Accidental Activist

It’s a mandatory training session. On April 1 at 8:00 a.m. in Fayetteville, which is more than three hours away. I know what mandatory means, so I arrange lodging for the dog here and lodging for me there.

With my favorite Arlington activist

After a night on what is arguably the world’s worst hotel mattress (you’ve been warned, do not stay at Holiday Inn Express), I check in early at the meeting facility. As a first-timer I am a little nervous, but eager to hear Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II speak.

The moral voice of our time, Rev. Barber is the electrifying leader of North Carolina’s Forward Together Movement, President of the NorthCarolina NAACP, educator, minister, and so much more.

I’ve heard him speak twice before – in 2014 at Asheville’s Moral Monday in the Mountains and at a July 2015 march at the start of the federal voting rights trial in Winston-Salem. But, I’m in Fayetteville for training, not marching. I’m the recently elected secretary of the Catawba County NAACP branch and Fayetteville is the site of the annual training.

Last summer, I’d gone to my first NAACP branch meeting after seeing a notice in the newspaper. I kept going.  It felt right; I felt welcome. The branch president asked me to be on the nominating committee. Okay. I can do that. Then, I raised my hand and offered to be secretary. I’m a writer. A secretary takes minutes, how hard could that be?

Fast forward to Fayettevile. I’m sitting at a table I’ve staked out for our chapter in a cavernous room with about 300 other people. After a press conference and introductions, the training begins. At my age, I’ve been to a lot of training sessions. Who knew that learning bylaws could be so lively and interesting? Our trainer-in-chief, the eloquent Rev. Barber, has lots of stories that he uses to punctuate the bylaws discussion much as a conductor uses percussion to punctuate a movement.

He goes through a portion of the bylaws, line by line, with a voice that can move mountains. After another story, he gets to the role of branch officers. President: Check. Not my problem. Secretary:  Geesh, no mention of minutes, my strongpoint, but a list of other duties and the importance of the position. Heck, Rosa Parks was a branch secretary.  No pressure or big shoes to fill there.

I pull myself from hanging on every word of our trainer-in-chief’s discussion of policies and politics (my favorite) and retreat to the training for secretaries (um, not so favorite). There are lots of us, and lots of questions. The ladies who run this training know their stuff, inside and out. But, nothing is clear. I am so right-brained. The woman seated next to me, from the neighboring county, looks at me as if to say, “There, there, dear.” She gives me her name and number. Then, I remember that before lunch my chapter mates told me they’d have my back. Whew. My breathing returns to normal.

As I begin my drive home how I came to this new role reminds me of how I became president of the Democratic Women of Catawba County. I showed up. At the early 2014 meeting to elect officers for the brand-new chapter there were seven women in the room. No one wanted to be president. Okay, I’ll do it. How hard can it be?

Driving north on U.S. 421, I muse on my retirement path. None of this – president and now secretary – was planned. My involvement was a byproduct of wanting to meet people, and people with whom I share values. That’s why I went to the Catawba County Democratic Party meetings and the meetings about the women’s group. I decide somewhere between Fuqay-Varina and Winston-Salem that maybe I’m an accidental activist.

Yet, it’s my fourth year as president of our women’s group. I kept showing up. I stood for reelection. Okay, it was not a coveted position. Leading is getting a little easier, but offers new challenges because we’ve grown from the founding few to more than 60.

Dem Women founders portraying legends

The good news about the now-crowded meeting rooms is that instead of a handful with their hands full, we have more people doing more. We’ve got a strong issues group working to educate and advocate on our priority issues -- public education, access to health care, and voting rights. We’ve got a great group for events – with a signature fundraiser set for May 6. And, we’ve got a team of communicators, including our youngest member, a teen-aged Instagram and Snapchat maven.

The founding few cannot take all the credit for this growth.  Do you think there might be a link between who got inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2017, and 70 people showing up at our meeting eight days later?

And, yes, that is a rhetorical question. 

