The Romney Reward

I've been spending a portion of my summer thus far working for Organizing for America, the campaign to re-elect Barack Obama. Unfortunately, due to the nature of my job, I was under a strict media blackout - a restriction that included blogging. Fortunately, after weeks of speaking with my supervisor and looking to renegotiate exactly what it is I do, I'm now able to write somewhat freely. My campaign work is still off-limits (honestly, it's not that exciting, they just don't want anybody even remotely associated with the President saying something stupid to the media), but I'm allowed to use this and other public forums to discuss my opinions about the upcoming election.

So here goes. First off . . .

I am not a Democrat.

I'm registered as a Democrat. I've voted for Democrats in the past. I share a lot of ideology which is commonly held to be "liberal" in nature.

I am not a Republican.

I've supported Republicans and conservatives in state and local elections. I share a lot of ideology which is commonly held to be "conservative" in nature.

With that in mind, I had one person I usually looked towards as a role model for politicians. John McCain.

However, in November of 2008, as I stood at the voting booth staring at the two names in front of me, I was locked in place.

John McCain, whom had been a hero of mine for almost a decade. A veteran, an established politician, and a good man with a long history of working for what he believed in. A long-serving Senator with a history of working across party lines on important subjects, rising above petty politics, and connecting more than any other candidate with actual issues and the concerns of America.

Barack Obama, who . . . was handsome?

Then I looked down at the Vice Presidential nominees. Joe Biden, a Democratic analogue for John McCain. Well-spoken (as long as he doesn't speak too much), experienced, well-respected, and deeply involved and dedicated to working with fellow members of Congress, regardless of their political affiliation, in order to do the work that needed to be done.

Sarah Palin, who . . . was pretty? Or was that Tina Fey?

Barack Obama pitched a good game. He never had any of the "gaffes" media outlets scour every speech for along the campaign trail. Just by virtue of his being black he represented a paradigm shift from the establishment of American Presidential politics. Whenever the mud was slung his way, he seemed to rise above it. He inspired people with his presence, got millions of young people out to the voting booths, and had everybody talking about his meteoric rise.

However, it was all predicated on a keynote speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. After that he had a single, somewhat unremarkable run as a Senator from Illinois, and then immediately rode the wave of public interest built up around him all the way to the Presidential nomination. All in all, he hadn't really done much, he just talked a lot.

McCain got down and dirty. He steamrolled over Mitt Romney in the primaries with every attack on his record and character he could come up with. When the general election came, he let campaign ads run demeaning Obama's character, his friends and associates, and his experience (justifiably, in that last case). He played on the fear of terrorist attacks and illegal immigrants taking over our jobs. He allowed people associated with him paint Obama as a non-American Muslim.

He did everything I never thought he would do. He became a typical dirty politician. He abandoned decades of good work in Congress so that he could ensure his nomination, and once he had it he couldn't back down from those platforms. His loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 primary taught him a lesson - you want to be President, you play ball with the Party, and he never let that go.

But the fact remained - I knew John McCain was the person he was, the person I had admired, and I believed that once in office he'd do an about-face, flip off Bush's neo-cons, and run the White House the way he wanted to. I didn't know anything about this Obama character.

Yet, I checked his name, not McCain. Because under John McCain's name was Sarah Palin.

At the time of the election, McCain was 72 years old. Being President is an incredibly stressful job. The thought of John McCain dropping dead one day in office and Sarah Palin becoming President of the United States was not a reality I wanted to encourage, even taking into account the potential face-off with Putin.

Sarah Palin represented something I didn't want in office. Forget the idea that she was uninformed or ill-prepared, or even the notion that she only got the nomination to try and woo Hillary supporters. As Vice President (or President!) Sarah Palin stood for . . . whatever it was the party told her to stand for. She never demonstrated an original thought or idea, she never strayed from popular talking points, she never tackled anything that the Republican party, and specifically the most conservative elements of its base, didn't have a prepared statement for. I didn't want this woman anywhere near the White House, and she cost John McCain my vote.

I think time proved that to be the right decision for other reasons, as I've written about before.

So now it's four years later, and this time around Mitt Romney wisely sat back and let his opponents destroy themselves before calmly marching up the wreckage of their campaigns to claim the Republican nomination. It's still some months out from Election Day - though closer than you think - and so far I have yet to see anything from Romney that sets him apart from Sarah Palin. The man makes me think someone had a powder somewhere in a package that read "Instant Republican Nominee: Just Add Water" and they just doused that thing.

