Before any city council person, county commissioner or state legislator can vote on a proposed solution to a problem. the politician, and his or her family, must live with the problem for at least a legislative term (2 years or more). Also, no longer can any legislative body exempt themselves from compliance with legislation enacted to govern the rest of us in a democracy.
Boundary Waters beauty
Photo by J. Harrington
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How can we expect Minnesota's legislators to want to protect the beauty of the Boundary Waters if they've never been there? On the other hand, it seems to us that too many politicians have never experienced the effects of huge Confined Animal Feed Operations (hog farms, anyone?) before they get to decide that ordinary folks can live with the odors and other environmental effects. If legislators and their families had to live with nitrate contaminated water supplies, would they be inclined to delay implementation of known (if partial) solutions while further studies were done? How about requiring a number of legislators to live for a couple of years on only the foods available on Native American reservations, plus food stamps and harvested wild rice, foraging and hunting/fishing, while they pondered how to address sulfate water quality problems. How many legislators or members of congress have been subject to mass shootings such as those that have happened all too often in our schools and other locales where significant numbers of unarmed potential victims are gathered?
When we were growing up, there was a standard saying "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." We need, more and more these days, to vote on whether those who purport to represent us are part of the solution, or not. Aren't we supposed to be living in a representative democracy? How can an elected or appointed official represent something they've never experienced?
Democracy
When you’re cold—November, the streets icy and everyone you passhomeless, Goodwill coats and Hefty bags torn up to make ponchos—someone is always at the pay phone, hunched over the receiverspewing winter’s germs, swollen lipped, face chapped, making the lasttired connection of the day. You keep walking to keep the coldat bay, too cold to wait for the bus, too depressing the thoughtof entering that blue light, the chilled eyes watching you decidewhich seat to take: the man with one leg, his crutches bumpingthe smudged window glass, the woman with her purse clutchedto her breasts like a dead child, the boy, pimpled, morose, his headshorn, a swastika carved into the stubble, staring you down.So you walk into the cold you know: the wind, indifferent blade,familiar, the gold leaves heaped along the gutters. You havea home, a house with gas heat, a toilet that flushes. You havea credit card, cash. You could take a taxi if one would show up.You can feel it now: why people become Republicans: Get that dogoff the street. Remove that spit and graffiti. Arrest those people huddledon the steps of the church. If it weren’t for them you could believe in god,in freedom, the bus would appear and open its doors, the driver dressedin his tan uniform, pants legs creased, dapper hat: Hello Miss, watchyour step now. But you’re not a Republican. You’re only tired, hungry,you want out of the cold. So you give up, walk back, step into line behindthe grubby vet who hides a bag of wine under his pea coat, holds outhis grimy 85 cents, takes each step slow as he pleases, releases his coinsinto the box and waits as they chink down the chute, stakes out a seatin the back and eases his body into the stained vinyl to dreamas the chips of shrapnel in his knee warm up and his good legflops into the aisle. And you’ll doze off, too, in a while, next to the girlwho can’t sit still, who listens to her Walkman and taps her bootsto a rhythm you can’t hear, but you can see it—when she bopsher head and her hands do a jive in the air—you can feel itas the bus rolls on, stopping at each red light in a long wheeze,jerking and idling, rumbling up and lurching off again.
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