Opinions

Alaska Legislature to the gallery: 'Leave the propaganda to us'

For more than a week, I have been dropping by the rebuilt Anchorage legislative building on Fourth Avenue to see the Legislature in action. There isn't much action. Lawmakers are deadlocked over the 2015 budget, and substantive discussions, when they occur, usually take place in private.

The multimillion-dollar building, which Democrats and their friends have denounced as wasteful, and unnecessary, is a tribute to banality. Maybe Republican Rep. Mike Hawker, the lead legislator funding the rebuild, wasted millions as Democrats contend, but the big money must have gone into the engineering, not the appearance. The building is clean, freshly painted, and tidy but makes no more of an architectural statement than a chain hotel at a large airport. It wasn't built to hold legislative sessions. The room in which the House and Senate meet is poorly suited for floor activities -- lawmakers were complaining about the sound system when I recently looked in -- and has the gravitas of a study hall at a Big Ten library annex.

If, as the great architect Louis Sullivan said, form follows function then the architects and contractors succeeded: The form is dull, matching the daily routine.

Visitors who want to sit in the cramped "gallery" -- 35 chairs strung together in the back of the room where floor sessions occur -- are subject to gallery rules, printed in a handout. In keeping with the manner in which those with authority impose their will on the common soul, the rules are a list of "nos." Ten of them. Most are obvious. For example, No smoking, No food or drink, No video recording, No weapons. But I burst out laughing at one restriction: NO PROPAGANDA.

No propaganda in the legislative chamber? Legislators subsist on propaganda. The new building already reeks of propaganda. What the Legislature is saying in this handout is, "No citizen propaganda -- leave the propaganda to us."

The handout cites signs and banners as examples of propaganda. Signs and banners can be unwieldy and disruptive, so okay, keep them out. But beyond proscribing signs and banners, the propaganda ban seems arbitrary. Is a T-shirt that says "Business sucks" propaganda? Is wearing an NRA lapel pin propaganda? Are union -- or chamber of commerce -- handouts stuffed in your pocket propaganda?

The word propaganda seems so retro. It conjures up images of sweaty communists spattered with purple ink hovering over a balky mimeograph machine that is slowly, slowly spitting out page after page of "Workers of the World Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Chains."

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Legislators might want to remember: One man's propaganda is another man's eternal wisdom.

Monday, perhaps 50 or more union leaders and state employees came to the legislative building to express their support for the 2.5 percent cost-of-living raise with a $30 million price tag. Many were dressed in green jerseys identifying their affiliation. A few sat in the gallery and watched the Senate's brief technical session, which accomplished nothing beyond conforming with the requirement the Senate must meet every so often.

The rest of the crowd went across the hall to what passes for a committee room and watched the session televised on a large flat screen, some of the green shirts standing, some sitting. The audience cheered when Democratic Sen. Bill Wielechowski spoke briefly for the raise. It hissed and booed GOP Sens. Anna MacKinnon and John Coghill, equally brief in their opposition to the raise. At one point, a green shirt blurted out "liar" at the video image of Coghill beamed from across the hall.

I felt as if I was watching the legislative version of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," and turned to union leader Jim Duncan, a former legislator, standing next to me. We both laughed.

It's an elementary principle of psychology that frustration leads to aggression, and that's what Duncan and I were watching -- in a self-consciously absurd form.

I will leave it to legislative leaders to tell the rest of us whether those who cheer, hiss, or boo a flat screen are engaging in propaganda.

Michael Carey is an Alaska Dispatch News columnist.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.

Michael Carey

Michael Carey is an occasional columnist and the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News.

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