Somebody said “All politics are local.” But a lot of local people don’t believe that.
Some people only pop out of their log cabin cuckoo clocks to consider politics during a big election year. We were incredulous when the media reported less Alaskans had voted in 2008 than 2004, then gratified to learn that someone had forgotten the 310,000 absentee ballots, 1/3 of the total, that were counted after the election. If we counted all the ballots together, it was the highest turnout of Alaska people voting in relation to the number of registered voters—ever.
Well, that’s a relief. At least we weren’t napping.
Now I’d like to challenge all those people who woke up to consider Joe the Plumber on the national scene to stay awake for the somewhat more local Jane the Board Member and John the Volunteer.
Plenty of people like the idea of Democracy (note capital “D”) but don’t want to step in it.
Local politics and organizations engage us with people we know. Participation is hard work, which is probably why history teachers often stick with the text book and don’t get students down into nuts and bolts of local and state government. Alaska’s “Close-up” program for high school students offers a huge payoff in understanding for our future voters and leaders. Local elections need volunteers. Boards and committees need members.
“Local” has a lot of flavors. I once had a five-minute conversation with Sarah Palin about the Copper Basin, in which she told me she thought the people here were “cute.”
I am not sure it gives people a lot of credit when you think they are “cute,” but it’s probably better than thinking the people next door are Neanderthals and wondering how they lurched into the gene pool.
Local people do fight over property lines and dog poop. Feeling fashionably cynical about any such wrangling, we let our neighbors go to meetings and make silly rules while we stay home and do a little arm chair quarterbacking.
I’d like to draw a different portrait of us “locals.”
I sat in on the local fish and game advisory committee meeting last night, where eleven people with eleven opinions chewed over a possible requirement to leave moose meat on the bone until the hunter gets it out of the field, plus other possible requirements designed to make sure wild meat is not wasted. Some said yes, some no. Most everyone had good reasons and good reasoning.
At these meetings they go on talking, trying to get at better management of the game populations and management of the people who hunt. They talk for hours and hours. Nobody goes home before eleven, and sometimes it’s midnight. Not always but sometimes, they come up with a course of action they think fish and game management ought to take.
Anybody can go to the advisory committee meetings and express their ideas. Some persons on the committee represent particular local communities. Regular meetings take place twice a year, sometimes more when there is a Board of Game Meeting coming up that will affect our nearby units. When that happens, ideas come in for our committee from all around the state.
The advisory committee does not decide anything, but they can hammer out a proposal that they may elevate to the official Alaska Board of Game or Board of Fish.
Proposals come into those big boards from advisory committees all over the state, plus the agencies, Native groups, State Troopers, and various advocacy groups. People come to the BOG and BOF and argue their points of view on the proposals. The big boards then set the rules—season dates, hunts, bag limits, hunter requirements and so on.
It’s an elegant and messy system where people who have a stake in the outcomes get to help shape the creation of the rules. A lot of people in our state don’t even know that this system exists.
Rules about guns, antlers, hunting and fishing areas, sex and age of game, limits on fish—all these have the power to raise tornadoes of scorn and anger without once causing the stormer to investigate how the rule was made. Or show up at a local meeting.
Of course this is what passes for entertainment on dark winter nights around here, to make judgments about a “bad law” or “stupid regulation,” while also despising the people who proposed and wrote these things into existence. Without ever showing up.
On the same dark winter nights, there are people from all around the valley who drive icy roads to listen to and be patient with people they may or may not agree with. They try to hammer out the nuts and bolts of what may work better this year with moose, with caribou, with salmon, and with hunters.
It’s not just fish and game. There are local advisory school boards and district school boards. There are people who go out to take care of house fires, medical emergencies, even the garbage. They show up, and they have to decide things, often things that affect us. We can help them or not.
They are the “cute” people I admire most.