Timothy Egan, among others, points out the silver lining of this era of orange-haired government, of having a national leader who has never been in government at any level or in any capacity. As Egan wrote in The New York Times, “… we may be experiencing a great awakening for the humane values that are under siege by a dark-side presidency. People are going inward, to find something bigger than Trump, and outward, to limit the damage he inflicts on the country.”

Yes, we are waking up.

One hundred and ninety three miles later, I arrive home and retrieve the newspaper. Turns out, I’m on page one, pictured talking with one of the participants at the previous day’s Transgender Day of Visibility.

Okay, perhaps my activism is not so accidental. Maybe it’s accidentally on purpose.

There is purpose and a lot of work to be done. Our state and nation need so much work – on justice, equality, education, and the environment, to name just a few. And, I’ve already got something to show for my involvement -- my picture with Rev. Barber. 

Sweet.

Now to live up to it.

In Fayetteville with Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

Mr. Adams's Horrible Idea

One of the nation’s leading proponents for common-sense gun laws is Gabrielle Giffords, former U.S. congressman from Tucson, AZ. She learned about gun safety the hard way. A man carrying a concealed weapon shot her in the head.

Arizona is one of ten states that do not require a permit for carrying a concealed weapon. Rep. Jay Adams wants our state to join that list. He has sponsored legislation – HB 69, The Constitutional Carry Act – to eliminate North Carolina’s ability to regulate carrying concealed weapons.

There are two bills on this topic at the 2017 regular session of the General Assembly. “These are horrible ideas,” says Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes, co-chair of the NC Sheriff’s Association legislative committee.

I agree. These are horrible ideas. Recently, I wrote Rep. Adams to ask him what benefits could outweigh the risks to justify sponsoring this legislation. Here’s what he said:  “…the very possibility that a law-abiding citizens (sic) might be armed has had the desired and predicted effect on the calculation criminals make as they contemplate their illicit activity, thus chilling that behavior. This bill expands the probability in the minds of criminals that a law-abiding citizen may intervene in their actions.”

Adams cited no research, no statistics. If you start to look into this – it doesn’t take long, Rep. Adams – you will find that research shows, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, that, “Weak permitting systems allow dangerous people to carry guns.”

Here’s more on that – again based on research. Concealed carry weapon holders threaten public safety. They can threaten public safety even if they are trying to assist in a dangerous situation.

Did you know that in the 2011 shooting that injured Congressman Giffords, where the shooter killed six people and injured 12 others – a man carrying a concealed weapon almost drew his weapon against another man, who had wrestled the shooter’s gun away, mistakenly thinking that the man was actually the shooter, but he wasn’t.

Study after study shows that carrying concealed weapons does not reduce crime. It only adds opportunities for more harm. Rep. Adams, I will feel safer in my hometown knowing that anyone carrying a concealed weapon has been trained in gun safety and gone through our state’s rigorous and highly regarded permitting process. Please focus your legislative efforts on ways to improve our quality of life.

Note:  Check out the organization -- Americans for Responsible Solutions -- that Giffords and her husband, former Navy captain and astronaut Mark Kelly launched to prevent gun violence and protect responsible gun ownership.  

Numb

Election results are in. The short-fused man with the red face and orange hair and no experience or sense of governing is the president-elect. My husband reminds me that it is good news that I am no longer a federal employee. That is one silver lining in this orange mess.

I hope it is true that God loves idiots, drunks, and the United States of America.

I need sleep, restorative rest, to be calm and ready to be open to keep working for my -- and many others' -- ideals of a fair and equitable nation that is open to all.

Yes, to sleep, perchance to dream, of a nation based on our founding principles of all men/people created equal.

Dream, yes, then back to work.

Confessions of a Poll Greeter

The good news:  For the hours I stood greeting voters at early voting locations in North Carolina’s Catawba County, where just a little over one-fourth of the registered voters share my “D” designation, was that the sun was shining.

Too late did I realize I should have invested in a proper hat to shield my face from the sun and proper armor to shield my soul from the deplorable – yes, deplorable – negativity.

