cell913blog.com #70

 After each election, there are news reports of the percentage of voters who voted, and while the range of those numbers varies dependent on multiple factors, there is always a rather substantial number of people who did not vote.

ElectionsCanada.ca in a starting graph of figures compiled from 1867 through 2021 documents some remarkable numbers:

From early averages over 70% to more recent numbers in the low 60% range, there is a trend to a lower percentage of eligible voters participating in Canadian federal elections. From the same source, based on a comparison by age group, in Canadian elections between 2011 and 2021,

·      voters between ages 18-24 the average ranges from 38.8% to 57.1%

·      voters between ages 25-34 the average ranges from 45.1% to 58.4%

·      voters between ages 45-54 the average ranges from 63.8% to 68.1%

·      voters between ages 55-64 the average ranges from 68.3% to73.7 %

·      voters between ages 64-74 the average ranges from 74.9% to79.1%

·      voters 75 years and older the average ranges from 60.3% to 68.6%

The trend-lines here seem to suggest that as Canadians age, their voting turn-out rises until they reach 75. Another model of the bell curve indicating that the percentage of turnout is highest among those between 55 and 64.

In various jurisdictions, significant and creative initiatives have been tried to increase voter turn-out, especially among young voters. Presumably, those working to grow and to enhance democracy consider their efforts will have ‘the biggest bang for their buck’ (and effort) with that demographic. Having walked astride student elections in high school, college, university and later in municipal, provincial and federal campaigns, like many others, I have been dismayed at the degree of political engagement among Canadians at all levels, over at least seven decades. Documenting issues, personalities, conflicts, tensions, and rationales for various decisions by all levels of ‘government’ as one way of opening both the curtain of those issues and the eyes (and hopefully the minds) of readers and viewers to both grab their attention and engage their opinions. My generation became ‘politicized’ in the televised inaugural address of the late President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, on that cold January day in 1961. Robert Frost was the first poet to speak at the inauguration of a president, reciting from memory, ‘The Gift Outright’ when the glare of the sun prevented him from reading. While Kennedy’s ‘ask not what your country can do for you, rather ask what you can do for your country’ is the most well-known line from that day, Frost’s poem is worth recalling:

The Gift Outright

The land was ours

before we were the

land’s

She was our land more

than a hundred years

Before we were her

people. She was ours

in Massachusetts, in

Virginia,

But we were England’s

still colonials,

Possessing what we still

were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we

now no more

possessed.

Something we were

withholding made us

weak

Until we found out that

it was ourselves

We were withholding

From our land of living,

And forthwith found

Salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we

gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was

many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely

realizing westward,

But still storied,

artless, unenhanced

Such as she was, such

as she will become.

Not the stuff of high political rhetoric, yet worth pondering all these many decades later. And the initiation of the ‘poet’ into that ceremony has opened the door for the latest young black female poet, Amanda Gorman. (From cnbc.com): The 22-year-old Los Angeles resident, youth poet laureate of Los Angeles, first national youth poet laureate and Harvard graduate was invited to speak at the event by First Lady Jill Biden, who had previously seen the poet do a reading at the Library of Congress.

One highlight line from The Hill We Climb reads:

And yes, we are far from polished

far from pristine,

but that doesn’t mean

we are striving to form

a union that is perfect.

We are striving to

forge our union with

purpose.

To compose a country

committed to all

cultures, colors,

characters, and

conditions of man.

And so we lift our

Gazes not to what

Stands between us,

but what stands before

us.

Poetry is not an exclusive passport into being politicized. Rhetoric, youth, energy and enthusiasm, even a kind of self-possessed confidence and thespian imagination, like that displayed by Pierre Elliott Trudeau when he blazed onto the Canadian political landscape in 1968…these are all triggers, memorable moments that lift both the spirits and the identities of generations to watch, digest, criticize and engage with the political process. Amanda Gorman’s commitment too both expose and to imagine a thaw in race relations illustrates another form of political activism.

Here is another:

I cannot pinpoint a moment when I became politicized, when I knew that I would spend my life in the liberation struggle. To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment of one’s birth, whether one acknowledges it or not. An African child is born in an African Only hospital, taken home in n Africans Only bus, lives in an Africans Only area, and attends Africans Only schools, if he attends school at all.

When he grow up, he can hold Africans Only jobs, rent a house in Africans Only townships, ride Africans Only trains, and be stopped at any time of the day or night and be ordered to produce a pass, failing which he will be arrested and thrown in jail. His life is circumscribed by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, dim his potential, and stunt his life. This was the reality, and one could deal with it in a myriad of ways.

