election day 1
Mood:
spacey
Now Playing: nothing- except Bifo's talk from sydney indymedia
Election day 1.
photocopying until 1am this morning
woke up at 6am.
survived....kind of.
There is something strangely exhilarating about arguing with NOLS (Labor Left) people on Election day. The way that argument clarifies your thoughts is just magical. The way that a year's worth of frustration can, perhaps, be crystallised into a concise response to a provocation.
I spent the last 2 hours of campaigning today not wasting away in some empty polling booth, but outside manning, as ppl began to drift towards the bar, it would be a contest between NOLS and us ( i guess just me) as to who could walk with people to the line. It always seems such a lame contest, but nevertheless, important.
I ended up feeling soooo righteous and resentful towards Chris Friend and ----(forget his name temporarily). Chris was smugly saying that we dealt with the Libs, 'since they are preferencing us', whenever I was talking to ppl. I had just debunked this claim to him before, and yet he was still using it.
They were claiming responsibility for the Ed campaign overall (although throughout the year, their consistent attempts to exclude grassroots participation in decision making did not totally come to fruition, so they were lying whenever they said ROSE was the one who is the saviour of the ordinary student.)
I also realised that NOLS people year in year out claim that they will address this and that issue, without imagining how to make it achievable. It's disgraceful that they get votes on the back of hollow commitments: by having tickets on 'student poverty' when it is obvious that those candidates have not sat down and had a solid think about any long term strategy for a campaign. Just adds to the total vacuousness of their platform...
I realised another thing:
That students in the ALP have 2 conflicting hopes:
1. that the Labor party gets them somewhere
2. that the Labor party gets society somewhere.
As long as the ALP is a party of careerists, who play power games for the benefit of their own individual careers, it will not get society anywhere. As long as its members lack the humility to listen, to lead in order to become redundant, it will fail to really engage working people in the dream of egalitarianism. As long as it supports neo-liberalism, the dream of egalitarianism will be a mere mirage, receding from our attainment.
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So the culmination of this process...
I reckon that clarifying the basis of politics should be a big philosophical discipline in a similar way to the way Empiricists clarified and problematised the basis of science.
For example, what does 'political' mean? It seems that the Left uses the word in an entirely different way to the ordinary student, sometimes in a contradictory way.
For example, in terms of the question of agency, 'political' can be a descriptive word that implies disempowerment, as in "They were just being political, and didn't address the real issues". In this way, 'political' is a synonym for behaviour isolated from real engagement or true purpose; faction-like antagonism and superficial image building.
On the other hand, 'political' can mean the opposite: it can mean empowerment, such as "sexism is a political phenomenon", which means it is only embodied in so far as society allows it to be. It is not inevitable, rather it is contingent upon social power relationships of consent and complicity for its existence.
food for thought....
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Another outcome of today:
I spent a delirious hour in a traffic jam with Wenny today, and started to think about electoral reform, and how to do it in such a way as to encourage popular democracy and inspire ppl to create enabling structures that serve, rather than control us.
Also, to validate the traumatic experience that elections are for everyone (perhaps a necessary introduction to the machiavellian world that is student and Australian politics)
Here is a process I worked out:
1. Debrief elections. Validate how people felt.
2. Analyse these experiences. What aspects are individual problems? What aspects are cultural problems within certain factions? What aspects are due to our particular electoral structure? What aspects are due to the representative electoral structure in general? What aspects reflect a generalised alienation in our communities? (questions just a rough guide)
3. Identify and resolve conflicts and grievances. Nominate a neutral mediator if necessary (My internal reflecting: is this conflict destructive or creative? Is it necessarily a problem? Am I complaining about something intrinsic to the process we are engaging ourselves in?)
4. produce recommendations for electoral reform based on repeated grievances (perhaps a rep from each group can play a role)
Electoral Reform
5.Announce the process of electoral reform to students through Honi and lecture speeches/ petition on particular aspect??
6. Blue sky brainstorm, involving a call out to students to think of suggestions for electoral change.
What values are informing us? What kind of democracy is an ideal one?
7. Collate suggestions
8. make a list of pros and cons for each suggestion
9. perhaps shortlist the suggestions in some kind of democratic way
10. Build a student general meeting to vote on the suggestions (and perhaps the constitutional suggestions that have been in the pipeline for a while)
Posted by anneenna
at 12:53 AM NZT
Updated: Wednesday, 22 September 2004 9:20 AM NZT
caffeinated
hungry
a-ok
don't ask
cool