On Saturday August 19th on Boston Common, there was a triumphant living out of the right of free speech. Thousands of people gathered to listen attentively to speakers representing too-often-neglected points of view. Minds were changed, hearts were changed, the world was changed.
In other news, there was also a white-supremacist rally that completely fizzled, failing to grow beyond a tiny huddle of small-minded men. The triumph of free speech was called Fight Supremacy, and it was organized by Monica Cannon from an organization called Violence in Boston, with the assistance of a nationwide network of chapters of Black Lives Matter. The conversation around Saturday’s events in Boston has focused too much on the tiny handful of white people who feel like people didn't listen to them. Even traditional liberal redoubts such as NPR quickly fell prey to hand-wringing over the free-speech rights of a small number of people. Rather than focus on the failure of a sad gathering of people who did not even bother to attempt a speaking program, we should instead be focusing on the fact that tens of thousands of people on the Common did hear a speaking program. One where people of color—women of color almost exclusively—spoke about their deep convictions to a crowd of people who did not all view the world the same way. This is free speech in action. Our hand-wringing over the feelings of a few dozen white people reveals how resistant white people are to ever remaining silent. No Right to Control How Other People Respond Make no mistake, the white supremacists who gathered on Boston Common were there as an act of provocation. The few people who were involved in this event deny that this is the case, but their actions speak louder than their words. The event on Boston Common came into existence because of the white supremacist terrorism of Charlottesville. That violent day shined a spotlight on Boston, where a previously scheduled rally went from being a non-event to being headline news across the country. A group that had earlier in the year barely managed to turn out a few hundred people all of a sudden found itself with the attention of hundreds of thousands of people. They had a list of speakers which closely mirrored the speakers at the events in Charlottesville and because of this similarity the general public quickly came to view this as a follow up event, as Charlottesville round two. With the country freshly wounded by white supremacist terrorism, the organizers had a decision to make. Would they continue to organize this deeply provocative event as planned, or would they change course given what happened in Charlottesville? They chose to go ahead in spite of and in defiance of a public who manifestly did not want them. Choosing to go ahead with the rally as scheduled was in and of itself a form of political speech—one that people heard loud and clear. They could have made other decisions. They could have canceled the event entirely. They could have rescheduled for another time. “But why should they have to do that? What about free speech? Shouldn’t they be allowed to have their rally whenever they want?” The First Amendment prevents the government from censoring unpopular speech and, indeed, the government abided by the First Amendment. The white supremacists absolutely had a right to hold a rally--and they did indeed do so. They even had that right guaranteed at enormous taxpayer expense through providing a robust police presence at no cost to them. Far from censoring the white supremacists right to free speech, the city government afforded them a taxpayer-funded venue and taxpayer-funded protection. So I will say no more about any supposed First Amendment issues here. They had the right to have a rally, and they did indeed have that rally. What the white supremacists did not have the right to do was to control how people reacted to them. In choosing to go ahead as scheduled, the white supremacists had already engaged in political speech. In response, a wide and diverse coalition of ordinary people organized competing events in order to counter their message—and to do so loudly and unequivocally. What we saw play out on Boston Common was in and of itself a robust living out of free speech. Throughout the week people gathered in public parks and churches and union halls and on the internet to discuss what should be done. People thought through the issues at hand and made decisions about how they would respond. And which position won the day among the public was absolutely and abundantly clear. It was a fair fight, and the white supremacists lost in a humiliating one round knockout. The right to free speech does not guarantee anyone a receptive audience. The right to free speech is not the same as the right to make people listen to you if they do not desire to do so. An intoxicated man shouting on a street corner may, indeed, be angry that people aren’t listening to him, but he can hardly complain that his rights have been violated. Other Voices That Had Been Silenced Were Heard Throughout this country every day, the voices and perspectives of minorities are ignored and silenced. This is done in a host of ways—through textbooks in public schools that focus on Europeans, through film and television that resists diverse casting, through gerrymandering and voter suppression that minimizes political representation. In all these ways and more, our society actively chooses to ignore and overlook the voices and perspectives of minorities. What played out on Boston Common this past Saturday was a corrective to this. People of color were leading the march to the common. Women were holding the microphone (literally) and leading the crowds in chants and songs. On the common itself, the lineup of speakers was composed entirely of people of color. And people listened. Attentively. And they listened attentively because they believed that what they were hearing was persuasive. For an afternoon, the voices of people of color were actively elevated and given center stage. People listened. Minds were changed. Hearts were changed. Lives were changed. It is a living out of white supremacy to talk about the events on Boston Common as some kind of suppression of free speech. What happened was that normally marginalized voices were given center stage. Only a point of view that cannot abide being anything other than the center of attention would be threatened by such an event. The reality is