I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, and thousand unremembered moments, produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, From henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people: instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise. (Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, New York, 1994-5, p.95)

In retrospect, what might be termed the ‘gold standard’ of political commitment, integrity, authenticity, and dedication comes from Mandela. And what his biography tells us is that he never wavered from his struggle to free his people. Such dedication, echoed in others like Dr. Martin Luther King, exposes by eclipsing the narcissism of the trump life and campaign. The depth of Mandela’s anger, rebellion and devotion to the liberation of his people suggests a confidence that, with others, he could and would make a significant difference in the lives of South Africans.

Today, there are few who can envision the depth of his anger together with his vision of making a meaningful difference. To politicize young people in 2024, one must acknowledge that too many in many countries, including Canada and the United States, continue to live in conditions which can only be considered intolerable, even unconscionable. Whether the barriers to decency, equality, respect, dignity, honour and opportunity are considered under such terms as ‘classism,’ ‘racism,’ ‘sexism,’ ‘ageism,’ poverty, hunger, disadvanged, or even classified as ‘handicapped’….the capacity and willingness of advanced, affluent, educated and creative nations like both Canada and the United States are both seriously threatened by a right-wing political agenda, and the men and women who espouse that agenda.

This moment, unlike others in that the divide between the have’s and the have-not’s, has grown into a chasm that threatens never to be bridged. Banning books, for example, is a significant agenda item for that political agenda. And the underlying, if unacknowledged, impetus for book banning is fear, the very argument they project onto their opponents.

From The Toronto Star, April 23, 2024, in a piece entitled, If anything should be banned, it’s ignorance, fear, and hatred-not books by Michael Coren we read:

We live in a divided, judgmental and unforgiving age. No ideology is immune—the darkness seems to be wedded to the culture—and extremes of left and right are especially culpable….According to PEN America, between July 2021 and March 2022, alone, there were 1,568 book bans in the U.S. Texas and Florida were among the leaders but it might surprise some to know that Pennsylvania was in second place. Most of the condemned books dealt with LGBTQIA issues, or the origins and problems of racism…..Book Banning is usually the step before people banning, just as book burning comes before people burning…

Rigid, intransigent, fundamental, binary and autocratic self-righteousness, in all forms and faces, leaves no room for poetry, the imagination, the aspirations and the dreams of not only children but people of all ages. Setting mind-fences up, analogous to and evocative of that monstrosity trump was erecting on the border, not only suggests, but actually exposes, a profound fear, contempt, hatred and animus toward anything and anyone, including any idea, ‘they’ cannot control.

 Whether the barriers to decency, equality, respect, dignity, honour and opportunity are considered under such terms as ‘classism,’ ‘racism,’ ‘sexism,’ ‘ageism,’ poverty, hunger, disadvanged, or even classified as ‘handicapped’….the capacity and willingness of advanced, affluent, educated and creative nations like both Canada and the United States are both seriously threatened by a right-wing political agenda, and the men and women who espouse that agenda.

While Mandela was committed to the liberation of his people, a different kind and degree of liberation is needed today. This liberation is from the enslavement to personality cults, and to the mind-control that those personality cults seek to impose.

Mandela knew both who his opponents in the white supremacy regime were, what they believed, and how he and his cohorts might strategize, plan and execute, even predict how they might respond to specific acts and strategies of the ‘freedom-fighters.’

Freeing the next generations of children, of all races, ethnicities, cultures and beliefs from the straight-jacket, and the prison cell of ignorance and duplicity, into which the cult leaders, the megalomaniacal terrorist-leaders (think trump, putin, netanyahu, xi, kim, orban) would have us live, is a global problem. And both its definitions and its expectations remain somewhat vague and difficult to discern.

Nevertheless, this morning, Saturday, August 12, 2024, we learn the startling and scintillating news that one political activist, Simone Biles, has just contributed some $4 million dollars to the Harris-Walz campaign.

Such a high-profile, altruistic, and visionary commitment, today, from a single woman, ‘speaking’ through the megaphone of her celebrity, can have ripples that can inspire, motivate and convince millions of others to see the issues we all face forthrightly, honestly, courageously and challengingly.

Thank you Ms Biles, not only for your generous vision and political commitment to the people of the United States, as well as those of us around the world who are watching anxiously for the electoral results the world needs on November 5.