, I still believe that most people ultimately want many of the same things: to be able to rest easily at night, to have good healthy food on their tables, to have time to love and be loved.
Now more than ever, the time has come to not just collaborate with people whose belief systems and values and perspective I feel aligned with. The magic energy that fuels the soul might come from gathering with the “others” through a step-by-step process of destroying the mythology of US against THEM.
A next step is to find all the pathways — and perhaps even forge new pathways — to meet and sit with and break bread with people who hold perspectives I don’t agree with or understand.
Because the American Dream is a fantasy after all…as Stephen Jenkinson reminds us, this was not the dream of the first Americans, the indigenous people who lived on and tended this land. The American Dream was brought to this land by immigrants, refugees, and colonizers.
And what is a Fantasy? The etymology leads us to the Greek word phantasia ‘imagination, appearance’, later ‘phantom’, from phantazein ‘make visible’.
So here we are considering what is the distinction between The American Dream, The American Fantasy, and a vision of an America I want to live in. When we research the etymology of Vision: now we are speaking about a word that is also associated with imagination, but derives from Latin visio(n-), from videre ‘to see’. So it’s not an ungrounded apparition, it’s a world that you see and then play a role in creating.
So it comes down to this: is it time to put the fantasy down, and start getting to work on creating the vision we want to see? And isn’t this the challenge of our time? That people living in America have very different visions for what they want to see in our country?
So it feels like the healing of our country might just originate in exploring the original stories and myths of our country, because how we tell the story will affect what role we play in the story.
And yet… oddly enough, all of our presence on this land are in the prophecies of many Indigenous stories. Cultures around the world speak of the end of a cycle of great suffering, and the beginning of a new cycle of peace on earth. And part of this prophecy involves people of all colors and races uniting together — and when that happens… not utopia; but a place where all beings can thrive.
It is in one breath frightening, and in the next breath an incredible vision. A thing worth living for.
As I look back, the things I was against motivated me to take action, and yet it was actually working on what I was for that gave me the courage, the optimism, and the life force energy to keep investing in listening for the vision for a world I most want to live in.
Engage images by Noah Scalin. Liberty by Istvan Kadar. Your Vote is Your Voice by Thomas Wimberly.