He hasn't deviated even one syllable from party-line rhetoric. He hasn't expressed a single idea which could be controversial to his constituent base. He hasn't done anything to make himself seem like an individual running for the highest office in the land instead of a mouthpiece for the monolithic entity backing him.

But let's put that aside. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Mitt Romney was the greatest possible candidate available. Let's ignore Bain Capital, his own Health Care reform in Massachusetts, his stance on the middle class, all of it. I want you to imagine the most perfect Presidential candidate you can think of, and then pull the image of Mitt Romney over it.

He still shouldn't win.

Here's why.

Margaret Pratt

The evening of June 20th, perhaps late enough to be called the early morning of June 21st, after the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, Margaret Pratt passed from this life and returned home to the side of her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. She was 80 years old, and had been suffering a great deal following a protracted battle with cancer. Three years ago, the doctors told her she had 6 months to live, but she continued to survive, and to thrive, up until the day she couldn't anymore. She passed peacefully, having been surrounded by her family for weeks on end. 

Margaret Pratt was my grandmother, and I was blessed enough to be able to spend the last few weeks of her life by her side. In that time, I learned more about faith, what it really means and what it really looks like, than I had ever known.

I have known people of great faith throughout my life. I have known rabbis and priests, nuns and ministers, Christians and Jews and Muslims and Sikhs and pagans, all with their own take on what it means to be faithful. With my grandmother, I realized the difference between someone professing their faith, telling you about their faith, and someone showing you their faith. She always held on to everything I wrote and encouraged me to write more, so, I'm going to write about that. About her. I don't know if I can aptly put it into words, but I'm going to try.

Before she died, I went to a number of sermons, and as is usually the case found that the Lord had put me where I needed to be. The things I heard all seemed to illustrate a fundamental point about the life of my grandmother. I'd like to share a few stories from that life, how they tie into the services I attended, and how, at the end of her life, she showed me what true faith really means.

Occupied Wall Street (Part Three): The Notary, the Suit, and the Trader

A short time after I finding the giant dry-erase board with the minutes and  issues from meetings of the General Assembly, I came upon a curious sight. A woman sitting on the ground underneath a tree, behind a small table she had set up. Above her, a sign which read "Public Notary." A handful of clipboards and a stack of forms sat beside her. Wondering what it was she had set up, I decided to ask if she'd be open to an interview. She agreed, as long as I filled out one of her forms - the purpose of which she was about to explain - in exchange.

Me: Could I have your name again?

Caren: My name is Caren Dashow, otherwise known as Yesiree, the public notary.

Me: And how long have you been here at Occupied Wall Street?

Caren: I've been coming down every few days. I just started doing this the other day.

Me: Now "this" is - you're sitting under a sign that says "Public Notary" and you've got these manifestation forms here. Could you tell me what it is you're doing here specifically?

Caren: I am asking people to write down their visions for the future, and then I will notarize them - and they have to show proper identification - and the idea is to get a legal manifestation, a compilation that can be a document, and that could be used in different ways. It could be used as a document for the Library of Congress, it could be used by the General Assembly, however it is that we want to do this, but it's a good way to - kind of like what you're doing - to get a smattering of what different people think, what is our vision, what it is we want as opposed to what it is we don't want.

Me: Now, the message that I've been getting from the outside media sources covering the event is that this is . . . unorganized, it's divisive, it's . . . Americans against Americans, class warfare gets thrown around a lot. What's your impression of the attitude here (unrelated cheers in the background) besides the obvious brotherhood happening behind us?

Caren: Okay, well I think the disorganization is the strongest part. I think this is beautiful that for three weeks these people have been negotiating and figuring out ways that they want their future to be, you know? And . . . and the world is changing, and this is a big say in the way people want the world to change.

Me: What would make - you say you've been coming here about three weeks -

Caren: Yeah, off and on, not the entire time. I'd come when I could and I was trying to figure out what I could do to help this, and I thought "well, what I don't see is, not just a list of demands, but, I want to be able to see what it is people really want." So, this was a way to individually get voices to figure out what it is people want, and then I could do that, but also, as you're saying, to get that out, get that information out.

Me: Well thank you very much Caren, and I guess I'll fill one of these out now.

