Routes to Power

So... now that serving as president of your child's PTA is  being touted as a excellent qualification  for serving as Vice President of this country, it seems like as good a time as any to turn our attention to just that... the PTA.  

It's not like I'm an expert or anything.  Yeah, I'm a member of the PTA at Elder Girleen's school but that's mainly because all it required from us was writing a small check at the beginning of the school year.  I actually didn't know we had a choice in the matter:  I thought membership in the PTA was mandatory until this year, when I found out that 20% of the families at our school have chosen to opt out.  As far as I could tell, being a member of the PTA once your children hit elementary school was a prerequisite of motherhood:  you wear sensible shoes, you keep baby wipes in your handbag, you join the PTA.  No questions about it.  

Serving on the PTA in some official capacity, though... that's another thing all together.  A year on the board of Elder Girleen's preschool cured me of any impulses I might've had to volunteer for things like that,  so as far as the inner workings of the PTA goes, I'm about as clueless as the average Joe, who until Sarah Palin gave her past presidency of a school's PTA as a good reason to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket, never gave the PTA a second thought.  

I won't weigh in here the pros or cons of the organization itself (it's always existed, so it has to be worthwhile, right?) -- my interest is more in examining the idea of a position in the PTA as a route to power. 

And for me, the most interesting thing about examining the PTA in that light is just how non-threatening it sounds.  Hey, our moms were in the PTA.  Some of us might've even had moms who served as president of the PTA. It's as American as apple pie!  Whatever things the PTA actually undertakes, it also serves — and maybe this is its most important function? — as a very traditional, feminine way to have, or take, power.  Within its very codified structure, a woman can become very powerful... without neglecting her primary duties as mom (because it's for the children, even though they may be at home with a babysitter during PTA meetings).  Serving as president of the PTA has none of the negative (ie, unfeminine) connotations of ... what?  Community Organizer (sounds vaguely commie-pinko, doesn't it?)  Human Rights Activist?  (ditto).     

If I have little idea what the PTA really does, I have even less of one about what the PTA does at a national level.  But one thing I do know is that a PTA president is probably not making policy. 

When I next need to sit down across the table from a potential employer, will I mention the fact that I served on the board of my child's preschool and sat around conference tables at City Hall East attempting to win City functionaries over to the idea that our neighborhood deserved a park that served as more than a trash heap for malt liquor cans and a play structure that wasn't being partially held together with plastic security webbing?  You bet.  Because whether the outside world chooses to recognize it or not, it's work, and it's important work. And it's as difficult, or more so, than any job I received a paycheck for.  

Whatever genius thought up the McCain/Palin strategy of highlighting Palin's PTA presidency and status as hockey-mom is hoping women will focus on that and not much more.  Wondering what exactly those qualifications have to do with running a country makes you... what?  A sexist?  An elitist?  Someone denigrating women's work?

But here are the facts:  the larger picture doesn't really impact a PTA president.  Reasons a child might need reduced-price lunch, or a family might feel completely incapable of volunteering to organize a bake sale... or an auction... don't have to matter to a PTA president. They might matter to some of them, but they don't have to.   Heck, a PTA president doesn't even need to understand that children or families which such issues exist. 

 

I know, there are so many other scary things going on right now — but gosh, let's be sure to add that one to the list.  

Now Is The Time, And We Are The Answer

Way back in the day, when Elder Girleen was still just a babe-in-arms, one of the things that ended up giving structure to the days I spent with her was taking daily morning walks through the neighborhood in the company of a few other moms (and the occasional dad) who had kids of stroller-sitting age.  The "Stroller Brigade," as we came to be known throughout the neighborhood, wasn't some official club; it wasn't an organization anyone had dreamed up. There was no board of directors, no officers, no fundraisers.

We were just a group of women whose main (and sometimes only) commonality was the fact that we had kids of roughly the same ages that we were staying home with.  We met every morning in the parking lot of a nearby church — sometimes there were 7 of us, sometimes 2. Sometimes no one showed up at all.  We walked for an hour  and mostly talked in the cautious pleasantries employed everywhere by moms:  where do you live?  how old are your kids?  Are you from here? 

