Decisions, and history, are made by those who show up.

This is a well-known truism in politics, but it seems to be remembered only by those who do show up. They are the ones who hear and understand, and what the progressive movement needs is a lot more people to hear, understand, believe and act on these words. The bottom line, especially for progressivism, is that showing up is key to everything else.

Being a progressive does not mean you believe in universal health care, justice, etc. Plenty of non-progressives believe in such things. Libertarians can dislike corporations as much as progressives. Being a progressive has nothing to do with any particular policy or issue. The progressive movement is about grassroots democracy, about ordinary citizens taking control of the power that is essentially and fundamentally theirs in a democracy.

And obviously, in order for citizens to take and wield their democratic powers, they have to do more than stay home and be outraged at what “they” are doing. To be a part of the progressive movement and not just an admirer on the sidelines, you have to actually do something.

Step one is to show up.

Last night I finished my phone banking at the Bus Project, and I asked Henry what the no-show rate was for those who said they come on a Bus trip. “50 percent,” he answered, and Audra nodded in agreement. Half. (Math whiz at work: please stand back and be careful.) First of all, it takes a ton of work to get even one person to agree to show up. I made 60 calls or so last night, most of which got me their voice mail; I spoke to about 8 people about Bus trips, and I got one solid Yes (and 3 strong maybes for September trips). That’s a lot of time and effort to get one person to agree to come this Sunday to Clackamas County and walk for Brent Barton.

I don’t know Phil Keisling, so I won’t pretend to know his motives. I do know the law of unintended consequences, so I will instead attribute all the bad results that will flow from the former Secretary of State’s so-called “Open Primary” initiative to that. Either was, it’s a terrible idea and will have disastrous effects on democracy in Oregon.

I am confident that is not Keisling’s intent.

I am far less certain about the proven bad guys in Oregon’s politics over the past two decades: Don MacIntyre (Measure 5), Kevin Mannix (Measure 11 and this year’s M), Bill Sizemore (who has time for a list?), Karen Minnis, Wayne Scott, Betsy Chase and the ragtag collection of religionists and corporatists who have done all they could to gut democracy on behalf of god and their corporate masters.

Keisling is supposed to be one of the good guys, one of those who trusts the people to take care of themselves through direct and representative government. Yet he apparently has so little faith in the ability of Oregonians to do so, he’s decided to push a ballot measure (Measure 65) that will remove most of the candidates, and all but the two major parties, from future general elections. In the vast majority of contests, should his measure pass, either a single Democrat and Republican will make the November election or two from the same party.

Goodbye Pacific Greens. Adios Constitution Party. Adieu Libertarians. Auf Wiedersehen, Socialist Workers Party. Hit the road, Working Families Party. Whatever chance you have to advance your cause under the current system — which, I fully agree, needs a whole lot of fixing — that chance will be gone unless you find a way real quick to become the #2 party in many towns and counties around Oregon.

As the kids say, Good luck on that.

The stupid part about his measure is that he focuses on the primary election as the problem. The only problem with the primary is that people who don’t belong to or support a particular party want a say in who that party’s candidates should be. This is akin to letting Ducks head coach Mike Belotti tell Beavers coach Mike Riley who should be on his team and who his starting quarterback ought to be. If it is important to someone who the Democrats pick as their candidate for an office, that person can register as a Dem: it’s free, it’s quick, and it can be undone the day after the primary.

Anyone who volunteers for a political campaign or organization asks themself this question at some point: “Does what I’m doing actually matter?” Does it matter that I just spend two days in Bend, going to to 70 doors and talking to about two dozen people? Did I make a difference? Change anything?

If I had just stayed home, would it have made any difference at all?

I talked to one guy yesterday who said he wasn’t voting for either Obama or McCain; he’d be voting for a third-party candidate. He then recited a list of available third-parties that went from Pacific Green to Libertarian; kind of lacking in any coherence other than they were not Democratic or Republican. But what I was then able to do was educate him on the so-called “Open Primary” initiative and how it would destroy third-parties in Oregon. He hadn’t even heard of it, much less begun to become educated. But by being the first one to this man, I may have ensured that he’ll vote against it.

