Small Victories

[A Brief Note: I have chosen to restart this weekly essay series. My hope is to sustain it for another 75 weeks as I did the first go-round. But my life seems to be made up of chapters and for a while I believed my essay chapter was at an end. Recently I found I missed the processing of my thoughts and of sharing them with those who connect to these musings. So let’s give it a shot and see where we go . . . . ]

After a long, drawn-out series of events I was recently elected to a position of president of a small national organization. The election process began over a year ago when a group of us decided the organization needed to go in a different direction, so we ran as write-in candidates. As the voting by mail began it became fairly clear that we would be successful in our bid. There was a great deal of dissatisfaction with the performance of the then current board within the membership.

Just prior to the opening of the ballots, the board met and without telling any of us, rescinded our membership and expelled us for life from the group, thereby nullifying votes for any of us as write-in candidates. A large portion of the membership protested at the annual meeting calling for our reinstalment but to no avail. So we hired an attorney and brought suit against the organization and the board. 

The legal action took 7 months to complete but at the end of everything the judge came out with a full exoneration of our 9 members, placed an injunction against our removal, and set a date for a special election to allow for fair and unbiased voting. The election took 45 days to complete and at the end of it, our slate won by a two to one margin. 

I bring all of this up, not as a celebration of our victory, but as an example of an election process that is somewhat of an anomaly these days. Our team was vilified by those who we were running against. Communications from a few of our opponents cast us as villains, usurpers with underhanded hidden agendas, liars, instigators of a coup attempt, and on and on. I refused to be baited into responding in kind. Our group stuck to the issues at hand and never made personal attacks on the members of the then current board. 

Based on the political atmosphere we are living in today, I assumed we would lose, and probably by a large margin. My observations of local and national political campaigns led me to believe two things. One is that everyone complains about the nastiness expressed in political commercials. Accusation of maleficence, of corruption, of arrogance, and of not caring about their constituents have constantly pummeled television viewers during election season. No one likes this kind of rhetoric, but when it comes down to how a person votes, these accusations remain at the back of the voters’ minds, so in essence it works regardless of our distaste for this style of campaigning.

I’ll add here that I wasn’t thrilled about running for this office. My life is filled with projects, work, artistic endeavors, and family, so the last thing I needed was to be the president of anything. I also knew that I had a specific skill set that could make a difference with regard to refocusing the basic principles of this group back towards the original intent of its founders. In addition, I was determined not to allow people who I viewed as bullies intimidate me from running for this office. This was not a great reason to seek this position, but I also felt it was critical to make a statement about ethics by fighting for this job (albeit a volunteer job) while taking a higher road. 

We live in a time when politicians on both sides of the aisle believe the only way to win is by denigrating their opponent. This is especially true of the person who currently occupies the White House. His unrelenting stream of cruelty and vitriolic name calling is both infantile and incredibly destructive to our national self-image. I was determined to run against that style of politicking more than anything else. 

And so, to my ultimate surprise, our policy of focusing on the issues and never stooping to disparage the other side worked. Who knew? 

Perhaps Abraham Lincoln was right when he stated that, “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” And so, are we finally turning the corner? Even though this small election is not necessarily a bellwether of things to come, maybe, just maybe, it is. Let’s hope.