MD: Yes We Can? No, I Couldn't.

In my junior year, I was elected Recording Secretary on Student Council. I still have no idea what I was meant to record, but it didn’t matter. I was active in organizing activities for the school and the community. Sure, the biggest challenge was a fall event known as Hip-Hop-tober (yes, it was as white as it sounds), but we did coordinate food drives and raise funds for local charities.

It was fun. I enjoyed the managerial aspects of it, but more than that I loved serving a community. Like in every high school in America, there were cliques and class divisions, but Student Council was there to serve, if only in theory, the entire student body; everyone was to benefit. This appealed to my beliefs in fairness, inclusion and coexistence. And I approached such projects as pie-eating contests and pep rallies as if they were inciting incidents to global harmony. Community Organizer, that’s got a nice ring to it. For a brief moment, I thought that this was my calling and while I saw that some change only happens gradually, I was intent to set in motion the foundation of a more perfect union. Then I ran for Student Council President in my senior year and was cured of that affliction.

I was never popular, but I was liked. I don’t think anyone had any ill will towards me, which is how I was elected Recording Secretary in a landslide. I had hoped to benefit from my incumbency and previous voters for a Presidential run the following year.

There were no debates, but there was a pep rally in which the entire student body came into the gym to hear each candidate’s speech. Each of the candidates for the other positions gave their talks without much excitement or controversy. However, there were four of us running for President that year which was clearly going to split the vote, considering our drastically different platforms.

One of the other candidates had been on Student Council with me and we had enjoyed working together. I shall call him Aaron Burr because, in his pursuit of higher office, he took aim and shot his political rival, me. We had a tacit agreement to respect each other’s campaign, but he threw me under the bus in his speech. He referenced my campaign poster depicting a milk carton, but instead of “milk,” it spelled “Mike” with the tagline, “Mike: he does a student body good.” (Still considered some of my best work.) He said that after having worked with me for a year, “Mike, like milk curdles under fire.” That line got groans and gasps from the crowd who recognized it as the cold backstabbing it was. His speech did not endear him to the crowd, but he proved to be the least of my worries.

The second rival was a longhaired punk who I’ll call Sid Vicious because of his anti-establishment leanings. He referred to our high school principal as a fat cat and led the student body in a chant of “Anarchy!” He was quite effective in capturing students’ emotional attention, but had no platform other than nihilism. Still, my only hope where he was concerned was that his speech would incite a riot and he would be disqualified from the race.

The last candidate I will call Ross Perot because he deftly channeled populism and distrust of incumbents. He referred to our current Student Council as do-nothing paper pushers bent on preserving our cronyist status quo. He came armed to the podium with a pile of index cards each of which contained a practical change he was going to make happen. These “thousand points of light” of his included such improvements as greater soft drink variety in the cafeteria (free trade) and allowing juniors to go off-campus for lunch (civil liberties).

In my speech, I laid out a modest, but achievable plan and referenced the strides we had made already, but these were lackluster talking points compared to what came before me. In the end, I asked the student body to vote for the candidate who could best serve and deliver for the school.

Needless to say, I did not win. Ross Perot won and as the runner up, Sid Vicious became Vice-President. They were able to accomplish some very good things during their tenure, though nowhere near what was promised in the campaign and Sid’s anarchistic revolution saw no progress.

Aaron Burr and I who had served on Student Council as class representatives since freshman year no longer held seats, but the faculty advisor in a kind, but totally undemocratic move, granted us seats as representatives by fiat. I was glad to still be included even as a sinecure, and I sold tickets at Hip-Hop-tober, washed cars to raise funds for next year’s budget and was proud to have seen the day that juniors could venture to Duke’s for a sub and a coke, equal with Seniors on that long walk towards freedom. But I have never again run for any position. I no longer have the stomach for it. I commend anyone who runs for public office, for the PTA board or even their condo board, but I cannot abide the common and increasingly accepted trend of denigrating another person to assure your own advantage in winning a position intended to serve a greater whole. Perhaps Aaron Burr was right, Mike does curdle under fire.

SJ: Laughing Matters

There’s an important election coming up. Maybe you know this. But then again, maybe you don’t. According to a recent Pew poll, turns out only 15% of people report “paying close attention” to the November midterms, and in 2010, the last time we had one of these things, only 41% of us bothered to show up to vote.

