Political Theater
Disclaimer: This isn’t political.
For most of my life, I’ve tried to avoid politics and political discussion. Committees and councils have always seemed, by their very nature, to be counter-productive.
Over the past year or two, my calling has put me in a position where it’s been helpful to interact with local politics and government. I’ve attended and made myself available at local ward and neighborhood meetings, and officially gained support from the alderman when submitting a proposal to buy land from the City of St Louis.
While my innermost crypto-anarchist revolts at what seems to be, most basically, hierarchical impositions of power, I’ve come to appreciate these meetings in church basements and city boardrooms. Citizens getting together to share ways they see to better the lives of themselves and their neighbors, or to just be heard. Officials making themselves physically available, justifying their positions. People, doing life in community the best they know how.
Is it efficient? Not at all. It is real and messy, like people. Early on, to psych myself up to go (I am not a meeting person, of any type), I would simply view these gatherings as entertainment, through an anthropological lens. Stages that you don’t need to buy tickets to be an audience of, improv shows that you get to interact with. I’ve come to enjoy the acts, personalities, and what I can expect from certain characters.
Currently, once a month, reams of paper are printed and stacked at the entrance to the once-a-month 8:30 am LRA Board Meeting. I long for the day when, instead of needing to procure a packet to see what is happening, their decisions are archived, searchable, and accessible via API. Or, when a verdict requiring community input, it will simply be made electronically, effortlessly and incorruptible.
When this day comes, I hope there will still be goofy chairmen in obnoxious bow ties, chain-smoking directors to blow me off, social justice warriors protesting every motion regardless of what it is, and aldermen to take out for a beer. Even if, at that point, it is purely theater.
