Notes From The Floor

Survival

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Put the head phones on and wow. Here I am. The message-focused, issue-automaton that I become falls away and its just me here at the computer on the floor listening to Taj Mahal, Tracy Chapman and Concrete Blonde. I've literally been too busy spinning here between committee and balcony, key board and sleep to dig out the ear phones and listen to music here since weeks back in February.

    We are far from there now. Today I went to the press conference which some of Boise's stalwart Human Rights organizations had pulled together, there out on the lawn as the rain turned to white snow. We discussed Senate Bill 1323... a bill saying I, as a gay person, am human. I matter. Saying that this state agrees that harm against me is not OK. Saying that firing me or throwing me out of my apartment for no other reason than that I'm gay is not O.K. What state or nation would not up hold that value?

    Odd day today. Full of odd moments. I've written so much e-mail that my brain now naturally streams bill phrases, numbers, consequences, debate. The music here in the head phones reminds me that I can survive anything, even as good bills go down and bad ones creep ever forward. If it all gets to me for a day or two each session, I'm doing pretty well. I have a well of strength from many places. Carol's brilliant humor, my years in the wilds, having seen a world where I know never to pity myself too much. I've seen lives people live elsewhere in the world. I can survive anything here.

Here's one I will share....... Having walked alone for hours following foot prints, through deep snow at first, and then downhill for miles along the winding dirt road out of a Tibetan mountain town through forest, toward the boarder with Nepal. An army jeep stopped and I took a ride with a group of Chinese military men in uniform. It was a ride that I know from the faces and voices there in the cramped seats very nearly went wrong. I speak no Chinese only some Nepali and when I insisted on getting out, I was on a huge hill side above the boarder gate. Rocks fell constantly across the road from high up in the rain and I threaded my way down huge switchbacks until a voice below the road called out. An old man sat there under a low piece of corrugated metal. He invited me in with hand gestures. Leaning over a little fire, he made Tibetan tea for me, a kind of salty yellow soup made with yack butter. He showed me how to dip little dough balls made from tsampa flour into the warm broth and I sat with him, communicating with gestures and smiles there in his shelter of tin by the road side where he had pulled me out of the rain to share with me what food he had.

Ending Debate

White haired Reverend of anti-gay causes, Brian Fischer, caught up with me in the brown marble stair case last week. He wanted to tell me that he wants us to get along. I said, as long as you are pushing legislation which affects my life, that will be hard. He said he didn't want it to be personal. I said, it's my life, my family. That is personal.

    Oddly, Reverend Fischer nodded. When you debate him on issues he doesn't give up. Like with me, there is no end to it with him. I guess that's because you can't debate different values and priorities. If one person thinks another is unworthy of rights and they see that belief as sanctioned in their religious documents, how do you debate that? You can debate whether their religion should be expressed in Idaho law, but can not really debate the belief itself. But Fischer looked up and nodded on the stairway landing below me, almost understandingly at last, and turned away.

Race in Debate

If you watch our House floor session each morning at from about 10 AM to noon on line or on public TV, you might have watched some pretty disturbing debate on the grocery tax on Thursday. The 70 of us debated a bill to offer a $30 rebate on your income tax which would climb each year by $10 until it reaches $100. It was one of those moments at which I cringed to be debating along side some of my colleagues on an issue I opposed for completely different reasons.
    Phil Hart was debating against the bill and began by expressing concerns about how people, especially low income people would spend the rebate, which would be as much as $50 even the first year if your income were low enough. He went on for some time about "illegal aliens" and must have said that phrase literally 15 times in only a few minutes. It seems that the proponents of the credit didn't want to take the tax off food because illegal aliens and tourists in Sun Valley might benefit from the tax cut.
    I am supposing some think it doesn't get any scarier to Republican law makers than to contemplate a few women in furs and Lycra and some unfortunate person whose visa has expired while her husband's has not and she chooses to stay in Idaho rather than leaving the kids. Phil did not dwell on the tourists, only those whose "illegal culture" means they have a lot of kids.
    Phil mentioned some odd statistic about how people spent relief money from Katrina. It wasn't flattering either and I'm guessing was only part of the real story, omitting the people who paid for caskets and house repairs, clothes to replace molded ones soaked in sewage and long gone. I wondered if Phil would ever feel comfortable if people analyzed how he spent his money. I listened and he went on.
     Next he talked about Idaho's tribes and I cannot for the life of me remember how they were connected because I was on my phone to our Democratic Minority Leader Wendy Jaquet downstairs telling her I was going to stand up and object. She said she'd do it. And so the debate came back to food tax rebates.
    I know well that not every undocumented immigrant in Idaho is Latino and not every person living in New Orleans is black.  Still, later I found Phil at the shooting range and with a smile and pointed humor, gave him a big whack on the arm, explaining that using negative examples ranging from undocumented immigrants to Katrina to Idaho's tribes was debate chock full of pretty dreadful racist innuendo. He said we all see things from different points of view. I agreed. He smiled sheepishly and said he didn't mean it. I actually believe he didn't. I also expect he might be more thoughful next time. 