USA! USA! USA!

I’m always dismayed by how few people bother to exercise their constitutional right to hit up the ballot box. This is mostly because I’m a little righteous and think it’s irresponsible not to do the very bare minimum we’re asked to do to participate in our democracy, but it’s also because I happen to be something of a political junkie and have a difficult time understanding why other people aren’t keeping up to date with the hour-by-hour posts at Daily Kos and etc. just for the pure joy of it. Oh, what’s that you’re saying? You’d rather lie in a bed of fire ants than spend any more time than absolutely necessary seeking information about the corrupt, depressing, morally and ethically bankrupt hell-hole that is the American political system?

Right. Point taken.

For whatever reason, and for as long as I can remember, I have been invested in the news. I kept so on it as a kid that my fifth grade teacher told me I had to stop raising my hand in our weekly current events lesson, because my knowing all the answers was discouraging the other kids. My sixth grade teacher told me I had to stop making jokes about Margaret Thatcher and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney having secret trysts because one of my classmates had referenced the faux affair on a quiz, apparently not getting the joke – which I’ll grant, was not much of a joke, but hey, I was 11, what can I say.

Despite my longtime interest in politics and my copious consumption of political news, ravings, rantings and satires over the years, I’ve remained almost exclusively a spectator in this gruesome sport. I was never interested in getting professionally involved in politics – originally because it seemed obvious I lacked the qualifications, though it has been subsequently made crystal clear that outside having a pulse there are no qualifications – but every election year I feel a tug to be more involved and a sense of guilt that I do so little to participate. I didn’t lift a finger for Al Gore in the debacle that was 2000, and my four years of frothing over W.’s first term did nothing to get me involved in John Kerry’s run for the office. I got to Pennsylvania exactly once to register voters in 2008, which made me feel incredibly useful and oh-so-patriotic, though looking back on that day, I mostly remember the trip to the Cracker Barrel on the drive there. I think I bought a slinky.

In short, I have not lived up to my own ideals of citizenship. I have spent far too much time cursing the darkness, and not nearly enough time stuffing fliers in envelopes at local campaign offices.

When 2012 rolled around, I was back to my usual excuse making. What could I really do? I was acting in a play and couldn’t travel out of the safely blue lands of New York to pound pavement in less-certain territory. I gave money when I could – and that was something, right? I mean, seriously, what more was a girl to do?

Thanks to modernity, this was not a question I had to ask rhetorically. I didn’t have to ask it at all. The answer started coming to me daily care of an unyielding stream of emails from MoveOn, from the Obama campaign, from Bill Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, ActBlue, the DNC. Yes, they wanted money, sure, but they also wanted my time and most importantly, my telephone. Day after day, the challenge came, “Stephanie, do you have President Obama’s back? Sign up to make calls to potential voters in closely contested states...The future of the country hangs in the balance…”

Oh brother. It sounded serious. And in fact, it was.

My first move was to ignore these pleas, because for the most part they asked one to sign up for time slots at an office somewhere, usually in the evening or weekend afternoons, when I was busy performing Chekhov to urban liberals. See, I couldn’t do it. Work restrictions. Maybe next time.

But as the election drew closer the calls to action changed a little. No longer did one need to show up at the campaign center. Now, all one had to do was request a list of names, and through the magic of the internet machine, Obama’s website would hook a girl up with the names and numbers of strangers in Ohio to call, right from the comfort of one’s own home.

I was out of excuses. I signed up and got a list.

It’s worth mentioning that I have a longstanding fear of making phone calls. This sounds like a joke, but it’s not a joke. I’ll spend days delaying something as innocuous as a call to the hair salon, all the while practicing the call in my head, creating anxiety with each passing minute, certain it will all go terribly wrong. Rationally speaking, how a phone call to schedule a hair appointment could go “terribly wrong” is lost on me, but the feeling that it could looms large. And if it’s a call of any significance… well, I’ll probably need to lie down. For a week.

But. The prospect of a President Romney provided excellent motivation to overcome my bullshit neuroses. I read the instructions on the website. It seemed manageable. All I was really expected to do was call people up, make sure they knew where their polling place was and remind them when they were supposed to show up to vote. No problem. I poured a glass of wine and got to work.

