I've always been fascinated with understanding how minority parties and demographics are represented in politics. When I interned at the Texas Capitol under a Democrat in the House, I was eager to draft legislation regarding prisoners enfranchisement, women’s issues, and other minority issues. Unfortunately, I was discouraged to find that in a GOP-dominated legislature, the name of the game was to stay on voting laws, electoral redistricting, and other pieces that would affect re-election. That sucked.
The next semester, I went to Samoa, where I conducted research on Women in Parliament (or lack thereof). I found that there were few explicitly binding rules in the structure of the Parliament, but subtle barriers for women to be elected and other procedural difficulties once they are elected. I began to see how Westminster Style Parliaments inherently prefer masculine deliberation, treating grace and cooperation as vices, rather than virtues. Samoan culture prefers collaboration (communal lifestyle) over competition (capitalist/American lifestyle). Ultimately, the Parliament introduced by New Zealand doesn't seem like it fits Samoa, but the interesting thing is that other women's organizations are doing the actual governing in Samoa.
So, when I returned to America, rather than going back to the Capitol, I came to the conclusion that my efforts would be better spent “getting my hands dirty”. Since felon enfranchisement was important to me, I spent several years in Georgia, North Carolina, and Hawaii working as a Wilderness Instructor for juvenile delinquents and at-risk youth. I felt like Thoreau… separate from a corrupt government living in a cabin in the woods that I built by myself (and a small group of teenagers). I felt proud doing this, and would boast that my altered career path was making more of an impact than I ever could at a desk drafting legislation. But one by one, these camps (except for private run Pacific Quest in Hawaii) were closed for lack of funding. It seems like affairs in North Carolina and the Texas Legislature should be unrelated. After all, we are just a bunch of nominally "united" States. A friend once said that if you were to flip the map of the United States, Texas looks like the head on a really weird animal. That image is stuck in my head. Texas is big, has a lot of money, and holds a lot of influence, but you have to flip the map to be able to see it.
TBC...
