Candidates argue duet in music while they fight for votes. New

"Society, have pity on me / I hope you're not angry if I do not agree," get into the final lines of "Society" – a three-song folk song written by Jerry Hannan . Last week, in the midst of a controversial mid-term election season, two aspiring Vermont politicians interpreted the song as an elegant alley crossing and a rare multiparty collaboration.

Immediately following a debate held on October 10 at the Varnum Memorial Library, in Jeffersonville Village, two candidates from a rural district contending for a seat in the House of Representatives of the State, Republican Zac Mayo and Democrat Lucy Rogers, began reorganizing the library furniture to make room for Mayo's guitar and Rogers cello.

The duo was originally an idea of ​​Rogers, who informed Mayo two days before the debate. "We met in the afternoon the day before the forum and played the song several times in the Waterville Lookout," Rogers told NPR. "It was less than Zac and I were trying to make a huge statement rather than just working at the local level."

Despite the local focus of the candidates, the performance began to attract attention after CBS aired an article about their musical composition on Friday.

"These kinds of stories are necessary because they really do not appear anywhere," NPR Mayo said, whose platform focuses on the sense of shared responsibility for civic life. Mayo considers that Americans have lost the sense of a shared identity. "We are tribal in our thought process," he says. "We forget that we need a deeper bond below that."

The chorus of the song, he says, speaks of "the way you look, what we read and look at, it's fundamentally the struggle of society. We struggle and lose sight of what is really important. "

The feeling that many Americans have of a more deeply shattered society is corroborated by data. "In recent years," said a Pew Research Center survey released a year ago, "the gaps between several political values ​​in particular, including attitudes towards the social safety net, the breed and immigration, have widened considerably. "It was a similar story six years ago too.

Rogers tells NPR that his civilization, as well as that of his opponent, not only illustrates the need for collaboration, but also the diversity of rural communities, even though they are often described as homogeneous and cloistered. "I found that growing up in a very small town – in a grade school classroom with 11 people," she says. "I could not choose to surround myself with people who agreed with me." In a follow-up email, Rogers writes that "when it's your neighbor who thinks differently from you, it's much easier to see the common humanity still".

It's a feeling Mayo echoes. "For me, the biggest and most important problem is that we do not know how to dialogue constructively with each other," he says. "I really believe that the government and all the issues involved are extremely complex and interdependent. and if we are able to work together – respect being the underlying value – we can move forward. "

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