Dancing in the Streets, Part IV

Dancing in the Streets Part IV

November 2014
Shrewsbury College

"So when my Mom lost her job," William Vincent said, "that's when I started thinking about things. I decided I'd look at that flyer you put under my door, and a lot of that stuff started to make sense."

"Vincent, we're glad you're here," Madeline said.  Madeline was the chairman of the NPAPP Shrewsbury organization.  (Quinn had moved up to vice-chairman.)  All together, their little group now had ten people in it.  "The news hasn't been good recently.  Quinn, I'd like you to give the report on the issues that we're facing."

Quinn stood up and the little group clapped.  She was now wearing a long-sleeved green shirt (her old pink shirt, dyed green) and a pair of white pants.  She had worked on her speech for at least a couple of hours, but reading it simply made her aware of how short it was.

"Don't think that what's going on in this country doesn't affect you as students of Shrewsbury," Quinn said.  "The spike in gasoline prices should worry every commuter student.  I grew up in Maryland and came to California because I heard that Shrewsbury provided a quality education.  Now, I'm at risk of not being able to go home this semester."

Everyone nodded gravely.  The current price at the gas pump was $5.69 a gallon, an unexpected spike in gas that hit the pumps shortly after the 2014 Congressional Elections and the alarming hike was considered a national crisis, leading the news every night.  The Republicans were screaming that there was some sort of conspiracy to hold gas prices to artificially low levels until the end of the election cycle - if so, it didn't work because Democrats lost more seats in the House and the Senate was now tied 50-50 with Joe Biden holding the deciding vote.  No one expected Obama's coattails to be long in 2016.  With a Democratic president, a Republican house and a tied Senate, no one expected Congress to make headway on any major issue, not even the gas issue.

The gas issue affected everything.  Despite the fact of the alarming climb of gas prices (which had only lasted for ten days) belts were already tightening.  The price of airplane travel took a major bump, particularly with the coming of the holidays, and consumers screamed about the practically usurious airline rates.  Small businesses that depended on the price of gas being in the $3 range were being squeezed at the margins, with the first wave of layoffs just before the Thanksgiving holidays.

There was one good thing about the gas bump, Quinn told herself.  It gave the NPAPP some talking points when they went door to door.  NPAPP members generally went door to door as a large group, had hit every dorm on campus and prepared to hit every dorm again. 

"President Obama says that we're already in a recovery, but the recovery hasn't taken place yet.  He's opening up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to bring the price of gasoline back down.  I want to remind you of a saying from another previous president - 'Prosperity is just around the corner'!  That was President Hoover, before the Great Depression."

"But if you listen to the Republicans," Quinn said, "you'll get the same story.  Their idea of a solution is to trash the Arctic Refuge.  Trash out the enviroment to fill up the tanks.  Pipelines and fracking and devastation. The other story is that there isn't a recovery because President Obama has created a 'toxic environment' for 'job creators'.  If you listen to Republican talk radio - and, like, I suggest you don't, because I listened to it for four hours yesterday - I guess their plan is that if we stop taxing rich people, everything will get better.  Seriously, I'm not kidding, that's their plan."

"Now you might ask, 'what does that have to do with me at Shrewsbury?'.  It has everything to do with you.  It has to do with whether you're going to walk or drive to school.  It has to do with how much it costs to buy food - the food drives too - and how much you're going to pay for that food at the Student Union.  It makes you have to think about how far from Shrewsbury you can go to look for part time work.  It means that more students will stay at home and take on-line courses - it breaks up our community.  It affects where your money is going to go if gas prices don't go down."

"The economy is trashed.  Global warming is real.  The current government isn't doing anything about it.  The guys who want to be the next government aren't doing anything about it either, except proposing to make it worse or let it be somebody else's problem.  So you need to about this.  You should ask yourself, who put these morons here, and how do we get them out?  The answer to both of those questions are the same.  Think about it."

The students politely applauded as Quinn sat down.  "We have to keep working on getting word out about NPAPP," Madeline said.  "There's nothing that we say that distinguishes us from any other political group out there.  Even though we've hit every dorm, I don't think there's much awareness of who we are as a group."

"Kids are apathetic," Jeremiah Rosslo, another NPAPP member said. 

"Then we have to break up their apathy," Madeline said.  "People either need to fall in love with us, or hate us, but apathy is just going to kill us."

