careful, I'm feeling a little punchy today.....

Today I was ecstatic to learn that a federal appeals court struck down the EPA's plan to cap and trade mercury from coal burning power plants instead favoring a straight cap on emissions. Now, to be fair, the EPA plan would have reduced mercury by 70%. The problem is this would take TWENTY FIVE YEARS.

I can't figure out why seven years later I am still shocked when I hear that our government continues to try things like this. Living in the Northwest I am especially aware of the battles with the EPA appointees from the Bush administration. Trying to take salmon off the endangered species list. Allowing logging in areas with spotted owls. Permitting snow mobiles in Yellowstone. Drilling in Alaska's protected areas.

But those are minor issues compared to 60,000 children (mostly low-income) being infected with mercury poisoning every year. I've been to the pier in San Fran where poor migrants from China still fish off the docks to feed their kids despite it being in Bay View Hunters Point, the worst polluted area in the city. Those are also minor issues compared to the immediacy of change necessary to halt the affects of climate change. Our current administrations says it has gotten the message, but it certainly has not.

So I have some questions/thoughts for the non-voting crowd. How are we going to address global climate change if the science says we need immediate macro-solutions controlled by the feds? All the suggestions from the policy side say cap and trade is too slow. We need to have emission regulations on the two polluters that contribute 80% of our output - cars and factories. This isn't something that is going to change with lightbulbs and recycling, these are policy issues. And we need to implement these solutions quickly.

There are a lot of reasons non-voters are able to sleep easy not participating in national political issues like these. Halden describes voting as "pure theatrics" where you get to decide between two undesirables. His alternative to voting is participation "in the re-shaping of human social relations in Christ." He provides no framework for what this actually means but I have a guess. When Christians take this particular line they often are saying, "If every one in the church built hospitals, cared for the disabled and loaned each other money we wouldn't need to vote. We would be doing the work of the government."

These are particularly naive statements first, because Christians haven't been doing these things, and certainly not to the extent to let us think we don't need the help of our government. Second, this kind of thinking fails to address funding from the government (Christians also don't give money), state provided health insurance for the poor or the big one we just mentioned, regulation of the environment. To me, this way of thinking represents one of the great Hauerwasian sins: treating the world as you want it to be, not as it is.

A more nuanced perspective comes from Sheldon Wolin and his concept of fugitive democracy (via Isaac). On his great, lengthy piece on Wolin, Isaac provides a quote on voting.

“The citizen is shrunk to the voter: periodically courted, warned, and confused but otherwise kept at a distance from actual decision-making and allowed to emerge only ephemerally in a cameo appearance according to a script composed by the opinion takers/makers”

Wolin talks about voting as luring citizens into the belief that they have particular controls over the democratic system while a whole different reality is happening all around us. The Superpower, “an expansive system of power that accepts no limits other than those it chooses to impose on itself,” is at work of its own accord. I won't sum up any more; you will do better to read it yourself.

While Isaac doesn't get into any specifics until he starts answering posts, one result is a move to the local as the space of production for discordant democracy "rooted in the ordinary." There are a lot of people doing great work in the particulars of grassroots advocacy of this kind. Rom Coles, who has a most pleasant mustache, is one of these theorists/activists. His work has centered on Durham CAN, our local IAF affiliate. They work on local and state issues organizing congregations, neighborhood associations, unions and like-minded groups to bring about change at a most basic level.

The necessity of the local, of our involvement on behalf of those who sweep our city streets, work in our schools and are put to death under our capital punishment systems makes Eugene McCarraher's comment about the last election one of the most "ugh" comments of the past year:

I stayed home on election night, watched a movie on the couch with my beloved wife, and retired in the knowledge that the empire would remain in someone’s untrustworthy hands.

I would feel a lot more comfortable if he'd passed up the movie to write literature for a janitors strike.

Grassroots organization and advocacy is likely the best way for Christians to take seriously our claim to advocate for the alien, the orphan and the widow while being wary of the soothing voice of your every-four-year vote. But also vote in national elections. Don't vote because there's no hope outside our government or because it's your patriotic duty. And don't think voting gets you off the hook from participation in local movements. Vote because its a small contribution, hopefully your smallest contribution to helping our government behave.