Would we have met each other, pre-children?  Probably not.  

Now I know some of those folks and their kids much better but back then the main thing we had in common was our babies.  And that was — and can be — the most tenuous of bonds.

For our various reasons, we all needed those morning walks; we were wary of breaking those social bonds.  Thus, when we walked one morning way back in 2003 when Iraq was invaded, the fact did not even come up, nor did the politics surrounding it. 

That was probably as it should've been (how could we have kept rubbing shoulders every morning if we vehemently disagreed?).  What we had in common wasn't strong enough to overcome what we probably did not.  

But the time for such careful politesse is, I think, long past. At this moment, politics does  belong on the playground, around the water cooler, everywhere.   

All of which is a long preamble to the passionate and eloquent call-to-action I received from a friend today:

Hi-

I don't know about you but I am getting more and more scared as I watch the news.  There's never been a party quite like the Dems from snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but even without any obvious missteps, with the best ticket I've seen in my life, and with Americans nearly unanimous in seeing deep deep flaws in how the past eight years have been handled, I can see that we might lose this one.  And the stakes have never been higher.  

So what to do?  Last weekend  I rounded up a bunch of friends, and used the Obama website and local listserves to take a caravan of cars to go canvass in nearby Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  It's one thing to read in the paper about disaffected white ethnic voters, or soldiers who return from Iraq telling stories of having to fight without enough body armor (or bullets!), but it's quite another thing to actually see those people face to face.  

Canvassing is not really that hard but it's not easy either.  The folks at the Bucks County field office were super-organized, and when we showed up they had packets with lists of doors to knock on, and good maps, and they got us trained and out the door pretty fast.  At first it feels embarrassing to knock on the door of total strangers (but then at first it must feel embarrassing to go trick or treating too, right, and somehow we got over that hump pretty easily).  After a couple of houses, you get in a rhythm.  I was lucky and went with a good friend, so we had the unexpected bonus of some mommy time in between houses, catching up on summer vacations, the beginning of school, and the delicate balance of survival as a working mom.  

The goal is to connect with people.  If they are hard and fast for McCain, then it's just "thank you, have a nice day."  For the undecideds, we asked them what issues were important to them, and then shared our thoughts about where the candidates stand on those.  We tried to move those leaning toward Obama into strong Obama voters, sought out strong Obama voters as prospective volunteers, and made sure that those who voted for Hillary were moving (or already moved) into the Obama camp.  Since my friend who accompanied me was a big Hillary supporter herself, she was sort of a "secret weapon" on the trail, talking about the commonalities in Obama's and Hillary's agendas.  

With eight adults and three children divided into four teams, we knocked on about 200 doors and earned probably 10 votes.  It takes effort, and energy, but ultimately nothing is more effective than showing up as a volunteer, being the heart and soul of a movement, demonstrating that you care enough about what this election stands for to get up off the couch and do something about it.  If you are religious, think of this as praying with your feet.  (Whether you are religious or not, think of this as stopping the scary slide toward becoming a theocracy!)  

If we lose, it's our fault for not doing enough — and we will get the goverment that we deserve.

So why am I writing?  *To encourage you to get involved.*  If you live in or near a swing state — Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Virginia are all really important but so are some others — then hit the trail.  It's so easy — just go to the Obama website, click on "states," then find a local field office and call them up.  They will be happy to hear from you and will give you everything you need to get started.  

*If you don't live near a fiend office, then hit the phones.*  I did this during the primary and while it was not as fun as going door to door, I did rack up several hundred phone calls for Obama.  Again, at first it feels scary to call total strangers, and we all hate telemarketers, but for the most part I found people to be surprisingly receptive to listing to the political enthusiasms of the disembodied voice of a total stranger.  

I'm exhausted too, and behind on my work, and the house is a mess, and I desperately need a pedicure.  But for the moment all that's on hold....

Ask yourself what you can do — and then get out and do it.  

Don't know about you, but after reading that, I'm signing off now to figure out how to get down Florida this weekend.