this. If the sad white supremacists who were so roundly humiliated want to hold another rally on the Common, they are free to do so. But nobody is going to show up. Their own people might show up, but there won’t be thousands of protestors. The only reason why the white supremacists had such a grand stage on which to fail was because they chose to take up the banner of Charlottesville and wave it in the face of a nation still grieving. In another month, no one will care about them. This is the reason why they refused to reschedule. Not because of a point of principle. But because they know they are irrelevant. Their ideas have had a hearing in this country for centuries. It’s time for them to be silenced. They should be silenced by something much more powerful than the dictates of city government. They should be silenced by an engaged public actively deciding to demonstrate to them that their ideas have no worth. This is not a failure of the First Amendment or a failure of free speech. This is the triumph of free speech: when discourse plays out in public such that everyone can see what ideas have worth and what ideas are empty. If white supremacists do not like being publicly humiliated, they should either be more convincing or they refrain from entering into public discourse at all. To whine about free speech in this case is to fundamentally misunderstand how the marketplace of ideas works.
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A solution to this problem is possible, however, by fundamentally shifting what one understands an ally to be. This alternative model will be called “strategic alliances”.
A strategic alliance is an explicit agreement between two separate organizing movements to join their power for a period of time. This is done in order to achieve goals that would be impossible for either movement to achieve alone. Each aspect of this arrangement serves to solve the problems previously enumerated. Allies are contingent. But strategic alliances exist between two or more separate organizing movements to further their own direct interests. Allies ought to be permanently subordinate. But strategic alliances require each party to take the lead at different times. Allies introduce a dynamic of unequal distribution of power. But, strategic alliances require each party to treat the other as having equal dignity and equal claim to power. First, strategic alliances exist between two or more separate organizing movements to further their own direct interests. Say there is a group organizing fast food workers for sick time protections for their workers. Say, further, that there is a labor union working for guaranteed sick time for all workers. Such groups might form a strategic alliance. The interest of the fast food workers is protecting their people from losing their jobs when they get sick. The interest of the labor union is to avoid having to bid for contracts against firms whose costs are artificially low because they do not pay for sick time. Their interests are not the same. At other times, the interests of fast wood workers and a labor union might even be in conflict. But each group exists for the purpose of organizing on behalf of their own interests and—for a specific period of time—those parties can agree to work together toward a shared goal. Each partner in the strategic alliance may participate in the alliance fully, rather than on a contingent basis. Each partner can, in fact, be counted on to participate fully because it is in their own interest to do so. Entering into strategic alliances only with partners that have their own interests at heart solves the problem of “allies” having only a contingent stake in a movement. Second, Strategic Alliances require different people to take leadership at different times. Remember that allies ought to be subordinate because they lack two critical resources needed to organize powerfully—personal experience of pain cause by the unjust system being targeted, and the capacity to invite people similar to them to join in the movement. Keeping the example of the fast food workers and the union, each of these groups has its own distinct interest in working for sick time protections. Those interests are driven by pain that is distinct to each group. The fast food workers have stories of working through illness and injury. The unions have stories of stagnating pay and being out of work as job after job goes to unscrupulous cut rate labor providers. Because the fast food workers and the unions have different interests, motivated by different pain, one or the other of these parties will be more effective than the other depending on the circumstance. Say the movement is looking to build their base among low-wage home care workers—the fast food workers will need to take the lead because their stories of being exploited for labor will resonate. Say the movement is looking to build support among politically connected and organized groups like chambers of commerce—the unions will need to take the lead because their stories of struggling to compete in a cut throat market against unscrupulous firms will resonate. Different members of the alliance will need to take the lead at different times if they are to be effective. In a strategic alliance, diversity among membership in the alliance is critical to effective strategy. Diversity is strength. This model avoids the trap that allies fall into, of always and only filling a subordinate role in someone else’s movement. Finally, Strategic Alliances require a leveling of power, both within a movement and outside. Within the strategic alliance, power dynamics will be revealed through logistics. How should the group be funded? How will its leadership be chosen? Who will publicly speak for the movement? Who gets to decide any of that? In deciding on these critical questions and dividing authority amongst the distinct interests represented, there is a fundamental principle operating: neither member of the strategic alliance can demand something from the other that they themselves will not willingly submit to when the situation is reversed. And the situation will be reversed. Neither member can be expected to supply all the funding all the time, neither member can decide on all the leaders all the time, neither can do all the talking all the time—because such an arrangement would be intolerable for one of the parties. No one will long put up with a situation in which they have ceded