When do we all do better? (When we work together!)

The Minnesota legislative session is almost over for the year. By the time we’ve figured out what they’ve done to us, they’ll be back at it again next year. If legislatures were comparable to corporations, many would drive their states into bankruptcy, as Congress continually tries to do when the Republicans are in charge. Would it be possible to only vote for those, in whatever party, who have education, training and experience in win-win negotiating? Politics, in a democracy, should not be a zero sum game.

Are you ready to vote?

Photo by J. Harrington

If we consider the world as a model, nature creates synergistic benefits from the multitudes of different species and ecosystems. Why is it that we can’t manage our elected officials so that they do much better than we’ve been experiencing? Is it that we’re too tolerant of our officials' failures? Too accepting of results that benefit the 1% at the expense of the rest of US? This country was founded in rebellion against a government that treated colonies as an extraction zone. Aren’t we experiencing something similar with a system in which corporations and billionaires pay effective tax rates lower than most of US? Meanwhile, corporations continue to use our commons as a dumping ground for their toxic wastes, making more of US sicker while they profit and our health care system is breaking down. How many more years will we continue to allow political factions to kick down the road cans such as the definition of Waters Of The United States (WOTUS)? It’s all one interconnected water system!!!

Senator Sanders of Vermont has a piece in The Guardian that’s worth reading: We’re in a pivotal moment in American history. We cannot retreat. The late Senator Wellstone of Minnesota had a slogan that: “We all do better when we all do better.” That reflects the qualities I’m espousing we look for in candidates. Ask yourself how many successful marriages are based on a zero sum, I win, you lose, relationship. Then ask yourself why we can’t do better next November than repeat past mistakes.

Let Them Not Say

Jane Hirshfield
1953 – 

Let them not say:   we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say:   we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say:     they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say:   it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say:     they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something: 

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.

—2014

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