Column: Gaining Yards, by Michael Racioppo

In a few Sundays, millions of us will shout out at the television insistantly “Move the Chains” as our football teams – in my case the Giants – advance for a first down on their march down field to hopefully put points on the board. At the risk of flooding the zone with sports metaphors and alienating those who don’t care about football, I think moving the chains describes the advancement of social change through elections very well. I couldn’t help but think of this as I saw Bernie Sanders supporters during the Democratic National Convention. Sanders

They have great energy and believe deeply in a more just society. But many are new to this grueling game with its share of arcane rules. They fail to understand that a Hail Mary pass thrown 60 yards downfield doesn’t get to win the most powerful office in the world. (Well maybe you can if you are an unprincipled reality TV huckster.)

It takes long and somewhat boring work that many people aren’t willing to do or don’t engage in early enough. It is the most necessary element of advancing an agenda. To use another football metaphor, it generally takes “3 yards and a cloud of dust.” Bernie has implored his supporters to take this energy and use it to get involved in local politics – just like he did.

People that supported Bernie (and Hillary) should take the energy that they’ve shown and register voters, make sure races for state legislatures and municipal government have better turnouts, and act like every vote counts all the time because it does.

I have supported Hillary throughout, but now there is added urgency. I am all in for Hillary but if she doesn’t have progressive legislators supporting her agenda across the country, it will likely be stymied in ways that President Obama’s agenda has been frustrated.

In Brooklyn, this means getting involved in participatory budgeting, community boards, petitioning for candidates to get on ballots or joining a political club. If people who were passionate about Bernie’s candidacy don’t stay involved, they will fail to alter the process and perpetuate the problems and issues that fueled the Bernie movement. The rigging can be altered by more experienced hands, so long as they are not co-opted, and we can sail off into a beautiful sunset.

There is some truth in the saying “you get the democracy you deserve” and before we deserve a perfect, or near perfect one, we have to gain some yards and “move the chains!”

If you’re reading this and want to get involved, but aren’t sure how feel free to email me at Racioppomike@yahoo.com.

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Comments are closed.

READ OUR FULL PRINT EDITION

Our Sister Publication

a word from our sponsors!

Latest Media Guide!

Where to find the Star-Revue

Instagram

How many have visited our site?

wordpress hit counter

Social Media

Most Popular

On Key

Related Posts

Film: “Union” documents SI union organizers vs. Amazon, by Dante A. Ciampaglia

Our tech-dominated society is generous with its glimpses of dystopia. But there’s something especially chilling about the captive audience meetings in the documentary Union, which screened at the New York Film Festival and is currently playing at IFC Center. Chronicling the fight of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), led by Chris Smalls, to organize the Amazon fulfillment warehouse in Staten

An ode to the bar at the edge of the world, review by Oscar Fock

It smells like harbor, I thought as I walked out to the end of the pier to which the barge now known as the Waterfront Museum was docked. Unmistakable were they, even for someone like me — maybe particularly for someone like me, who’s always lived far enough from the ocean to never get used to its sensory impressions, but

Quinn on Books: In Search of Lost Time

Review of “Countée Cullen’s Harlem Renaissance,” by Kevin Brown Review by Michael Quinn   “Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: / To make a poet black, and bid him sing!” – Countée Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel” Come Thanksgiving, thoughts naturally turn to family and the communities that shape us. Kevin Brown’s “Countée Cullen’s Harlem Renaissance” is a

MUSIC: Wiggly Air, by Kurt Gottschalk

Mothers of reinvention. “It’s never too late to be what you might have been,” according to writer George Eliot, who spoke from experience. Born in the UK in 1819, Mary Ann Evans found her audience using the masculine pen name in order to avoid the scrutiny of the patriarchal literati. Reinvention, of style if not self, is in the air