Shut It Down!

Reflections from the inside: day 4 of the shutdown. 

By Danielle Verney O'Gorman

Government exists to protect people who can’t protect themselves, to provide a mechanism for collective action so that no one slips through the cracks and is forced to fend for themselves in a hostile world. 

This is what I tell my freshmen students in my Intro to American Government class on the first day and that thesis statement provides a framework for the rest of the policy discussions that we have throughout the semester.  This is how I frame the Affordable Care Act, SNAP and WIC and other social welfare programs, foreign aid, and anything else we discuss. 

I think that if we accept this basic premise, it’s possible to have a discussion about the pros and cons of policies to achieve that end.  I truly believe (perhaps this makes me naïve) that it’s possible for reasonable and intelligent people who are deeply invested in the public good to disagree on the means for achieving it.  I’ve met kind and compassionate people across the political spectrum.

What I haven’t come across before are people who are so invested in their own self-interest that they are willing to let the country burn, to let our most vulnerable citizens as well as their own employees go hungry.  Shutting down the government was a shock to my system because I truly believed the Tea Party would blink.  Polls were telling them to stop.  Democrats were telling them to stop.  Moderates in their own party were practically begging them to stop—including John Boehner, who has now apparently lost any remnant of a moral compass and has joined them in their “small government” crusade without even truly believing in it. 

I went to work in shock, and was surrounded by my shocked and saddened civilian colleagues.  Some of them had been working during the last shutdown, 17 years ago.  They remembered feeling much the same way, as though they were the victims of the very government they worked for.  Now, though, they were fairly united in pointing the finger at the GOP for responsibility in a way that perhaps they were not under the last shutdown. 

I have given much of my life, much of what is good in me, to my country and my job.  My debate team is the second child that I did not and could not have.  I believe that what I do as an educator makes my students better officers, better front-line ambassadors to other countries, better stewards of the enlisted people entrusted to them as junior officers, better advocates for compassionate policy changes both inside and outside the military.  For that reason I have sacrificed countless weekends, countless nights, countless hours I could have spent with my family and I have done it smiling.  Now I feel lost and small and sad, as the government I work for turns its back on me, calls me “non-essential”, refuses to pay me; my employer pays lip service to my importance while not only not canceling the football game scheduled for this weekend, but going ahead with the pep rally they’re paying for beforehand.  Think about that—the civilian professors of the service academies are LESS ESSENTIAL than not just a football game, but a pep rally for a football game.  It breaks my heart. 

Even more heartbreaking is the impact this has on those who rely on the government.  Does the loss of a paycheck or two hurt me?  Yes, but my family will survive it.  We won’t lose our house or our food security or our cars over it, and even if we were at risk of doing so, our families would step in to shield us from the impact.  There are many employees, both at my own workplace and throughout the federal government, who are not so lucky.  Not all of us are “overpaid” desk jockeys with doctoral degrees—many are the workers who clean up after us or who prepare food for our students.  They are suffering in a way I’m not. 

Or how about the families that rely on SNAP or WIC to get through the month?  This is not just in support of the unemployed, though God knows they need it in this economic climate.  It also goes to support the working poor who still can’t quite make ends meet, including many military families.  The idea that a few selfish members of Congress are quite literally taking food from the mouths of children makes me ill.  Of course, their answer is that the hungry should rely on private donations—which is what the wealthy and selfish always say. Never mind the fact that this year donations to food banks are down 68%, or that many food banks are still experiencing depletion from the summer due to a decrease in school and university-based drives and the fact that they feed children over the summer who rely on school nutrition programs during the school year (school nutrition programs that the GOP would also like to see cut).  Many who are impacted by this absurd hostage-situation-cum-temper-tantrum will find they have nowhere to go to feed their children. 

Women and children are suffering because of this decision, the decision to “shut down”.  The language is reminiscent of Todd Akin's 2012 comment that “legitimate” rape victims wouldn’t get pregnant because women’s bodies have a way to “shut that whole thing down”.  What is it with the GOP and shutting things down? This terminology that they use as a weapon to hurt women, children, and families?  I hope the American people remember this, remember how they felt during this wild-eyed Tea Party crusade into madness, when it comes time to vote.  Maybe it’s time for America shut that whole thing down!

