Bobaganda!

If I had known the watch party would be so much fun, I would have run for office years ago here in Oklahoma City.

We had a grand potluck hootenanny celebrating the fact that I didn’t win the election but nevertheless began the process of calling together a new political movement rooted in social justice, environmental sustainability, energy conservation, and local economics. About 50 people drifted in and out during the evening, including a reporter for the Daily Oklahoman. It was a very diverse group.

It was a balmy spring evening, so all the windows were open, and as the crowd grew I turned on the ceiling fans. Global warming indeed. As the evening wore on and the libations continued to flow, we gathered around the piano for an old fashioned hootenanny and sang a few old favorites from including multiple choruses of “Solidarity Forever” (which is to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic) and a poignant song from the “Little Red Songbook” of the IWW to the tune of Auld Lang Syne called “Renunciation” (text below, it may become our “anthem”.).

There was roast leg of lamb and gyro meat we made from the lamb we got last fall from the Clear Creek Monastery. Fried chicken. Potato salad. Cream cheese rollups made with roasted garlic and habanero salsa. Two different scalloped potato dishes. Saurkraut and sausage. Deviled eggs. “Church dinner punch” (which tasted really good with the Jim Beam). Whole wheat rolls and whole wheat chocolate sheet cake, the flour from John and Kris Gosney’s farm. (Don’t grimace. It’s as moist and light as any cake made with white flour. Wagon Creek Creamery yogurt makes that possible.) Seven layer dip. Home-made tortilla chips. Wine. Jim Beam. Christian Cheese from Kingfisher. Well, you knew there would be interesting food at a party at my house, didn’t you?

Today’s paper reports that I received 8.2% of the vote, coming in 2^nd in a field of 3, with 1,157 votes. There were a total of 14,000 votes cast out of a population of 556,000 for Oklahoma City. Our newly re-elected mayor was on the 9 PM News last night informing all that good times were here and even better times were coming soon. He looked excited and happy, as he should be. But I am thinking this morning, reviewing the news from across the world, that as time passes, events are more likely to run in the direction of favoring my positions than his.

Which is why I am as happy as can be about the results. On one hand, they show us how far we have to go, but on the other hand, things were said in public here that have never previously been said about our local politics. Political heresies were openly spoken! Personal responsibility! Energy conservation! Municipal power! Destruction of low income neighborhoods for urban renewal purposes as a social evil! The sunset of the natural gas industry! The coming crisis in energy! Urban agriculture! Local economics! As events move in the direction that I am predicting, these positions will seem less radical and more responsible and necessary. Mayor Cornett and the rest of the City Council are firmly mired in the 20^th century. They won’t have a clue what to do as energy prices continue to climb. They are like the French aristocracy of the 1780s, speeding down the road, running over the children of peasants, oblivious to the pain and suffering around them, advocating that the poor eat cake if they have no bread. The “Ancien Regimes” always seem so solid, so in control, so on top of things, so confident, as they approach their sunset daze. But like a giant tree riddled with disease, they are rotten to the core and the day will come when a stray moderate breeze will come along and topple them to the ground. And people will stand around, scratch their heads, and wonder, “What took so long?”

Our job is the be there, “the firstest with the mostest” when people start awakening from the mindless daze of gluttony and greed in which we are presently mired, and start looking for better answers. To be there the firstest with the mostest, means that we must be organized in every precinct, and ready, willing, and able to get a message to their doorsteps when time is of the essence.

This is where this campaign goes now. Anyone who thinks that it is over on this “The Day After” is wrong. The springtime of hope for Oklahoma City I wrote about Tuesday morning is not destroyed by a late night-time freeze, it is only just beginning. This election was only the first phase of an organizing campaign that will go on for years.

Stay tuned to the website, www.bobwaldrop.net . I am reworking it as a commentary blog devoted to local issues in central Oklahoma. You can expect to hear more about the issues I raised in my campaign, and the ideas I have for the growth of a new grassroots movement for democracy, responsibility, and sustainability. Today it is only a handful of tiny seeds that are placed in the ground. But as the years pass, they will grow and become in time a mighty forest of trees.

My inbox this morning is full of email from all over the world expressing appreciation for the campaign. Thanks again for these many expressions of support and hope To everything indeed there is a time and a season, and this is a time for work and for hope.

Bob Waldrop

PS. The potluck/hootenanny/political discussion was so much fun we will probably do it again next month, and maybe make it a regular feature of this on-going organizing campaign.

“RENUNCIATION”(Sing to the tune “Auld Lang Syne”)

Social justice. Energy conservation. Environmental sustainability. Local economic development. “What kind of whacko candidate are you, Bob?”, a good friend gently teased me after reading my website. Indeed, it says something about the modern political context that these simple, common sense, and pragmatic ideas are considered irrelevant to the present era.

