Democracy for Vancouver

Rich has kindly invited me to cross-post here from my regular blog, no fish, no nuts. I’ve lived in Vancouver since 2000, and before that lived in New York, Florida, North Carolina, New York again, Florida again, Wyoming, Georgia, the Socialist Republic of Eugene, New Orleans, Longview, and then Oregon again. (I have told my husband J. that he will have to take me out of our current home in a pine box. No more moves for me. It’s a good thing we love Vancouver.)

I am a lawyer, mom, baker, commie-pinko, and (as of August 17th) a Tae Kwon Do blackbelt. Getting that blackbelt was helped along in no small part by the 2004 election - my punches and kicks became much harder after that debacle, especially when I pictured Bush’s or Cheney’s face on the kicking post. As for my nom-de-blog,I got tagged with the nickname “slim” when I was a naive reporter just out of college in Rome, Georgia.

This is a few days old, but I wanted to use it as my first post here because it is such a local issue. Thanks to Rich for his welcome; feel free to email me at nofishnonuts -at- hotmail.com if you want to contact me directly.

slim

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civility

As anyone who reads my blog regularly knows, I have no aversion to obscenities. Under certain circumstances (nearly always when talking about BushCo), it is nearly impossible to express oneself honestly without employing “bullshit” or “fuck-up” at least once.

That being said, I do believe there are places to deploy civility strategically - as when you are trying to convince someone that you have a logical argument, and the outcome of that argument actually has a practical impact in the world.

Last night, I went to see Brian Baird speak and had some very pointed questions for him myself on his change of heart regarding withdrawal from Iraq.

There were several people who had very good points to make, and they made them very well.

But all in all, the over-capacity crowd was rude and loud, interrupting Baird and those at the microphone asking questions, and punctuating every speaker with either applause or boos so that half of the allotted time was wasted.

As I’ve said before, Baird is not convinced that peace activists understand what is happening in Iraq, and he does not believe we have standing to argue any points on Iraq because we are not soldiers or Iraqis.

In order to convince him otherwise, and to change his mind, we have to present our arguments rationally and without overt malice.

Baird is our representative (like it or not). He is the one voice we have in the Congress that belongs only to us in the Southwest corner of Washington state. His vote is the only vote we have to either get us out of Iraq or commit us for another five years; his is the only vote we have for impeachment (another big topic at last night’s town hall meeting).

If we cannot convince Baird of our seriousness and our understanding of the complex issues facing the Iraqis, we will get nowhere with him, and we will lose what voice we have in these matters. Shouting him down with “Bullshit!” and “Impeach or Resign!” will get us nowhere.

I understand that people are angry. I think Baird is foolish to believe that another 6 months or another 5 years or even another decade of U.S. military presence is going to get us any closer to a peaceful and democratic Iraq.

But there is no question that Baird’s belief is sincere. It visibly pains him, the certain knowledge that more U.S. soldiers will die in the next six months trying to fulfill the potential that Petraeus has convinced Baird there is in Iraq right now.

I can express my frustration with Baird here, and in letters to the editor and emails to Baird himself in terms that many may consider obscene or uncivil. But when it comes to speaking face-to-face, I do not want to trigger a defense mechanism in him that shuts down any chance of acceptance of my point of view.

I’m not sure anything would change Baird’s mind at this point, and it will be very interesting to see what his thinking is after these 6 months are up, and we’re beginning our 6th year of occupation. But we are certainly not going to make any long-term progress by tarring and feathering him.