Danielle Verney O'Gorman is the Director of Debate at the United States Naval Academy

Same Love by Macklemore

I am an NPR junkie, I listen to it all day long, except when I drop off and pick up my children from school. My kids love top 40 music and we are excellent car dancers. The kids and I love to sing at the top of our lungs to all the pop favorites played on mainstream radio. This morning on our way to school we were listening to 107.5 KZL Jared & Katie in the morning. I am frequently annoyed at morning radio DJ banter because we need good pump up music at 7:30 in the morning to get us psyched for the day ahead.

This morning, their topic of discussion was the suspension of a teacher at West Alexander Middle School in Taylorsville, NC. The teacher was suspended for 3 days for showing Macklemore's "Same Love" video in class. Jared & Katie were taking calls this morning from listeners who had something to say about the appropriateness of showing the video to middle school students and subsequent suspension. As I listened to Jared spout off what I presume he thought was a nonpartisan middle of the road opinion I became enraged. The main thrust of his opinion was that parents should be able to opt-in to their children being exposed to the theme of the song. He argued that students should not captively be forced to listen to the message of the song. One caller was belligerent saying something to the effect of "these teacher's jobs is education, period" and another caller said that she felt this was relevant to the curriculum to teach about equality, after all, a 14 year old she knows was learning about the Equal Rights Amendment in school, something that may have drawn the same ire 40 years ago in a middle school classroom. Jared just kept saying the same things, over and over again, parents should have the option to say "no, I don't want my kid exposed to that". I raced home to look up the phone number for the station and call in, shaking, I pressed the call button, got a busy signal several times and then the message "we're not taking calls on this issue anymore".  And its with that that I decided to start this blog. 

I'd like to respond to the desire to "opt-in" here:

First, you want the ability to opt in because you are afraid. You are afraid that your child, after being exposed to Macklemore's message will what? Be aware that gay people exist? might be nice to gay people? or gasp, might become gay themselves? You want to control that, you want to determine when and how your children become exposed to ideas like marriage equality. I have news for you, that fear that you have, that's a manifestation of homophobia. Yes, YOU, are a homophobe. News for you, if your kid is gay, its not because they heard this song. Your kid has probably already heard this song, but for some reason hearing it in school, well that will make your kid sympathetic to the gay cause and oh no, YOU can't have that! That fear that you have that your kid might have thoughts about gay people is homophobia. If you are unsure what homophobia is, wikipedia is super easy to use and you can read all about it here. But the cliffs notes are right here: homophobia is the fear of gay people, being gay, and supporting gay things (like marriage or songs about gay marriage). Also, FYI: Homophobia is bigotry. You don't want to be a bigot, but you are because you are homophobic.

Second, opting in is a slippery slope. It should be clear now, the US Supreme Court, several legislative bodies and the populations of several states have all determined that gay marriage is an equality issue and that we can't select certain populations (suspect classes) to deny rights to based on an identity characteristic like sexuality. As annoying as it is, the analogy between this and other civil rights issues is useful and true. 60 years ago people were saying the same things about interracial marriages. Its obvious at this point that gay rights is THE civil rights issue of our time. Should we similarly have opt-in permission slips for lessons on suffrage, the civil rights movement, the ERA, aparthied, the 14th amendment, or even the holocaust (should we leave out discussions of the purple triangle that people the Nazi's deemed homosexual had to wear on their concentration camp uniforms when we teach the holocaust)? The list goes on and on and on. If every time we wanted to teach about equality teachers had to send home a permission slip, we'd be in big trouble. The fact that every American deserves equal rights is not really up for debate in our society anymore.

It should also be noted, that it is difficult for teachers to make material relevant to their students. Its difficult to get a room full of 13 year olds actively involved in a conversation, to get them excited about anything other than themselves is tough. It is well documented that teachers are underpaid and overworked. This has become more apparent to me as my children have matriculated into public school. We've seen teachers sacrifice their time, their money and recently their lives for their students. I have a hard time managing my two kids, but teachers handily manage more than twenty students a day. Teachers are professionals who are trained and educated to teach our children. We should be doing more to enable them to be creative in the classroom and to not be afraid to do what is necessary to keep our children actively engaged in the curriculum. Music is a great way for educators to do this and when a teacher gives students an opportunity to have a guided discussion in the classroom about a song that they have already heard outside of the classroom we should appreciate that our children are being given the opportunity to engage in an intellectual interrogation of this song instead of passively receiving it without question. 

About a half an hour after I heard Jared & Katie (mostly Jared) ranting about the inappropriateness of this song in the classroom, I got into my car to run an errand and the very same station was playing Macklemore's "Same Love". So I guess its ok with them if the station's commercial interests align with the song, as long as we keep it out of the classroom. I call BS on this bassakwardness.