As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Annie Loyd, an independent Congressional candidate from Arizona, quoted the founding father’s famous exhortation to kick off the Columbia College Student Council Campus Life Committee’s “Independent Night” on Saturday in Wien. Loyd called on students to break out of the country’s bilateral political system and asserted that so long as Democratic and Republican candidates are voters’ only choices, there will be no real political progress.
“Different masks, same thing,” Loyd said. “If you don’t like the way your shoes fit, what do you do—try to reshape them? To heck with it, I’m done with those shoes! You don’t keep going back to them because you really think it’s going to be different this time.”
Loyd spent much of her speech urging students to examine the full range of options for enacting political change.
“We don’t know what the answer is, but we know this political system isn’t working,” Loyd said. “How do you change a top-heavy system? Any significant change has always come from the grassroots.”
Loyd is running for a seat in Arizona, and only Columbia students hailing from Arizona can vote for her in the coming election. Her purpose, she said, was not to campaign, but to urge students to think outside the box, stop seeing the two major parties as their only options, and take action for what they truly believe in. She called the philosophy “political entrepreneurism.”
“People tell me, ‘How dare you campaign as an independent, you’re going to split the vote!’” Loyd said. “That’s not the point.” The point, she said, is not to find the lesser of two evils, but to find a truly ideal candidate and create an ideal system.
The event, spearheaded by James Bogner, CC ’10 and a Loyd campaign staff member, and the CCSC Campus Life Committee, drew a small but passionate crowd.
“We were hoping for more people, but we’re happy with what we had,” Bogner said. The size of the group appeared to facilitate closer discussion and greater audience participation.
During a lengthy question and answer session, which had more of the feel of an open conversation, one attendee was brought to tears as she spoke about her work with low-income high school students, and how powerless she felt to help them.
“I can’t do anything about it!” the student said, her voice cracking.
After a moment’s pause, Loyd responded.
“You do matter,” she said. “You matter so much, and I believe in you. I believe in the human spirit that says we can do this.”
In a brief moment of levity, Loyd recalled the time she spent working to reduce gang violence in Los Angeles.
“If I can get the Crips and Bloods to talk,” she joked, “I can get the Democrats and Republicans to talk.”
maggie.astor@columbiaspectator.com