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In Person by Louise Kennedy

Returning to Politics

For many former activists, politics has become something other people do, something Out There. But that can change.

ack in the day -- this would be the day before anyone had ever heard the expression "back in the day" � there was another expression that we liked to toss around: "The personal is political." For some reason, I've been thinking about that a lot lately --well, at least when I'm not thinking about my son's impending transition to kindergarten, which I confess is most of the time.

It occurs to me that these two items may not be entirely unrelated. As C.J. stands on the brink of entry into the wider, public world (I know, I know, it's only kindergarten --but, really, it is a bigger world than the one he's known, and it's the first one with lockers, lunch money, and giant fifth-graders in it), how could I not start thinking more about just what that public world is like?

Actually, that's not quite it. I always think about what the world is like, partly because that's my job. But lately I find myself, more and more, wanting to do something about it.

This is not a new feeling. In college in the 1970s, which is to say in the shadow of the '60s, I did my share of marching, petitioning, and arguing. But at some point it began to feel as if political activism was an all-or-nothing kind of calling, and that if were to choose the activist road, other roads might be closed to me.

Newspaper work, for one. There's a funny tension in this business, in which we're called to care deeply about righting wrongs and bringing injustices to light, and yet we're asked to keep our political affiliations to ourselves. We don't march, we don't petition, we don't argue � at least, not too loudly, and not at public meetings. But isn't not marching a political act, too?

Still, it wasn't just my job that kept me home. I was busy, I was distracted, and, perhaps most important, I was increasingly skeptical that marches or petitions or arguments could really change the world. And so, gradually but definitely, politics became something that other people did, something that was disconnected from daily life, something Out There.

And yet, as we said all those times, the personal is political. A truth repeated often enough becomes a slogan, then a cliche. Yet it can still be true.

Why, then, is it so hard to hang on to this slippery fact? Politics is not just something Out There; it's what we do in our homes, how we take care of our families and do our work and talk to our friends, the choices we make and don't make in every aspect of our daily lives. The personal is political, and the political is personal, too.

If remembering this were just my problem, I would keep it to myself � or, at most, sheepishly confess to friends that I wish I could find a way to resolve the conflict between wanting to do Something That Matters and wanting to make sure C.J. is ready for kindergarten. But I don't think it's just me. Many of us, I find, outside of a small and committed core of people who have devoted their lives to activism, have slowly and sadly come to feel divorced from politics. Somehow we just don't take it personally anymore.

Sure, we vote --though often without enthusiasm � and we try to stay informed, and we talk with our friends. We might even get involved in a local zoning issue or work hard to improve our kids' schools.

But when it comes to tackling problems that aren't directly connected to our daily lives or to addressing the underlying forces that are causing some of these problems, we feel small and overwhelmed. Global corporations, millionaire politicians, and the many deeply intertwined connections among them --how do we even start to take all that on?

Maybe just wanting to is a place to start. The desire to act isn't everything, of course, but it is the seed of action.