And I did, and she notarized and recorded my statement. It might even be up at http://yesireepublicnotary.wordpress.com/ one day.

After almost two hours of wandering around Occupied Wall Street I had yet to even really scratch the surface of the amount of diversity present in my interviews. The ways people had found to coexist peacefully and productively in the throng of humanity was nothing short of remarkable. I found myself at what sounded like a drum circle from a distance, but turned out to be just a handful of individuals banging away constantly to the cheers of onlookers and the consistent outbursts of pro-Occupation chants.

What I noticed a lot of as I made a lap around the park was the number of people with recording equipment. Voice recorders, camcorders, video phones, television cameras and sound equipment; there was no shortage of people going in amongst the people and trying to hear what they were saying and get the message out. It's a wonder to me I haven't heard more of the voices of the people in the mainstream media, because there is a wealth of recordings which must exist if what I saw was any indication. If you're looking for coverage of why the people are doing what they're doing, what they're saying about their reasons for being there, what it is they want, simply go to the scores of people - some, I'm sure, amateur reporters, others perhaps more like me, curious as to what people will say and wanting to spread their words to the outside - who have been covering the Occupation and posting their results on blogs, twitter, or YouTube. The age when the media could black out an event is over. The people can be their own media now.

Occupied Wall Street (Part Two): The Gospel of Reverend Billy

After my talk with Jacob I spent some more time going through the camp, but it wasn't long before my attention was taken by a figure in a white sports jacket, white dress pants, white collar and black shirt. He sported a mass of bleach-blond hair atop his head which waved back and forth rhythmically as he called to the audience gathered around him. Cameras were on him. A crowd had formed quickly. Every few words of his spirited sermon, he would pause, and just as they did when someone was making an announcement, the crowd would repeat everything he had just said loud enough for everyone outside the circle to hear.

He was passionate in every word, and spoke with a voice that infused the crowd with energy. This was my encounter with Reverend Billy of the Anti-Consumerist Church, and this is what he had to say. Ellipses added wherever the crowd shouted back what he was saying.

"To my daughter Lina . . . back in Brooklyn . . . Amen!

I'm Reverend Billy . . . from the Stop-Shopping Church (applause, cheers). I've been talking to . . . sooooome people! Arooound New York . . . and arooound the world. And some of them . . . laugh, and loath this thing we're doing.

And some of them . . . they go "ohhhhhhhh . . . I don't know!"
"Ohhhh . . .how is that gonna work?"
"Ohhhhhhhh . . . it's kinda . . vague!"
"What are the . . . specific demands?!"
"What do they WANT?"
And I say . . . the answer is . . . to occupy Wall Street!"

Let me share with you . . . what I believe . . . and the people in my Anti-Consumerist Church believe . . . that occupying Wall Street . . . could not be more specific!

(Extended cheers)

Living here . . . living here on this square . . . exercising the freedoms . . . of the First Amendment . . . Speech! Worship! Press! Peaceable gathering! And protest! The First Amendment . . . has not been in public space . . . in New York City . . . since 9/11!

We have it here now.

(Cheers, applause)

We are living in the First Amendment! It is a part of the occupation . . . speaking and singing . . . feeding and making media . . . and being surprised by people. People arriving from everywhere . . . for a thousand different reasons . . . is completely specific.

Children!

I'm losing my voice . . . but you have many voices.

Those freedoms . . . Americans have died for . . . and now we . . . are living those freedoms.

And this force . . . will cross that sidewalk . . . and go up that escalator . . . and walk into the corner office . . . where they keep those financial formulae . . . that victimize us . . . our living . . . will dismantle . . . their mathematics.

Thank you, people."

I kept getting hung up on his emphasis on what about the protest was, in his words, completely specific. Thousands of people from thousands of places coming for thousands of different reasons, all because they heard of the Occupy Wall Street movement and said "yes, the thing I am concerned about directly relates to that. This is where I need to go."

And the Reverend was right. That is very specific.

Occupied Wall Street (Part One)

The last 21 days have seen the birth and growth of a movement which has come to be known as Occupy Wall Street. Thousands of protestors from around the country have gathered in the nerve center of America's financial institutions to protest . . . well, that's the question, isn't it?

