The Big Game
Buffalo High Road Fellow, Lila Tauzin-Fox, talks inside baseball about democratic participation.
On Friday (6/30), the High Road took to Sahlen Field for a baseball game. The cadence of baseball is rather interesting and unlike any sport I’ve ever known. There are such long drawn-out periods of seeming nothingness. If you don’t pay attention, it could genuinely feel like the game was paused for ten minutes. And then, out of nowhere, the other team has loaded the bases and….oh my god!!! Hit a homerun??! In some ways, this is how observing the decisions of government has felt to me for so long. Radio silence for a few weeks and then “Holy Shit Roe v. Wade was overturned!” But this is a problematic and cloyingly privileged perspective. Living in ignorance and only tuning in for big stories is not me being the active participant in democracy I hope to be; the same way a baseball spectator who only looks up from their phone when they hear others cheering isn’t a good fan.
This fellowship has taught me a tremendous deal about those ten minutes of silence. They were never silent, I was just tuned out.