If you want to know where I come from, you have to go down to southwestern Oklahoma and back in time a bit. My grandparents went through the Depression and the Dustbowl years as farmers in Tillman County. They didn’t get through those hard times by being foolish. They raised nearly everything they ate. They were frugal with their money. They pitched in to help friends and family in time of need. The ideas of conspicuous consumption and the “throw-away society” were not part of their vocabulary. Many years ago, I was at my grandparent’s house – a home built by my grandfather Glen Waldrop and his brother Fred – and I threw an empty glass jar into the trash. My grandfather picked it out of the trash and said to me, “Bobby Max, you already paid for that jar, why would you want to throw it away?”

I wouldn’t have anyone believe that those days were perfect, even in the retrospective view of memory. Tillman County wasn’t Walton’s Mountain. Racial segregation was a blot on the honor of the community, and the poverty was so deep it ground people into the dust. But the seeds of overcoming lay in the fertile soils and people not only survived, they prospered.

Fast forward to the 21^st century, and those basic ideas seem almost quaint in their simplicity. We fancy ourselves as much more complex these days. We are far beyond ideas like local food security and energy conservation – we think – in our 24 hours a day, seven days a week “busyness”. But are we actually happier? Are we more secure? Are our prospects as hopeful as theirs? Somehow I don’t think so.

I realized a few years ago that I was becoming my grandparents. In our youth oriented culture, some might be horrified by that thought, but I wasn’t. I found myself thinking, “This is the way things should be.” I am grateful that their basic virtues, including a deep and abiding love for the land and the soil which gives all of us our daily bread, were part of my own life, despite many of my personal efforts to escape that cultural legacy.

Outside of my windows, the peach and the apricot trees are blooming, and asparagus shoots are coming out of the ground, promising a feast of abundance in the future. Spring is a time when farmers and gardeners look forward in hope. The cold of the winter is past, the heat of the summer has yet to come, the wheat is growing, the peas and spinach and potatoes and turnips have been planted. Promise is in the air. It is said that to everything there is a time and a season. Thus, I dare to dream of a springtime of hope for Oklahoma City, a time to put aside the politics of division and hatred, a time to open the doors and welcome all to the table of plenty, a time to remember the virtues of our grandparents and to understand their importance and their utility for the 21^st century.

Victory in this election is less an issue of my actual election as mayor and more a realization by people that they can take personal responsibility for their lives and live them with great intentionality and that doing so is a way towards a life of joy and abundance and hope and security. Going along to get along will get us nowhere but the ash-heap of history. Greed and gluttony are the roads to ruin. A secure, prosperous, and vital Oklahoma City calls forth the opportunity for people to do what is right, irrespective of the occupant of the mayor’s office or what the city council may or may not do. It doesn’t take a city ordinance for people to get out of their cars and walk, ride a bicycle, or take public transportation more often. It doesn’t take a mandate from City Hall for people to buy food from Oklahoma farmers, to shop at locally owned stores, to plant fruit and nut trees in their yards and grow their own tomatoes and carrots, to eat at locally owned restaurants, and to put their money in locally owned credit unions and banks. Every person who does these things is participating in the springtime of hope for Oklahoma City and is doing more than all the politicians added together to build a secure and promising future for themselves and their children.

Today is not the end of this campaign. It is only the beginning.

PS. Thanks to everybody for the wonderful support for my campaign. Don’t forget to vote! And don’t forget to invite your friends and family and co-workers to vote! Don’t forget to plant some fruit trees this spring! If you can, come by our watch party tonight, starting at 6:30 PM at 1524 NW 21^st (that’s the southeast corner of North McKinley and NW 21st. There will be lots of good Oklahoma food on the menu. Bring a dish to share with friends. For more information about the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, visit http://www.oklahomafood.coop . For more information about simple and sustainable living, visit http://www.bettertimesinfo.org . If you need help with energy conservation, go to http://www.energyconservationinfo.org . If you are concerned about local transportation issues, visit http://www.oklahomacityrail.org . If you are a fabric artist, and sew clothes or quilts or other items for sale to the public, I would be happy to list your business for free at http://www.oklahomaclothing.org . For more information about the Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House, visit http://www.justpeace.org .

Hello folks,

Just wanted to remind y’all that the polls for OKC Mayor are open tomorrow from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

If you are registered to vote and do not know your polling place, call the Oklahoma County Election Board at (405) 713-1515. They’ll need your name, address and birthday and then can look up your polling place within minutes.

If you do not have transportation to get to your polling place tomorrow, please call me at 476-5620 and I’ll see what I can do to get you ride.

And if you know any undecided voters, encourage them to check out this website and then offer to give them a ride to the polls!

Thanks,
James Branum
Proud supporter of Bob Waldrop