all authority in a fight for issues that matter to them personally. Unequal power sharing within a movement threatens the strategic alliance’s goals and, therefore, does not serve the interests of anyone within the movement—not even the party which holds greater power! To hold power over the heads of friends and dictate their behavior is the dubious luxury of those who are not trying to change the world. There is no way to solve these questions other than through negotiation among the members and no two situations will involve exactly the same answers to these questions. But what about the unequal distribution of power outside of the movement? If the different parties within an alliance occupy different positions of power and authority within society, won’t this cause inescapable problems within the movement? It is possible, after all, to imagine the existence of cultural divides between fast-food workers and a union. It is possible to imagine racial tensions between fast food workers and a union. What does a strategic alliance do to solve these kinds of problems? First, strategic alliances break down the barriers of interpersonal relationship that exacerbate cultural and racial divides. By working closely together to coordinate strategy, these parties cannot help but learn about one another. Why is it that Wednesday night meetings don’t work for the Pentecostal fast food workers? Why is it that the Muslim trade-unionist doesn’t serve food or coffee when they host breakfast meetings? Animus and prejudice and resentment flourish in the absence of relationship. Real relationships that can exist across differences can thrive when they are cultivated by doing shared work. One cannot help but admire a person’s strength when that strength is in service of a common goal. As long as the shared work of the alliance persists, the parties exist within a counter-culture. The shared work of transforming unjust social systems can help break down barriers. Summary Allies are contingent and unable to participate in the fundamental purpose of a movement, but strategic alliances require full participation from all parties in order that all might advance their goals. Allies ought to be always subordinate within a movement, but strategic alliances demand frequent balancing of power and interest among parties. Allies insert a dynamic of unequal distribution of power, but strategic alliances build an alternative counter-culture in which people who are not supposed to get along are empowered to treat one another as having equal dignity through negotiation. If a person wants to give up on being an ally to marginalized groups and instead be part of a strategic alliance among peers, how are they supposed to begin with this alternative model? First off, there is much that they must stop doing. They must stop trying to improve the lives of “the less fortunate”, as if people are not best capable of fighting on their own behalf. Instead they must decide to be deeply connected to their own community. They must refrain from inserting themselves into movements of people organizing on their own behalf. Instead they must search their own life for places where their personal pain is created and maintained by unjust social structures. For some, such a search is quite easy. A person who grew up in an extremely poor family may have suffered innumerable indignities caused by the unjust and horrific gap between rich and poor in this country. A person whose parents are not legal citizens may have suffered a lifetime of fear and anxiety created by racist xenophobic policies. A person in treatment for a mental illness may be unable to gain employment because of discriminatory and illegal bias against people with mental illness. A woman may see her male colleagues time and again advance beyond her professionally, being lied to at every turn about the sexist and patriarchal reasons she was passed over for promotion. The very first thing a person must do if they wish to be part of a strategic alliance is to articulate how their personal pain is created and maintained by unjust social structures. The second thing a person must do if they wish to be part of a strategic alliance is summon anger at the way they have been treated and to organize on their own behalf to do something about it. They must organize people who are being hurt by society just like they are, they must build an organization or become a part of one. That organization must go out and fight on their own behalf for their own interests. Maybe that looks picketing the big box store that closed down local jobs and shipped profits to a wealthy few. Maybe it’s organizing to run an opponent against the local sheriff unless they agree to stop targeting people of color for unwarranted investigations into immigration status. Maybe it is publishing a list of the home addresses of every employer in town with zero women managers. The important thing is that they go into action, that they fight for their own legitimate interests against those who profit from their pain. The third thing a person must do if they wish to be an effective ally is to assess in a clear eyed way what they and their organization are able to accomplish on their own. Were they effective or ineffective? What did they achieve with the power they had? What could they have achieved if they had more power? It is this last question which is critical. Because any organization of people fighting for their own interest will quickly realize that they could achieve more of their own goals with more power. Such a realization, made in all humility, is necessary to form a true strategic alliance. Because the only way to fundamentally build more power is to partner with people who do not happen to share the same pain, but who are also fighting for their own distinct interests. Such people might be worthwhile partners in a strategic alliance. Find a group that is also organizing on own behalf. If one group is organizing for immigration reform, they might reach out to a group trying to force the police to wear body cameras. If one group is organizing against a big box retailer, they might reach out to a group trying to address a food desert. What is important is that the group being reached out to has its own base of power, its own reason for existence, its own leaders, and a clearly articulated sense of what is in their own best interest. Sit down with them, ask them what they have already achieved and