TheBanyanTree: rock out with my Barack out

[Julie Anna Teague]

Warning: political content--don't read if you don't like to read about 
other people's politics.  I've always been involved in politics.  I 
remember seeing Johnson in 64 from my mom's arms--I was three.  At ten, 
I worked fund-raisers wearing purple crushed velvet shorts and a banner 
that said "Welsh-aide" and handed out pamphlets for the man who was 
running for Governor of Indiana.  In 1976, at 15, I waited for hours 
beside a barricade so I could shake Jimmy Carter's hand--that moment 
remains one of the highlights of my life.  I have petitioned and 
rallied and worked the polls for people I admire.  I have marched and 
carried protest signs, calling to task those I didn't.  My granddad, my 
dad, and my mom have all held public office.  To not write about 
politics would be to leave off part of myself that is grafted on at 
bone level.  And this is far too much lead in for the smidgeon-sized 
thing I have to say today, but it's to give you a gist of who and why I 
am.

For the first time in my lifetime, the Indiana Presidential primary 
actually matters.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've heard it on the news, but 
if you're from a state that has consistently had input into who runs 
for President for your party, it might be hard to realize what a big 
stinkin' deal this is.  I've voted in every primary, but with quite a 
bit of apathy, because everything has always been a done deal.  What 
sense of investment in the process is there in that?  But this year is 
different.  This year I count.

My Presidential vote, on the other hand, has never counted, maybe never 
will count.  The last time Indiana went Democratic in a Presidential 
election was for Johnson in that 1964 race.  Maybe they were just too 
hurt and stunned to remember they were Republicans after November, 
1963.  Indiana didn't even go for Kennedy in '60.  I was looking 
through history, to see what had happened before my time, and saw that 
Indiana did go for Roosevelt, but only a couple of his terms, and well, 
there was a major groundswell there that perhaps no one wanted to be 
left out of.  Roosevelt got something like 99 percent of the popular 
vote. (I'm making that number up, but it was WWII, and it was a 
groundswell.)  Then Indiana got back on it's conservative track and 
voted for Thomas Dewey twice.  I made a joke to a co-worker that the 
second time around, some Hoosiers probably thought he was the 
incumbent.  It might take a minute, but you'll get this real stretch of 
a joke, I hope, eventually.  I crack myself up.  But then, that isn't 
nice is it, to claim that my fellow Hoosiers are complete idjits?  No 
it is not.  Suffice it to say, no delegate has ever carried my precious 
vote to the final tally-uppers.

But this year, in this primary at least, my vote counts.  And tonight, 
I am going to hear Obama speak.  I'm beside myself with excitment.  And 
here is where my Buddhist leanings touch my political fervor--this 
sense of optimism growing in my heart like a bean vine. There have been 
politicians I can admire (on both sides of the equation), but only a 
few at this level have called up in me, so strongly, the eightfold path 
principles of Right Speech and Right Action.  Jimmy Carter was one of 
these people--I was so inspired by him in the 70's and feel that time 
has proved that he was who he said he was, that he has followed his 
"right speech" with "right action" and the world is a better place 
because of him.  I knew, from a deep place, that he was telling me the 
truth, that he meant what he said.  I feel that way again and I am 
buoyed up in these troubled times.

I like this quote: "The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist 
ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or 
friends, start war or create peace."  I know they are just words, and 
words from someone who is making a major grab for political power, 
words that should always be considered suspect, but something in me 
says differently.  I am going tonight to hear the man for myself.  I 
*sense* right speech, and I *pray* for right action.

Julie