Places to look for a Democrat's(?) vision of America

My email inbox is full of pleas for $ so democrats and progressives can flip the House and / or the Senate come November. It has almost as many email invitations to sign petitions and receive additional requests for $. The last time I checked, petitions do not contribute much to the governance of the country whose government isn't very inclined to pay attention to anyone whose name isn't Koch.

our foundations need shoring up

Photo by J. Harrington

Please don't misunderstand us. We know the Democrats aren't as bad as the Republicans, but what else do the Democrats stand for? Are the Democrats the party that helps protect the environment? We sorely need one of those. Do the Democrats truly support the labor movement? We need more and stronger unions to offset growing corporate power. Why has the single payer - Medicare for all issue taken so long to be accepted by the Democratic leadership? For that matter, whatever happened to the "public option" in the Affordable Care Act? Do the Democrats have a vision of the American they want, other than it's not run by Republicans? Where can we find that vision?

Remember the westerns of long ago? How about "Magnificent Seven," the version from 1960? Remember how the Mexican villagers hired the gunmen to protect their homes from the gang of bandits? Can we, would we honestly claim to be able to find the equivalent of the seven American gunmen among the Democrats? We can probably name three or four, but seven? What do Democrats think leadership stands for? Cutting deals for dollars? Getting people elected?

We once worked for someone who had the sense of humor to show up at senior staff meetings wearing a "seed cap" with the slogan "I am their leader, which way did they go." Since most of the Democrats we've seen recently actually need such caps, and the humility to wear them, let us suggest the Democrats look for their "followers" not in corporate board rooms, but in places like these:

• The Next System Project
  (The Next System Project is an initiative of The Democracy Collaborative aimed at bold thinking and action to address the systemic challenges the United States faces now and in coming decades.)


• Doughnut Economics
  Humanity’s 21st century challenge is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet.


• Drawdown - 100 Solutions to Reverse Global Warming


• Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

"It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It’s also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings."

There are other places to look. But for now, that's the best we can come up on a Sunday afternoon with both literal and figurative clouds in the sky. Remember, while we're at this, what the wonderful Studs Terkel once wrote: "Hope Dies Last."

Of History and Hope

By Miller Williams

We have memorized America,

how it was born and who we have been and where.

In ceremonies and silence we say the words,

telling the stories, singing the old songs.

We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.

The great and all the anonymous dead are there.

We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.

The rich taste of it is on our tongues.

But where are we going to be, and why, and who?

The disenfranchised dead want to know.

We mean to be the people we meant to be,

to keep on going where we meant to go.

But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how

except in the minds of those who will call it Now?

The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?

With waving hands—oh, rarely in a row—

and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.

Who were many people coming together

cannot become one people falling apart.

Who dreamed for every child an even chance

cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.

Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head

cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.

Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child

cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.

We know what we have done and what we have said,

and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,

believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become—

just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.

All this in the hands of children, eyes already set

on a land we never can visit—it isn’t there yet—

but looking through their eyes, we can see

what our long gift to them may come to be.

If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

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