I’m looking for hope and inspiration here, in tune with the season.

So let me start with a recent teachers’ strike in Middletown, New Jersey, where 228 teachers and secretaries were jailed for as long as two weeks for defying a back-to-work order. The strike was mainly over soaring healthcare costs, which their board is trying to dump back onto teachers. It is still unresolved. I was a bit amazed to hear of it occurring in a land apparently blanketed by patriotic conformity with very little rocking of the boat. It’s been minimally covered in our media.

They’re surely not doing it for the glory. Aside from jail, they have faced abuse in their communities for behaving unpatriotically in a time of terror and anthrax, during an economic downturn.

It’s so easy for public bodies such as governments and school boards to relativize the crying needs of daily life, like healthcare, in the face of global terror. Listen to Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s chief strategist and hand-holder, on the political change in mood since September 11: “It’s a little more sombre when you’re dealing with life-and-death issues instead of the patients’ bill of rights.” For him, a bill of patients’ rights is not about life and death, perhaps because he’ll always have the money and clout to get good care.

For the teachers, protection around their healthcare is about life and death. I know it’s not everyone’s cuppa inspiration, but I find it moving when respectable types like teachers risk disapproval and jail to insist on their rights.

Now take the fifty-five journalists at the Montreal Gazette who signed an open letter last week protesting against a directive to run editorials from head office in Southam papers. Their letter said this would compromise the independence of local voices in favour of the imposed views of the Asper family, which owns the chain. What I find touching is that none of the signers (except maybe an editorial writer) would have their own work or security affected by the policy. They were protesting on sheer principle, yet put their jobs in jeopardy by standing up to the boss at a time of rising economic insecurity in their field. That’s inspirational.

There’s also Winnipeg accountant George Harris, who spent five years holding Revenue Canada’s feet to the fire for letting a family “widely believed to be the Bronfmans” (as it’s always described) get away with a tax dodge on the Canadian public. He lost his case on Wednesday, with nothing to apologize for. At least the government will have to pay his costs.

I like these cases because they are gleanings from democracy’s floor rather than its penthouse. Our version of democracy tends to be top-heavy at the best of times, leaving leaders, generals, experts and the rich to run things unencumbered, except for occasional elections, which everyone knows are a hard time to discuss issues since you’re so busy choosing between candidates.

Insert a crisis such as September 11, and there’s virtually no role for input from below. The pressure doesn’t just come from new infringements on civil liberties due to panic over terror. There’s also an informal, cultural shutdown. Everyone closes ranks around the leader and squelches criticism, in the name of democracy.

If you want to know how tetchy the system is: John Ralston Saul got raked for saying George Bush looked fragile and awkward on September 11. It’s not even a putdown! Academics who study polling say there’s even been a falloff in that minimal source of public input. Instead, we get CNN phone-in surveys on questions such as: Should the U.S. search cave by cave for Osama bin Laden?

It’s apt that this diminution in democracy happens at the first point in U.S. history when a president won with fewer votes than his opponent. It should have been the cause of democratic soul-searching and reform. Instead, Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in The New Yorker, “The unthinkable happened and the almost universal response was not to think about it.”

It’s a situation in which you feel grateful for small democratic mercies. I mean I don’t really think the Gazette till now has been a great rainbow of diverse and stimulating views. It has traversed the usual narrow band of the mainstream media. But what the Aspers are attempting will constrict debate further. Besides, the mere fact that journalists took a stand is probably more democratically beneficial than any effect they may have. It’s good democratic karma or something.

The same goes for the Jersey strikers. That they felt confident enough in their cause and each other to take a provocative stand in a coercive social environment makes you feel that the democratic impulse must run very deep. Which is probably where it has always run or it wouldn’t survive.

Additional seasonal tie-in: the image of gleanings from the floor comes from the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament. Ruth, a gentile, wed Boaz the Israelite landowner, and from their line, King David was born. Jesus of Nazareth, in turn, came from David’s line. Merry Christmas.

rick_salutin_small_24_1_1_1_1_0

Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.