Partisan Politics as a Spiritual Path -- Re-weaving the Web

[presented as a summer service at the West Hills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Father's Day, 2004]

When I was younger, a friend of mine taught me to blend the Sufi dance, the Dance of Universal Peace, with the image of the chalice that is the symbol of Unitarian Universalism.

I want every one of you to imagine that you are a lit chalice. Every one of you is a light – that’s what the chalice symbolizes to me, that flame that transforms the world through the actions that flow from the open and clear heart.

I’m going to open up with a song we would sing at LRY camp, if you can follow along with me:

This little liberal light of mine
I’m gonna let it shine (3x)
Let it shine all the time let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel?,”NO!

Nobody’s gonna PHFT it out

This little liberal light of mine…

Now, I know there are probably Democrats, Greens, Independents, maybe even Republicans and Socialists, who-knows, in this congregation. But there’s a strong liberal streak in our congregations that I am speaking to today, even for those of you cultural creatives – like me – who have stances that don’t cubbyhole easily. Bear with me, please.

This is an apt tribute I'll offer on Father's Day, acknowledging my dad, the Reverend Joseph F. Nerad. My father, a UU minister, was deeply involved in the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King. I remember seeing him off, to go march in Selma, like seeing him off to go to war. I don’t think John Reeb was dead yet, but we all knew, even I at 4 years old, how dangerous this work was, if how necessary.

I remember asking my father why, why, why it was that people just didn’t see what was right, that the old ways were wrong, and that they should learn to live together and be good. And my father crouched down to my height, and told me, “You have a gift for knowing what is right, and if you could just speak to every one of these people, one at a time, then they would understand.”

Then he stood up, and sighed, and said, “Meanwhile, I have travelling to do.”

I felt a Truth in what my father said there, although really I don’t think he thought of it as a moment of epiphany or even importance. It’s something that many of us tell our children at tender ages, laying on them an obligation to dash their youth on the rocks of an idealism that we struggle with as adults.

I have struggled with that for forty years now, and I’ve modified my perspectives.

Like some of you, I grew up steeped in this environment of social action that's afforded by the Unitarian Universalist congregations. And like some of you, I have spent a good deal of my life at arm's length, well away from the tangled webs of political circles. To me, there always seemed something clear and virtuous about devotion to a cause. Partisan politics was just ikky.

Civil Rights, Peace, Environmentalism, Civil Liberties, Digital Divide activism, the rights of sexual minorities – these are all causes I’ve been involved in over the years. It is always easy to be crusader for a cause – in your mind, you can always shape what you are fighting for.

Politicians, on the other hand, will always say something that will make you want to curl up in a corner and die of embarrassment.

So most of my forty years of activism I have reserved my energy for issues, not for parties or candidates. I’ve learned a few things – the more you know, the less clean an issue is. Environmentalism comes at the cost of jobs in the short term. Peace, if one is not careful, can come at the cost of turning your back to genocide, or the abuses of dictatorship, or the covert actions of your own government. You must learn the concerns of your opposition to craft good process, good compromise in the public sphere, and what you learn can slow you down – but it has to.

We need to understand all sides. Martin Luther King specifies six principles of nonviolence from his first book, Stride Toward Freedom. Here’s what you need to embrace:

1) Nonviolence is not passive, but requires courage;
2) Nonviolence seeks reconciliation, not defeat of an adversary;
3) Nonviolent action is directed at eliminating evil, not destroying an evil-doer;
4) A willingness to accept suffering for the cause, if necessary, but never to inflict it;
5) A rejection of hatred, animosity or violence of the spirit, as well as refusal to commit physical violence; and
6) Faith that justice will prevail.

From this, The King Center distills six steps for nonviolent social change:

(1.) Information gathering and research to get the facts straight;
(2.) Education of adversaries and the public about the facts of the dispute;
(3.) Personal Commitment to nonviolent attitudes and action;
(4.) Negotiation with adversary in a spirit of goodwill to correct injustice;
(5.) Nonviolent direct action, such as marches, boycotts, mass demonstrations, picketing, sit-ins etc., to help persuade or compel adversary to work toward dispute-resolution;
(6.) Reconciliation of adversaries in a win-win outcome in establishing a sense of community.

This is my beacon in all of my actions in the public sphere. It works pretty well in family arguments, too…

Now you may imagine by now that I grew up in a family that wasn’t averse to bantering issues. I had a conversation with my mother, not so long after 9/11. My mother is in her middle 80’s, and frail, but in 2002 we were still sharing long rants about politics and international affairs. I forget what Ashcroft had done – something to erode democracy further, some act of many.

And my mother burst out, “I think it’s time we brought the F word back into politics.”

