Democracy is Messy
I heard the title phrase a lot in the past few weeks. First on March 4th as we struggled to understand the Texas Democratic caucus system while 450 of us stood outside of a retirement community for three hours. Most of us had never participated in a caucus before, many of us had never voted in a primary. And then again yesterday over the course of the (about) eight hours we spent at the Travis County Democratic Convention. We spent a lot of time in lines: 45 minutes of lines into the convention center to park, an hour and a half of line to sign in as a delegate, 15 minutes of line to get a soda in the morning, 15 -20 minutes of line to get a hamburger for lunch, an hour and a half of lines to get out of the convention center and back home again. We spent a lot of time waiting around and really only spent about an hour listening to speeches and an hour engaged in the caucusing process.
Do I feel like I “wasted time”? Absolutely not. I feel like I did my part to aid in Obama’s campaign. I feel like I did my part to represent my friends who support him and would like to see him win the White House. I didn’t have any expectations of the day other then doing whatever it took to serve as a delegate. I learned a lot and met my neighbors. I feel engaged and part of the process.
I was disappointed by how the process brings out the worst in human behavior; distrust, accusations, elevated egos, arrogance.
At the risk of sounding naive and simplistic, democracy is messy because it tries to allow everyone the opportunity to have a say, to speak their mind and express their opinions. That’s one heck of a goal to achieve smoothly. I am very proud of the time I spent yesterday in lines and in waiting because in doing so I was part of the process. A process that certainly needs revision, but that’s a whole other blog post.
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I will actually be attending the State Convention in June, and am SOO excited about it. I hope I find a chance to sit down and blog about the convention in Denton County before the week is over.