For the rest, I either spoke to people who were going to vote for Judy Steigler, the House District 54 candidate we were walking for in Bend, or I introduced her to them. And given how vital name-recognition is in a campaign, the two or three minutes I spent on the doorstep with them may be what was needed to push their vote Judy’s way.

I do a lot of political volunteering. I enjoy it. I meet and work with lots of great people, most of what we do is fun, and I truly believe we are working towards important, even vital, goals. I rarely have to be pushed to volunteer. When I say No, it’s because an event as it the wrong time — usually, during work — or because I’ve already said Yes to something else. Others do a lot more, but I do far more than my “fair” share.
And then there are the people who say they care and want to make a difference but refuse to do anything. Nothing. They’ll vote and donate a little money, but ask them to spend one evening making phone calls, and suddenly democracy is inconvenient, irritating and something they can’t be bothered with.

No wonder the bads guy took over.

However, despite my frustration and, at times, disgust with people refusing to get involved in any way (disgust being saved for people who’ll become PCPs — precinct committee people, a role that requires actually stepping forward to say, Yes I’ll be a leader in my community — and then never find the time to fulfull that role), I understand the onus to change this is not on those people but political organizations. (Ok, for the PCPs, they gotta get their own act together.)

Politics, of course, has a bad name and an ugly face. We’re asking a lot of people to believe that spending a few hours on a campaign is doing something worthwhile. We’re not only facing the problem of “What can one person do?” but also the stereotype of anything political being sleazy, selfish and totally bad. It does not matter if the cause is a good one, if the candidate is pure or the need transparently clear to the entire society. What counts is that it involves “politics” and for too many people, that’s an area of life that frightens, angers and frustrates them.

War with Russia: the huge nightmare of my life. From before I was born, the possibility of war with Russia — aka the Soviet Union, but it was always the “Russians” we feared — was the worst thing that could happen. Ok, for some, appeasement with Russia and/or surrender to and invasion by Russia (the latter made inevitable by the former) was worse. But for most Americans, war with Russia meant nuclear war and the end of the world. So while that war’s possibility dominated thought and politics for decades, the impossibility of surviving that war seems to have made the war itself worth avoiding for both sides.

Today, as Russia apparently continues its invasion of Georgia, using “irregular militia” to commit atrocities against the civilian population so it can stay officially above such nastiness, war with Russia — and this time, Russia proper: Mother Russia — is on the minds of the bellicose neocons who will never actually have to right in such a war. Fortunately President Bush, who has looked into the soul of the war’s architect, Vladimir Putin, refuses to take the bait. He does not do so out of principle, of course. He’s actually more like the boyfriend who will be the last to acknowledge his girl is cheating on him.

“President” John McCain has no such illusions. He recognizes Putin for who he is: a former KGB official who wants to extend Russian power, and territory, to its former “greatness.” That much, however, is all he gets right. He harbors the neocon illusion that the United States can, whenever it wishes, inject its god-given power and might into a conflict and, with sufficient will and firepower, crush the forces of evil. Even with the United States’ military forces past their limits in his illegal war in Iraq and needed to stop (again) the Taliban and al Queda in Afghanistan, McCain is making the kind of noises about this war that should wake voters up to the foolishness of putting yet another warmonger in the White House.

The frustrating thing about politics to most people, I believe, is how little it appears one person can do. However angry, motivated or energized I am about something — from the "only sensible" solution to local school funding to doing the "smart thing" about bus service to ending the war — the idea that one person can have any effect at all seems more than ludicrous. So while plenty of people are willing to try and make an impact through voting for individuals, most people look at the big picture — there am I, one person out of millions — and shrug their shoulders and give up.

Giving up is even less effective than being one vote among millions; simple statistics proves that. A single vote is tiny, but it is something. Nothing is always nothing — except when it's less. Not voting means another person takes your place entirely; your one vote may not count for much, but your "no vote" counts for nothing. And in the meantime, the people that do vote get to make decisions for you. Kind of like a tyrant would do.