Now I was a little shocked. My mother doesn’t use bad language. But she went on:

“I am old enough to remember the rise of fascism in Europe. Everyone thinks of Hitler, but it started first with Mussolini and Franco. And you know, Benito Mussolini was a fat good old boy in the hip pocket of business, and a paragon of banality. And no one reminds me of the man’s character so much as this young Bush.”

Well, I was even more shocked. I mean, “fascism” isn’t a political system, is it? It’s an epithet. It’s that word you throw into a political conversation to stop dialog – in fact I can see a couple people here shut down now, just from my saying it.

But fascism is a system of unholy marriage between corporations and government, popularly supported by a propaganda-controlled citizenry rallied by patriotism rooted in nostalgia for some “lost golden age,” and controlled by fear of the Other.

I am not saying that the people in DC are fascists. I am only saying that the comparison makes me far too uncomfortable. In 2002, it made me think. In 2003, it moved me to action.

Now, I’m fond of third parties, but there is no third party that’s going to turn Bush out this fall. I started out thinking that the Democrats had got to field a candidate that I could support. I love Dennis Kucinich, but I believed then and now – even though I voted for the man in the Oregon primary – that the nation is not ready for Dennis’ message. Politics is about compromise.

But I grew up in Vermont, and in late 2002, I heard that Howard Dean was running. Dean was never governor when I was living in Vermont, but my parents liked him, and there are people who I would trust to raise my son, back home, who believe that the man is a man of great integrity. The first candidate for the presidency with such integrity since Jimmy Carter.

But already the media was painting him with the broad brush of “Rockefeller Republican” – fiscally conservative, socially progressive. You know, I can live with that… It’s a message that isn’t so harsh in the face of deficits, war, pollution, and the loss of rights and liberties.

As a result, I figured I could support him, even though I thought the man would get eaten alive. At least he’d be heard.

Much to my surprise, a couple things happened. First, I found – attracted to Dean – the most beloved, brave, organized, wide awake and enlightened set of liberal activists I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with on any issue or campaign whatsoever. Second, the Dean activist and Dr. Dean managed to change something fundamental in American political activism. We’ve scared the crap out of some folks high up in the Democratic Party. In a good way.

And that’s why I’m here today talking to you.

Dean didn’t make it to the Democratic Convention, but he is making a difference in the respect people give to grassroots organizing, and especially the relationship of new media to the grassroots. He’s woken up the DNC to the power of liberals in an age when 100 $20 contribution can cost less to raise over the net than one $2000 contribution from some fat cat. Less in dollars and less in ethics. Democracy. Who’d a thunk it.

Howard Dean also used the Internet to give his volunteers permission to represent his ideals, and tools to empower us to bring his message out to anyone we could reach, by whatever seemed best locally.

We organizers were given basic ideas and materials and told – go do what you know how to do. We were not given strictures, and sometimes not even given much guidance. But we were given tools. And we developed leadership.

That leadership has now revitalized the Multnomah County Democrats, and we are leaning behind Kerry’s caboose, even though we don’t all love him the way we loved Dean.

But let me tell you about that.

The day I agree with a candidate for public office 100%, it means I’m running for office myself, and just shoot me. As a mom, I won’t tell my son fondly, “Someday you could grow up to be President.” What a curse! To find someone of decent character who’s willing to go through the crap we put candidates through… It’s amazing we get anyone decent at all, ever.

Kerry is, I’m convinced, a decent man. More than that, I’m convinced he’s listening to the grassroots, and he’ll be responsive (certainly more than Bush!) to the will of the people. He has good ideas, even if he doesn’t project well – I’ve seen him in small groups now, a couple times, and he’s really a fine man in person. I think he’s afraid of crowds… And the media does him no favors.

Issues are easy – you can make them what you want, and if the folks running your nonprofit of choice screw up, it’s about them not about the cause. But if a candidate screws up, it’s about the candidate. Why is that? Why don’t we give a candidate slack? Is it a contagious media feeding frenzy that sweeps us up?

Why is it that when we see the right wing yahoos threatening the Sierra Club or public broadcasting, we feel a call to action, but when we see the Democrats moving to the right we throw up our hands? Why don’t we get involved, instead?

All politics is local, people. Properly, in a democracy, the candidate is the delegate of the people, the spokesperson, and we shape his or her message. But we don’t believe that any more. And our lack of belief is self-fulfilling.

Time to take back our democracy.

We know, in social action circles that life in the public sphere is about compromise. We understand, every time we appeal to our allies in government, that they are constrained by compromise built into the system at every level. Yet when a candidate compromises a message so that he or she can get elected and act on our behalf, we distrust it.

One reason is that, the day after the election, we feel powerless. Why is that? Because no one has ever taught us UUs how to work directly on the political system the way we know how to work on nonprofits. Well, I’ve been learning fast, and you can too!

