THe World is Run, revisted

I had lunch with my friend BA yesterday. We talked about the state of the world and our town. She raised the question, “How do we bring along the next generation of leadership?” It’s a good question—and the third time I have heard it this week. The League of Women Voters is asking the same question as is the library advisory board. I think it mostly about helping people find their homes, feeling sufficiently rooted in their places and their people that they are willing to spend hours and years protecting it. And then there is a bit of quiet nudging and perhaps modeling…I wrote this piece nine years ago. I think it is still relevant.

I spent the weekend at PeaceJam, a conference designed to “empower youth to make positive change in their communities.” Here in Corvallis that often means the sons and daughters of activist liberals, but the program was created to give kids who were looking at gang life an alternative way to impact the world.  That is one of the underlying vibes of the weekend. There were over 200 kids at OSU—bouncy middle school soccer players and older students with parole officers in attendance. It was an interesting mix, but it worked. The Youth had a grand time, playing team building games, learning about political action, and talking about peace as well as listening to a Nobel Peace activist talk politics at their level. The organizers didn’t really know what to do with the adult chaperones; I spent way too much time in a circle with fifty adults, dominated by five or six, lightly bored, wondering why I was there, rather than home  planting tomatoes.

One of the central rituals of the weekend is the Ceremony of Inspiration on Sunday morning. Anyone can stand up and tell the crowd who inspired them to work for peace and justice. The Laureate begins—her family inspired her. Kids troop to the front, talk about their families and friends, some living, some dead, who inspire and support them. Everyone applauds. When a kid talks about losing his mom to cancer, there are sniffles in the room. When another talks about her friend, the friend calls out from the crowd. “Love you, Ashley!”  I drift off, glance up to see Sandy, one of my old students, wearing an OSU sweatshirt, now  leading the Youth for the weekend, peering over the podium. “I’m on my tip-toes,” she said with a smile. “When I was in ninth grade, in my English classroom, there was a bumper sticker. It read ‘The world is run by the people who show up.’ It inspired me—so here I am. I showed up.”

And it is so true. The world is run by the people who show up. In Corvallis, if a dozen people testify, it can sway the council; the land use planners are more difficult. Enough letters to create a file folder on a specific topic can influence the state legislature. Clearly, as we have seen, every vote counts. So we have to show up. To move chairs so that people can watch a movie, and bring cookies so that they stay after to talk about it. To stand in front of the courthouse, silent, dressed in black, to absorb the anger of frustrated white guys in big trucks who shout at the “damn hippies” – never mind that some of those hippies were in Vietnam and know what happens in a war. And, sometimes, that means being lightly bored in an endless meeting—because you never know, never know, when you might inspire someone, although it’s probably not when you are trying to do so.