what they still hope to yet achieve. Each group should assess, with honesty and humility, whether there is any way their organization might help the other achieve their goals. Each group should assess, shrewdly and tactfully, whether the other group might help them achieve their own goals. If the answer is mutually “yes”, then a strategic alliance is possible. There are, of course, several provisions. This would have to truly be in the best interest of a future partner. After all, it is best not to undergo any risky strategies with a mere all, someone who might abandon you if things get difficult. Whatever is being asked of one partner had better be something the other partner would be willing to do too. It’s possible to lose months of organizing effort supporting some other organization, if that organization turns around and refuses to help in turn. Once you have had experience in a strategic alliance, it is easy to see why allies are so problematic. And it is easy to understand how to avoid those problems. Imagine that you are a white person and a leader in an organization of people in recovery from opiate addictions fighting to reform police treatment of addicts. You will have no tolerance for a well-meaning “ally” with no experience in the world of addiction and recovery barging in and trying to take over the movement. You would not allow them to claim leadership roles better suited to people in recovery, you would not allow them to become the public face of the movement, you would not allow them to engage in recruitment or strategizing. Even though you are white, you would have an easy time understanding your proper place if you were working for a time with Black Lives Matter on a joint campaign aimed at the local police. You would not try to take over leadership roles within Black Lives Matter, you would not put yourself in the center of that organization because you know from experience how insulting and disruptive it would be. As someone who understands deeply that the world of addiction and recovery is complicated and cultural, you would not be insulted if someone pointed out ways that you were ignorant about the nuances of racism. As someone who cares deeply about addiction and recovery you won’t be interested in taking on potential allies whose interest is that of a tourist or thrill seeker—why build strategy around a part-timer? You would insist on forming relationships only with people and organizations doing real work on enduring problems affecting them personally, people who you know will be in the fight for the long haul because it is their fight too. Being a part of a movement that is organizing on its own behalf will allow you to avoid and mitigate the problems associated with being an ally. Don’t Forget Where You Are: Allies Are Incapable of Engaging in the Core of the Work First, an ally is a contingent figure. That is, an ally exists only in relationship to a movement of people who are organizing on their own behalf to change the unjust social structures that are hurting them. For example, black people are organizing all over the country to change a culture of impunity and brutality among police targeting black people. From an outside point of view, Black Lives Matter seems to have as its core the value and importance of black people organizing their own political power. It is a movement of black self-determination which has a significant focus on changing the behavior of police. Put another way, the Black Lives Matter movement will not go away when they change the culture of unaccountable police violence. Black Lives Matter will continue as a movement, building strength victory after victory. The truth of this can be seen in the broad political goals identified by leaders within the Black Lives Matter movement. The goals represent nothing short of a political and cultural revolution led by black people. The enemies of Black Lives Matter understand this well. Right wing political entities—who in theory should be supportive of checks on police power—are among the most reactionary elements defending indefensible abuses of police power. This is because independent political power organized by black people is threatening to right wing political entities, so deeply invested in maintaining the present system of white supremacy. The Black Lives Matter movement seeks to place black people and other marginalized people in the center of new structures of political power. This is why no matter how well-meaning or well behaved, a white ally is incapable of participating in the fundamental activity of Black Lives Matter—black people organizing power on their own behalf. White Allies may be involved in the movement and their work may even prove helpful. But such work is inescapably contingent. It is contingent upon the existence of a people organizing on their own behalf. It is contingent upon the successes of people winning fights on their own behalf. It is contingent upon the sacrifices of people taking enormous risks on their own behalf. This is not a question of whether I am doing a good job or a bad job at being an ally. Because I am not black, I cannot fully participate in the Black Lives Matter movement, I will always be a contingent figure. The same basic dilemma exists in any movement of people organizing on their own behalf, and the same problem applies to allies in other movements, for much the same reasons. On its own, this does not appear to be a deadly difficulty. But the problems run deeper. Get Off the Microphone: Allies Should Always Be Subordinate Because They Lack the Capacity to Hold Leadership Roles Second, the figure of ally can best serve an organizing effort by remaining in permanently subordinate roles. Any ally will lack at least two fundamental resources needed for leadership roles within an organizing effort. First, those who are personally impacted by unjust social structures are uniquely qualified to speak about why those structures are harmful and articulate the systemic changes required for real change. Second, people who are personally impacted by an unjust societal structure are well qualified to attract new people to join the effort as they can speak with integrity about the issue to those who are being similarly impacted. Strategizing and recruiting, these are the two most central leadership activities in any political movement. And only people who are impacted by an unjust structure are capable of strategizing and