I have been talking with one and another and then another of my fellow green party members. We share a sense of frustration for the time that have taken people of color to gain a foothold in our elected politicians. So we are going to try, once again, to shape a network, a loosely connected group of people that can trust each other, perhaps even help each other. It is not the first time. We certainly hope that it will be the last one. That this is the attempt that will make it.
But, actually, what does “make it” means?
In the chat of today, we exchange words about being radical, being different. And then later, thinking and thinking about what will we do, I was thinking that perhaps we need to start from real zero. Not even knowing what do we mean by making it. Maybe we should only jam together, and see if anything like music comes out.
The thing is that we are no Bach, nor Shostakovitch. Certainly no Lady Gaga nor Frank Zappa. If we would be as great politicians as those great musicians were, we would have already take power, and our party would be exactly what we want it to be. But we are flawed politicians. We aren’t great communicators, we frequently have contradictory ideas, and now and then even opposed interests. We are not necessarily interested in making a career in politics (whatever that might be) and our spouses are not always delighted by the long nights and the longer debates. So we are not likely to win any competition set up in the terms of those other white guys, the ones that are actually great communicators, and have simple straightforward convinctions and interests, and will be making career.
So perhaps we need to reset the terms of what being a politician means.
Because, after all, that traditional straight shooter politician, the one that says the words that everybody is waiting to hear, is pretty much exhausted. It is a kind of a zombie. It walks (and perhaps even wins elections) but is dead. Look at the dutch primer minister. He keeps on winning votes, but nobody trust him, nor whatever he represents. We have been voting, as a country, by default. We need something different. Think about the rise and fall from our current green leader. A great communicator, young and sympathetic. In one word, the promise of renewal. He got us closer to forming government than ever before, two elections ago. But then he repeated his act in the last elections, and we losed half of the votes. People did fall out of love, people did not vote for the same act twice. You can not renew with the same recept.
We shouldn’t even try, then. Perhaps we need to embrace our shortcomings, and our contradictions. Our differences, that is. After all, given that we are a group striving for diversity, we should carry that to the ultimate consequences and be different, shouldn’t we?
And perhaps then and only then we will start representing real people.