A Local, Grass-Roots Neighbor, a Grandma with "Attitude"

By Mary Alice Coverdale

I'm not going to take it anymore!

Many of my women friends, even those with college degrees, did not vote. Or, if they did, they voted how their husbands told them to (or so they said). I hope that times have changed a little bit beyond that by now!

I fell for a lot of that stuff and achieved most of it. But somewhere, in between the "ladies'" magazines, I got ahold of Marilyn French's "The Women's Room" and Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique." These books, along with others, I usually read while my children were napping. I was waking up to the idea that there was a lot more in the world I could and should be doing than to be on a permanent search for the best recipes for company dinners or going into a tizzy about having the "right" curtains!

So I embarked on "making a difference." In a small community where people lived far apart from one another and playmates were hard to find for little kids, I made some phone calls, stopped strangers in stores, set up a meeting, and eventually we started a cooperative nursery school at what is now South Lake Tahoe. I was only 23! The Tahoe Parents Nursery School is still operating--still going since 1958! Because of that, my 3 little kids had a preschool to attend! Not willing to stop there, a few years later a few friends and I began the movement that led to the incorporation of the City of South Lake Tahoe in the mid-'60s. That was NOT an easy project. We were fighing huge money, but we won. What a party we had on THAT election night!

I learned early on that an individual CAN make a difference, and with that knowledge, I have tried to be conscientious in making my causes the proper ones, best for the situation, whether it be local or international or everything in between.

The main skills I have brought to these activities have been:

• A knack for networking, i.e., bringing people together for a common purpose, recognizing their various skills, and setting them on their course of action to get the job done, whatever it may be--setting up a different kind of curriculum in a school program, incorporating a city, fighting "city hall" to get a new traffic light, working with a homeowners' assocation to put in a well for irrigation purposes when we were told it was impossible, help put on dinners to raise money for the Democratic Party, and on and on.

• A willingness to make our causes known through media publicity, either taking photos myself or delegating that job to others, and/or writing news releases and sending them to the appropriate media, sometimes even internationally.

• The ability to teach others certain techniques that I have learned in order to multiply the effectiveness of communication of things I care about, such as how to write a news story and where and how to send it. I have taught this to students in school and well as to adults who want to "do" something.

• The quality of being a political junkie and a media junkie. I read tons of material, both from the left and from the right, about politics. I watch TV, listen to radio--sometimes all at once. So I think I know better than most what is going on!

As a member of the Sacramento County Democratic Central Committee representing the 5th Assembly District, my agenda would be to work to keep our community and nation safe, healthy, and nurturing for families of all sizes, including families of one.

I would accomplish this, as I've said elsewhere, by doing everything I can possibly do to elect more Democrats in my area. We are the underdogs when it comes to money, so we have to use extremely "smart" ways to find the best people we can, help them finance their campaigns, and continue to help them once they're elected.

I take this assignment very seriously. I truly feel the integrity of our nation is at stake. Our current administration has taken one irrational step after another to bring us into an illegal and unwise war that has made us the laughing stock of the world. They have brought about reductions in the standards for the quality of water and air. They have increased the practice of sending jobs overseas, thus eliminating thousands of jobs here on our soil.

Just this morning on a radio program I heard someone says that it seems like members of Congress wake up every day trying to think of new ways to rob us of our retirement benefits. This is just one tiny example of our being dragged down the drain.

In summary, as a grandma with "attitude," I am not going to take it anymore. But, then, I rarely have!