I have heard a lot in recent weeks about what the protestors stand for, or don't stand for. I've heard them called a mob, heard them called divisive and un-American, heard that they're instigating class warfare. I've even heard from potential Presidential candidate Herman Cain that they're just jealous. The country's largest news organization, on the front page of its website today, lent two stories to the protests; one about how they're dirtying up the park, and another criticizing their criticism of banking based on frozen donation funds. On the other side of things, people have extolled to me the virtue of what's happening, that this kind of revolution taking place is exactly what the country needs. People are angry at Wall Street and the way business has been done in this country, the disproportionate wealth, the unfair and unscrupulous business practices, the influence of corporate money in our politics, and more.

What I've been told more than anything though, from people who both support and detract from the movement, is that the movement has no direction, no cohesion, that it's disorganized and rudderless, and without a specific message, they're not going to get anywhere. It's great (or terrible) that they're there, but they won't accomplish anything until they propose some solutions or list some demands. Without that, they're just a bunch of angry college kids.

So I decided I'd heard quite enough from people outside of the occupation about what was happening within it. Today, I went into Occupied Wall Street to bring the message from the people there out to rest of the world. These are some of those messages.

It is October 7th of 2011 and I am on my way to Wall Street to find out exactly what the protestors there want from the financial institutions of America. At 3:50 PM, I enter the occupation and look around for people to talk to. After some time spent just getting my bearings in the camp staked out at Zuccoti Park, I came across a pair holding up two particularly well-made signs. As you might imagine, the protest area is awash in cardboard and posterboard, rampant with slogans ranging from scathing to humorous, along with a solid mixture of both. This pair, however, were holding up two professionally-made banners which caught my eye. That's what prompted me to approach Troy, a twenty-something Occupier and, I found out, the maker of the signs.

Me: Hi, would you mind saying your name?

Troy: My name is Troy Kreiner.

Me: Troy, how are you doing today?

Troy: Doing well, how are you?

Me: Good. So what brings you to Wall Street? To Occupied Wall Street, specifically.

Troy: To ask questions. And to help hand out statements from the General Assembly's declaration, which is like the one I'm holding above me and the one my friend is holding next to me. I came here last week, I noticed a lot of people voicing their concern of not understanding why people are here, and saying "well, it's all unorganized," and, uh, I wanted to, you know, make some signs for people that they could define themselves with, something that they could gravitate towards, so they could have something that they'd want to associate with. So, I've been handing out some of these signs, and this one associates with myself, and the one next to me probably associates with other people as well.

Me: Now, I don't have a camera, so do you mind if I just read what your sign says? (He answers no). The sign Troy is holding says They Have Held Students Hostage With Tens of Thousands of Dollars of Debt on Education Which is Itself A Human Right and the sign next to him says They Have Poisoned the Food Supply Through Negligence and Undermined the Farming System Through Monopolization. So, if you had the chance to send this message, or a message, directly to Wall Street, to someone who had some actual influence over these things, what would you tell them? What would you - if you had just an argument to make or a solution to propose, what would you say?

Troy: This is the thing - I don't have a solution yet. I'm just scratching the surface and asking questions and - trying to start a dialogue. I don't have an answer yet, and . . . it's okay.

Me: It is. That's actually the best answer I could've asked for.

Guest Gentleman: Dear DCPS...

Today's Guest Gentleman is a dear friend and very, very good teacher with more patience and love in her heart than I can ever imagine possessing.

Thank you for your honest and informative feedback provided by your most recently hired “Master Educator” of the current WL teacher at $%HS in Washington DC. According to your rubric, she has been qualified as a Minimally Effective teacher, scoring not so much as one 3 or 4 out of 4 points in any of the Teach 1-9 categories on your IMPACT rubric. According to your score, this is what a “minimally effective” teacher looks like:

- She has been at the same position for 3 years and has developed positive rapports with 80-90% of the students she’s taught (P.S. She almost just wrote “teached”. Thank you also for the stellar grammatical influence your environment has on college graduates).
- She has gotten to school hours before and after the required time to A) plan lessons, B) grade quizzes, projects and in-class assignments that clearly show production of a language other than English and C) organize extracurricular activities that you put on her shoulders the DAY BEFORE THEY TAKE PLACE because you failed to take the responsibility on yourself and she didn’t want to let the students down.
- She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Foreign Language Education and Teaching English as a Second Language Certification to become a better teacher for your students.
- She was nominated as her Department Chair in her second year of teaching (granted by default) and took an enormous workload including statistical analysis of the (non)growth of student achievement without so much as training her in any of the documentation that is so “official”.
- She remains a solid presence in her students’ anything-but-stable lives, serving as a mother, best friend, sister, guidance counselor, mentor and teacher while also trying to maintain her own life separate from work.

