Margaret Gendreau's Open Salon Blog

Team America

Wed, 6 Jun 2012 12:06:19 -0400

Let’s face it, I’m not much of a joiner. Woody Allen famously stated, “I’d never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member,” I’ve always disagreed. It’s not arrogance; I just don’t really trust a team that doesn’t want me on it. Or maybe it was my brush with the basketball team my freshman year of high school. Later, after the JV coach showed they tried to convince me that the list had only been for the Varsity Team and I could try out all over again, but the damage had been done, I had already moved on to something else and I didn’t try out again.

Whatever the reason, I’ve never joined many teams over the years, but now I find myself a Summer Organizing Fellow for Organizing for America to re-elect the President. I have often thought about getting involved in the past and even made an early attempt, but, life got in my way and the excuses were too easy.

Now with the election approaching, my partner unemployed and my children’s future looming ahead of me, I find it impossible to not throw my hat in the ring.

REI – recruit, empower, include. I’ve always believed that in America there is a place for everyone. I am working for a campaign that shares my view of this great country. I have felt off-course for a very long time, maybe, just maybe, I have finally met up with my path again.

I'm In, I think!

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:05:12 -0400

I found out something about myself: I’m accommodating. The words look benign enough, but trust me, they are not. I have just about accommodated myself out of my life. On the bright side (which I am apt to look at) learning something that is a game changer this late in life, is not something one expects.

I started this year knowing something had to give so I started to say something to myself almost daily “What would Steve do?”, Steve, being Steve Jobs whom I have always admired, if from a very great distance. I learned some shocking things. For one, Steve would never had the inconvenience to be born a woman, much less a two-time recent mother just inside of middle age. He would not ever of accepted my job, and he never would have allowed other people to encroach on his vision, just to be nice. Oh and he most certainly would never let anyone mess his me time, especially if it was 5:00am yoga (another accommodation, by the way, who else gets up this blasted early?).

I accommodated myself into an old beautiful, house that I can not afford by myself with an unreliable partner, which does not, by the way meet my needs, and into a larger, front loader washer, which does not fit in the space and will never, ever, get towels clean. I think you know what I mean.

Yesterday started out with a fight, there were several fights in the middle and a fight and a headache at the end. Something else I just learned about myself, if I am pushed hard enough, I push back. Probably, we all will. Well that is the point I found myself at yesterday, pushed way, way beyond my limit and at the point of accepting an unpaid, summer fellowship with the Obama campaign.

Oh, did I mention the part where I have a house I can not afford and two small children? Yet after being in a meeting all day and fighting with more people than I have in a decade, I had a phone interview with an assistant deputy of something from the Obama campaign and did amazingly well. We made each other laugh often and I kept thinking, now this is someone I want to work with, electing a President I can live with.

So, I haven’t had any of you know, those conversations with my partner, my boss, the HR director, etc. So I leave this note to do some yoga to maybe get rid of this headache and the fear I am shaking with, but hopefully, not the smile that has been keeping me company since yesterday afternoon.

The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 02:06:12 -0400

Should Anthony Weiner resign? I actually don’t care about this as much I am surprised by my own reaction. I’d stopped expecting the group of politicians and religious figures to be worthy of my admiration a long time ago. History is, after all littered with the bodies of Presidential Mistresses and Pope’s children. If I wrongly believed that we had come such a long way that we were no longer in fear of repeating the past, then it was my expectations that were the problems, not reality.

I started off naïve and ready to take on the world. Even with all the promises to myself about not becoming one of “those” adults, you know the ones that had, well you know, um settled, here I find myself wondering how I’d overlooked this problem and that problem and so many problems that I actually became part of the problem along the way. But what if that supposition is incorrect? I’m not sure exactly the moment my expectations so eroded but I am prepared to admit I have learned the wrong lesson from our collective history.

The enemy has become so odious that my veneer of cynicism cracked and I can stay silent no longer. The founding fathers founded a government not because they felt “government was the problem”, they did not believe that taxes were inherently wrong, they believed that taxation without representation was wrong and they most certainly believed in my favorite…separation of church and state. Anyone that tells you differently is lying either to themselves or you, either way the end result remains the same.

I do not demand that our politicians are perfect. I do not demand that I am perfect, but I demand that "we the people" be put first.

You can not say you have my best interest as an American at heart and simultaneously erode voting rights, child labor laws, education, Medicare, and the environment. You can not say you love jobs but attack the people that have jobs and the groups that protect them. You can not say you love America and give more tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. You can not love the Constitution but believe in monopolies and you can not say you are able to judge impartially all the while fundraising and giving speeches for the few.

You can not say you love life so much that you would kill.

I stood up for something today that is important. How it will turn out, I can not say. I did not speak eloquently. I did not give any speeches. I simply stood up for the right at my own peril. Rick and Louie said it better in Casablanca: “Rick you’re not only a sentimentalist, but you’ve become a patriot,” “Louie, it seems like a good time to start.” I couldn’t agree more.

We're the Decider

Wed, 6 Apr 2011 15:04:43 -0400

I must begin this with a qualifier and it is this; I am not making this up! I’d like to believe I am in possession of a strong imagination, but it does not turn in such a way.

On Friday April 1^st the 112^th Congress passed HR 1255 by a vote of 221 – 202. In short, the legislation states that if the Senate has not passed a budget by April 6^th, HR 1 as passed by the House on February 19^th, 2011 will become law.

You read that correctly, House Bill HR 1 will become law without approval of the Senate nor the President. And the Republicans state they love the Constitution and this country with a perfectly straight face. Apparently they have never heard of the separation of power or maybe they believe THEY are the deciders. That’s right they are the dictators and do not need to go through the any of the processes set up by our Constitution. The “Government Shutdown Prevention Act of 2011” sweeps away the Constitution in a mere 513 words and its unequivocal power grab is of a magnitude unseen in American politics.

Many highs and lows mark this important time in our political landscape and I try to keep a level head about me, but, at this moment I must confess this new low completely blows my composure. Never mind it is unconstitutional and will be enjoined or some such stop put on it by a reasonable judge, but that it was tried at all is telling in its own right. It is a reminder of what some in power would do to civilization as we know it and why we must be involved in this political landscape at any cost.

Ditch Mitch!

Fri, 5 Nov 2010 02:11:25 -0400

delete

Ditch Mitch

Day One of The Ditch Mitch campaign begins! The Senate Minority Leader, Republican Mitch McConnell stated today that his number one goal is to get Obama out of the White House in 2012.

Is anyone really surprised that his top goal is not something more lofty like create American Jobs, improve the economy, strengthen the middle-class, serve the people as a representative in any way shape or form? Uphold the Constitution possibly (no, I did not say bastardize the Constitution just in case you were confused)?

I have to admit for a split second I hoped the Republicans would put aside their partisan rhetoric and do what they were elected to do, but I am afraid they have the interests of their corporate donors, and only their corporate donors at heart.

If this is indeed the year of the outsider, the truth may shock you: Mitch McConnell has been in office since I graduated High School, a whooping 25 years ago! - 1984 no less. Please see Opensecrets.org for some donor information on Mitch. I hope you'll join me and DITCH MITCH instead - because I, as a citizen of The United States of American, deserve better...and so do you.