As my skin darkened from hours in the sun, it never thickened from nasty comments. Early on – day 2, I believe – it was clear the life of a Democratic poll greeter in Western North Carolina wasn’t going to be easy. A woman who reminded me of a defensive lineman got into the faces of my coworker and me. She insisted on provoking us, yet we quickly saw no point in discussing anything with her. We ended up moving to opposite ends of the greeting area while she stubbornly stood her acquired ground near the Democratic Party Information Station sign.

This election reminds me a lot of 5^th grade and bullies.

One voter in battle wear 

Another day I asked a woman walking to the voting site if she’d like a sample Democratic ballot. She told the two teen girls with her, “Now, that’s what I don’t want you to go up to be.”

Oh, boy, do I hope those girls rebel, and not with drugs or drink.

Another day at the voting site where political foot soldiers are inches apart, a Republican stalwart asked about my accent. I can be so naïve. I replied, honestly, Texas, California, and Virginia. Later, I learned that he likely cared less about my pronunciation and vocal patterns and more about my activism.  A longtime union organizer explained his inquiry was code for, “You’re an outside agitator.”

Yes, I am. I care about public education, equal rights, and equity.

Next, that individual addressed my candidate for school board. “I hear she’s an atheist.”

“What does that have to do with being qualified for school board?”

Again with the naiveté.

After falling for the bait, twice, I got quicker with my response. Slipping slightly into my native Texas drawl I pronounced, “My grandfather said ‘I heard’ and ‘They say’ are the two biggest liars in the world.”

Later, I realized he was using the same tactic as Trump, smearing others, not with fact, but with innuendo by saying things like “I hear crooked Hillary is …” 

I started out my 2016 poll experience hopeful. Fivethirtyeight.com had our state light blue. I was enthusiastic about our chances to get a new governor who cares about public education and doesn’t discriminate against the LGBTQ community. I thought we could elect a strong and principled woman to the U.S. Senate and send the NRA-financed fellow packing. I want to elect fair judges, not ones who sanction outlandish gerrymandering and voter suppression. Oh, and maybe, just maybe, we could get a new congressman with integrity, and elect someone to the school board who wants to put ALL students first.

By the last day, my adopted state was pink on fivethirtyeight.com and a car emblazoned with hate, notably a “Lock Her Up” sticker, pulled into the polling place. 

That car left me dumbfounded. Was I a fool to think we could take steps, even teeny tiny ones to help our county and state be more supportive, more open, and more fair?

Yet, minutes after that angry car, I gave a sample ballot to a 70-something African- American who was voting for the first time. A young African-American, also voting for the first time, came out smiling. His parents and I applauded. Then, a middle-aged white woman returned her voter guide after her first-ever vote. She gave a thumbs-up for our “blue” guidance.

I scanned the parking lot to find my colleague. The all-time high point of my time in the sun was volunteering alongside this African-American man. He grew up in the Jim Crow era and knows what it is like to be marginalized, disenfranchised, suspected, and hated. He knows the importance of voting and how hard-won and fragile that right has been, and remains.

Of his long hours at the polls, this gentle man says, “I have to be here.”

It’s people like him, my other fellow volunteers, those first-time voters, and the thumbs-up and smiles that lift my spirits and give me hope.

May I offer you a blue ballot?

On Civility and Campaign 2016

When I was growing up in the South, I called grownups sir and ma’am. I called the parents of my friends Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so. I also got my mouth washed out with soap for saying “shut-up.”

On matters of manners, my mother ran a tight ship. We had to say “please” and “thank you.” Writing thank-you notes was the 11^th commandment, or maybe the 6^th, right after “Honour thy father and mother.” We children were more often seen than heard.

Of course, that was in the bucolic 1950s. Then, my family left the South and went West just in time for the 1960s and to be near the epicenter of flower children, free speech, and the counterculture.

I wore tie-dye and bell bottom jeans and protested Vietnam, but I still said “please” and “thank you.”