I could go on about the “detrimental” behaviors and actions that this teacher has engaged in to make you consider her “Minimally Effective” when, miraculously, she has never received an overall score of less than a 3.2 out of 4 in her two years teaching under this imperfect IMPACT evaluation system.

Why then did she receive in her most recent “Master Educator” evaluation a 1.66 out of 4 overall?? Tell me, was she drunk in front of the classroom? Did she by chance hit or insult any of the students in your presence? In fact, did any of the students act out AT ALL at any point throughout the tiny, 30-minute window you saw into her class when she teaches 3 classes for 80 minutes a day? (Because really, that’s what her job has become: babysitting.)

The District of Columbia is special. You tell the teachers and students so every day. We are in a unique situation and are pioneers of the future of education, specifically ensuring that every single classroom is stocked with a “Highly Effective” teacher, who apparently engages in none of the behaviors exhibited so erroneously by the WL teacher at $%HS. She understands what it takes to be an effective teacher, and in fact, scored 4. Points. Away from being considered “Highly Effective” last year and receiving a considerable amount of money, the possibility of being observed and filmed as a model classroom for potential new hires to the District. Why then did she receive a score of 1.66 out of 4?

Yes, the “Monster Educator”, Mr. @, championed for the rights of World Languages. He claimed that he was an advocate for them, and that only when we worked together to demand professional development (because it is our right) that we would receive scores that ACCURATELY reflect our teaching abilities. So Mr. @ told this poor WL teacher that her scores were essentially not accurate.

…

Let’s think for a moment: How can you claim to represent a system that insists upon having Effective and Highly Effective teachers in the classroom when the very rubric you work upon is NOT ACCURATE?? Her job, salary and integrity are at stake because of this imperfect evaluation system. How demeaning to hear from a man who saw 30 minutes of one lesson, on one day, in one week, of one month, in one year of a course that she is “Minimally Effective” in not one, but NINE categories. Who. Do you think. You are?

DCPS, you claim to support teachers and initiatives that retain teachers for longer than a Teach for America or DC Teaching Fellows stint of two years. This teacher CHOSE to come to the District after graduation, maybe not fully understanding what she was getting herself into, but she put her heart, soul, mind, body and LIFE into this job. You didn’t put a single person into her classroom her first year of teaching. NOT ONE. She was put out to sea with swimmies and somehow managed to make it through the Bermuda triangle, shark-infested waters and the annoyance of jellyfish stings, to stay on to a third year at an institution that you claim is “on the mend”.

I’m sorry, DCPS, but you just lost the most Highly “Minimally Effective” WL teacher that you will NEVER find again. I guarantee that not many people have the heart that she has to do what she did for so long for your district. When you continually tell her that is it HER fault that students are not succeeding, she beings to believe it.

However, she has come to realize that she doesn’t have to tread this murky water any longer. There are countless other districts around the world that would throw out life vests, buoys, canoes and jet skis just to get this “Minimally Effective” WL teacher into their programs.

So, if your goal is the retention of Effective to Highly Effective teachers, you’re doing an extremely poor job of giving them the support they need. You can’t come in three years later and assess this teacher who’s been doing a pretty good job on a rubric that you never prepared her or trained her for. You are setting teachers up for failure and you are burning them out by placing ALL of the blame on them.

It’s time for this WL teacher who is so much more than “Minimally Effective” according to your rubric to go test the waters elsewhere, reflect on her time in DCPS with fondness and to selectively remember all of the other positive comments, feedback and scores she has received in her three years of service to your District.

Thank you for your time. I wish you the best of luck. You will need it.

Sincerely,
Mademoiselle

Something Occurred To Me

...today while I was on the Interwebz. I had to put in my date of birth to prove that I was old enough to visit a site with graphically violent images. As I did so, I realized I'm 25. Short of running for a few elected offices, there's pretty much nothing that I'm not allowed to do anymore. I'm never going to put my birth date down and hear someone say, "Sorry, you're not old enough yet."


That's a weird feeling.