Thursday, June 7, 2012

On, Wisconsin!

I seem to have a pattern of blogging [lately] on a 2 or 3 month cycle.

Fail.
 
Life has been busy – I’ve been contemplating a real estate purchase, spent a week “screen-free” (or pretty damn close, anyway), went to a drive-in conference about behavior  intervention teams and even got to make a quick trip to see some peeps in Columbus.

I also voted in an historic recall election for our governor and lt. governor.

Quite sadly, they’re both still in office. And so I, like many people I know and work with, are quite disappointed and a little deflated. And I’m pretty sure that’s an understatement of great proportion.

I’m trying to look at the bright side.

Like that I believe that democracy is pretty awesome. Still. People used their collective voices to say, “what you are doing is not okay. Your choices in fact, are unacceptable to us.” Almost a million signatures were obtained to even make the election happen. Only 2 other governors in history have been recalled.

TWO.

So I got to vote in a recall election. They clearly don’t happen very often.

Over 2.5 million people voted. They waited in lines in places that didn’t have enough ballots. They waited in line to vote absentee. They made homemade signs and stood on the streets, telling people to vote. They got people who have never before voted to go to the polls.

Power to the people.

It was awesome.

I’m trying to remember that, because right now it doesn’t feel awesome.

It’s disheartening and scary and still unbelievable.
 
But we are Wisconsin, and we will push Forward.