Leave ... or stay and fight?

By JoAnne Young

 

I am driving through Florida and Georgia and Tennessee as I write this, rolling back to Nebraska from a two-week stay at the beach house of the Young Youngs (Joseph, Michaela, Ky and Finn). 

 

For 14 days I’ve touched the sand and salt water every day. Watched the sun rise over the waves. Eaten wonderful seafood in restaurants surrounded by lapping water. 

 

Earlier this year, we visited our oldest son in San Diego and our daughter’s family in Denver. All of these are places where the living is pretty easy; all places where we could pull up our Nebraska roots and move, as they did.

 

Many people have vacated this state. Sometimes the state’s politics and policies figure into those moves; frequently it’s for family, lifestyle, economy, taxes. Even former governors and U.S. senators move away from Nebraska. 

 

So I ask myself daily, should we – the last of the Young clan to reside here – leave, too? Or do we stay and fight for a place that has been home for so long, that has established family memories and good friends, but that has distanced itself from me with its stubbornness of conservative politics, its failure to embrace women and people of color in its state leadership, and its refusal to protect the LBGTQ+ community in state law. 

 

I watch as it becomes increasingly difficult for people who ran for office to help their communities and to speak for people who aren’t really able to speak for themselves. 

 

We aren’t confused about the fact that we live in a red state, with Republican rule in the legislative and administrative branches. Money frequently determines policy. That’s due in part to a governor whose net worth is estimated at $60 million to $70 million and whose family’s net worth is in the billions. A governor who uses that money to fund handpicked candidates for the Legislature and other offices and defeat those who don’t walk his line. He uses it to thwart the will of the majority of lawmakers and disrupt the results of petition processes with which he disagrees.

 

I talked today to one of our lawmakers, Sen. Megan Hunt of Omaha, about why she has chosen the fight. I see hers as an uphill battle. Thirty-six years old, a woman, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, a single mom, a progressive.  

 

The question of whether to stay or go is one Nebraskans of all ages ask themselves, she told me. She has pondered it herself. What people don’t talk about is the guilt of leaving, of turning your back on the people who don’t have that option. We all need to live in a place where we have faith that we can reach our dreams. 

 

Politics are getting nastier, she said. Leaders are getting more authoritarian. It’s more difficult to be an elected official. 

 

The fights in state government these days are not substantive, she said. They are “dumb culture wars” that don’t matter deeply to the needs and wants of real people. It’s frustrating, she said, and nothing more than playing at politics and lawmaking.

 

She quoted wisdom from Jewish Talmudic sages: “You are not required to finish your work, yet neither are you permitted to desist from it.”

 

The obligation is in the effort, not the outcome. 

 

A mental health break is good, she said. Hers would take her to the mountains of Norway. When and if she gets there, she will know her contribution has been made, that she did what she could. She’d be more than ready for the freedom leaving could bring. 

 

For me, I will put off the question at least another year, maybe two. I will fight, not out of a sense of obligation, but the result of inspiration. My work with state Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks, who ran valiantly for Congress but was defeated by the candidate handpicked by Ricketts and other conservative Republicans, showed me the beauty is in the journey, not the victory or defeat. 

 

So in January, as a new legislative session begins, I plan to go to the Capitol, to be the watchful citizen, an observer of what the lawmakers and administrators are up to. And I will report back, a battlefield correspondent at least for a while.