I called the first few numbers and got no answer. Called the next few numbers, again no answer. After leaving 10 very helpful and chirpy messages on answering machines, I felt confident and relieved as it dawned on me that in a presidential election year, most people in Ohio probably stopped answering their phones in July, and for good reason. Here it was, late October, the election less than a week away, and the poor folks of the Buckeye State were probably mostly hunkered down in political fallout shelters, phones unplugged, “Beware of Dog” signs in the yard, just praying, praying that it would all be over soon. This was great news as far as I was concerned. I was doing my part, and I didn’t have to talk to anybody. Perfect.

Now and again though, the odd person answered the phone. I got hung up on a few times by people annoyed to be getting another campaign call (again, this was late October, so we can call these the slow learners), and I got the chance to be genuinely helpful a number of times. People thanked me for the work I was doing, and I felt very pleased with myself. I was participating. I was being a good citizen. I was helping my country.

The guidelines for making these calls included a list of questions the caller was meant to ask the Ohioan. The first three went like this: Do you intend to vote? Do you know where your polling place is? Do you know who you’ll vote for? The first two questions were easy enough, and one would think, with only days to go, the last one, the biggie, would be too. Most people who bothered to pick up gave me a decisive Romney or Obama, articulating their choice with a pronounced air of This-is-not-up-for-discussion-I’ve-been-fielding-these-calls-since- Independence-Day-so-let’s- just-not. Fair enough.

Finally, though, the moment came, the moment I both dreaded and yearned for, the moment that I was called upon to possibly make a real difference. A young woman answered the phone. She sounded a little tough, a little wary, but she picked up, she talked to me. Yes, she was planning on voting and yes, she knew her polling place, but no, she wasn’t yet sure who she was voting for.

My heart stopped. Oh my god. I had unearthed one, one of those mythical creatures the pundits talked about endlessly, one of those most valuable specimens – The Undecided Voter. This was my chance. All the information I had about the candidates, a head swimming in facts, months of data and articles stored, a lifetime of accumulated conviction, this was the time to make it matter. I had a fellow citizen on the other end of the phone who was willing to talk to me, who was now waiting in the silence to be drafted to a team. My team.

I panicked. I stalled, trying to gather my thoughts, scanning the website for quick tips or something. I said, “Okay, okay, so, you’re not sure who you’ll vote for on Tuesday?” trying to buy time. She repeated that No, she wasn’t sure, and I gave an Um, and another Okay, and then I did the terrible thing, the worst possible thing: I laughed.

Not uproariously or anything. It was much worse than that. I knew how it sounded the minute it came out of my body. It was rooted in my own discomfort and uncertainty about how to proceed, but that’s not what it sounded like when it came into the room and went off to Ohio. It sounded like judgment. It sounded like arrogance. It sounded like a bougie East Coast liberal sitting in her Brooklyn apartment drinking white wine and congratulating herself for doing her bit to be a good citizen while sneering at fly-over-country. I felt it happen and instantly wished I could shove the sound right back down my own throat. But it was too late. Already the click had come. Already the line was silent. Already my undecided voter had slipped back into the abyss.

Something sank in the pit of my stomach, probably the realization that I’d just guaranteed another vote for Mitt Romney. That was bad enough, but not the worst of it. The worst was that in my carelessness, I’d made someone else, a stranger who was willing to listen to me, feel small.

I wanted to call her back, apologize, tell her I didn’t mean it that way. Tell her “I’m from the Midwest too! I get it!” Explain that I wasn’t really some snotty New York liberal who thought I was better than she was. Explain that I really did think Obama was good for American and Americans, all of us, and for real reasons, not just cosmetic ones. I wanted to fix it. But I knew I couldn’t. I knew there was one more person in Ohio who was done answering the phone.

That was the last call I made that week. The end of my anemic attempt to do my part in 2012. I tried to remember the tiny handful of people who I seemed to actually help, but I thought mostly about that young woman, about who she was and what her life was like, about whether or not she ended up voting at all. The only thing worse than a vote for Romney would be if, exhausted by the circus and the solicitation and the laughing snobby stranger, she decided to scrap the whole thing and stay away all together. So I hope she voted. For whomever. I just hope she did.

It’s not much, but the voting bit, you can count on me for that. The least I can do, and I’ll always do it. I still feel a responsibility to be more involved, to try to make a difference. And maybe I will. Maybe I’ll get better at it. I’ll try. There’s always 2016.