Oklahoma Dreaming: Politics
by Donna Schoenkopf
I have been a political person since I’ve been seven years old.
I heard my mother speak with love and affection and yes, adoration, of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his fireside chats and heard my dad speak of Truman as a truly cruel man for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But these things just were words flowing into my little brain.
It wasn’t until I was seven that things got personal, politically speaking.
Let’s set the scene:
I am seven. My family is at the Garrison’s beach house on Oahu, Hawaii. There are three or four other families there. We kids have been running in a pack all day, swimming in the warm Hawaiian water, popping man-o-war bubbles on the beach with the heels of our feet, exploring the pine forest with the foundations of a long blown over house, eating on the run.
The last of the sunlight has disappeared. Our parents are sitting around the fire outside, having drinks and talking, talking, talking.
We kids only hear sounds, not words, coming from them.
My dad calls me over.
He sits me on his lap. I am the only kid in the group.
He says, seriously, “Donna, if you ever want to marry a Negro, I want you to know that that will be fine with me. Just as long as he is good to you.”
The other parents don’t say anything.
I say, “Okay.”
And run off into the night with the other kids.
That was in 1950.
I’ve thought about that from time to time over the years and imagined that the adults that night were talking about interracial marriage and that my dad must have said that it would be fine with him for his daughter to marry a Negro and that to prove it he had witnessed to them by telling me publicly.
I love my dad.
Politics was personal when my mom sang “Lilac Trees” as she rocked us in the rocking chair, and later, just because we all loved it. It’s a song about a little black boy who is shunned by the white kids in the neighborhood and how his mother handles it.
It is the saddest song in the world.
All of my children and my brother’s children know this song by heart.
It is our family’s credo.
It taught us to NEVER shun a person who was a different color, a different background. It taught us that being different is something to love someone for.
And that is my background, my core. So when I moved to Oklahoma at the age of fifteen and began to see what was happening to black folks and heard Martin Luther King speak about it all, it rang so deep and true in my heart that I could NOT do nothing.
So I spoke up, here and there, and once got death-threatened by a football player as he walked past me in the high school hallway. It really, really scared me.
And now I’m here in Oklahoma again, after a 42 year absence, all involved in politics, fighting the fight.
At this age, in this place, I am more aware of the accident of place, family and culture having a bearing on a person’s politics than I have ever been before.
I am no longer angry at people for what they believe. I know it’s all about personal experience of the world making belief systems.
With that in mind, please know that Oklahoma is mostly white. Almost totally Protestant Christian. And very, very conservative. It’s like Sweden, in that it is homogeneous, of whole cloth.
And when a human being is confronted with something new, like being of a different race or culture or belief system, that human being is cautious or defensive or OFFENSIVE about this new thing.
It’s not an Oklahoman thing, it is a human thing.
I can feel all smug and superior because I am essentially racially-prejudiced-free, but that is completely and totally because of how and where I was raised. No credit to me personally.
AND I can see and hear how people in Oklahoma STRUGGLE with fear of other, try to overcome it, rise above their place and origin in order to combat the label of racist.
They are braver than I because they have overcome MUCH more than I have. I have NEVER had to overcome other, having had such a diverse upbringing.
However, because human nature is what it is, most people stay entrenched in their origins and beliefs.
This long preamble leads me to politics in Oklahoma.
This past week I made a firm commitment to go to Mary Fallin’s town hall meeting. She’s my congresswoman. I write her letters about health care, the environment, the economy, unions, only to get a form letter back. Half of those letters don’t even relate to what I’ve written.
She is the antithesis to my thesis.
On the day of the meeting I started wavering about my commitment. My knee hurt. I had been through two weeks of intense medical crap. I had productive things to do at home.
I decided to get dressed and if I liked the first thing I put on, I would go, but if it turned out to be a ridiculous outfit, I’d stay home.
I put on my black cotton pants with bands of gray and brown on the hems of the legs and a long black cotton shirt and walked over to the mirror.
Ah, shit. It was a good outfit.
Then I decided that if I didn’t feel well enough, I could still stay home. So I watched a little teevee but found myself getting my makeup bag out and putting makeup on and getting my keys and putting some cranberry juice in my travel mug and putting the cats outside and climbing into my car and driving toward Oklahoma City.
I guess that meant I was going.
I had to stop for gas.
That made me a little later than what I had projected.
I kept going.
I drove on and on and found myself in a real L.A. style traffic jam the closer I got to the town hall meeting. I also realized I would get to the town hall meeting just about 5:30, the time it started. Knowing my chances had plummeted on getting in, I called Larry to see if he was up to meeting me at the town hall meeting (no, he wasn’t) or having dinner with me afterward (yes, he was).
