Ever been to a town board meeting in Greenburgh, NY? Some call it a spectacle , at times it looks like a brawl waiting to erupt. But on further inspection you’ll see that it’s been like that for years. Matter of fact, there are many town hall meetings across the country in the past and in the present that carry that type of atmosphere. You may dislike the raucous crowd but you can’t help but notice that the passion for politics and government is there.

After reading Ralph Nader’s book The Good Fight there were some passages from the book that I think we could welcome into our civic and political thought. They are as follows…

Growing up in a small New England town, with a pristine “town meeting” form of government, I witnessed the contrast between the few active residents and the many on the sidelines. My parents would bring me and my siblings to the often boisterous town meetings to see democracy in action. Town meetings were the town legislature. Some in the community did their homework and took their concerns to the local selectmen. They stood up and proposed, argued, questioned. They refused to take no for an answer. Others in the audience ( and those who stayed home ) seemed ambivalent. On the one hand, they were rooting for their stand-tall neighbors; On the other hand, they felt a little embarrassed to witness the pounding taken by the town officials.

The town activists, not the passive spectators, were the ones considered the mavericks. I recall once, the day after a town meeting, a couple of residents on Main Street pointed to one of the regular activists and said, ” there goes old Mr. Franz.” It was almost as if our community had the town citizen, the town drunk, and the town fool as unusual spectacles. But again and again, I observed the active citizens keeping our collective rights muscular by using them. More often than not, they improved conditions or thwarted misguided moves by town selectmen or the local business titans. And yet there were too few active citizens; many of them became discouraged and sometimes dropped out. A lack contributes to the “see, you can’t get anything done,” “what’s the use,” “que sera, sera” syndrome which feeds on it’s own futility.

Now while I know both sides in this town go at it pretty hard. We hate each other, we call each other names LOL. But you’ve got to love Greenburgh politics for that. I am glad that there are people involved in civic affairs within this town. While I and others may not agree with some of them, and while they disagree with us, I’ll give everyone credit for taking up the mantle that has been carried for hundreds of years by others at local meetings all over the country and the world. We need more people active and involved in the town of Greenburgh, in the county of Westchester, in the state of New York, and in the United States of America. It’s the only way democracy can be healthy once again. When more voices, choices, ideologies and positions are not present, one view becomes a vocal minority or a vocal majority.

More into the book Nader asks the question of what does it take to build civic motivation?

So, then what builds civic motivation? A sense of the heroic progress against great odds achieved by our forebears helps. Think what stamina and inner strength drove abolitionists against slavery, women seeking the right to vote, workers demanding trade unions to counter the callous bosses of industry, dirt-poor farmers of the late 1800’s who, taking on the major railroads and banks, used their heads, hearts, and feet to launch the populist-progressive reform movement. These efforts advanced our country immeasurably. They were efforts by ordinary people doing extraordinary things without electricity, motor vehicles, telephones, faxes, or e-mail. They mobilized person-to-person. That history certainly motivated and excited me as a youngster.

Now I totally agree with this statement by him. It’s been said the more apathetic we get, the more arrogant the politicians become. They’ll take us into wars where we would not have ever ventured. They’ll give tax breaks to the rich, steal from the poor, and squeeze the middle-class. But if you don’t play the game you can never get anywhere. You have to do the work of organizing and sticking together. Change does not happen overnight, but if you never work at it then things will most definitely stay the same.

Ralph Nader goes on to speak about the 60’s where he took on GM. He wrote, testified, mobilized, and networked on The Hill to get his desired results. He talked about the years when the streets were alive with demonstrations and rallies. Many young people were alert to change on and off college campuses, they taught each other. And they got the adults aware about war, civil rights, poverty, the environment, and stifling bureaucracies. He mentioned those were the years when many of the national progressive organizations were formed. But, as it stands today those groups are suffering at the hands of apathy and a one sided ideology controlling all three branches of the federal government.

There’s also another part of the book I’m going to end with and that deals with how we can be conscious voters. Nader makes us a short list of what we can do…

• A liberation ritual. Rid yourself of all preconceived, hereditary, ideological, and political straitjackets. Replace with two general yardsticks for candidates for elective office: Are they playing fair and are they doing right?
• Stay open-minded. Avoid jumping to conclusions about a candidate based solely on their stance on your one or two primary issues. Don’t disregard where they fall on twenty-five other realities that affect you and your family very deeply and seriously. If you judge them broadly rather than narrowly, increase your influence by increasing your demands and expectation levels for their performance. There are numerous evaluations for their votes ( see citizen.org or commoncause.org for progressive perspectives ) and positions to get you behind sly slogans like “Clear Skies Initiative” or “Leave No Child Behind.”
• Know where you stand. A handy way to contrast your views with those of the incumbents and challengers is to make your own checklist of twenty issues, explain where you stand and then send your list to the candidates. See how their list-or their actual record-matches up to your own.
• Ask the tough questions. These are the questions that politicians like to avoid. They include whether they are willing to debate their opponents and how often, why they avoid talking about and doing something about corporate power and it’s expanding control over people’s lives, or how they plan to shift power from these global corporate supremacists to the people. Ask them to speak of solutions to the major problems confronting our country. Politicians often avoid defining solutions that upset their commercial financiers ( this includes a range of issues, such as energy efficiency, lower drug prices, reducing sprawl, safer food, and clean elections). Ask members of Congress to explain why they keep giving themselves annual salary increases and generous benefits, and yet turn cold at doing the same for the minimum wage, health insurance, or pension protections.

I’ll add one more thing. People mostly Democrats want to really hate Ralph Nader for the 2000 elections. They say had he not run, Gore would have won Florida. But ask yourself, are you really hearing what you are saying, when you say this? You’re angry at a guy running, that was a heck of a lot more progressive than Al Gore was. Also you’re actually anti-democratic in saying that someone did not have the right to run. You’re actually advocating for people to have had a more narrower choice, how backwards is that? Who’s to say these people would have voted for Gore if Nader was not running anyway? They probably would have either not voted, or voted for another candidate. It’s really silly and petty to think that way. Instead Gore should have worked on the kinks in his platform to attract these progressives. And I like Gore actually, I wish he would run for office again, though that seems unlikely given his new venture Current TV.