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Edited on Sun May-17-09 10:19 PM by Bjorn Against
This afternoon I stood in front of the doors to the House Chamber at the Minnesota State Capitol with a group of citizens who wanted to make sure their voices were heard. Our Governor Tim Pawlenty had once again used his veto power against the most vulnerable people in the state so that when he runs for President in 2012 he will be able to brag to the wealthy campaign contributors that he did not raise taxes.
The organizers of the rally believed that we were only two votes shy of getting the legislature to override the veto so about seventy five of us stood at the door loudly chanting “Override! Override! Override!” as members of the house walked into the chambers. Some of the representatives cheered us on, others walked quickly by with their head facing towards the ground trying not to look at us, but whether they acknowledged us or not we made sure they at least heard us.
When I got home later this evening I learned that despite our efforts the House had come up three votes short of overriding the veto. I was of course disappointed, and my first response was to think that we had lost this battle. It didn't take me long however to get over that thought when I remembered some words that I heard in a speech I heard Ramona Africa deliver a month ago.
Ramona Africa is a member of the MOVE organization and in 1985 she was inside the MOVE residence when it was bombed by Philadelphia police. Ramona was the only adult survivor of that bombing, and eleven people including five children were killed by the police that day. It is hard to even imagine how traumatic it would be to go through something like that, but Ramona said something to us in her speech that showed her enormous strength. I am going to have to paraphrase somewhat as I am going off my memory from what I heard a month ago but the words I remember Ramona saying are “If you stand up for what you believe in and confront those who are doing us harm you will always be victorious. The people in power may continue to do great damage, they may bring harm to our planet, they may land a blow against the cause you are fighting for, they may take away your job, they may beat you, they may arrest you, they may even kill you, but as long as you stand up for what is right they cannot defeat you if you do not give up. If you give up then you have lost, but if you keep fighting for as long as you are physically able to fight then you will never lose.” What you think about Ramona Africa's politics and beliefs is not the issue here, this is a woman who watched her friends and family die at the hands of police because of their politics and despite the extreme pain she was dealt she never accepted it as a loss and she kept fighting.
Thankfully most of us will never have to experience the same level of extreme brutality that Ramona Africa had to endure, but we can all learn from her words and apply them to our own lives. Many people will lose their health care coverage because of Pawlenty's veto, and poor and disabled Minnesotans are going to face very tough times because of his insistence that we don't tax the rich. We could accept this as a defeat and move on, or we could keep fighting. If we accept this as a defeat then we lose, but as long as we keep fighting then we haven't been defeated.
This principle can be applied no matter what issue you are working on, when the other side thinks they have won we need to stand up and let them know that they did not defeat us and we are going to hold them accountable for their actions. We need to continue to protest, and we need to make sure that we succeed in making the people in power squirm.
Democracy is not about accepting the decisions of the powerful, democracy is about ordinary citizens standing up for what they believe in and refusing to hand power over to a small group of people. If we want a better world we can not leave it up to the politicians, we need to take charge in holding the politicians accountable. This is our democracy and we are not going to stop fighting for it.
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