Yet, after watching a candidate for the highest office in the land on the stage of Hofstra University interrupting, sputtering, and spewing “Not!” and “Wrong!” before a national, even global, audience, I have to ask where in the world has civility gone?  Did my generation of protestors, hippies, and flower children flouting authority start us down the slope to where we are today?

As Professor Walter E. Williams of George Mason University writes, “Starting in the 1960s, the values that made for civility came under attack.” Dr. Williams talks about banning corporal punishment half a century ago as being a forerunner for today’s lack of civility.

I was smacked with a ruler by my 2^nd grade teacher for not putting my pencil down and sent to the office for chewing gum in 7^th grade. Yes, I was quite the wild child.

Not!

The point is there were consequences for bad behavior – whether it was a soapy mouth or a ruler swatting or being sent to the office. So, how did someone of my generation – just a few years older – grow up to be so unruly, surly, and rude?

Enter “Donald Trump” and “grade school” on Google and you’re quickly led to descriptions of an incorrigible child at Kew-Forest School in Queens, NY.  If only Donald Trump had had my parents or my teachers.  

I suspect class and privilege played a big part in young Donny getting a pass from those teachers and administrators. The little rich child got away with big talk, swagger, and bullying.

But, he was abruptly sent to military boarding school when he was 13, TheWashington Post reports. 

To me, it looks like he needed a much stronger institution than the New York Military Academy where instead of military order the emphasis was on fighting, hazing, and male dominance.

He learned those lessons well.

Here’s what’s worrying and it takes me back to the ‘60s again to the Graham Nash song “Teach Your Children Well.”

Election 2016 is not teaching our children well. With the Republican candidate we are telling our children that cruelty, crudity, and lying is okay. We are saying it’s acceptable to be racist, intolerant, and bigoted and still be a candidate to be the leader of the free world. We are tacitly admitting that being bellicose and belligerent is admirable.

Not!

Those are bad lessons. They are the direct opposite of the misogynist candidate’s favorite adjective. Those lessons are terrible, not terrific.

As developmental psychologist Dr. Roberta Michnick told Vanity Fair,  “Our children are being exposed to a role model that is horrendous… And he’s already had an impact. There are examples in which he has disinhibited people, and children, from saying negative and racist things about others.”

  

With this fellow – he’s no gentlemen – on the national stage consuming so much airtime and so much of our finite genteel oxygen I’m worried about civility, about kindness, and about empathy.

That’s worries me a lot.  But, the future of our country worries me even more.  

This bully must be stopped.

And it is up to us. All of us. That’s my message on National Voter Registration Day.

Woman's Best Friend, Piper, Oct. 5, 2001 - July 22, 2016

Taking a Stand By Sitting Down

The title is mine. The text is a letter our daughter wrote to her elected representatives after the Orlando massacre at the Pulse nightclub. It's timely today with the powerful action by some elected representatives, including her congressman Gerald Connolly, sitting on the U.S. House of Representatives floor demanding action on gun control.

I wish I had such principled representatives. Mine are among the top recipients of NRA funds. Here's to addressing this serious problem and here's to citizens, like Jocelyn Dorfman, and to elected representatives like Connolly, John Lewis, and Donna Edwards, who are taking a stand by sitting down. 

Dear Congressman Connolly,

My name is Jocelyn Dorfman, and I am your constituent in the 11^th District. As my elected official, you are my representative in the Congress. I know that you do not undertake that challenge lightly. I also know that I am one of many voices you were elected to represent. Please consider this letter providing my perspective as a resident and preschool teacher in Fairfax County.

Every day, it is my responsibility and privilege to guide 15 three- and four-year-olds through the challenges of life. I teach them that hands are not for hitting, that mean words can hurt a friend’s feelings, and that we wash our hands after using the bathroom and before eating. I teach them to take a moment to consider a friend’s point of view; to listen when it is their friend’s turn to speak; and to be respectful of their friends, their teachers, and their families. I teach them these things so that they can be ready for kindergarten and school when the time comes, yes – but I also teach them these things so that they can be good citizens of the world. Watching, reading, and listening to the news sometimes makes me feel as if most adults have long forgotten these basic lessons.

