CPTnet  
3 November 2008
FORT FRANCES, ON: Beyond the election

[The following reflection by CPT Director Emeritus Gene Stoltzfus has been edited for length.  People wishing to see the original piece will find it at http://gstoltzfus.blogspot.com/2008/11/beyond-election.html]

The day after the election may be a downer for people like me who found the adrenalin of this election season seductive.  Mornings will continue to dawn and the progression of late fall to winter will continue.  Eventually I will remember that a few things may be different, but a lot stays the same.  A nation that controls half the world's military might, a global economic crisis, an impending world food crisis, and serious environmental challenge are looming in front of every one of us.  Unless I have a longer view, I may fall into a very long depression because so little has changed.  

In the 1968 election between Nixon and Humphrey, I refused to vote and to this day friends challenge me for this act of civic mistrust in the hard won right to vote.  Although I didn't believe elections were a bad thing, I was so disappointed that Hubert Humphrey persisted in the rhetoric of war.  When Richard Nixon was elected with even fewer credentials for peacemaking and a "secret plan" I got depressed.

We shouldn't have to wait for elections to get down to work, nor should we have to wait for elections to ignite our hope and vision.  Elections are messy and often imperfect.  So are our local efforts for change and we easily run out of energy.  Successful efforts such as closing a local military base or recruiting office, pressuring an irresponsible corporation to stop producing toxic products, or overturning terrorist style interrogation tactics take five to twenty years or more.  These efforts transcend election cycles.  Abolition of slavery took more than 100 years and in fact, it is still not over.  The U.S. still has to make good on the forty acres and a mule promise.  

Change comes from good strategy carried out by trained teams of people who try all kinds of tactics such as participating in delegations to areas of conflict, discussion, education, and nonviolent direct action. One should not gloss over the long-term personal demands of the work.  Negotiations and change only come at the final stages when money, wealth, power, policy, and the common good are put in their proper place.

Almost all local communities have to deal with at least one expression of the four global threats I mentioned above.  If twenty percent of our congregations, mosques, and synagogues would determine as a highest priority to form and support action teams, in five years the world would be on the road to recovery.  Over ten years we would see larger solutions beginning to form out of a collage of our efforts.  We would see fewer corporations and money managers who seek destructive control for quick profit, fewer military bases, more protection for the earth and the alleviation of hunger.  We will know that the spirit is in this work by the fruits of these efforts.