Monday, November 24, 2008

Op-Ed Epiphany

This is going to sound so corny, but as I read the State Journal’s latest op-ed, “Don’t let pols pick their votes,” I had an epiphany about Wisconsin politics. Last Sunday the thoughtful and paid-to-be opinionated editorial page writers were opining about the state’s rotten redistricting rules designed by and for incumbents to protect their legislative seats. Lefties and conservatives both took the heat for allowing the once-a-decade line drawing to conveniently shed voting districts that aren’t exactly keen on their brand of politics.

As a trained journalist, I can be skeptical about the reckless nature of power and influence. And I can wax all poetic about how crucial it is for democratic societies to examine and question the role of leadership and government. Frankly, that’s why I’ve been so pissed lately that newsrooms have been virtually abandoned by their corporate owners and ungrateful advertisers. (Is it just me or do the ads in the State Journal lately look like invasive species choking healthy flora?). But at the same time, I have always felt that most people in charge—be they teachers, priests, doctors or politicians—have their community’s best interests at heart.

So it’s with a heavy—and a little bit guilty—heart that I share my epiphany. Wisconsin started its journey into the 20th century a progressive and principled role model. It finished out the 1990s a fat and happy cat, the kind that led to political cronies, legislative caucus scandals and now, because all good things must come to an end, five-billion—BILLION—dollar deficits. It’s atrocious. And what I realized reading the op-ed column Sunday was that Wisconsinites like me are so used to good, clean government and a reputation for years and years and years of best behavior by our elected officials that we can't acknowledge or accept how much damage has been done. We’re no longer a role model; we’re the girl you don’t dare bring home to your parents.

Fellow Midwestern states like Iowa—let me repeat: IOWA—have gotten the best of us when it comes to something as straightforward and little “d” democratic as redistricting. Then there’s another neighbor called Minnesota, with sparkling clean lakes and a taxation system that experts say is a friend to businesses, government and education without bleeding taxpayers’ wallets.

For so many years we’ve voted so many good and honest people into office—Democrat, Republican or Ed Thompson—that we’ve taken for granted our privilege and responsibility to hold these humans, with all of their imperfections, accountable. Then we’re shocked and appalled when they pass a Band-Aid solution to funding public education, campaign on the taxpayers’ dime, or hold a budget hostage to protect the special interests and party leadership that got them elected.

We’ve all had our political epiphanies. Mine is admittedly a variation on a pundit’s theme, and frankly, a little too late. While my belated “aha” moment won’t do much for that state of our state, it reminds me of the incredible importance of our editorial voices, whether they are in print, online or over the airwaves. They are made up of smart, well reasoned and well-read professionals who tell us what they think--not because, like our politicians, they want our vote in the districts they’ve drawn like kids with too many crayons, but because they want us to know the facts as they see them.

We might not agree with the op-ed pages every time, but we should respect what they have to say, and in many cases, thank them for having the courage to put pen to dying paper.

Friday, November 14, 2008

First Step

Our November story on domestic violence (on newsstands now!) has struck a chord. The advocacy community praised it (though I received some understandable flak for not running the crisis hotline number: 251-4445). Survivors identified with it and took the time to let us know. But best of all, we’ve heard an anecdotal story or two about how it helped bring someone the courage to leave an abusive situation.

That’s exactly why we titled the article “Seeing is Believing.” If you see yourself or a loved one in one of those remarkable stories of survival, you might believe in yourself and your situation. You might acknowledge that it’s real, and happening to you, and that you need to get help.

The title was also intended to shed light on one of society's greatest failures because so often domestic violence goes unnoticed or ignored by friends, neighbors, employers and the media. It takes a village to recognize and refuse to allow chronic and dangerous emotional and physical violence. And when we do so, we take the power out of the hands of the abuser. It becomes a community problem—like homelessness, burglary, or jaywalking—that is no longer tolerated just because it goes on behind closed doors. It says to the abuser: what you are doing is wrong, even illegal. So stop, get help, or go to jail.

The subject has so deeply affected the author of the article, Maggie Ginsberg-Schutz, that she is building an online community of support for a new blog called Violence UnSilenced. Here’s Maggie’s latest update on her own terrific blog, which is spawning her new advocacy campaign.

When the domestic violence blog goes live, I’m going to ask survivors to speak out. And because they are brave enough to speak out, I’m going to ask the rest of us to pledge to listen. I hope you will take up that challenge. Please, keep listening.

A few days after Maggie’s article came out, I ran into my friend Bill at the Harmony Bar. Bill is a writer and a poet, a gadfly and a grandpa … an all-around good guy. Though I respect his politics, we usually disagree. And yet, when we got to talking about domestic violence Bill launched (as Bill is wont to do) into a diatribe about women’s liberation. If women are not free, healthy and educated, Bill told me, economies collapse, democracies fail and societies are ruined. The world needs more women in power, he continued, because they won’t let their sons go off to war without a fight of their own.

While Bill was pontificating I thought of the Taliban in Afghanistan and their oppression of women. I thought about how every nine minutes a woman in the U.S. is beaten. I thought about how women still earn substantially less than men, which is often why they can’t leave an abusive situation. I thought about my mom, who helped get my hometown’s first battered women’s shelter off the ground. How she would make me close my eyes when we drove there because even a little girl might tell the wrong person where it was.

But not everybody understands the fundamental truth about women like Bill does—he and I do agree on that one. Which is why we need more survivors telling their stories to Maggie and more Maggies launching blogs and more moms volunteering at shelters and more Bills spreading the gospel from barstool to barstool. We all have something we can offer the cause.

What can you do?