StgCoach – Page 63 – Oh, Contrarian!

Making a Joyful Noise, NEA-style

Over the years, I’ve played and sung at a wide variety of liturgies; but one of the most unusual comes up once a year at the NEA Annual Meeting.

The National Education Association, an organization of public educators, is the largest labor union in America, with about 3.1 million members. Every year its leadership gathers over the Independence Day holiday for the seven-day NEA Annual Meeting, which culminates with the four-day Representative Assembly. (The NEA RA is the largest business meeting in the world, assembling 9,000-10,000 voting delegates in the same room. Imagine the Republican and Democratic party conventions combined, add about 10% more people, and then realize that in this body anyone can go to a microphone and speak!)

So why is there a delegate Mass at this gathering of public educators? For the answer, you have to look at the schedule.

Some trade and professional meetings have developed a reputation for hijinks. I would never suggest that there’s no fun at NEA’s Annual Meeting, but the hours are long: state caucuses start at 7:00 AM, and RA sessions typically start at 10:00 AM and continue pretty much straight through past 6:00 PM. Because of the costs involved, the schedule unfolds without breaks: the proceedings continue through the July 4 holiday and Sundays. This year Sunday, July 6, was the fourth day of the RA and a day of business as usual.

So delegates of faith have a choice: on their sabbath, they can go to a church, temple, or mosque and miss part of the business that their colleagues have sent them to conduct; they can skip religious observances altogether; or they can conduct their own, which is what many of the Christian delegates do.

When I arrived at my first Annual Meeting (Minneapolis, 1995), I was elated to see that the Minneapolis Convention Center was very close to the Basilica of Our Lady; then I learned that the basilica was under construction and closed for services at that time. But soon I noticed signs mentioning a “Mass for Catholic delegates.” When Sunday rolled around, I found myself in the company of a few hundred delegates, all worshiping enthusiastically. As a stranger away from home, I found it very moving to find a congregation to worship with.

The woman who had organized that Mass is Ellen Logue. At the time, she was a retired delegate from California. I contacted her and offered my services as a musician for that congregation. She gratefully accepted, and I have been playing and singing for the delegate Masses ever since.

To foster the continuation of this practice, Ellen was assisted by not only deep faith but also good, practical organizational skills. When she arranged conference rooms for the Masses she made sure to arrange them for the other Christians attending as well, so that the delegate religious services aren’t just a Catholic thing. She used her extensive connections in the Catholic Church, especially within the Dominican order, to recruit priests to preside at the Masses. And she encouraged all delegate worshipers to come together for the purpose of worship only, and to resist any attempts to use these faith gatherings to promote positions on the sometimes-sensitive issues that come before the Representative Assemblies.

Ellen continues to be a source of help, support, and advice. And since she stopped attending RAs a few years ago, quite a number of delegates have stepped forward to continue the leadership she started. We have ministers of the Eucharist, Word, hospitality, and music. And we have organizers who make sure that NEA reserves rooms so that all this can happen.

So once again this year, on Saturday, July 5, over 300 delegates gathered for Mass in an assembly room at the Washington Convention Center. It was an odd sort of church: the microphones had been turned off, and the worshipers stood or sat behind tables still set up from a meeting a few hours earlier. I don’t recall any candles, and worshipers passed conference bags for donations. But inside that room as in Catholic churches all over the world, it was the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, and that’s what we celebrated with our celebrant, Dominican Father Albert Paretsky.

It wasn’t just like Mass back home: some had to catch shuttle buses for their hotels, so as we sang the closing hymn the procession out included many of the faithful. It was quick, but it was reverent, joyful, and musical: the beauty and significance of the Mass is greater than our human limitations. As with Mass back home, some of the worshipers stayed around for a while. (Some new friends from Pennsylvania even helped carry my keyboard and other supplies on the DC Metro!) Many commented on the beauty and meaningfulness of this shared worship experience, and I’m guessing we’ll look forward to meeting together again for Eucharist next year in San Diego.

Prejudice by Another Name

I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink! It reinforced what psychologists have been saying for years: sometimes we aren’t even aware of the reasons for our decisions. Gladwell writes about times when we make decisions literally within the blink of an eye. Evidently, those judgments sometimes turn out to be as accurate as those on which we spend a lot of time. (Or, as my former teaching colleague Jerry says, “When you study long, you study wrong.”)

