A special thanks to a wonderful friend and a talented writer, Rich from the political/lit blog based right here in the Mid-Michigan area, Honest Errors.
How I Became Involved in Michigan PoliticsMy wife, son, and I moved here to Mid-Michigan at the end of July last year, 2006. Among the many great things we discovered about the area, we stumbled upon the wonderful
Everybody Reads bookstore. On our first visit we went up to the counter to buy the books we had chosen. We noticed they had Impeach Bush yard signs available for a donation to the store. Being election season, we bought one and put it in our front yard.
Mind you, lest you think we were intentionally trying to provoke our neighbors, we had been living in the house well over a month before we put the Impeach Bush sign in our front yard. In that time, only one family in our immediate vicinity introduced themselves to us. (Welcome to suburban living.) So we thought who's going to care what sign we put out front? We don't know any of them or what they think. Besides, we were not the only people in Okemos with this sentiment; several other homes in the town displayed similar signs in their yards.
One week later the sign was missing. My wife and I thought, this is new. We'd never had this problem in Los Angeles or in Chicago. Especially the latter, where if you're a business owner and have a sign in your window for the "wrong" candidate, don't be surprised if you get a visit from a city inspector...
Anyway, I went back to Everybody Reads and bought another sign, telling the clerk that our other sign had been stolen. He said the Impeach Bush signs were rather popular that way. I put the new sign up in our yard.
Less than a week later, that sign was stolen. It was also at this time my wife and I noticed that signs bearing similar sentiments were defaced with spray paint. Okemos (like the rest of the country) was definitely a place with strong feelings both for and against Bush. But we also couldn't help but notice that signs for candidates, like Granholm, Devos, Rogers, were always untouched.
So, stubborn ass that I am, I went back to Everybody Reads and bought two signs. I figured I would save myself a trip when the third sign was eventually stolen.
I should note that I have never thought that a Bush Impeachment was a realistic expectation to have. Just? Yes. Likely to happen? Never. Why do I think so? Go read
this book.
Not even three days later the third sign was stolen from our front yard overnight and replaced with a yard ornament featuring a cow with wings. Whoever was stealing our signs had a sense of humor.
At this point I was pissed. I had fantasies of jamming the fourth sign full of razor blades or attaching the metal frame to some wire and attach that to an outlet. The latter would reveal who the thief was when we saw his body splayed out on our lawn.
Instead, I decided that when I went out in the morning to get the paper, I would put the sign in the ground and in the evening I would take the sign up and put it in our garage. I repeated this for a number of weeks. At the same time, I decided that I had to take more direct action towards bringing about the change in government that I wanted. Michigan has a lot of problems, solvable ones. I also believe in put up or shut up. You have to act, not just complain.
I looked up who my Representative to Congress was and found out it was
Mike Rogers, a Republican. This was new to me. I had never lived in a Republican-represented congressional district before.
(Wait, there was that one term that Republican Mike Flanagan served in Illinois' 5th district, but that was because Democrat Rostenkowski had been taken down for corruption. Flanagan was voted out the next term in favor of Democrat Rod Blagojevich, who is now Governor of Illinois. His House seat is now filled by Rahm Emmanuel.)
What to do about this? Sign up for the Marcinkowski campaign! Which is what I did and met some great people in both the campaign itself and the Democratic party. I took down the Impeach Bush sign and put up a Marcinkowski sign. No one stole the Marcinkowski sign. Unfortunately, Rogers won another term.
The day after the election, I took down the Marcinkowski sign and put up the Impeach Bush sign, just for the day to gloat a little at the Democrats take-back of the House.
A few weeks later I started blogging. I was inspired by the litblogs and political blogs I had read (and continue to read). I believe artists are no different than other citizens, and should be engaged with the world around them, including the political forces that shape so much of our daily lives: from the placement of roads, the quality of our schools, to the critical services provided by firemen and police officers, to the rights we constantly have to fight for in order to keep them. Through blogging I have become much more (happily) involved in progressive politics in Michigan, my new adopted home.
To the person(s) who repeatedly stole our Impeach Bush sign: It was extremely stupid and short-sighted of you. If you had just left us that first sign, I never would have continued giving money to support the cause of Impeaching President Bush, thereby strengthening that cause. And I probably never would have volunteered for the Marcinkowski campaign, which got me involved in the local Democratic party, too, which got me fired up to start a blog, which I continue to write to this day.
