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Three days ago, filled with the image of Iowa as the first political barometer for the coming fight to oust George W. Bush from his ill-gotten seat in the White House, I headed west after less than five minutes' deliberation. After all, I concluded firmly, if impulsively, it's Iowa where the action is. Worse, it's all we've got for the moment.
In Dallas I met up with Dennis Kucinich supporters planning to volunteer for the underrated grunt work that is the foundation for every campaign. Together we set out early the next morning to drive the 800 miles to Iowa, in preparation for the January 19th caucuses.
For hours, I bobbed into and out of energetic conversations about the plummeting state of our nation and what Dennis could do with the funds currently being spent to kill people. In and out we went -- were we anti-war or pro-peace? Was Dennis part of the media blackout or did people truly no longer care? The deeper into the heartland we drove, the more semantic the nature of conversation became, and the more knitpicky the semantics, the greater the presence of conspiracy theories. The greater the conspiracy, the more isolated I felt from a doable but heartening reality.
Mildly rolling ground in northern Texas and Oklahoma flattened into Kansas, then Missouri, and finally found texture again on the fertile Iowa plains, now shrouded in night. All the while I kept searching for a rational synthesis of hopes, an icon with a heart, something to cling to and disperse to others during these dark, dark times without any serious promise of respite. The one unequivocal belief I held was that Dennis' promise of reducing the pentagon budget was the only path, symbolic though it may be, toward stopping the Bush imperialism. He was promising a fifteen percent cut, and I would have gone with Frodo OR Gollum in an instant had either come out and promised sixteen percent.
The Kucinich people remained true to the premises of loyal followers, refusing to acknowledge even the remote possibility that their candidate might not win. By the time we reached Des Moines, faith had crescendoed into absurdity. I kept remembering the long ago -- campaigns for Gene McCarthy, George McGovern, attempts to spread truth about what the Sandinistas were doing for Nicaraguans, what the Reagan contras/terrorists were doing to the Sandinista peasants, exposing the lies told about Al Gore, demonstrating against the invasion of Iraq, all that fighting that could easily be confused with banging one's head against a wall in order to construct an avant garde symphony of lonely notes.
I had gone to Iowa solely in the hope of helping to keep the Kucinich message alive. I felt that there were two issues -- Dennis the man, a near-saint if such is possible in politics, and secondly, Dennis' message. I believed firmly that the message could outlive the man, and I'd hoped to help make Dean or Gephardt or Kerry know that we were there and that it was the message of stopping the ongoing wars and of regaining world respect that had brought us there. No person who could pass second grade math had hopes of Dennis winning the Iowa caucus, but there existed the possibility of continuing to let the country know that there were propositions to stop the madness, propositions that we could still hope to see Dean or Kerry or Gephardt or Clark embrace.
Meanwhile, there in the city portrayed by the media as the political center of the nation this week, we counted cars in a parking lot not connected to a campaign center. Fifty cars, one bumper sticker, and it was for George Bush. It appeared, over and over, that the PEOPLE of Des Moines were not especially interested in what was happening. TV crews could find people in coffeeshops reminding us of their pocketbook issues, but they certainly weren't touting them on their bumpers or windows. In the same parking lot, a man walked through wearing a Dean pin. It lifted hopes, even among the good Kucinich supporters. Someone took a stand, any old stand. A far cry from the false picture being painted by the mainstream media, but at least one man in one parking lot was involved in the process.
This was the tone for forty-eight hours. Inside headquarters and at events, people praised the energy they felt; a few yards outside headquarters, there was snow and ice and a dark sense of apathy. It was easy to remember that fewer people would show up for the caucuses than for a University of Michigan football game. I was counting the time until we could pile in our cars and head south again, daring though to still hope for a moment of revelation, a glimmer of inspiration that could live all the way to New Hampshire. What we needed, what ALL of us needed, was something far greater than a desire to WIN, whatever that meant.
We needed a mission, one that could utterly transcend the desire for votes. We needed a voice.
* * * * *
Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Lakota Great Sioux Nation is the 19th generation "Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Pipe." His role is to safeguard the Sacred "C'anupa," including "bundles," ceremonies, and songs that include peace icons to presumably be used in the search for forgiveness and eventual peace between all men.
On this night in Iowa, however, Chief Looking Horse was appearing to offer his nation's endorsement for Dennis Kucinich. Later that night I would read bits of the Chief's book, would read that:
"We need a great healing, And we need a Great Forgiving. But healing can't begin without forgiveness."
I would know by then that the Chief and his people have been immersed for some time in the promotion of peace. Looking Horse was the youngest Lakota to ever be entrusted with the Sacred C'anupa. As its guardian, he has participated actively in World Peace and Prayer Days. As he describes this dream, he often uses the term, Mitakuye Oyasin, "All our relations."
In the hours that followed, I would learn that Mitakuye Oyasin encompassed more than its simple definition. The gentle Chief Looking Horse, well over 6 feet, 5 inches tall, would explain it. The term means more than our families, our nations, even humankind. Mother Earth and Grandfather Sky are included, explains Looking Horse, as are "each of the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, those that swim, those that fly..." He is talking about the interconnectedness of all beings and all things. He mentioned, in his words of praise for Dennis Kucinich, that he and his family are the "keepers of the Eastern Gate."
