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Talking Story |
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From The Asian Reporter, V18, #16 (April 15, 2008), page 7.
The power to serve
Engage ’08 is one of Portland Mayor Tom Potter’s several initiatives to engage local refugees and immigrants in democracy, in the political process that delivers tidy streets, nice parks, good cops, better housing, terrific afterschool and summer kids’ activities, to our families.
So many things are so different," a Ukrainian intellectual said to me. "So very different here." She meant: in America.
She was saying so, not in admiration, not with that awe we all feel about clear, cool water bubbling endlessly out of sparkling elementary school drinking fountains or about Safeway’s pyramids of bright carrots, green onions, and red apples, stacked high and not a fly in sight.
She said so, without anxiety, without what we’ve all experienced as overwhelming anguish about how our delicate lives seem daily swept away by the pressures and the pace of this new place. She said so not in dread.
We were paused, when she said it, leaning against a polished pink marble wall of an emptied hall. Between breaths.
"Things are so different," she said almost absentmindedly, like when something needs to be said, something important, but nothing of great value comes out. Like when I used to get hit bad, nearly knocked out, and hanging there in my cousin’s arms, barely hanging onto consciousness, and I’d say something like "Wow, that was really something."
Referring to a right hook I didn’t see coming. Pow.
My friend, a doctor degreed in one of the former Soviet Union’s most rigorous universities, was like me when I was a beat kid, she was like all of us gathered and dazed in Portland’s elegantly old City Hall. Rendered for that moment, speechless.
Mayor Potter had just ended his welcome speech — more like an elder uncle’s lecture, really. Not at all what our fifty newcomers to participatory democracy had expected. Thus my best Ukrainian bud’s breathy exhortation: "Things are so very different, so very different here."
When she finally cleared her head, after words returned to her, my new friend put it all together better than any in our crew of community organizers gathered for Engage ’08, our Mayor’s city leadership program, possibly could.
What he said
Here is what, in short, Mayor Potter said: "Welcome to your City Hall. Welcome to your house. Your house, because I don’t think any of our elected leaders — these City Commissioners (pointing at their nice leather seats), not me as Mayor, paid for any of these tables and chairs. You did."
He went on to say that our taxpayers built that lovely public building and that our voters filled those high offices. But then he went on to brow-beat us, us Ukranians and Russians, us Somalis and Ethiopians, us Viet Kieu, Khmer, and Koreans, us Burman, Hmong, and Yiu Mien, us Lao, Filipinos, Chinese, and Japanese Americans.
Democracy, he said, depends on us participating in Portland government. On serving our communities. This house cannot be healthy and happy without your service to your families. Whew.
And that was the sharp right hook we didn’t see coming. The one that knocked the words out of me and my brainy Ukrainian.
So here’s what she said after we got back on our feet:
"This is so different," softly, slowly, "this is not about power, not like in old Soviet Union days."
Not about power I said to myself.
And it’s not. Not like us newcomers are used to thinking about power. Not like we’re used to ducking power to keep from getting clobbered. The power of government to take what big government guys want. Ugly government — the reason we ran, swam, and sailed here.
What she said
"Mr. Mayor is giving us the power to serve." Not the power to take what we want — but the power to serve our families’ needs. And this idea is new. So new.
This kind of power is different from how we’re used to thinking, used to acting. This is the kind of thinking and acting of idealists. This is an American ideal.
As a matter of fact, when we settled back into our warmed up seats, after we got back into our civic leadership training inside Portland’s old and elegant City Council Chambers, it was also clear that this tends to be the kind of thinking and acting of women. Our immigrant women.
Indeed, most Engage ’08 participants were women. Thoughtful grandmas, vigorous mothers, smart young women.
And of course, this rather odd and obvious observation was brought up, again and again and again, in those inevitable little meetings folks have after The Big Meeting, in one ethnic enclave after another. "This is so different." Back home there’s one kind of power, and men are doing it. In Portland, there’s another kind of power, and women seem more ready to respond to it. The power to serve.
And of course, at those little talks some men protested that they were tired after lo-ong work days. Too tired to serve. And of course also, most women gave each other looks, many lowered their brows at dopey boys, and some suggested: "you don’t think we’re tired after work, after making dinner, after washing clothes?"
Dopes argued back. Smart guys shut up. Real men realized that power changes style, power even changes gender roles. Solid guys know that a man’s power — the power to protect and provide — doesn’t change. Real men serve.