So voting actually does matter, even if the scale of impact appears minute. But in most elections, there are only two or three choices. Which means that by voting, you are automatically part of a larger group. And the only way your favored group ends up the largest group is if you give them your vote. By actually voting, you ensure that your choice is multiplied. Tens of millions of people will vote for president, and while your one lone vote may seem completely insignificant, it is actually multiplied tens of millions of times. All the other people who also select your candidates — each one using no more than the same single vote you use — are increasing the power of your vote millions of times over.

It's like compound interest, only it happens immediately on Election Day.

As a political activist, I would also add that to increase the power of your solitary vote, you should get involved in the campaign or campaigns that mean the most to you. Nothing has more impact on an election than the involvement of local citizens, neighbors talking to neighbors, whether door-to-door, on the phone, or just casually. If you really want change, or to defeat some ballot initiative, then you have to do more than cast your vote. Donate to the campaign or volunteer. Just a few bucks and few nights a month: It takes very little when many people do it.

The beauty of democracy is that it allows individuals to maintain their unique identity while becoming part of a mass social effort. No mobs are needed. Just the willingness to cast your vote, however tiny that piece of paper may seem to you.

I was bicycling home this evening (before my chain broke and I finished by walking home) and as I rode serenely down a quiet Southeast street, a man and a woman were talking. Apparently saying goodbye, happy voices, the kind of way that lots of friendsor siblings talk to one another at the end of a pleasant evening. Only I had no idea what they were saying because they were talking in Vietnamese.

And I, thought how very cool. I understood not a single word, but I knew they were happy, I knew they cared about each other, and I knew they were good people just going about their lives. Like average, ordinary Americans — speaking Vietnamese.

What could be more American? A normal life, normal people, being friendly and enjoying whatever it is they have in life. The woman lived in a very nice home; she and whoever she might live with made a good living; the man probably did as well. I'm sure they both speak at least passable English, enough to prosper in our community, but they chooose to converse in their native tongue.

The idea that there is anything wrong with this picture just flies in the face of what it means to be an American. Those who push for English-only never speak of liberty, of rights, of freedom from oppression. The basic values that formed and shaped our country are not in their vocabulary. Instead their arguments are of the cost to society, the need to assimilate, the difficulty of living together without a homegeneous langauge basis. That, to me, sounds like totalitarianism at work: the obliteration of the individual, of difference, of the international spices that make the American melting pot not only flavorful but vibrant and productive.

Today, I had to call tech support. The woman who helped me was great at her job. She did all she could to maintain my business (I was closing my membership at a national gym club), but when I insisted I had quit on purpose, she got me the refund upon which I insisted (well, we'll see: 7-10 business days). She did an excellent job, and if I couldn't understand her accent much of the time, the fact that I'll be getting my money back makes that a great big nothing.

There are racists and xenophobes in this country who think I'm dead wrong. That I have to struggle to understand her accent is, to them, wrong. They may yap about outsourcing jobs, to cover their real intentions, but I have no idea if my call went to Guatemala, some pentitary in Texas, or a call center in Ames, Iowa. I got someone who had immaculate grammar and enunciation, just overlaid with an accent the result of growing up speaking Spanish.

I don't care where she was. She did her job right. If this was a job some American lost, it wasn't her fault. To point at those for whom English is a new or second language as if they were doing something wrong or harmful is, I believe, hateful and unAmerican. The ancestors of most, if not many, Americans spoke bad English. If any at all. They learned, to varying degrees, and they worked hard to take care of their families and get their kids into schools. Their children spoke fine English (however crummy their grammar may have been). That's how long it takes: a single generation. The children of immigrants know the langauge, and their accents are not impediments to understanding.

Meanwhile, over in Germany, Barack Obama spoke in English to a crowd we can presume was mostly German. He spoke in English, directly and without translation, not because the whole world needs to understand English or tough luck, but because much of the world does understand English. Certainly in Germany and the rest of Europe, English is an extremely common second language.

Too bad so many Americans adamantly refuse to return the favor.