I am also a student of American history and government. I know that the United States Constitution is one of the most important documents ever written. However, I also know that it is important to consider the time in which it was written. When Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other founding fathers codified this document, it took approximately one minute to load and shoot one bullet with a Brown Bess or Flintlock rifle. When they agonized over every single word of each sentence in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they knew it was important enough to include “a well-regulated militia” in the Second Amendment. I know that it took me several weeks and some very long trips to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get my driver’s license, vehicle safety inspection, and vehicle registration; it should not be easier than that process to purchase a machine that has no other purpose than to hurt, maim, and kill.

This past weekend, I was visiting the parents who raised me to be aware of the world around me and to be a responsible citizen. I consider myself lucky that I was with them when I woke up to the news that 50 people were killed and even more were injured in Orlando, Florida.

I have a Master of Science in psychology; I am more than aware of the impact mental illnesses can have upon a person. However, the ease and simplicity of the process by which a mentally ill individual can obtain a semi- or automatic killing machine is horrifying. We will learn much in the coming days and weeks about the assailant’s history and potential motivations, but we already know that he was able to obtain and use a weapon designed with the sole purpose of killing a lot of people quickly.

A United States citizen purchased that weapon legally. A citizen who had been investigated by the FBI more than once and who had a history of domestic violence.

In April 1999, at the time of the mass murders at Columbine High School, I was nearing the end of my fourth grade year. At nine years old, I had to process the fact that I might be unsafe in school, a place of fun and learning. Those fears came to fruition in December 2012 when I woke to the news that twenty children had been murdered. The fact that this timeline left out Virginia Tech, which happened during my own freshman year of college; Waco, Aurora, Roseburg, and countless others leaves me nauseated.

At some point, we have to stand up to the NRA and say enough is enough. Let the CDC and other research bodies investigate gun safety. Let there be a legal and prescribed process for obtaining, registering, and re-registering weapons. Let me be able to know that my fifteen students will be safe. 

I am asking you to hear and understand that as your constituent I would like you to vote for, introduce, or otherwise support at least some common sense gun regulation. When flying to visit my parents, I could not carry on a bottle of shampoo greater than 3 ounces – but tomorrow I could walk into a gun store and legally purchase an AR-15.

Let’s require a gun license. Let’s require gun safety courses, like driver’s education. Let’s check people’s eyesight, and also check if they’ve committed a crime since the last time they registered their weapon. Let’s make it so that if you want a more deadly weapon than a shotgun or a handgun, you have to go through a more rigorous process. Let’s make sure that people being watched by the FBI either aren’t allowed to buy guns, or at the very least, make sure that the FBI is immediately made aware of the purchase. Let’s keep guns out of the hands of known perpetrators of intimate partner violence.

I am a native Virginian, and I consider myself lucky to have been born and raised in this great Commonwealth. I am also very lucky to have been raised by two conscientious parents who intentionally moved to a county and state that provided high quality public education, who raised me to be aware of the bigger picture of my county, state, and country; and who raised me to be a citizen of the world. As such, I have always been active in politics at every level, from handing out sample ballots as a five-year-old to working on my father’s school board campaign to voting in every possible election since I was first eligible.

Yet, this is the first time I have written to my elected official.

I write to you now because enough is enough. Thoughts and prayers, while comforting, are not enough. No moment of silence can bring back Edward Sotomayor Jr., Luis S. Vielma, and Kimberly Morris, much less the thousands of individuals who perish from automatic weapons every single year in our country.

Thank you for reading this. You are my elected official. Please hear my voice and make my voice heard in these matters. Please know that hands are not for hitting or for holding assault rifles in our communities.

I’m counting on you to do the right thing.

  

Sincerely,

Jocelyn Dorfman