The Rip van Winkle Effect

Since I've been back working in and around the state Capitol, I'm experiencing the Rip van Winkle effect.  Remember the Washington Irving story of Rip van Winkle?  He falls asleep and wakes up some 70 years later after the American Revolution.  Well in 2004 or thereabouts, I fell asleep (read: quit my job lobbying on health care for a union and became a homemaker/failed entrepreneur) for 7 years and woke up in March of 2011 only to find myself lobbying on health care for a union.

It's eery because everything is the same only some things are different.  Almost all the other staff and lobbyists in the health care area are the same people, they've just shuffled around a bit, in and out of the building, from job to job, mostly skewing in the direction of money.  Due to term limits, most of the legislators are different, but somehow they're the same as well.

The thing that's the most different is language.  While I was asleep, people started using the following words that weren't often used in 2004.  Without them, it appears that public policy is impossible to conduct.  Principal among them are metrics, silos and optics.

Of them, my husband, who was "awake" during this period, tells me, metrics is the most dispensable with insiders, but completely indispensable with Foundation grant makers.  "If you want to get a grant, you've got to be interested in metrics," he says.

Back at the turn of the century, we used to use quaint words like data or outcomes or measurements to mean the same thing.  Now, only metrics will do.

My same source thinks that silos may be the most useful of the terms.  In my job we're always trying to break down silos between subject areas or subspecialties, but occasionally it might be useful to build them.

Of the 3 terms, optics may be the most telling.  The only way to use the word optics is "I do/do not like the optics of _________"  In the beforetime, we would say, "I don't like how this looks to the public" or "I think this will play well."  Politics has always been concerned with optics of course.  But this is a fascinating concept.  See this piece in the New York Times on the term--click here.  It says that William Safire wrote his last language column partly on the word optics.

In the end, all I can tell you is that until we get more metrics on the use of these terms,  I may just crawl into my silo until it's safe to come out.  And if you don't like the optics of that--tough.

Can I take MLK's legacy seriously?

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day--the day every year when millions of American do laundry and take down Christmas cards.  Seriously, why isn't this day more important to me?  Every year I resolve to organize something around it and every year it just becomes a badly needed Monday off from school and work.

I was shocked to read in the paper that there are marches all over town and that the Occupy movement is a big part of it.  Shocked not because it's happening, that makes sense, but because I didn't know anything about it until today.  Honestly, how can I live in a liberal, activist enclave and work for whom I work and not know that the largest march in a while is expected to take place today in my city on MLK day?

In many ways, King exemplifies the ministry that I want.  Not in the sense that I need to be a famous national leader who ends up being assassinated and now people do laundry on his birthday, but in the sense that I want to be a minister who is serious about social justice, whose faith is connected to the real world and calls for and creates and fosters change.  

This year people are reporting more on King's last speech and march at Riverside Church than on the "I have a Dream" speech.  At the end of his life, King set his focus on the gap between rich and poor and ending the Vietnam War.  A week after his famous speech on that subject at Riverside Church, he was killed.  Now, almost 5 decades later due to the Occupy Wall Street/99% Movement there is a groundswell of attention to the fact that 20% of Americans live in poverty and the size of the gap between rich and poor is almost insurmountable.

The movement and its language is so pervasive that in one year it has vastly changed public opinion about taxes.  For the first time in decades, Americans are ready for some good old-fashioned class warfare.

And so the backlash has begun:  yesterday saw a front-page story in the New York Times (reprinted on front page of Sacramento Bee and lord knows where else) about how difficult it is to be in the 1% these days.  The article showed that rich people are people too, and they have feelings and can feel hurt by all the chanting and the demonizing.  The minister in me wants to say, you know, that's true.  We separate ourselves from rich people when we say, "we are the 99%"  why not chant, "we are the 100%"?  But the activist realist in me says, "hallelujah, we are finally talking about what's important."  (I actually think it's possible that both are true, by the way.)

On the same Sunday, on the front page of the NYT business section was an article about a woman who has the tough job of rehabilitating Bank of America's reputation--ministers everywhere take heed: we all need to have more compassion for Bank of America and its public relations consultants.

So it's on.  In my ministerial school recently, there's been talk that if my ministry doesn't scare me, it's not big enough.  Other than standing where I am, trying to articulate the presence of love in the state capitol every day I don't know what my ministry is right now.  But it's scary enough to work full-time, study for ministry and raise a family.

As King himself said, "Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."

Pew poll: Class warfare visible for many

This is a reprint from Politico--I just think this is so exciting.  Sara

By MACKENZIE WEINGER | 1/11/12 2:48 PM EST

Although the Occupy Wall Street movement has receded from the headlines, a majority of Americans said in a new poll that they see major class conflict between the rich and poor.

