lifeonq.com

Pay Attention and Be Outraged

I knew better than to pay attention to the Georgia primary this week.  The clear lack of interest in Georgia perplexes and frustrates me.  After putting my heart and soul into the elections of 2004 as a staffer for then U.S. Senate candidate Mary Squires, serving as an active member of Georgia for Dean and a participant in the fight against the gay marriage amendment in Georgia, I was 0 for 3 and out of energy.  I devoted huge chunks of my time to politics that year, thinking people would be motivated to participate by the mismanagement, hatefulness and destructiveness of a Republican-dominated government.

I really thought that the people of Georgia could be convinced that discrimination against anyone, even people whose orientation they did not understand, was not the right thing to do.  But my fellow Georgians voted their bias anyway.  Our state constitution has an amendment discriminating against LGBT Georgians to prove it.  Georgia helped return Bush to the White House.  And the Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate didn’t have a chance.  In the face of massive Republican campaign war chests, the Georgia Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee threw in the towel before they even worked up a sweat.

In 2006, I voted, of course.  But I stepped away from any participation in the elections beyond that.  I just didn’t have the heart to be disappointed again.  This election cycle, I’ve taken an interest in the Presidential race, but have not been an active participant in any campaign.  So here we are again with a U.S. Senate seat on the ballot.  I purposely avoided the U.S. Senate race, hoping to avoid a repeat of my 2004 frustration.  But I felt it was important to vote, so I began looking at the Democratic candidates only a week ago.  As I feared, the frustration returned.   Again, the DSCC seems to be doing little to nothing to help field a candidate.  Now we have controversial DeKalb County politician Vernon Jones and former State Rep. Jim Martin, who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2006, in a runoff after yesterday’s votes were counted.

In my view, Jim Martin is a viable candidate who is on the side of the kind of change we need for our state and in Washington.  But enough of us have to turn out to vote in the runoff on August 5 to give him the chance.   And once one of the candidates earns the chance, we have to support them with time and money.  Saxby Chambliss has $4 million in the bank to buy his seat for another 6 years.  Unless, of course, he has that deposited at Indy Mac.

It must have been an easy night for the Secretary of State’s office.  Only about 15 percent of Georgia voters bothered to go to the  polls.  That’s only half of the 30 percent the Secretary of State had predicted.  That is really pathetic.  We are in two wars.  Gas is $4.00+ per gallon.  The Bush answer is to give oil companies tax breaks and permission to drill off our coasts. (Both measures that are supported by our Senator Saxby Chambliss, who’s up for reelection this fall). Utility prices are skyrocketing, and your gas and electric bills will soon help you feel the pain. There’s a mortgage crisis, and the Bush administration is doing nothing except bail out their buddies at Bear Sterns. Banks are failing.  Airlines are going bankrupt.  Healthcare insurance is impossible to afford, and even if you are lucky enough to have it, you have to fight to get care. Tainted products from China.  Tainted food here, a mystery which the government can’t solve.  Here in Georgia, we have no hate crimes law, despite several hate crimes against the LGBT community.  We have a water crisis.  Budget problems in the city of Atlanta, with fire stations closing and other services being cut.  We have a Fulton County sheriff who was on the job when Brian Nichols escaped, killed people in a courthouse, and terrorized the city.  He was on the ballot yesterday too.

Where is the outrage?  Where is the momentum for change?  Where is basic participation in the process?  If you don’t vote, nothing changes.  The 15 percent of us who do, and the even smaller percentage who try to work for change on various campaigns, are paying attention.  The way I see it, you can either get engaged in the process, or get ready to pay for it in higher energy prices, a planet in peril, inaccessible healthcare and ongoing financial worries.  Your vote does matter, more than ever.  This election cycle really matters, for all of us.  If the LGBT community in particular would get engaged, could unify as a voting block, things could change.  It’s too late to keep hate out of the Georgia State Constitution, but it’s not too late to fight hate in Washington, or to fight for the common issues that face us all, gay or straight.  When queers vote en masse, consistently, equality and fairness will win out.