November 11, 2004

Secular Blue America
by Liza Sabater

I got to Steve Gilliard's News Blog : They voted for this mess via another awesome post, written by Chris Bowers, at MyDD :: Yes, These Are Conservatives.

Gilliard's is one long-winded rant that starts out hitting liberals good but ends up really tearing appart the post-election appeasement façade of the extremists ruling the Republican party. I wish he had spent more time flogging the "Liberals". Here's why :

So here's the thing. We're wrong. We have to stop. We have to do something different.

Let's examine this Laura. What she got from us:

"Domestic violence workshops."

What she got from the church: food, a job, and people that said they loved her. The church gave her something to do, a narrative to organize her life around. Someone to tell her what to do.

Are we prepared to do that? To make her a bowl of soup, and sit there and hold her hand while she eats it, and pretend to love her, and force our narrative on her--to own her? To tell her what to think?

I think probably not. Because we're liberals. We believe in teaching her skills, in getting her a job, giving her a loan, maybe lecturing her. But she doesn't want to learn skills, she's weak and tired and afraid. She doesn't want to think.

And most people would rather be preached at by a preacher than a social worker.

We have this idealized image of our fellow humans: that human nature is perfectible, that people go for what's best for them, that given the opportunity, people want to be happy and free. We're liberals. We believe that, given equal access to information and resources, people will work toward happiness. That they will act for the best for themselves, their family, their community, their country and eventually, the world.

We're wrong.

What precedes this comment is a heart-wrenching description of the tribulations of a single, working poor, pregnant mother named "Laura". What he describes is the chasm between the life options offered by the church people who offered her real life support and encouraged her to vote Bush, and the bureucratic treatment of the liberal social-workers that marginally served her.

I have an older brother by my father who is a Pentecostal preacher. He and my sister-in-law have Masters and PhD degrees in Education, and found their calling in ministry. Their parish is in the middle of a working poor Latino neighborhood in, of all places, Rhode Island.

This is the sister in law that taught me at about 10 or 11 all about reproduction, female sexuality and "christian responsible" birth control. I was raised a "bad" catholic girl and, being so young, I wasn't even interested in boys in that way. My hormones did not really kick until I was about 16 years old --and all hell broke lose then :) But if it had not been for her, I would have never been properly trained in the issues of reproductive rights.

I sincerely do not know if she still does this, but at the time (they were not preachers yet), she saw it as the responsible christian thing to do. Better I know the consequences of sex and getting pregnant and the truth about not just abortion but pregnancy, labor and birth. I was not around during her son's birth, but I sure was during her pregnancy. I went to the hospital to see my nephew and I remember staying overnight a few times in a one bedroom apartment with them and the screaming beast (who is by now in his late 20's, by the way).

My brother and sis-in-law are some of the most giving people you'll ever meet. And they take personally the poverty that's around them. They're always talking about lifting up the community. They are the kind of people that will give you a plate of hot food, will open their houses to anyone in times of need and will find a way for those who have no hope. And they are rabid, anti-liberal, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, christian fundamentalists. But such is their compassion that at least they pray for my abortionist and atheist soul.

I honestly do not know if they voted for BushCo, but let's say it would not shock me.

Still, can you see why people in dispair, who end up at a Pentecostal or Baptist church, who are too tired of being kicked around by "the system", too mired in their sorrow, would choose to vote for BushCo? It's not because they are stupid, or dumb or irresponsible. It's because by voting for BushCo, they are voting to support people like my brother and sister-in-law and the communities that have offered them a place to belong.

Secular Blue America has no system of community building. This is the reason why for secular homeschoolers it is incredibly difficult to find meeting places. Secular Blue America has so relinquished it's duty as a community that, in places like NYC, without schools and employment places, they'd have nothing to tie them to a community.

What Secular Blue America has to offer are compartamentalized, bureaucratized, reality-based 'social despair programs'; also known as targeted social services. Red America, on the other hand, has churches, tabernacles, temples and congregations. Not just places of worship but 'community houses' of love, hope and redemption.

In the context of the blogging world, churches are social hardware, religion, social software.

Where are the secular community spaces and organizations that are supposed to be the alternatives to religions as the oldest of networking infrastructures? Where do I go as a non-battered, [pick your disease]-free, creative class, secular humanist, unschooling, precariously self-employed and politically progressive mother of two? Where do I go for my kids to be with like minded people without shelling out $40,000 a year for the privilege?

For the next four years, at least at culturekitchen it will be all about communities. We need to build from the ground up. One reality-based but hope-filled bowl of soup at a time.

Once we start doing this, it would not be a question of conservatives vs. liberals but of haves vs. have nots. Until then, the issues will stay muddled by all the preaching.

Posted by Liza Sabater in 2004 Elections, Activism, Christian Fundamentalism, Class, Creative Class, Culture War, Government, Grassroots, Homeschooling, Latino, Life, New York City, Parenting, Politics, Religion, Reproductive Rights, Social Networks, Welfare
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