I Am Not Ashamed. I Am Energized.

I have lived in Indiana all my life, and I have dealt with the assumptions and negative connotations people have lobbed against us.  At one point this blog was called "I may be from Indiana, But I am NOT an Idiot," for a reason.  People have these notions that we are mostly rural, redneck, and very uneducated.  With most stereotypes, there is a grain of truth to this, but having grown up rural and having spent the majority of my life in Indianapolis, I can say that your assumptions are not always correct.  On a whole, Hoosiers are a pretty pragmatic people, and the notion of "live and let live" is a strong one.

Want This? Click for More Details

Of course, it is difficult to fight these notions when Governor Mike Pence and his Republican supermajorities in the General Assembly just passed and signed into law the so called Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which is an open way for people to discriminate under the umbrella of their religious beliefs.  It is a  jarring setback to a state that has enjoyed a rapid expansion of LGBT equality culminating in a successful maneuvering against a proposed anti-marriage amendment and the eventual overturning of the whole thing in the courts.  We were happy.  We thought we had turned a corner. We were complacent.  With the lowest voter turnout in the nation in 2014, we let the Republicans gain even more seats in their supermajorities -- losing Democrats and Republicans that had stood up for us just months before.

I have been banging my head against the voter turnout issue since writing an editorial in the Butler Collegian in the mid-90s, if not before that.  In fact, I came across that editorial recently, and it is eerie how so much has not changed. Indiana has a voter turnout problem.  The problem stems from the feeling of helplessness caused by government passing things like the RFRA or just seeming to be in it for the power or to help businesses.  I do understand that.  Unfortunately, my sympathy for the malaise ends when I look at the numbers.

Using 2008 as a basis, which showed very high voter turnout in the euphoria around Barack Obama, if those same numbers had voted in each of the next three elections, one could make the easy assumption that Republicans would not have the amount of power they have right now. Indeed, perhaps the Democrats could have remained a majority in the House, and most definitely, the redistricting that happened after 2010 would not have put Democrats in the wilderness for the next 10 years.  It is also easy to see that Governor Pence, who did not even have 50% of the vote and won by a only about 82,000 votes, may not have won if Democrats had shown up. Granted, it is a giant contextual leap, but I am choosing to assume the silent majority is at least middle to middle left.

The amazing conundrum of all this is that people do not vote because they do not feel government is working for them, but the more they do not vote the less likely government is to change.  How do we motivate people?  How can we get them out to vote?  How do we teach them that the elections between Presidential ones are just as important as the rest?  These are questions that will be on my mind for the coming months and years.

Bringing it back around, I am not ashamed to live in Indiana.  My world has not spun off its axis today.  I realize now there is much more work to do.  I am ashamed of our elected officials. I am ashamed that the populace has chosen to not participate in the process. However, even with that knowledge, Indiana is ultimately filled with good people.  People who want to do the right thing, and people who do not want to be seen as the backwater yokels we are made out to be.  It is this reason that I am energized by all of this.  I can feel change awakening.  It just needs to be harnessed to keep the fires burning, because there is a long time between now and November 2016, when real change can happen. I still love and believe in this place.  I am comfortable in the knowledge that we, the people, are better than Mike Pence, the Indiana General Assembly, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.