And on that cold night in Iowa, with a few loyal people devoted to a message not strongly enough endorsed by the party faithful, Dennis Kucinich was presenting this extraordinary victim of government lies and deceits with a ceremonial blanket.
In that presentation, a message outshone politics.
* * * * *
On this coming Monday, 1993 caucuses will be held throughout the state of Iowa. From these meetings will emerge the first of the delegates who will choose the presidential nominee of the Democratic party, the man or woman who might conceivably stop the imperialism of the Mideast, the eradication of constitutional liberties, the spiralling of the federal deficit.
These first delegates are chosen in loud, undemocratic settings where no ballots are cast, where people's votes are not private, where the voices of those who must work that night or those confined to nursing homes are not heard, where the easily intimidated may well be overridden by more forceful voices. Carl Hulse of the New York Times, even points out that "Wooing with fresh-baked cookies is not unheard of."
In the end, we'll have the first indications of whom a very small percentage of the people have chosen. And those results, if they follow tradition, will then influence the votes cast in New Hampshire a week later. With New Hampshire, we're off and running, all from a germ in Iowa, where the snow-covered streets are quiet. A few loud voices could theoretically be the shot heard round the world.
Iowa is an absurdity, utterly escewing the notion that the smallest voice is as important as the loudest. Contenders for the nomination are forced to go there and proclaim that this is democracy at work. To do otherwise would be as politically suicidal as bringing up the refusal to count all Florida votes, or as mentioning a lot of discomfort as to what really killed Paul Wellstone, or to suggest that the attack on the World Trade Center was the luckiest break George W. Bush ever got. In this political world, following the rules always supercedes open inquiry.
Chief Looking Horse's lifelong search for forgiveness and peace is not a winner.
* * * * *
For a momento of these days in Iowa, a few hours of which were spent walking alone in the snow, thinking and hoping for some surge of truth, I have a photo someone was kind enough to take of me with the Chief. When I look at it now, Looking Horse grows right before my eyes, diminishing everything else in the photo, including myself. Feeling small, I remember that he talked of being a keeper of the Eastern Gate. My great loss is that I didn't think to ask him afterwards, when we talked, what the title meant.
The Eastern Gate looks to beginnings, the rising sun. Whether that is what this Keeper of the Buffalo Pipe means by the Eastern Gate, I don't know. But I believe it's a valid assertion for one who is concerned with the interconnectedness of all things.
New beginnings. Perhaps that should be the great hope in every instant when a ballot is cast. A new start, a better deal. That's what a reevaluation of the country, in the form of a chance to overhaul, implies. Perhaps the nation is not where we would place it; perhaps we opt for changes; perhaps there is hope in a new beginning.
* * * * *
Later
It took another fourteen hours, through the night, black enough to give us stars we don't see in more populated areas, to reach Dallas again. Most of us were exhausted. I felt, quietly, as if we'd gone on a scavenger hunt and that everything we found fit in one pocket. In the middle of Kansas, we'd been stopped for going over the speed limit.
A young highway patrolman asked us where we'd been. We told him, "Iowa." He asked why we were in Iowa. I told him, "To campaign for our political candidate." He asked, "Who?" Someone answered, asking if he knew Dennis. The patrolman answered, "No, I don't keep up. What side's he on?"
We all became very tense, very quiet. Afterwards, wondering about the legality of such questioning, one of our party posed the suggestion that the young officer had become part of a police state mentality without even knowing what he was doing.
We arrived home, with the numbers unchanged. Dennis Kucinich hadn't had a chance from the beginning, and his chance had not improved when people heard of his plans to put a ceiling on drug company profits so that senior citizens having to forego dinner to buy medicine could have hope. No points were gained when people learned that he would take the U.S. out of Iraq and replace American soldiers with U.N. peacekeepers until Iraq's stability was restored. None of this had anything to do with the coming caucuses.
My guess is that there is still only one bumper sticker in that fifty-car parking lot.
* * * * *
Keeper of the Eastern Gate. Back home again, snowless and reflective, I look at the Chief's picture, remember his somber resignation as he talked of peace, the lines of his face strong with determination, perseverance. A principle lives only so long as it has a voice.
Some in this campaign, 2004, have given important issues a voice. To maintain any tenacity in such a voice requires a guardian for every moment of renewal, every opportunity for beginning again, which is - in many senses -- what we are doing every hour of our lives, whether in our personal lives or our collective political journeys.
Surely, the most important gate must ALWAYS face eastward, most especially if we are to grow, fortified by renewals, new ways, improvements, a better deal.
At various intervals of life, needing to believe that anything is possible, we do well to check out the health of those watching the gates. The keepers, the loyal who dare to keep seeking a better world, the bearers of voice.
Mitakuye Oyasin
--------------------------------- Lisa Walsh Thomas is a lifelong political activist, poet, and writer. Her second book, "The Girl with Yellow Flowers in Her Hair" is available online through Pitchfork Publishing at http://www.pitchforkpublishing.com. Lisa can be reached at: saavedra1979@yahoo.com
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