One of the missions of the binghamton bridge is to amplify local progressive news and organizations. We have been very impressed with AccessAbility, the newsletter of the Southern Tier Independence Center. The analysis of NYS politics and budget is excellent. The writing of Ken and Marie Dibble is just great. We highly recommend, in particular, an article about why voting matters. There are other articles of interest as well, so take a look at the pdf of the most recent issue #147 Summer 2022, page 8. And subscribe!!
Here’s a sample:
This is an election year. You may already
be tired of hearing about that. We under–
stand. The endless repetition of opposing
extreme viewpoints on what usually is a
rather small range of hot-button issues
gets tedious at best, and may at times gen–
erate the kind of anger and anxiety that
all of us would rather avoid. After all, we
have enough stuff going on in our lives
that produce those feelings already. In re–
cent years, as American society has grown
more and more politically polarized, the
endless hammering on divisive topics
only seems to get worse. And most of us
understand, on some level, that much of
this is being propagated by people whose
only goal is to obtain and hold on to pow–
er for their own personal satisfaction. We
don’t want to cause you more misery by
making you think about this again.
But this is extremely important.
Many, if not most of you, never attended
a high school Civics class. They seem to
have gone out of fashion with dial phones
and avocado green refrigerators. That is a
tragedy, because that means that most of
you have never been told by someone you
trust and respect about some very basic
principles. So we’re going to take a little
time here to do that.
The United States’ form of government
is a representative republic. It is not a de–
mocracy. That means citizens are repre–
sented at all levels of government—local,
state, and federal—by officials who are
elected directly by the people in most cas–
es (the president and vice president are not
directly elected, nor are federal judges).
The key word here is “elected.” Although
this is, as Abe Lincoln said, government
“by the people,” and under our Constitu–
tion, Americans have the right to peace–
ably assemble and to petition the govern–
ment for redress of grievances, the only
time when citizens get to put their fingers
on the actual levers of government is on
election day.
You have an obligation, a duty, to take
advantage of every single one of those
opportunities. No, it’s not a legal require–
ment. It’s more important than that, be–
cause in order for elected officials to truly
represent the people, the people—all of
them—must participate in elections. It’s
more like a need: you need to eat and
breathe in order to live. You need to vote
in order to stay free.
When the Constitution was written in
Philadelphia, and the delegates who wrote
it were leaving what’s now known as In–
dependence Hall, one of them, Benjamin
Franklin, was asked by a woman on the
street, “What kind of government will we
have?” Franklin famously replied, “A Re–
public—if you can keep it.”
That wasn’t a cute joke. It was a histori–
cal reference. Prior to that time, republics
did not have a reputation for surviving
for very long. It was too easy for them to
be manipulated by power-hungry dema–
gogues and transformed into corrupt oli–
garchies or dictatorships. That happened
a lot, and not just in ancient history, as in
Rome. After the French Revolution estab–
lished a republic in the late 18th century,
France went through four republics, each
of them overthrown by corrupt and cyni–
cal autocrats, right up into the mid-20th
century. In February of 1917, Russians
overthrew their Czar and established a
republic. It was so weak that Lenin and
his Bolsheviks were able to destroy it just
eight months later. When most of the in–
dependent German states joined to cre–
ate Germany in the 1860s, they set up a
parliamentary republic; it was corrupted
by a military autocracy shortly before
World War I and re-established after that
war. Only 15 years later, a few cynical
and overconfident right-wing politicians
allowed Adolf Hitler to become its head,
believing, incorrectly, that they could con–
trol him. You know what happened next.
Read more (on page 8)