This article is about what I believe is a form of prejudice. This is an area which I think it’s best to approach with humility: those of us who have our favorites in this Presidential campaign may have made up our minds months or even years ago for reasons we’ll never know. I’m pretty sure that the reasons why I’m supporting a white candidate have nothing to do with her race; but if Gladwell is right, I may never be sure.

It’s tempting to take the position that our true motives are unknowable, so any time spent on knowing them is time wasted; but I think we have an intellectual and moral responsibility to try to understand our motives. And I think that’s especially important for Democrats this year because the sex and race of the candidates are more important in this primary than they have ever been before.

This phenomenon is being called “identity politics.” The Web site dictionary.com quotes the American Heritage Dictionary as defining identity politics as “political attitudes or positions that focus on the concerns of social groups identified mainly on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.” (It’s worth a trip to Wikipedia for more on this phenomenon.)

I must confess to some discomfort when I hear Hillary Clinton’s supporters pointing out how wonderful it would be to elect the first woman to the White House. To me, that was never much of an argument, and I’m equally unimpressed by the equivalent argument being made by Barack Obama’s supporters. Both arguments are appeals to identity politics.

Earlier in the primary when several white male candidates were still running, if supporters had ever suggested voting for one because he is a white male, observers would rightly have condemned the suggestion as racist and sexist. But political leaders and regular citizens alike say openly that they’re supporting Clinton because she’s a woman or that they’re supporting Obama because he’s black. Allegedly that’s identity politics and it’s OK, but to me it’s just prejudice by another name.

I wrote in a previous post that our challenge is to vote for the person we believe will make the best President. We can honorably reach different conclusions about whether that’s Clinton or Obama, but I think we are obliged, to the extent that it’s possible, to make that judgment independent of the sex and race of the candidate.

As someone who is neither black nor female, I hope a final observation will be appropriate. To me at least, it is clear that being a woman has been a far greater burden to Clinton’s campaign than being black has been to Obama’s. I have never heard anyone suggest that Obama’s race makes him unfit for the Presidency, but I have heard plenty of people suggest that Clinton’s sex is an obstacle. If she appears sensitive, she’s weak; if she appears tough, she’s a lesbian. Obama hasn’t had to contend with anything remotely like it. I have a friend who believes that many white voters who tell pollsters that they would vote for a black candidate actually won’t. He may be right, and racism may hide below the surface. But evidently sexism doesn’t have to stay below the surface: it can be indulged in openly and without penalty.

The implication–and it comes as a surprise to me–is that at this point in our journey as a society, sex is a far more potent political force than race.

This historic primary has revealed things about us that we might prefer to have kept secret; but we’re better off for knowing them, and we’ll be better off if we can acknowledge them honestly, openly, and fairly.

We’re Electing a President

I have a lot of friends (and at least one family member) supporting Barack Obama for President. That’s their right, and if the Illinois Senator becomes the Democratic nominee I’ll be happy to support him against either of the Republican candidates.

I went through a period of indecision, but everything became clearer when I realized that my choice was actually pretty simple. The choice we all face is simple and yet profound. Our responsibility is to vote for the person who will make the best President. Period.

We can’t vote on the basis of who’s more electable. To do so is to allow our political adversaries to make our decision for us.
We can’t be swayed by the chance to be “a part of history.” Any Presidential election makes history, and everyone who votes is part of that history. (I’ll write later about “identity voting,” which I think is simply prejudice dressed in political correctness.)
It doesn’t matter which candidate is perceived as more likable. Millions of people thought they liked George Bush more than Al Gore or John Kerry: how’s that working out?
Without attention to where it’s heading, why it’s important, and how it’s to be accomplished, “change” is an empty promise.
Substance is more important than style. Rhetoric is valuable only when employed to communicate a meaningful message. The best speaker isn’t always the best President.
Even the ability to run a good campaign seems to be a poor predictor of success in office. Bush ran a better campaign than Gore or Kerry, but has been a disaster in office.

Most of the people I know who are supporting Obama seem to be doing so for one of the reasons I’ve just listed; I seldom hear anyone suggest that he’s more qualified or that his positions on issues are superior to Clinton’s.

I’ll readily concede that Republicans and independents hate Clinton more than Obama and that he seems sincere and likable, promises “change,” makes great speeches, and has run a fabulous campaign. None of that matters, because on the basis of her experience and the substance of her proposals, Hillary Clinton offers a greater likelihood of success as President.

That means that she deserves–and gets–my vote.