"There is something," Quinn said, "that everyone can do.  To the people who come to this meeting - if you've got a talent, we can use it.  I don't care what your talent is, we can use that talent and we want to use it.  If there's anything we're talking about that interests you, use it.  What kind of talent do you have, William?"

"Me?" he said.  "Hell, I play basketball."

"Fine.  You can leave fliers in the visiting team's room.  We're glad to have you here, William, because...."  Quinn didn't want to say "because being a jock means you're not the typical loser", and thought of something else.  "...because you have a high profile on campus.  If you show up in green and white, people are going to ask questions.  'What's he doing with the NPAPP?' Tell your story about what brought you here."

"Richard?"

"I'm a philosophy major," he said, a bit sheepishly.

"Good.  You know what motivates people," Quinn said.  "We want to hear from you.  William, we're going to leave you with some material.  Richard, we need a report from you, a critical assessment from a philosopher's viewpoint about our group."

"I think," Jeremiah said, "that people at Shrewsbury want to know what we're going to do for them.  Specifically."

Madeline frowned.  "What, like some sort of student government thing?"

"Yeah."

"Student government is the toybox of a university," Richard said. "No one takes student government seriously.  If you're thinking about getting involved in campus politics, you're going to doom us to irrelevance."

There was some argument among the attendees regarding whether or not NPAPP should get involved through the official university channels.  Madeline broke up the argument. "Enough.  I don't know how the NPAPP HQ feels about us getting involved in campus politics."

Groaning ensued. "What?" Jeremiah said, "you have to ask for permission?"

"Guys, wait!" Quinn said.  "Give us some time.  We are going to make a political impact!  We are going to positively affect the lives of every student on campus!"

"So we are running for office?" Jeremiah asked.

Quinn looked at Madeline.  "I didn't say that."

"So we're not?"

"I didn't say that either."

"Then what are you saying?"  Quinn only had the kernel of an idea, but it wasn't enough to verbalize it.  "Richard?" Quinn said with a smile.  "I need to form a NPAPP Campus Politics Committee. That committee will consist of you, me...and Jeremiah."  She turned to Madeline.  "With your permission."

"It's a great idea," Madeline said. "But frankly, I don't want us dicking around with a bunch of committees. That's party politics of the worst kind.  I expect this committee to have its work done by *yesterday*.  I expect you to come to some conclusions by *tonight*.  I feel like we're just treading water here."

Madeline made a few concluding remarks and then broke up the meeting.  As everyone walked out, she managed to get Quinn's attention. "Quinn, I want to talk to you."

Quinn expected the worst as she walked back over. "What's up?"

Madeline sighed again.  "I don't know what Party HQ is going to think of this.  I really don't want us to get involved in the Student Government.  That's a quagmire.  That system is engineered not to do anything."

"Yeah, Madeline, but we have to do something.  Like a service organization."

"There are enough of those on campus.  I really liked the idea of using other people's talents, it gives them the idea that they are actively building the party, even though they can't build much.  Ten people is a pretty big chapter when it comes to NPAPP.  But I don't know.  I feel that our momentum is slipping."

"I'll come up with something tonight," Quinn said, not knowing how she was going to do it.

"I hope so," Madeline said.  "It might be a long meeting.  I think Richard likes you.  It might be the only reason he's in NPAPP at all."

(* * *)

Quinn had already asked around about student government before her meeting with Richard and William. (She wondered if they were called Dick or Bill by their friends?)  She made sure to talk to someone in Shrewsbury Student Government, as well as one of the quad-occupying student groups that protested against them.  Then, she matched their stories.

She quickly learned that most of the multicultural blocks - everyone from the Black Student Union to Hillel to the Muslim Students Association - would always vote for the establishment candidates.  The only way to have a shot at winning a campus election is to get the apathetic students to vote, as participation levels were at the low 10 percents.  Occasionally there were joke candidacies or stunt candidates, but the Shrewsbury Student Government was well insulated from insurrections.  (A rule stating that only *human* students at Shrewsbury could be elected, for example.)

The head of the Students for a Just Shrewsbury told her that one of their candidates two years earlier had been disqualified by a rule that stated that campaigning was limited to just three days before elections.  In reality, the SSG types campaigned all the time, but all it took was a magic wand by the SSG to turn an informal meeting into a "campaign event".  There were all kinds of potential pitfalls. Mistakes on campus forms had killed outsider candidates.  There was an "election manager seminar" that everyone interested in running was required to attend, and the student newspaper never put up any notice of it.  Yet magically, every establishment candidate manged to attend it. 

