March 17. 2007
by Heather Wokusch
What do you get when you cross Robert's Rules of Order, progressive activism and wounded veterans?
Welcome to the annual meeting of Democrats Abroad (DA). Nicknamed the 51st state since it sends delegates to the DNC and represents many of the roughly six million Americans living abroad, the DA is currently meeting in Germany to chart its future path. I am blogging the event exclusively for Democrats.com.
Around 100 people attended the opening reception last night, where the featured speaker was Phil Murphy, Democratic National Committee (DNC) National Finance Chair. Murphy is a wiry, affable man who speaks in sports analogies and seems relentlessly upbeat about the Democrat's possibilities for 2008. To paraphrase Murphy: It boils down to how much money you can raise and how you spend it.
Unfortunately, his talk came on the backdrop of the Democrat's scandalous decision to make it easier for Bush to invade Iran. How that betrayal of the voters' trust would improve fundraising possibilities was not addressed.
For this blogger, the first official day of the meeting has been a mixture of bureaucratic boredom and gut-wrenching introspection.
As in any large gathering of Democrats today, you have those calling for order in the plenary and those calling for impeachment. But here, the handshakes and water-cooler pleasantries mask an underlying sense of tension. You've got various candidates vying for executive-committee positions (and the status they afford), you've got big and small countries in a power play for representation, and you've got those wanting to assuage the system pitted against those determined to fight it.
The trick is in finding a common voice.
I keep hearing that the goal is to elect a Democrat in 2008. But my goal is to elect a candidate worth my vote. And I'm more than a little disgusted with what I have seen from the Democrats recently.
That is, with the exception of Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, who recently said: "Since war with Iran is an option of this Administration, and since such war is patently illegal, then impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran." (http://kucinich.us/node/3667)
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By lucky coincidence, today I hung out with Elizabeth Kucinich, Dennis' remarkable wife. Elizabeth has been repeatedly introduced as 'representing Dennis Kucinich,' but ten seconds with this timeless woman and you realize that she actually represents peace and wisdom. Fortunately, so does her husband.
In another coincidence, a massive Defense Department military hospital and treatment center for the wounded in Bush's wars happens to be less than two hours from where the DA is currently meeting. Elizabeth was determined to visit the troops during her short time here, and while Landstuhl Regional Medical Center is off-limits to the general public, Elizabeth was allowed access due to her status as the wife of a Congress Member. This afternoon, the New Hampshire State Co-ordinator for the Kucinich campaign, Christina Kraich-Rogers, and I joined Elizabeth in a visit to Landstuhl.
It's hard to describe the impact of what we saw. A 23-year-old soldier recently medevaced from Iraq, physically shattered and facing blindness. Couldn't even see the newly-earned purple heart pinned to his pillow.
Relentless stories of IED attacks and sniper assaults; youth putting a brave face on lives torn apart and innocence tragically lost.
Through it all, Elizabeth remained warm, engaged and connected.
On the ride back to the DA meeting, she was quiet then said: 'The feeling I come away with is that we are sacrificing our nation's future to pay for war. We are plundering its treasures and its communities, and leaving young lives irreversibly broken. It's like the Mayan snake with the head eating the tail. It's that cycle of violence.' Elizabeth then spoke of the campaign to establish a Department of Peace (www.thepeacealliance.org) and the need to embrace non-violence both at home and abroad.
I come away from this day feeling that there is a time for Robert's Rules and there is a time for urgent action. The Democrats Abroad can take pride in having introduced recent DNC resolutions including restoring Habeas Corpus, condemning torture and ensuring voting rights to Katrina refugees. But we must do much, much more.
For as a young US service member recently learned, a foreign policy based on 'an eye for an eye' can leave you blind.
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Heather Wokusch [send her email] works as a free-lance writer and cross-cultural trainer. Her writing has been featured across the web and in periodicals internationally. She is the author of The Progressives' Handbook vol 1, and The Progressives' Handbook vol 2. See all of her work on her website, http://heatherwokusch.com/.
