Betty Rivard: Deciding what we can be
As I write this, I am so excited to get out early this morning, walk through our beautiful East End, and rest on a bench before my first time to visit inside the Capitol for the first time in more than a year.
I was thinking as I walked over about how we have a choice here in our state about where we want to go.
We are already green and have been, gristle and bone, throughout our time here as a state and before. The young man who brought me groceries via instacart gave me advice on my garden. My neighbors accept or trade for fresh produce from my front yard. Some of them share fond memories of a grandmother who loved working in her own garden at an advanced age.
Many of us have dear pets who are part of our family. We pass treasured house plants from generation to generation.
A colleague tweets about the professional managerial class representing the Democratic Party. A former candidate talks about building a progressive machine of elected officials who will do whatever we want because we elect them.
This is not how I see either the Democratic party or progressives in our state.
The party is already a big tent with a full range of ideas and backgrounds among our elected officials. The new diversification of its structure will make this reality even more apparent. Over time we can and will instate a leadership that represents all of our various members.
Progressives come in all sizes. I know I am not the only one who recoils at the very concept of a political machine. I actually do not even want to elect only people who all think like I do.
Above all I want to support candidates who will think for themselves, day in and day out, un-beholden to anyone.
Am I a dinosaur to think this way? I believe — and my experiences have borne this out — that our best decisions are made through a democratic process that involves a full range of voices and different points of view. I love to witness those times at the legislature when people grapple with critical challenges and work together to figure things out.
Not every day, but enough to keep me going, at least.
Of course I want to see more elected officials who share my conviction that we need to govern for the many and not just the few. I look for candidates with this belief and support them however I can.
I also understand that some of them may feel that joining a machine is the best way to go. If they prevail then I can assess their performances based on their track record.
Still, this is not the only way to be progressive.
Anyone who has spent time at the Capitol understands how alliances can shift from issue to issue as things evolve. There is nothing wrong with this dynamic. This is how democracy works.
After moving inside the Capitol I again emailed myself on my iPhone, this time from a bench in the House lobby.
Everything is positively gleaming. The information desk by the upper rotunda that I staffed the year of the water crisis looks to me to be pristine. The doors to the chambers are open to invite visitors to look in.
I met a couple who are here from New Jersey. Both of them are educators and minor league baseball fans. They went to two West Virginia Power games to see a whole crew of players who came here from their home team in Somerset. They shared with me some of the history and their joy at seeing and even getting a hug from players they knew while they came up in the game.
Before that a man from Iowa walked through. He asked me why our capitol building is so big for such a small state compared to other states he has been to. I told him it was a conscious investment during the Great Depression to affirm our value as a state and a people.
It was a fight back then and it is again today to be the best we can be.
We are on the verge of having the means to break free of our carbon-based masters.
We can do this. We deserve it.
Each of us can use our voice and our votes to contribute to this process while ensuring that our current workers and communities have the necessary jobs and support to make them whole.
This is a great time to be a West Virginian, challenging as it may feel.
I also feel confident that we have the heart mind, and soul to get the job done.
Our children and our grandchildren, our people who garden and farm and hunt and fish, our outdoor adventurers from here and beyond, our current and future workforce who can and will have good union jobs — all of them will thank us for that actions that we take here and now, day in and day out.
Green is not a radical or foreign word here. It is at the heart of who we are and have always been.
It is exciting to contemplate where we can and will be over the next several years as we make the change that will benefit all of us in our state, our country, and our world.
Betty Rivard, of ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä, is a retired social worker and planner for the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.
