It always troubles me when I hear people say, “I don’t even keep up with the news anymore.” They might be referring to cancelling their hometown newspaper subscription. Newspapers have been hurting for decades, most of their advertising (car dealerships and grocery stores) having moved to social media. They are nearly gone. Or they might have meant they have simply stopped watching or listening to news programs of any kind or reading same, whatever the source.
And yet . . . how would you know about the arthritic giraffe, unless you read The Pine Belt News or The Hattiesburg American?! If you do know about Sue Ellen, and that she is suffering from severe osteoarthritis, you could have also seen her story on WDAM-TV news. Sue Ellen is important because she stands for all the other local news that is found in local newspapers and on local television and radio news.
Local news? Really? Pay attention to local news? You mean pay attention to local news now, while Rome is burning: while China is not buying our farmers’ soybeans and an anonymous national police force is daily violating the due process guarantees of the Constitution and the Republican majority in Congress has passed devastating cuts to SNAP, Medicare and Medicaid? You mean I’m supposed to be concerned with local news? Really?? Even arthritic giraffes?
Well, yes. Ever since 1980 and the Reagan presidency (and before that, in the sixties with Senator Barry Goldwater), Republicans have argued that the best government is that which is closest to the people, that is, local government. That was the basis of their love of so-called “states’ rights.” And that is partly true of course. It was not true, however, when Bull Connor was local government in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 or when the Klan was local government in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1964. It is true only when local government protects and defends the Constitution.
And well, yes, we must pay attention to local news, because Sue Ellen stands for all that other mundane local news, news like the new business in town that had a ribbon cutting, news like the city’s 67th mural, news like the city’s $4 million grant for sewer line upgrades, news like the increased requests for food assistance that are overwhelming local food banks, news like those local residents who are being honored for their contributions to the quality of life we all enjoy, news like . . . .
Well, you get the point I’m sure: the seemingly mundane news stories are anything but ordinary. Many real, live people (some of them your neighbors) have invested real sweat, real tears, real money, real time, real love, real commitment, real risk—to start that new business, to create that new mural, to write that sewer grant, to raise additional money for those food banks, and to promote a vision for a better life for the whole community. That is the lifeblood of a community.
Here is the principle I want you to think through with me: Without a civic life, democracy dies. Translation: persons who lack general and principled concern for their local community lose interest in having opinions about what happens there. That willful ignorance of “what happens there” takes them out of the game. For all practical purposes, they relinquish their citizenship. Without a civic life, democracy dies.
Sociologist John O’Neill has captured this great calamity we are all subject to, the temptation to withdraw from civic life: “We make our lives from what is around us, from our family, our house, street, playmates, school, teachers, friends, books, comics, and church. But we forget this. Our projects take us away from home; they sweep everything behind us as a past we hardly remember. We move on, looking for wider perspectives, new experiences, unseen things. . . . But things beckon us back—the weight of things, their touch, their smell; the time of things, their seasons; the way of things, their uses—all these offer us a chance of salvation, a redemption rooted in things, often comically, but in an ultimate wisdom.” He then offers this puzzle, “How it is that [we humans] belong to one another despite all differences?” (Making Sense Together, 1974, pp. 9-10)
We also belong to Sue Ellen, the giraffe, and she to us. She is a part of our community, as are we, if we choose to be. My prayer is that she will save us from “our projects that take us from home. . . . and beckon us back.” Without a civic life, democracy dies.