Our UU principles say that we support “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.” This year, I believe that the center of your social action – whether you believe in aiding the homeless, in improving education, in preserving the environment, in peace and positive international relations, in GLBTQI… rights and marriage equity – whatever it is that you believe in, you must work to remove the Bush administration from office.

But Sinkford and the UUA will not say this. Why not? Because they can’t legally. Our denomination and our congregations are restricted under section 501[c][3] of the IRS code to neither speak for nor against any candidate for public office. It’s part of the separation of church and state that is ignored by the Christian Right with apparent impugnity. But we believe as a denomination, as do many of our allies on the religious left (the society of friends, liberal episcopalian and lutherans, many more liberal Jews, and so on) – we believe in that separation of church and state. So you will not hear our professional leadership call for you to work against Bush. Not from Beacon Street, and not from professional clergy.

So what did I learn from the Dean campaign? Do what you can to organize locally.

I learned that I thought it was an issue of personal conscience to avoid politics, but it was just a lazy habit. Worse it’s a habit subtly ingrained in many of us by years of sensational media, and not the result of personal experience.

If it was good enough for Mohandas Gandhi, I just have to believe it’s good enough for me.

I learned that the local Democrats are a bunch of generally disorganized socially minded activists not much different from any fringe nonprofit I’ve been involved with. Most of us, in our UU congregations, do not live in places where the Democratic Party is a bunch of old rich white dudes chomping cigars in a back room, making decisions in closed session – if those places still exist.

I also learned that the Democrats are the folks who place decision makers in office, who I have to appeal to when I need support for whatever social action cause I’m working on. So I can work all my favorite progressive issues at once by making sure the Dems toe the liberal line.

Hard work, but someone has got to do it. The more people of good conscience who get involved, the healthier the process.

Now, some of you probably voted for Nader last election – I vote-traded with a guy in suburban Atlanta myself, so the Greens got one more vote but I (as a registered independent then) could vote for Gore in this swing state. And some of you probably believed at that time, Nader’s message that there is no difference between the two major parties.

But I do not believe that President Gore would have gutted environmental laws, sent us to Iraq, and done the damage to the constitution that this administration did. Corporatism in the Democrats is a symptom of a lack of popular grassroots support. We proved that with the Dean campaign. No PACs, no big corporate donations. Just $20 at a time over the net.

We have a huge store of resources and experience and leadership in our congregations, as do the Friends and many other of our allies who have built up social action savvy over the years. This is the year for us to organize those resources to turn the Bush administration out of office.

It will not come from the pulpit. It must come from us. Working with MoveOn and such is fine, but direct action will come through the local Democratic Party and the Kerry Campaign. I want you to get offline, and get out your walking shoes. Don’t mourn, organize!

This year, it’s vitally important that all our US congregants – here at WHUUF, at First Church downtown, in Eugene, all over Oregon, and all over the US – that we network peer-to-peer within our congregations to organize the religious left, in our own denomination and among our friends and allies in social action circles.

To this end, I’ve started a weblog, Unitarian Universalists for Kerry, that has information on how to revitalize the local county parties, the Kerry campaign, how to organize within a congregation peer to peer, and across the internet, and within your workplace and neighborhoods and schools.

But it can’t be just “anybody but Bush.” Listen, every one of you knows how we keep local politicians held accountable. It’s not just through elections. Yes, it’s through holding them accountable for individual votes and actions.

It’s also through showing them that we are their base. That’s influence.

People of conscience, people of principle, people of good will and good works, need to become the political base of the Democratic Party again. So that we are the guidance that trickles up. So our contributions become more powerful than those of any corporate lobbyist, as they did during the Dean campaign. We are millions, and we know how to walk the walk even if we do talk the talk a bit too much. And we know how to put our money where our mouth is.

Here is our mouth:
We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote


* The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
* Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
* Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
* A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
* The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
* The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
* Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

So, this year, help me organize the religious left. I’m one unemployed single mom, short on time and energy. I can’t push things to happen. I can only shine one liberal light on the process – together we can light a fire under this democracy, and burn it clean.

But there’s another song I’d like to revive in this current year, if you would stand as you are able:

We shall overcome, we shall overcome,
We shall overcome someday;
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We shall overcome someday.

We are not alone, we are not alone
We are not alone today.
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We shall overcome someday.

We're on to victory, We're on to victory,
We're on to victory someday;
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We're on to victory someday.

We'll walk hand in hand, we'll walk hand in hand,
We'll walk hand in hand someday;
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We'll walk hand in hand someday.

We are not afraid, we are not afraid,
We are not afraid today;
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We are not afraid today.

The truth shall make us free, the truth shall make us free,
The truth shall make us free someday;
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
The truth shall make us free someday.

We shall live in peace, we shall live in peace,
We shall live in peace someday;
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We shall live in peace someday.

We shall overcome, we shall overcome,
We shall overcome someday;
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We shall overcome someday.

Go forth and do good work. Thank you.