A Town This Size

Published in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette August 21, 2013

     "I just can't see why, in a town this size, we can't have a democracy..." I told a friend last week.  I meant it positively:  I think, in a town the size of Lindsay, or Exeter, Farmersville, or Woodlake for that matter, we can.  In fact, towns this size may be the only places where real democracy has a chance:  a government of, by, and for the people, a government that responds to its residents and operates on their behalf.

     In towns the size of Porterville, Tulare and Visalia, because of the fortunes to be made, we expect democracy to have a harder time competing with the economic values of rich people.  We expect democracy to be twisted to meet their needs.  We expect democracy to be just a form we maintain to keep a shred of self-respect.  And we don't expect to have much impact standing before their city councils when we are trespassed against by their decisions.

     "This is a perfect-sized town," said a new friend Sunday over coffee and cookies after church.  "You can get to know people here," he mused, and though it's not as easy as it looks, it's true.  With a role that provides interaction with folks, you can get to know lots of people here.  You can even learn new languages, exchanging words with new friends.

     In a town this size there's an opportunity to build a business based on the loyalty of friends and family, or get a job in one.  There are opportunities to join with others to form clubs or organizations to meet observed needs, to join churches in the search for strengthening faith and the chance to sing.

     But there are also opportunities for big fish to come in, do a belly flop into the little pond and splash out all the water.  Goodbye, smaller fish.  Goodbye (eventually), big fish.  Hello, mud hole.

     And that's why I'm against Dollar General coming to the edge of downtown, its tail swacking Miguel Chavez's family business out to the south edge where they may or may not survive (especially considering the costs of this move.)  If they would take over the empty Lindsay Foods site, where the visibility would draw people from Strathmore and the countryside, or fill one of the existing empty buildings downtown, with display windows attracting passersby on evening strolls, I'd reconsider.  If they'd act like a neighbor, participate in the Chamber, hire locally and circulate their profits through the community, we might have something worth approving.  But they won't.

    Dollar General ranked fourth-worst employer nationwide in a recent study of publicly-traded companies (see "America's Worst Companies to Work For," July 19, 2013 at www.247wallst.com.)  Citing employee dissatisfaction with inadequate hours and restrictions against having second jobs, the report also notes that "Dollar General has struggled to prop up its bottom line, with net income virtually flat in its last reported quarter."  The report also indicated a poor rating on the American Customer Satisfaction Index.  This is the gift horse we're not supposed to look in the mouth.

     What I'm suggesting is that this proposal has the potential to demolish qualities of life that are precious and unique to a town this size, like getting to know people, start a business or get a job.  Like democracy.  Let's remember our citizenship, step up to the plate and tell the Council we want them to reconsider.
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Trudy Wischemann is a remedial organizer who sometimes sings for food.  You can view this and other essays here and leave a comment below.

Soldier's Heart

Published July 31, 2013 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     I have been reading a new book by Parker J. Palmer, a Quaker author whose work has helped me grow repeatedly.  Healing the Heart of Democracy,  with the outrageous subtitle The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit (2012,) is helping me understand why I normally would not have picked up such a book had I not been run through the tumbler of small town politics for the last three years:  I think I've been suffering from a form of soldier's heart.

     Palmer opens with the words of Terry Tempest Williams, a Mormon author whose work I admire.  "The human heart is the first home of democracy," she says.  "It is where we embrace our questions.  Can we be equitable?  Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions?  And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up - ever- trusting our fellow citizens to join us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?"  The goal of this book is to offer suggestions on how we get to Yes.

     Palmer's main contention is that the majority of the American people are not apathetic about politics, but brokenhearted.  "When things we care about fall apart, heartbreak happens."  Sometimes heartbreak shatters.  Running through George Carlin's chronology of terms for the wartime shattering we now call PTSD, starting with "shell shock" in WWI to "battle fatigue" in WWII to "operational exhaustion" in the Korean War (noting the humanity getting stripped further away with each generation,) Palmer discovered the term "soldier's heart" from the Civil War on a modern-day veterans website (www.soldiersheart.net.) "The violence that results in soldier's heart shatters a person's sense of self and community, and war is not the only setting in which violence is done," Palmer claims.  The heartlessness we witness daily in the news, experience with government bureaucracies and corporations, and have witnessed over time as our economy has become the tool of the rich (to mention just a few) has also decommissioned hearts.

     And sometimes the heart is broken open by heartbreak. Using insights from Joshua Shenk's book Lincoln's Melancholy (2005) how our 16th President used the combined burdens of the deadly Civil War and his own suicidal depressions to reach for the country's holding together and healing, Palmer begins to scratch out the prescriptions for heart repair and relearning "habits (of the heart) that form the inward and invisible structure of democracy."

     I saw the reality of these things the week before our last city council meeting as I pounded the pavement getting signatures on letters asking Mayor Padilla to bring back a motion to reconsider their approval of the Dollar General II plan and ask for economic and traffic studies under CEQA.  Some mornings it seemed futile:  in the aftermath of Townsend's Follies, the number of people here with soldier's heart is still large.  But sometimes I saw the light go back on inside people, the valves healing, the muscle pumping once again. Eighteen signatures told the City "No, what you did is not right, and here's what we want:  fairness.  Good process.  Respect for our businesses and lives."

     Luckily, this kind of healing is contagious.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer and remedial community organizer who sometimes will sing for food.  Please leave a comment below.