Champion of the People

That was the headline in yesterday's paper. It hovered over the article about Indiana State Senator Anita Bowser. Her funeral was Thursday. You might remember me writing about her in this post. I did not know then that she was struggling with breast cancer. That was one battle she did not win; although she "died with her boots on". Still hoping that she would make Monday's morning session, she remained in Indianapolis in hospice, rather than return to her home in Michigan City. She had only a week's absence and had more bills heard this year than any other. They buried her with a copy of the Indiana State Constitution.

I cried when I read the said news of her passing in Monday's paper. Even today when I read over the accounts of her various debates on the Senate floor, I am moved to emotion. Why? After all, she was not from my district. She did not represent me, right?

(Michael McArdle/Post-Tribune file)

Wrong. She said what I feel. She spoke for me. They called her "the conscience of the General Assembly". They said "No one could thunder with more passion and indignation...". I wish I could have heard her.

I wish I could have heard her the last time at the podium when she condemned the proposed amendment to the state constitution banning same sex marriages. Senator Earline Rogers said she argued that the state constitution was designed to preserve rights, not take them away. I wish I could have heard her when she told them that the Indiana Constitution does not talk about intolerance, and asked "Who next is going to be on your hatred list?"

I wish I could have heard her scold fellow senators who were afraid to vote against the proposed gay marriage ban for fear of losing in the next election. "You're compromising your integrity for a vote. Does not your conscience bother you about that?"

It was reported in this article, that the Senator "with cancer in her bones and a broken pelvis, was so determined to speak against the resolution that she'd had to make her way to the Senate floor in a wheelchair."

Senator Bowser considered herself a conservative on constitutional issues, but "on social issues, yes, I guess I'm a liberal. I don't think it's bad term, I think it's a Christian term," she said. On Tuesday, flowers covered an empty desk while those that worked beside her remembered her "as perhaps the most intelligent, progressive voice in the body".

There is a pattern in the accounts of her life...a friend to the little guy, an advocate for the less fortunate, a champion of the people. I wonder who will fill her shoes. I wonder who will say what I think. Who will stand up for the downtrodden? Now who will be the champion of the people?

I will miss you, Senator Bowser.