Happy St. Patrick's Day

accept neither fake shamrocks nor fake democracy

Photo by J. Harrington

Our democracy needs to emulate St. Patrick and escape from its pirate captors. That's why we're spending today at our MN senate district DFL convention. We see attendance as a matter of necessity more than choice. Better policy and better politics must be made if we hope to preserve some semblance of democracy in this country. The only way we know of to bring that about is to get more involved. Voting, alone, is no longer enough. This attitude probably has something to do with having grown up in Boston, you know, where this whole thing started with a real tea party, and coming of age during the time of the civil rights "struggle" followed by the Vietnam War protests and the 1968 police riot in Chicago. In some, but not all, ways we've been here before. It looks like it's time to do it again. Sigh!

If you wonder what we're nattering about, here's some resources and/or reminders:

• Why Gil Scott-Heron Wrote “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” Finding inspiration in a world of unrest and rage


• Gill Scott-Heron performing "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"


• A Test of American Traditions: Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny”

Meanwhile, our own Minnesota Legislature is tackling critical issues like slow-poke drivers in the left lane and the GOP majority leaves Democrats uninvited to meetings on legislative issues. We hope they eventually find time to deal with Audit calls for upgrades to Minnesota voter registration and don't cut it during some end-of-session back-room deal cutting.

Something we learned about fishing a long time ago also seems to apply to democracy. We never caught a single fish sitting at home bitching about how bad the fishing could be. Seems to apply to our government at all levels theses days, doesn't it? If we want better choices in candidates, maybe we have to help select those we want to vote for. Corporations are not people. Money is not speech.

Leonard Cohen, a Canadian, seems to have presciently described our situation with two of his songs. We're going to provide links to those pieces instead of a poem today:

• ANTHEM (lyrics) (performed) 

•  DEMOCRACY (lyrics) (performed)

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