A practical lesson in US democracy

It began as a classroom dare. In a lesson on early democracy in Greece, 11-year-old Heather Faanes raised her hand and said that, while it might have worked for the ancients, in modern America only millionaires got to be powerful politcians. Her teacher disagreed and set out to prove the little girl wrong - by running for the US Congress herself.

The remarkable story of Tierney Cahill, a teacher who came from nowhere to challenge a Republican congressman with the help of 11 and 12-year-old campaigners, is to be told in a Hollywood film starring Oscar-winning Halle Berry. It is likely to be released next year, just as another woman, Hillary Clinton, builds momentum in her bid for the presidency.

Cahill, a single mother of three with a $30,000 salary and no political pedigree, made her audacious stand in 2000 to show her class that any citizen could emulate Abraham Lincoln's journey from log cabin to White House. Her budget was only a fraction of that of her incumbent rival but, with her pupils working on her campaign after school, she gained 34 per cent of the vote. It may have been a defeat, but it was a moral victory and more than the Democrats had recently managed in the safe Republican district. 'To be the subject of a film is an odd feeling, because I go to work every day teaching and sell real estate on the side,' Cahill, 39, told The Observer yesterday, speaking from her home in Nevada. 'I feel like a normal mum and teacher and don't deserve the attention. To have Halle Berry playing me is pretty exciting.'

.......

When Cahill - a teacher at Sarah Winnemucca Elementary School in Reno, Nevada - announced that she would run for the Democrats against Republican Jim Gibbons to prove that democracy was alive, officials warned her that the campaign could not be a class project, but pupils' activities after school were their own affair. Around 60 children formed committees, designed logos and garden signs, canvassed on doorsteps, handled interview requests and rotated the post of campaign manager on a weekly basis. Cahill described them as her 'campaign crew'.

She recalled: 'The children were much more well informed and astute to the process and institutions. They were 12-year-olds talking to political analysts, and the public were charmed by that. Many have gone on to run for office in their student bodies; one told her mother the place she most wanted to visit was Washington DC, so she got to visit Jim Gibbons's office on Capitol Hill, then came back and told me how exciting it was.'



http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2015763,00.html

11-year-old Heather Faanes was right "in modern America only millionaires got to be powerful politicians." Seems the teacher showed the student was actually correct.