The Freedom Riders

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”

~Emma Goldman

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It’s election day in the U.S.

The LLP is getting political today. But not in the way you might think.

Well, okay, for a minute I will. I voted for Barack Obama. President Obama is not perfect, but I believe he’s a decent man who’s done a good job after being dealt a very bad hand when he arrived in office in 2008. And sure, there is lots and lots of room for improvement.

I also believe there is a real difference between the Democratic and the Republican approach to governance. Because I grew up in a middle-class liberal Catholic family, I was raised with the orientation that “we’re all in this together” rather than “each one for himself.” I was raised to think about those who may be disenfranchised and those with less resources, and to consider what kind of social safety net we can build that doesn’t leave folks behind.

And so I am unabashedly, unashamedly, a progressive liberal. I even have some socialist and anarchist leanings. (The latter comes from having spent some time with the great Zen teacher Robert Aitken Roshi.)

Okay, that’s it for that soap box. If you want to unsubscribe right now from this blog because of my political convictions, you are of course free to do so.

With all the hoopla around the elections and the candidates over the past month, though, I think there’s something else that is easy to overlook.

More often than not, truly significant social and cultural change does not come from the electoral process. Every four years, we get pitted against each other in a rather artificial way through a very limited two-party system. Usually we don’t see how the system itself is so constrained by globalization and capitalism run amuck.

What really changes the world?

People talking to other people. People who might look very different from one another in kind of job, color of skin, size of bank account, religious beliefs, but yet still speaking to one another about what matters most to them in their lives.

Maybe it’s keeping our kids safe on the streets. Maybe it’s making sure that healthy, pesticide-free food is affordable. Maybe it’s ensuring that we all get to keep our right to free speech, as thorny as that sometimes becomes.

People talking to other people, and then organizing themselves around common interests to create solutions that work for all. And by speaking truth to power. And sometimes resisting unjust laws, even as their own lives were endangered.

Think about the Civil Rights Movement. It was comprised of people coming together across differences to advance a shared value: equality for all. That was entirely pushed from the grassroots level.

Have you ever heard the story of the Freedom Riders? In 1961, this courageous group of Black and white Americans put their lives at risk as they traveled together side by side on segregated buses and trains throughout the South. Along the way, they were severely beaten and imprisoned. But their commitment to freedom and to each other was unshakeable. One of the riders, Joan Trumpauer-Mulholland, recalled:

“We were past fear. If we were going to die, we were gonna die, but we can’t stop. If one person falls, others take their place.”

So — let’s stay in conversation with each other, let’s learn what’s important to us that connects us. Don’t let this election drive a wedge between our essential shared humanity.

Stay free.

Some great resources for busting the paradigm of division and polarization:

• Public Conversations Project
• Living Room Conversations
• The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World that Works for All of Us, by Tom Atlee with Rosa Zubizarreta

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