Triumph of Cynicism

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Wednesday: I feel like this sinister force is pressing down on this place, like our ugliest, most fearful natures are lurking at the surface, scratching the eyes out of our collective conscience.
    The bean counters are stuffing our ears with starch, pulling the alarm on sirens which have deafened our sense to what is possible. It has driven us into isolation, frozen us spineless in our big, black leather chairs.
    The Darfur divestment bill is dead. Created with the authorization of congress and the president as part of a coordinated strategy to impact the genocide and violent and systematic extermination of a people in Sudan.
    The one chance our nation and state has to make a difference and we fall, believing the whispers that this will be but one of a series of divestment requests -- as if national efforts are coordinated through federal legislation every year and as if the genocide of a group of people is acknowledged by world leaders and our own president each year.
    PERSI, the Public Employee Retirement System, insists we are powerless and thus we became so.
    PERSI insists it has no role in public policy yet invested hundreds of hours in defeating this bill, organizing public employee organizations, the Idaho Education Association and Firefighters to oppose Divestment.
    PERSI knows that only one third of one percent of its holdings would be divested and that the list of companies it must avoid is created nationally, yet the managers claim a great burden in having to comply with this divestment legislation. In fact the burden and cost has been their hours spent fighting Divestment itself.
    They insist we should have no role in the world, as if our actions are monetarily and materially isolated. This is the ugliest cynicism. I know because I sat in a college amphitheater in 1986 and listened to Reverend Desmond Tutu's thanks for my work and the work of thousands of students to bring down the Apartheid government in South Africa through Divestment and the public awareness and international pressure which Divestment created.
    Tutu was a man who spent his life struggling to end the rule of white government which made him, as a black man, a second class citizen with no right to work or pursue freedom and or participate in his country's political process as an equal. The Apartheid government was condemned worldwide. This was arguably the only other major Divestment movement in the US in the past three decades. Tutu knew the power of dollars and the power of coordinated international efforts. I know that power and I know that as a state we have that power, and with a small action like adopting this legislation we could have been a part of something larger, part of a strategy carefully targeted to place pressure where it is most needed to end violence and bring down a government which is not just cordoning off an ethnic group within its borders, but killing them, to the best of its ability, trying to kill all of them. And do we really feel we have no choice as a state but to stand by and watch?
    I think we know better. I think members of the State Affairs Committee, especially McKenzie, a former co-sponsor, knew better. With this vote, what really have we become?

At the Movies

Last night was Skip Smyser's Movie night. Smyser is a former legislator and long time lobbyist who holds an annual legislator and legislative staff Movie Night at the Egypitan Theater. People come dressed down. The house and Senate mix, sitting in seats right next to each other (unheard of.) And we sit back, eat popcorn and get transported together somewhere far away and usually long, long ago.
    I admire Smyser for his choice of movies. He often has a sort of transcending message he feels we need to hear, about the integrity of the law (A Man for All Seasons), racism (South Pacific), being different (To Kill a Mocking Bird). I look forward to these nights not just because so far they have all been movies I've never seen, but also just to look into the eyes of my colleagues afterwards, to ask their thoughts and see what they saw in a film. It gives me hope and re-affirms what we often have in common.
    One Hundred and five people from around the state, gathered each year to make law. We are not quite ordinary people. We had the ego to run for office and believe we could win. We had to have the means to give up a job and do so. We had to be elected by a majority and so the majority in the state is better represented than it might be if we just drew lots.
   I like nights like last night because we step away from the issues that divide us for a few hours and become ordinary people again.  In my heart I hope it helps the process. I also hope the words of the song from South Pacific about being taught prejudice, it not being born in you, ring in 105 ears when we discuss immigration or gay people, when we talk about people who live in poverty and in wealth and about hard work and worthiness. We have a long way to go together. I always hope that nights like last night rub a little armor off of each of us and inch us one step closer.

