A couple of weeks ago, I pulled a small envelope out of my mailbox. It came from friends of mine, people to whom I owe a favor, and I expected that this letter was going to be about cashing in on the time I had promised them—odd, I thought, why didn’t they just call? But that wasn’t what it was about, at all. I had received an invitation, an invitation to a”meet-the-candidate” party. The candidate was Amanda McClendon, a Metro Council member who is running for a civil court judge’s position. I knew very little about what a civil court judge does, nothing about Amanda McClendon, and nobody I knew had ever invited me to their house to meet a political candidate. I mean, most politicians would see fraternizing with the likes of me as the kiss of death. It’s been a long time since Jimmy Carter posed in that “Jimmy Buffet and the Coral Reefer Band” t-shirt. Of course, Ms. McClendon wasn’t doing the inviting, my friends were, and my buddy is about as disreputable looking as I am….anyway, after initially pooh-pooing the idea of spending a warm Sunday afternoon in early spring indoors in the gritty heart of Nashville, I succumbed to the lure of the unknown and RSVP’d.
It had been a while since I’d been to my friends’ home but it wasn’t hard to find— the three Amanda McClendon yard signs made it easy. I was one of the first people there, and so I got to know some of the other guests while we waited for the guest of honor. There was a woman whose name was familiar to me because I get email from her a lot—she’s one of the mainsprings of “Gathering to Save Our Democracy,” a listserve for people campaigning for verifiable paper ballot voting. (That should be a nobrainer, but Bush’s magnanimously (and deceptively) titled “Helping America Vote Act” was intended to push the country into non-verifiable, hackable, touch-screen voting. Fortunately, enough people have noticed this so that the movement has quite a bit of traction, nationwide. I am cheered by this, friends, and let me tell you, not much cheers me these days—but, I digress.)
Another was a Vanderbilt professor who is doing research into non-drug approaches to treating ADHD. For some reason, he has not been able to get any funding for this. He was fun to talk to. His wife is Ms. McClendon’s campaign manager, and, I found out later, also a Vanderbilt professor. A very distinguished, twinkly older gentleman and his much younger wife entered, greeted as friends by the other people in the room. Li’l ole produce clerk here was in a league far removed from my usual haunts, but I had come for something different, and this was that already, even without the candidate. Gee, I thought, if I hadn’t jumped the academic ship and gone off to chop wood and carry water, I’d be one of these people. I was relieved when my friends Earl and Joan arrived; I was no longer totally among strangers (our hostess was busy with food prep and her hippie husband was down in New Orleans doing volunteer relief work, bless his heart).
We had not been waiting long when the candidate arrived. I discovered that this was not going to be what I had thought—she was not there to give a speech, she just sat down with us, and noshed on hors-d’ouevres and took part in the ongoing conversation. But hey, her campaign slogan is, “Listening to you.” Not “talking to you.” I think that’s a good attitude for a politician to have—after all, they’re our employees. No matter how much money lobbyists wave at ‘em, we’re the ones who pay their salaries. Not that anyone’s going to be lobbying Ms. McClendon for anything much as a civil court judge. She probably gets a lot more of that in her current position on Metro Council, where she heads the finance committee, and has been an advocate for putting a new baseball stadium downtown.
Prodded by our hostess, I finally started asking Ms. McClendon some questions. The first thing I found out is what I’ve already told you—she’s running for a civil, not a criminal, judgeship, which means she would be dealing mostly with lawsuits, probate cases , divorces, and similar matters that end up in court because private individuals can’t agree. “I enjoy probate cases,” she said. She’s been a practicing lawyer for over twenty years. I think you’d have to be a lawyer to say you like probate cases!
“Do you think the adversarial nature of our court system gets in the way of”–I started to ask her.
“Finding out the truth?” she finished for me. “Yes, it certainly does. All too often, I’ve seen that money gets results. I’d like to set up classes to help people who plan to act as their own lawyers, and have a real small claims court that would exclude lawyers.”
“What do you think of mediation?” I asked her.
“It’s been hijacked by the lawyers, who have made it more expensive than going to court, because both sides have to have their lawyers, and then you have to hire another lawyer to be the mediator.”
“From what you’ve said, I gather you wouldn’t be partial to SLAPP suits?” I asked. An activist friend of mine who had been sued by the polluting company he was exposing had requested that I sound her out on this.
She looked puzzled. “What’s a SLAPP suit?” she asked.
“A Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation,” I explained. “It’s when a lawbreaking company sues the activists who are trying to expose it, in order to tie them up in court and weigh them down with legal expenses.”
Wonder of wonders, a woman who had been part of that action walked into the room right at that moment, and proceeded to explain the situation in far greater detail than I knew. And Ms. McClendon listened, asked good questions, and, I think, learned quite a bit, as did we all. It was a great story, and well told, but its substance is unfortunately not really relevant to what I’m talking about here. Ms. McClendon, although obviously interested, said that cases like that were not likely to show up in her court. I appreciated her honesty. She didn’t try to b.s. us, she just gave us the relevant facts. As I understand the rules of this radio station, I can’t endorse candidates, but I will tell you I like Amanda McClendon.
So, what’s the “Deep Green Perspective” on this?
It’s easy to fall way back and dig the big picture, but the closer you get to daily life, the blurrier the distinctions become. As a Metro Council member and a civil court judge, Ms. McClendon is serving deep in the nitty-gritty, at the base of the political pyramid, where any political party worthy of the name has to have its roots. Forget about national office. Forget about state office. How do the Green Party’s ten key values apply to neighborhood zoning issues? How does a Green judge run a divorce court? When we have individuals who are willing and able to answer these questions, we will begin to be a serious political party. When people hear and appreciate those individuals and respond with their votes, and put us into office, we will begin to be a movement to be reckoned with.
I don’t mean to demean my brothers and sisters who are running for state and national office this year, because I think they are the best hope we have right now for spreading our values. I believe that the ten key values of the Green Party are infectious. I think they are ideas that make such good sense that anyone who hears them with an open mind will say, “Yeah!”
I mean, what’s to argue with about grassroots democracy, social justice and equal opportunity, ecological wisdom, non-violence, decentralization, community-based economics and economic justice, feminism and gender equity, respect for diversity, personal and global responsibility, and future focus and sustainability? Now, as I was saying, how does that apply to divorce and probate court? I humbly submit that it takes someone smarter than me to answer that question.
Maybe I should have been prepared to present the matter to Ms. McClendon—but that’s a lot to get into when you’ve barely been introduced. I guess I’ll just have to share this with her and see how—or if—she responds. Stay tuned.