The only power the office really offered was the power to meet with the Shrewsbury Board of Trustees.  "And sometimes," her insider told her, "our Student Body President doesn't bother to show up at the meetings."

Quinn kept the news to herself.  William was asked about his perspective on campus matters as one of the popular crowd.  Even the popular crowd had issues.  They hated the high cost of text books.  They hated the $50 a year they had to pay as a student government fee.  On parking, the administration was determined to nickel and dime them to death.  Generally, student government members came from the popular kids crowd - and idealistic members had tried to address these issues - only to have them come to naught under the weight of their own student government bureaucracy and the wait-them-out tactics of Shrewsbury administration.

"Nothing good can come from Student Government," Richard said, "because how long is a Student Body President in office?  A year?  That's not long enough to get anything done.  There are no long range agendas by students because they and everyone else knows that they're only going to be here for four years. So nothing important really gets done."

Quinn then hit the philosophy major with why people joined political parties. "Some don't," he said.  "Some people will never trust society in general.  Others join because they're looking to fill some sort of vacuum in their lives.  Other than that, you have to wait for something big to happen."

"Like what?" Quinn asked.

"Well, there was the issue of slavery which both parties weren't equipped to address.  The Democrats wanted slavery, which was unacceptable to the North for a variety of reasons.  The Northern opposition parties wanted to compromise, or to kick the can down the road for the next guy to deal with.  People felt they weren't listened to and the Republican Party was founded, which was an activist movement.  The longer neither party dealt with the problem, the stronger the Republicans got.  It only took them four years to become a national party.  The problem is, Quinn, we don't have a defining problem."

"Capitalism," William said.

"Already been tried," Richard said. "Socialists, Communists, Greens.  There have been a lot of anti-capitalist parties in American and none of them have worked.  There might be some hope in the future, as the Republicans preach a more and more predatory type of capitalism and the Democrats are more and more corporate. But the bones of anti-capitalist political parties fill America's political graveyard."

"Okay.  Then we need to give people another reason to join."  Quinn worried, however, about the anti-capitalist planks in the NPAPP.  She wasn't against capitalism, per se, but her brief time in NPAPP and talking to other people convinced her that the old "I got mine" capitalism wasn't working.  So she looked for some other reason.  "What else we got?"

"Well, we have danger."

"Huh?"

"You know.  The same reason college kids become hardcore Democrats or Republicans as freshmen.  Because they want to stick it to their parents of the opposite persuasion.  Make a big show of things.  Make a lot of noise."

"That could work!" Quinn said.

"Well, everyone wants to have a good time," William said.

She could feel a hint of disgust in William's statement.  "You know, William - do they call you William or Bill?"

"My friends call me Bill."

"Bill - I don't think it has to be 'either-or'.  Either you get Student Gov that is all about having a good time but never gets anything done.  Or you get those other groups that are all super-serious that bore everyone to death. We need to do both.  We need a touch of excitement around there.  We're the excitement."

"You could put that on a bumper sticker," Richard chuckled.

"Why not?  We ARE the excitement.  We're not your Mom and Dad's political party.  The Democrats and the Republicans?  They're not following the future, they're following the past." 

"Yeah, but how do you keep the party together if it can't do anything?" Richard said.

"The same way you keep any group of people together," Quinn said.  "Trust me.  When I was in high school, I learned all about the popularity ladder.  If you offer people a good time, if you're nice to them, if you don't try to stab them in the back and if you talk to them like human beings, you will be popular.  Of course, it helps to dress nice and look good, too."

"The kind of people who attend NPAPP meetings look like a bunch of nobodies," William said.

"Then we need to give out good advice.  Everyone wants to be special," Quinn said.  "And at NPAPP, everyone is special.  And when they're not looking, we'll hit them in the head with our party platform."

"But what about Student Government?" Richard said.

"We're not going to reach out to them," Quinn said.  "Our goal is to be so big that we don't need to.  If we get to a large enough size, it becomes obvious who the student government is going to be.  If we're the popular people, then there is no choice."

"We don't have popular people!" William said.

Quinn smiled.  "Watch me," she said, "and learn."  She had finally put it together - people make political decisions based on little more than popularity.  And nothing sweetened an unpalatable position more than a popular person making it.