Messages Sent

Tense days. Finalizing legislation, seeing the deadlines looming. The friction is palpable among factions of our Republican colleagues over brewing debates about the grocery tax, open or closed primaries and more. Everyone seems yet more on edge as we close the week. Some of us stay late calculating fiscal impacts, writing statements of purpose (SPOs) which you find at the bottom of the bills on the legislative web site. In committee they appear as a sort of green cover sheet on a House bill (yellow on Senate bills.) They say what legislation does and why we feel it is necessary.
    This afternoon in the Senate, a long list of us as Senators and representatives, expect to introduce the bill to get PERSI, our public employee retirement system, to divest from Darfur. If we pass it, we sell .03% or less than one third of a percent of the stocks PERSI holds. Those oil, weapons and other companies sit on a list of businesses flagged nationally as contributing significantly to genocide in Sudan. If we pass this bill we join congress and the even the president and send a message that we won't participate in the deaths and torture of thousands in Africa, where, far off there today, it is nighttime in the heat of summer.

A Little History Made

This morning the Idaho legislature made a little history. On this day when we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Senate State Affairs Committee voted to print the first piece of legislation to mention sexual orientation, and to propose ending centuries of discrimination against gays and lesbians in employment, housing, education and public accommodation.
    Leslie Goddard, director of the Human Rights Commission beautifully presented the bill after an introduction by Senator Tim Corder, a major sponsor or the legislation. Some may remember the Mountain Home Republican Senator from a City Club debate in 2006 or from his past vote to ban gay marriage in Idaho's Constitution. His support of this year's legislation speaks loudly to the fundamental fairness implicit in the issue of employment discrimination and to the progress made on understanding of these issues over the years.
    Nothing, except giving thanks to those who vote well, is more important than dedicating ourselves to having positive, gentle interactions with legislators who are still on the road to understanding these issues and voting as we would wish. I will never fault a community frustrated with waiting so many long years to see a day when we can not be fired from our jobs solely because we are gay. Still, I hope it is well noted that Senator Little was one of the majority voting yes in support this morning, the man who bravely helped hold off the Constitutional Amendment for two years before bowing to extremely intense political pressure. Again his vote speaks to the importance of patience and how different and fundamental this issue is from marriage which so unfortunately intersects with church and religion.
    In what I hope will help bolster a budding coalition of conservatives and moderates, the BSU public policy survey this year found that 63% or Idahoans feel it should be illegal to fire someone just because they are or are perceived to be gay, that was a majority in every region of the state and both political parties.  Clearly those numbers take this out of the realm of being election year issue and show that basic fairness crosses all kinds of political lines. Who today doesn't know someone affected by this issue? In fact, how many legislators still do not have a family member or friend who is touched by what we deliberate today?

Yes votes (note some legislators were absent): Sen Pro Tem Robert Geddes, Committee Chair Curt McKenzie, Senator Joe Steger, Senator Brad Little, Senator Kate Kelly, Senator Clint Stennett

Being Gay

Carol Growhoski / Nicole LeFavour 2006

Some days it is harder than others to be the only gay person in the legislature. Ninety nine percent of the time there is no reason for me to feel it. My colleagues ask about my partner Carol. When I talk about what I did over the weekend I might say "Carol and I." I don't think much about it and I don't think they do either. At least not most of them.
    Rep. Curtis Bowers wrote a pretty frightening anti-gay editorial to the Idaho Press Tribune the other day. Bowers was appointed by Governor Otter this year to fill Rep. Bob Ring's seat. Dr. Ring is one of a group of Republican senators and representative who voted against the anti-gay constitutional amendment when he served in the house. Today I miss him more than ever.
    I imagine some days it is not easy for Raul Labrador listening to the debates around immigration and how they so easily flow into anti-Mexican, anti-Hispanic and racially stereotyping tirades. It is an odd feeling to know that someone you work with doesn't just perhaps disagree with your ideas or beliefs but feels that you as a person are lesser or evil or by virtue of your existence deserving of pain or derision. 
    Representative Bowers sits behind me here on the balcony of the House. I stood up a bit ago and went back to tell him how uncomfortable his editorial made me and how sorry I was to see he felt that way about gay people. He was willing to talk more about it. I offered to answer questions when he has them.
    I don't know if it will ever really make any difference since I understand he is a strong John Birch Society devotee. But I want him to see me as human. Even if he never votes in a way that shows he respects or cares about gay people, I want him to see me as human.