I turned off the highway onto 150th Street behind a jillion cars and saw a cop turning away car after car at the entrance.
He was a young cop. He had a smile on his face. He was having a good time. I don’t know if it was because of all the conservative Republicans arriving (identified by bumper stickers) or because he enjoyed being in a position of power.
“Sorry, the hall is filled up and there aren’t any parking spaces.”
So I took myself and my Prius and my Obama sticker out of there and called Larry and he said a martini was waiting for me at his house and we could go to a good Mexican restaurant not far from his place.
I said yes.
Then I called Jo, the most articulate liberal letter writer in our town, who engenders all kinds of talk. She had said earlier in the week that she was going to be at the meeting. Her phone rang a couple of times, she opened it without saying hello and I heard a few words of Mary Fallin’s speech. Then she hung up without speaking.
I got the message. She was inside, couldn’t talk, bye-bye.
I swung around, battled more traffic, finally got to Larry’s, had my martini and a nice dinner and went home.
Mission unaccomplished.
BUT this past Saturday I drove to Midwest City to be a panel member at the 5th Congressional District Democratic meeting on what to do this coming year.
As is often the case, we met at a union hall. American Federal Government Employees (AFGE) local 916.
Union halls rock my soul. These are the worker bees of the Democratic Party, the working class, strength of America, men and women who stand for what economic justice should be in the United States.
I got there at 9:30 and registered.
Got myself a donut and strawberries and watermelon and a delicious cup of hot coffee.
I amused myself with a little piece of graffiti art—NO STYROFOAM written on a Styrofoam cup—and replaced it on its pristine stack next to the coffee urn.
I was happy to see there were stacks of paper cups there, too.
As I stood next to the coffee urn the chairwoman walked up to me and apologized for the Styrofoam and said it wouldn’t happen again. She remembered the last time I complained and had brought the paper cups herself and didn’t know who had put the others there.
What a joy to hear! That wouldn’t have happened in California. I would have been given the evil eye. But in Oklahoma they take stuff seriously.
I went to registration and got some printed handouts.
Hmmmmm. They looked very interesting.
Introductions began.
Then Jay Parmley began his training of us, his pupils.
It was fabulous.
We learned the Paul Tully method of how to formulate a campaign.
Start with four boxes.
In the first box, write what WE would say about (ourselves, an issue.)
In the second box, write what THEY would say about (themselves, the same issue.)
In the third box, write what WE would say about THEM.
In the fourth box, write what THEY would say about US.
Then, reduce each box to 27 words, spoken in 9 seconds, with three points. This sharpens the message, in your mind and in the campaign ... think of the ad slogans you know by heart because they are short and sweet and repeated a lot.
(Try it. It is amazing how it works. Come on. I didn’t write all those directions for NOTHING! I will publish the best ones in the blog on FourStory.)
If we do this early on in the campaign, we can think through strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and be ready for the great adventure of a political campaign.
WHAT A TOOL!
We went through fundraising. (It is the LEAST pleasant thing about politics for me.)
We were told at the conclusion of our training that we must speak for and work for what we believe and not sell our souls in order to get more votes.
I felt, as I sat there, that I was with the French Underground during World War II. That we patriots were fighting the good fight for peace and justice. I was proud to be there, with these people, who, in spite of all odds, have figured out what is right and what is wrong, and have decided to put themselves on the line for the good of all.
So my political week was a mixed bag ... facing the multitudes who were NOT with me politically, meeting with a chosen few who WERE.
I am not discouraged about having my political dreams come true.
I am always, eternally hopeful.
I KNOW that things will change, as they did with civil rights, the Vietnam War, the public consciousness on the environment.
Next up is health care for all.
It’s only a matter of time.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
hello, carmen!
it’s wonderful to read your comment! we share a lot, don’t we? keep up the good work. it’s needed everywhere.
you made me smile…a great big smile.
Hi Donna!
I am Bill’s daughter- we met once when I myself was teaching in LA. I loved this article, and stand with you in this fight. I am living in a VERY conservative, Catholic county near St. Louis, and find myself missing the ease of being open-minded that LA brought me; and Boston; and even Connecticut at times. I was drawn back to the middle of the country, but couldn’t fathom living in the “reddest state in America” again. In fact, almost all of my politically active friends have moved away from Okahoma. I realized as I read your story, that we need you and others like you to return to OK and bring our life lessons. I make no promises- but maybe when the kids are older, I’ll join you in your fight? : ) There’s so much to love about Oklahoma- but their ignorance is just not blissful.
Thanks for this great story! I hope to read more in the future!
2009-08-22 by Carmen BumgarnerCarmen Bumgarner
Ballwin, MO