Depression

I’ve been trying like crazy lately to find something that inspires me enough to write about it on this blog. But there is a huge lack of writing inspiration and energy onmy part, or there is nothing happening that is interesting in the world today. I doubt that’s true…
Its probably just me. That’s terrible…
So I’m going to be giving this Community Organizing training for the Health Council here in town next week. I’m super excited because I love teaching this stuff and getting people engaged in this stuff.

The problem is, I’m feeling a little, cynical about it all. This very well may be that I’m coming out of two weeks of non stop stimulation (my friend Robert mentioned to me he’s bored in Santa Fe now because he had this over-stimulation going the week leading up to election day and then ABQ pride, and he’s like depressed coming down off the hormones that are flaring during excited times. Adrenaline and you know those others…)
And so I’m not quite ready to concentrate on the things we need ot be doing to make this world a better place.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be on my game by then and I’ll be good at it! But I’m worried.

Maybe it’s because I’ve had a few conversation lately and indication that things are just not going the way they ought to be…

So Community Organizing is about power right? Its about building power to make change, owning power to prevent power hungry people from misusing it, and empowering communities to help themselves.

I was calling people for GOTV in the north and south valleys Election Day and they were telling me “we really want Geno to win, but he’s got it taken care of, we don’t need to vote for him to win, everyone else is voting for him too…” This was painful to me because these people are regular voters, they know the power of their votes and they know the importance of their votes.  And yet they still didn’t’ show up, this is a simple task voting, and people take it for granted, or feel like by not doing it they are making some sort of statement.

I had a conversation with a girlfriend of mine recently about the election and she didn’t know she couldn’t vote in the primary because she isn’t a registered democrat.  This is something that is often confusing to people but I was upset about this anyway.  Why don’t these people know this? Why don’t we have people who are educating themselves on the civil system of change? And Especially why wouldn’t a young woman of color who’s culture, livelihood, and gente have been oppressed and hurt by the system, want to be educating herself about how to change the system? (I have since helped her with that registration thing by the way)

I’m thinking more and more that the people of this country don’t want to help themselves or anyone else.  We have done the ultimate disgrace to democracy we have de-legitimized our government and system.  We no longer have the greatest government on earth because people feel like it doesn’t represent them and therefore it doesn’t impact them or warrant their attention.

What do we do about this?