Yes, Virginia. Everything IS Political.

Blogger's Note:  Today we are excited to feature a guest post by Heidi, Anna's other mom, who just also happens to be a lawyer and a damn fine writer.


The beginning of the end of a very toxic and very short-lived relationship occurred when I heard the following words: 

“What is your problem?  Does EVERYTHING have to be political with you?”

  

Those words smacked me upside the head in a moment of true clarity.  Yes.  YES.  MOST.  DECIDEDLY.  YES!  Yes, everything DOES have to be political with me because everything IS political.  In my almost 35 years of life, I have, at one time or another, inhabited the following politicized categories:

·       Welfare recipient

·       Teenage parent

·       Evangelical/fundamentalist Christian

·       Single mother

·       Feminist

·       Unwed mother

·       Litigation attorney

·       Low-income advocate

·       Bisexual

·       Child abuse survivor

I’m not quite sure exactly when it was that I became interested in politics.  I remember being involved in student government in my elementary and middle school years.  Was that when I first began to care about the process of democracy and about the impacts that the decisions of so few have on so many?  Perhaps.  But I think that the seeds of my interest ultimately stem from an innate and powerful outrage of all things unjust.

Is it because I was raised in poverty that I am so passionate about economic justice?  Probably.  I knew as a child that it was unfair and unjust that we were so poor, especially in the richest country in the world.  Even if my parents were to blame for having too many children (5), it certainly wasn’t my fault or that of my siblings.  We were only children, after all.  Why didn’t we deserve sufficient and continuous fulfillment of our most basic needs?  Why didn’t we deserve adequate clothing, food, shelter, heat, and other essential requirements of life?  What had we done wrong to be deprived of these things?

Mom w/adorable Kelsey, circa 1995

Is it because I was a teenage parent on welfare that I abhor stereotypes about both?  Absolutely.  I remember the shame, stigma, and deprivation associated with the receipt of welfare.  Bearing a child at 16 years old and into poverty, I quickly learned that many of the politicians who railed against abortion were the same as those who railed against welfare and those in need of it.  I felt as though I was damned if I did choose abortion, and then was damned when I didn’t.   

According to that mindset, I had made my bed and now I should be forced to lie in it.  Yet every time I heard some pompous jerk condemn unwed mothers for the unforgivable sin of being pregnant and poor, all I could think of was my own child.  Even though many would and did blame me for my own situation, it was not my daughter’s fault that she was born to a poor, young, and unwed mother.  Didn’t she still deserve every opportunity in life?  Didn’t she deserve to have her basic needs met?

Cheeeese!

I could go on, but the point is this: my entire life has been shaped and affected by politics, and my politics have been shaped and affected by my life experiences.  For example, the fact that my home state created a program during welfare reform that allows low-income parents to receive minimal economic assistance while attending college meant that I could get my college degree, leave welfare behind forever, and eventually continue on to law school and into the practice of law.  

On the federal level at the time, politicians were stereotyping and denigrating poor single mothers.  In spite of the brutal public condemnation of welfare recipients, politicians here at home made the rational and compassionate decision to invest in me and in others like me.  I know with every fiber of my being that I would not be where I am today if my state had favored the punitive approach to welfare reform that so many states chose.

Photo from: babychildhealthcare.com

 

Have you ever asked yourself if this is the way that things have to be?  Or, is this the way that things should be?  If so, perhaps you share my desire to make the world a more just place.  How has your life been shaped by politics?  How have your politics been shaped by your life?