Two-thirds of Americans said they think there are “very strong” or “strong” class conflicts in society, according to a Pew Research Center poll on Wednesday. That marks a 19 percent increase from 2009, when just 47 percent cited it as a main issue.

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The clash between rich and poor now ranks as American society’s greatest social conflict, pollsters found, followed by 62 percent whosaid there are very strong or strong conflicts between immigrants and native-born Americans, and 38 percent who said these conflicts exist between blacks and whites. In 2009, more Americans said there were strong conflicts between immigrants and native-born Americans than the rich and poor.

And the intensity of the clash between rich and poor has grown more extreme, with 30 percent saying there are very strong conflicts in this poll compared with 15 percent who said the same in 2009. The 30 percent of Americans surveyed is the largest number recorded since the question was first asked in 1987, the pollsters said.

Over half of Republicans, or 55 percent, said there are very strong or strong conflicts between the rich and the poor, and 73 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of independents agree. All those figures have shot up since 2009, when 38 percent of Republicans, 55 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of independents told pollsters they believed the same.

Overall, just 23 percent of Americans said there are not very strong conflicts between the wealthy and poor and 7 percent said there are no conflicts whatsoever.

The poll surveyed 2,048 adults Dec. 6-19, 2011. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71338.html#ixzz1jH4KvfFT

Halloween theme overplayed in politics this year

Is it just me or did all involved overplay the halloween theme this year in political/policy circles? Every year there's at least one or two press hits at Halloween about what's "really scary." But this week I felt like it was a constant barrage of increasingly desperate and hateful emails from campaigns or organizations all with almost identical language:

This year for Halloween, dress up as someone really scary, "a right winger," "a Republican," "a prison guard," or "a supporter of compromise health care plans."

Strangely, I expected to see the corollary on the right--about how scary liberals are. Maybe it's because I'm not on any of their listserves, but I couldn't find it. I thought if People for the American Way is helping me dress up as the terrifying specter of Ann Coulter, surely someone has put together an Al Frankenstein costume?

Okay, I was able to find the Minnesota College Republicans Youtube posting on Al Frankenstein, but is that all?

Frankly, the whole theme needs to be put back in its grave for a couple of more years. These tired undead advertisements are mostly very boring and predictable.

Exception (and yes, I'm an Edwards supporter). I did find this alternate reality front page from the Edwards campaign both truly scary and funny. So if you're going to do it, be really really clever.

I love you, Chuck Calderon

I'm here to impart some shocking news. After 15 years of examining Congressmen and California state legislators at close range, I've determined that they are human beings. In fact, I think a mistake that many public interest advocates make (and lord knows I was one of 'em) is forgetting the degree to which they are dealing with human beings not some sort of super race, or robot version of ourselves, but ourselves.

Like people, legislators breathe, eat, sleep, have dysfunctional upbringings, and experience a full range of human emotions.

We tend to remember that they lust for power, praise and money and that they respond to pressure from constituents out of fear for their political future. But we tend to forget that most basic human desire, the need for love and understanding and compassion. The need to belong. The need to be okay with themselves and their own core values. And yes, they all have core values, even if they don't seem to be driven by them.

I am mindful of a story about Martin Luther King Jr. prior to his first face to face meeting with Attorney General Bobby Kennedy. As he prepared for the meeting with his closest advisors and allies, they talked trash on Bobby--he was white, he was Catholic, he was never going to understand, the administration would never help--they despaired of getting through to him.

King said something to the effect of "no, we can't go into this meeting with any of that in our minds. We have to love this man as we love ourselves. We are not going to anything else to prepare for this meeting but pray for the love and understanding of this man." And so they did. They prayed and focussed on love of Bobby Kennedy for several days prior to the meeting. And when they went in, they made history.

Too often here in Sacramento, I've been a party to preparation for meetings where we have the idea that the legislator we're talking to is a lost cause, an asshole, a coward, a sell-out. I doubt it would go over well if I asked us to hold Chuck Calderon in love, for example (a California Democrat whose voting and legacy has been a constant challenge to liberals).

But I have noticed that even a Chuck Calderon wants to think of himself as a good guy. Even a Chuck Calderon wants to believe that he does what he does for the benefit of all. He tells himself that siding with a business interest against a consumer group thereby killing bills that would advance the rights of working people is seeking "balance" or protecting jobs. He has a strong rationale for all he does.

Who among us has not rationalized harmful behavior? I know I have. I have hurt people I loved and come up with a way that it is okay. Ultimately it is this weakness, this humanity that binds us together, not our strength, or show of force. Ultimately, I can't help but think that love is the missing ingredient in public policy.

I love you, Chuck Calderon, for you are me.