The July 15, 1970, edition of the Oakland Tribune offered an example of who I was at the time in an article that began on page 1 and jumped to page 16. As the reporter explained what happened:
“… the Hayward City Council was showered with balloons and protests by a group of 15 longhaired youths objecting to what they charged was police harassment and a city ban on pamphleteering in public parks. The youths, led by Robert Hughes, said they were threatened with prosecution by city officials if they continued distributing political handbills during their free rock concerts at Hayward Memorial Park…. The youths started a carnival-like atmosphere in their protest by sailing balloons through the council chambers, wearing tiny clown caps, and staging in the council aisles a mock monopoly game they called ‘The Hayward Game,’ satirizing the city establishment.”
I learned how to be in the world from folks who raised me. As a result, my sense of right and wrong reaches back to the late 19th century through the stories that those elders told me. That gave me a lot of history to ground me. I suspect that those multiple generations of knowledge, mixed with my own experiences, have now given me some wisdom. I wasn’t born wise, and I can still make foolish mistakes. But I can apply the lessons of my years and the lessons of those who came before me to a lot of circumstances. I don’t believe we should do something now because we did it before. But it sure does save me a lot of headache to avoid circumstances that I’ve heard about or personally seen before.
That reliance on learning wisdom from the past and personal experience doesn’t seem to be universal. For instance, consider the antics of some House members during the President’s State of the Union address. Their reality-show theatrics got them the attention they apparently need, but it accomplished little beyond raising their profiles. They are elected, as the Constitution defines their role, to govern as a critical part of the legislative third of the government. In order for that part of the government to function, though, the framers seem to have hoped that we would elect people with wisdom to fulfill the role. That didn’t happen with some congressional members who seemed to think that acting outrageously for the cameras is what they’re there to do.
It’s as if UPS hired a deliver driver who came back at the end of the day with a full load and said that it was much more interesting to stop at Starbucks and make drinks for customers. I doubt that UPS would tolerate that. Pretty quickly, the manager at UPS is going to look for another driver who can get the job done. The job as a member of the House of Representatives is to represent your constituents – not to become a spectacle during a Constitutionally mandated event as the nation looks on. My Southern progenitors would call these people, “loud and wrong,” a phrase they reserved for people whose mouths outran their wisdom.
I understand that people can stray from what they’ve learned. That’s certainly the case for me. Even with the lessons that my forebearers gave me, I had to learn some on my own. Early in my public life, I thought that being the loudest voice was important, while assuming that, of course, I was right. I recall that event during the city council meeting in my late teens as I and my colleagues disrupted governance functions in an attempt to make a point. I can also recall how little impact those actions had.
The stunt in 1970 got us attention, but the point we were making got lost. The speech I gave denounced the police who had recently shot and killed a Latinx young man. We demanded accountability for that officer’s actions. The reporter misses those important points in favor of describing our antics and the comparatively minor points about our right to distribute handbills. Our protest was clever, innovative, and got attention enough to be in that day’s regional newspaper. Did it resolve the issue of police harassment and brutality? Now, over 50 years later, the nation is still having that discussion. Nothing changed in the city as a result of what “15 longhaired youth” did in 1970. Maybe clever, but not productive or wise.
The difference between the GOP loud-and-wrong crowd and me 50+ years ago is that I was a radical 18-year-old with little wisdom who eventually got some. In contrast, the current crop of GOP rabble are elected, mid-life adults whom constituents should expect to have some measure of prudence as they focus on the job they’re there to do. As I aged, I learned to find avenues that allowed me to create and sustain the changes I believed should happen. I became wiser. These folks are much older than I was when I was acting out, yet they seem incapable of learning to do more than shout and catcall their way into the national spotlight – with no agenda other than to decry the failures they claim others have had. They offer no competing vision or direction – just anarchical complaints. It took growing older and seeing the futility of my actions for me. As I wanted change, I began to realize the need for more than shouting. Unfortunately, these folks are being rewarded by accolades and additional funding. As a result, there’s not much incentive for them to grow wiser.
In addition to choosing wiser actions, another lesson I learned from my elders and my own life is one that also seemed lacking at the State of the Union: respect for others. Not subservience to others, or belief in the superiority of others. Respect. I learned it from watching my aunt who was born in the late 1800s and by the 1950s owned her own grocery store. I saw her show respect to community leaders and neighbors down on their luck with the same grace. My learning came from watching family and friends with brilliant minds being relegated to menial tasks because of the color of their skin, yet rising to excel at those tasks until the larger world recognized them. When they were ignored and when they later became well-known, they treated everyone they encountered with the same respect.
From what others taught me and from my own life, I learned to respect both those with privilege and those without equally. As a result, I listen respectfully when people speak. If I disagree, I find the time and appropriate place to express my disagreement. Although I now have status and privilege that exceeds where I started many years ago, I don’t abuse that privilege by disrespecting anyone. Wisdom teaches me that waiting for that appropriate moment and venue respects the speaker with whom I disagree. That, in turn, gives me the opportunity to share my disagreement so that was can, at the least, understand our differences. I’m no longer interested in looking clever. I want to see real changes, and that begins when I interact with others respectfully.
This all leaves me wondering about the constituents who voted for these representatives. In one case, it was by a small majority, but most of the others won their most recent elections by wide margins. I’m guessing that their constituents would tell you that they raise their children to be respectful and that they themselves are respectful of others – as most adults I know try to be. The majority of those voters might even tell you that they take some pride in doing whatever job they were hired to do. We’re supposed to learn those behaviors from early childhood. It’s part of the wisdom that gets passed down. But instead of demanding that their member of Congress acts wisely and focuses on legislation effectiveness (the job they were elected to conduct), constituents cheer disrespectful and ineffective actions that are clearly antithetical to the common courtesy these voters presumably practice in their own lives. To follow the metaphor I started above, it’s as if they tell their representative that it’s okay to make drinks at Starbucks – while being surly to the people who come to the counter – instead of making deliveries.
When are these congresspeople’s bosses, their constituents who elected them, going to expect them to deliver on the job they were elected to do instead of acting like they’re auditioning to be the latest loudmouth on TV’s newest reality series? Maybe these voters figure, “Well, at least my representative isn’t out stealing puppies from the Amish,” (as is allegedly the case for one NY Republican House member); but that makes as much sense as the errant delivery driver telling the boss, “Well, at least I wasn’t using the truck to rob banks.” The issue isn’t about who’s worse than whom. The voters in these congressional districts have to expect that the people they elect will act more wisely and respectfully than what we’ve seen so far from the people they elected. They have to hold these people accountable to legislate – i.e., to do the job they were elected to do – and to do it wisely.
