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The election cometh
 I co-produced a conference the weekend of September 11-12 on the Healing Power of Art. The conference took place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in a beautiful space equipped with a portable stage, a graceful and competent tech crew, a high ceiling studded with a vast array of theater lights, a polished floor, clean dressing rooms with fresh rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom stalls. The presenters were astonishingly brilliant, diverse, and heartfelt and I was proud to be among them. Catherine Sneed talked about her work cultivating gardens with prisoners and ex-cons. About how they deliver food they have grown to the hungry and in that moment of delivery, the politics of the world shifts. The prisoners are feeding their own community vegetables and some of the children they deliver food to have never tasted a cauliflower. Imagne, Cahterine says, that in the wealthiest country in the world there are children whose families do not have enough money to buy vegetables. Fred Martin spoke about the history of art as a healing practice, Susan Griffin about how when one writes, if one is to write well, one discovers what is true not in a way that aggrandizes the ego but in a way that brings us to our knees with compassion. Presenter after presenter stood on the stage and told of their own stories about how art had been a healing force in their lives.
Outside, over five hundred people gathered to receive training as they prepared to visit various states in the country to oversee the voting process and insure that all who wanted to vote in fact have the opportunity to do so-- that they are protected, encouraged, received gracefully at the polling booth and that their votes are counted.
The volunteers gathered out of doors under the clear September San Francisco skies and divided into groups--Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio.
i began to reflect upon the nature of our country, a country I love with all of my heart, from the deepest place of my being; I love granite-peaked Sierras , the expanse of flowering deserts, the red rock and fractal canyons of the southwest, the wild California coast, the flaming fall colors in the Adirondacks. I love this country because it is my birthplace and my home, because my mother tongue is American English, because my ancestors came here to escape persecution and were welcomed. But I cannot love the fact that that thousands of people in the last election were turned away from polling boothsand their votes were not counted. That when African American congress people requested the elections be redone in the contested counties, they were turned down. We are not living in an underdeveloped country but in a country of unprecedented wealth. Freedom to vote is at the core of our democracy. If we claim to be the ones who are exporting freedom to a world plagued by oppressive governments, we must first insure we have freedom at home.
Please vote.
Please make sure your friends and colleagues vote.
Please encourage your friends and colleagues who are not registered to do so and to vote.
Please vote for the candidates who truly embrace freedom and democracy and compassion for all living beings---who do not merely pay lip service to freedom but actually take the steps needed to protect all living beings from violence and poverty and make sure that all children have vegetables to eat.
© Nina Wise
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