Remember those miners that were stuck in a mineshaft for 77 hours then miraculously released? Check out this story (may require free login to NyTimes). Since the event, one of the rescuers has committed suicide, and all of the miners are suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Though the writer of the article was able to capture their angst, there is a sense that the miners themselves haven't quite communicated their sense of pain to either each other, or to their wider community. Why does this matter? What the hell does this have to do with politics?
Every election cycle we see two competing narratives from pundits. On the one hand we see patriotic narratives cheering and reaffirming the vote as the pre-eminent sign of our vibrant democracy. "I've never seen so many people at the polls" is a common refrain.
The other narrative? One of hand-wringing. Why don't more people care about politics? Why don't more people come out to vote? Why do so many people just tune politics out? This narrative is focused on voter apathy and on the problems it poses for our vision of democracy. From these narratives we as readers are usually steered towards the conclusion that the people who are tuning politics out are to blame.
Here's where the miners come in.
Not only do they not seem to have communicated their suffering to each other (preferring instead to engage in projects that keep their minds and bodies occupied, or to pharmaceuticals), but the "community" in which they live has turned on them rather than on the company that should have kept them safe. Nina Eliasoph wrote a work entitled AVOIDING POLITICS. Eliasoph spent a great deal of time in a working class, white, suburban environment examining the ways that citizens grappled with politics in their community. What she found was that citizens themselves created a number of spaces in which deep discourse on pretty much ANYTHING of substance was frowned upon.
Politics? Nope.
Religion? Nope.
Race? HELL no.
What fills this gap? If people aren't talking about politics with each other, then where do they get their perspectives from? This is where institutions like the media step in.
When the miners were rescued, very few stores focused on the ways that the company that owned the mine neatly dodged regulations created to ensure miner safety. Fewer narratives focused on the complicit aid of the current administration in overlooking those regulations or getting rid of them totally. So when the average person in that community is thinking about the rescue...they focus on the rescue rather than the causes. When the miners decide to sue, the average citizen is now thinking of possible job loss and blaming the miners.
And the miners themselves because they are unused to dealing with sensitive issues in a group context don't quite have the language to describe what they are going through in a way that builds community ties. They're left to pills, to booze, to digging holes in the ground.
Unless somehow we can create the spaces that can effectively build those ties, we can pretty much kiss any attempt to build support for civic institutions whether through public initiatives like Americorps, or private initiatives, goodbye.
Posted by at July 25, 2003 02:11 PM