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Civil Rights & Responsibilities / volume 5 number 7, August 2003 Assemblies and Agendas When I read in last month’s issue of The Ester Republic that the results of the picnic poll were “passed by the Ester Community Association,” I felt sick to my stomach. Not at the poll results—that was a shoo-in—but at what had been done to the association. I honestly felt that, after 20+ years as an active member, I would have to resign. I had chaired the committee that named the roads (remember when the borough started calling us all Alpha Way?), had a hand in building the park, worked on the hall a time or three, and I still have the tapes of Ida Lane Clausen at the famous “Great Electrical Theft Inquest” maintained under lock and key as I was ordered to do so many years ago. Damn it, I would resign. Not over the stance that was taken, but that a stance was taken at all. And without asking many of the twenty or thirty people that actually come to the meetings and do the work! I had been informed, as an elected member of the board of directors, that information about the proposed resolutions would be disseminated at the picnic, but no mention was made of a poll... But wait! As I thought about it, I realized that we couldn’t have passed those resolutions. The vote as it was taken was in contravention of our bylaws. I read the article again. Sure enough, it doesn’t say that we passed them. It strongly implies that we passed them. It presents the results as a fait accompli, with a “formal statement” to be issued by the ECA, but like the misguided reporting that it is, it never comes out and says that the Ester Community Association, Inc. passed those harebrained resolutions. The editor of The Ester Republic achieved that impression with simple front-page malignancy. But why even contemplate resignation over this? Am I just taking my toys and going home? Am I so blindingly conservative that I can’t see the danger that lurks in the USA PATRIOT Act? Do I suddenly hate my neighbors for being against something that most educated people agree is a bad law? It comes down to Assemblies and Agendas. One of the greatest things about America is our right to assemble with whom we please. The Founders thought so much of this freedom of association that it was enshrined in the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights. People associate with each other for many different reasons—from religion to sports, profit to protection, partying to politics. Ester is a great town. It contains many different people, with many different careers, working toward different goals in different ways. Some even have different politics. But what brings us all together is where we live—our Community. Anyone who has lived here awhile will tell you that what makes Ester great is its sense of Community—even outsiders will agree that we do it better than most. That’s why the free association of people coming together to enhance their lives in Ester chose Community as their middle name. The Ester Community Association was born in 1941. Its success comes from the dentists and diesel mechanics, gold miners and wildlife biologists, artists and businesstypes that make up its membership. We choose to come together to discuss issues that affect Ester, to party, and to perform works that enhance our lives. I know relatively few ECA members that actually need to worry about John Ashcroft’s brownshirts bursting into their homes in search of al-Qaida. But in this day and age, everyone must have an Agenda. Not an agenda, like building a bus shelter for the kids to wait in, but an Agenda to right all wrongs immediately, and stay firmly on, while moving quickly along, the prescribed course to utopia. (Think Globally, Pass Useless Resolutions Locally). In the mid-80s there was an attempt to have the Ester Community Association take an anti-mining stance. The members at that time wisely chose inclusiveness over polarization, keeping the organization open, welcoming, pleasantly dysfunctional, and apolitical. Had mercenary voters been allowed to participate, the outcome may have been different. Still, merely by refusing to take a stance on a highly charged issue, the association lost some members, but not nearly as many as would have been lost had that particular Agenda been adopted. Once an Agenda is adopted, or forced upon an organization, it’s a short step to the total politicization that has destroyed the credibility of many venerable groups. I used to belong to Amnesty International because I thought they did good work. Some time ago they became politicized, and when I found the U.S. on their list of top ten Human Rights Violators, I ceased my free association with that organization. They had lost their credibility with me, but that was okay with them because they were getting their donations elsewhere. Unfortunately, to me, it made their other good work suspect as well. Look, folks, the USA PATRIOT Act is bad law. It’s got a few kernels of good that the law enforcement sector has wanted, and needed, for decades. It was passed at the height of passion, following the worst attack on America in over fifty years, and it is sunsetted. Democrats voted for it in similar proportions to Republicans. Most thinking people recognize it as a danger if it is misused. It should not be extended. I would vote to renounce it in any forum but this one. But most of those that have adopted opposition to it as their Agenda don’t care about that. Anti-PATRIOT Act groups are filled with the type of activists who merely see a slam-dunk opportunity to bash the current administration (even though members of the previous one admit that they would have passed it, too, if they thought they could have gotten away with it). If these activists were truly concerned about imminent attacks on the civil liberties of Esteroids, why not propose a resolution stating that the Ester Community Association respects the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Alaska Constitution above all other laws promulgated by Man. The answer, of course, is because that type of positive activism doesn’t suit their Agenda of petty W-bashing. Their transparent abandonment of the common good in pursuit of short-term political goal scoring was apparent to anyone who read the “ECA Resolutions” as they were first submitted, and rightly tabled until the fall meeting by the general membership. I’m reminded of the fruits of such short-sighted activism-without-substance every time I drive through the College/University intersection. Along the curb on the east side of University is a weedy, barren strip of dirt separating street from sidewalk. I remember many of these same local Activists carrying their Signs and fighting the Good Fight against Monolithic AKDOTPF to change their Design and leave Earthen these valuable 18”-wide strips of Real Estate in between Concrete Structures, so that Flowers may be Planted and Lives Enhanced aesthetically. The hollowness of their eventual victory is personified as these ugly strips cry out to all who notice them: “We’ve no Time for Planting the Flowers we Promised, we’ve got Other Things to Protest!” You see, it’s not the anti-PATRIOT Act stance I’m disgusted with—it’s the hijacking of an honorable, useful, apolitical association of people to fulfill the aims of some short-sighted political activists. It puts the ECA on a level with the Berkeley City Council, forever passing wacky pronouncements, rather than the Peace Corps, actively engaged in bettering lives. The ECA could host a forum, a debate, or a “teach-in,” or rent its hall to others to do so, but it best serves its members by remaining above the fray. I choose to associate with political groups to express my political views. I choose to assemble with the Ester Community Association to participate in discussions and engage in volunteer works that improve the place we live. It’s been working just fine for sixty-two years. And we throw Great Parties! To those who would have it become the Ester Political Association, adopting popular Agendas like flavors-of-the-day, I say shame on you. Shame on you for lacking the drive or ambition or confidence to begin your own political association. Shame on you for using biased, unauthorized polling to put your words in our mouths. Shame on you for attempting to railroad the Ester Community Association.
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