recruiting. To place an ally in a role for which they are not qualified will serve only to hinder the movement by taking up a leadership position that would be better left to someone personally impacted by the unjust social structure being worked on. A common saying among the champions who fought for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act was: Nothing about us without us. People without disabilities setting a “reform” agenda on behalf of others reeks of paternalism and condescension. It would destroy the very purpose of the ADA—the legal recognition and protection of the full dignity and humanity of people with disabilities. Viewed simply from a cold analysis of what would lead to success in the movement, allies would have done a terrible job of setting the agenda and organizing a movement. People with disabilities needed to be the leaders of the movement from the ground up, speaking on their own behalf about why the ADA was important and what it should contain. Only people with disabilities could organize those who might potentially benefit from such legislation and build the power needed to win. Allies, if they earnestly wished to see the movement succeed, ought to refrain from seeking leadership roles. Again, this is not a question of whether I am doing a good job or a bad job at being an ally. It is an inherent problem. Being really great as an ally will not qualify me to be a leader in the movement. To put it mildly, not every person who identifies as an ally will be content with the idea that they are to only ever hold a subordinate role in the movement. Managing the hurt feelings of disappointed allies becomes a new kind of work for the leaders of the movement. No one gets into the Black Lives Matter movement because they want to tend to the hurt feelings of white people. And yet this is often a part of what movement leaders have to do. It is counterproductive and a waste of time and resources. This might simply be perceived as an annoyance, but remember that it is an inescapable problem because allies are always contingent figures. And as far as inescapable problems go, this one is very, very serious. Burning it Down on Their Way Out: Allies as Potentially Dangerous Third, allies exists within a double-dynamic of the unequal distribution of power. When allies show up to a movement, they are late to the game and arrive to find structures of leadership already set up and functioning. On arrival they are given (or should be given) minor roles to play. If an ally gets too vocal or starts trying to take charge, they are quickly (and rightly) called out for their misbehavior. There exists a dynamic of unequal power. Within the movement, those who are organizing on their own behalf to change social structures hold greater power than allies who show up late to the game. This is often a direct reversal of the power structure that exists outside of the movement. White people possessed of tremendous racial privilege find themselves subordinate to black people. Straight people whose right to live and love as they choose has never been questioned find themselves subordinate to LGBT persons. Organizing efforts are, in this sense, very much like Jesus’ parables about the Kingdom of God in which the last are to be first and the first are to be last. And just as people were upset at Jesus’ parables, so too do many people accustomed to holding positions of power chafe when being told what they can and cannot do. This power dynamic, however, exists only within the movement itself. In other areas of the ally’s life, they will hold significant power in relationship to members of the movement. A man who is seeking to further the aims of feminism may need to be silent in feminist gatherings. But as soon as he departs that gathering the power dynamic will shift dramatically. Compared to a woman leader in the feminist movement, as he moves through the world our man will not be catcalled, he will not be sexually assaulted, he will not be denied career advancement because of his gender, there are not countries that are off limits to him because of gendered violence, he will not lose democratic elections because of his gender. He picks back up his male privilege as soon as he is outside of the feminist movement. Thus, allies exist within a double-dynamic of unequal distribution of power: within a movement they lack power because of who they are, outside that movement they hold power because of who they are. Intentionally or not, allies introduce an irreconcilable inequality of power into an organizing effort simply by virtue of their presence. This helps explain why leaders of a movement might be so careful with the feelings of allies. An ally whose feelings are hurt because they are not allowed to hold leadership roles is a potentially dangerous enemy. They know the names of people within the movement, know its meeting habits and locations, know its goals and methods, know its funding sources and potential funders. This is information that a movement’s enemies could (and do) readily exploit. The feminist movement has enemies, Black Lives Matter has enemies, LGBT activists have enemies, immigrants rights groups have enemies. Given the choice between spending time coddling the hurt feelings of an ally and spending time rebuilding an organization after its enemies have hit them where it hurts, it is easy to understand why a movement leader might choose coddling. This is, of course, a problem only because of the presence of allies within the movement. Were allies to simply be absent—or were they be trustworthy for reasons beyond personal integrity—the problem would not exist. These three traits of allies—being contingent, subordinate, and introducing an unequal distribution of power, make allies deeply problematic to any group seeking to organize on their own behalf. To be clear, the kinds of problems allies create are not inherent to any particular movement. Nor are these problems philosophical or theoretical. Allies create real logistical problems which require time and attention and resources from leaders within a movement to address—time and attention and resources which are diverted from the movement’s true goals. So where does that leave me as a person who might wish to be an ally to marginalized people? Incapable of making a difference in the world about the things that really matter? Incapable of contributing to the movements needed to save our nation's soul? Not at all. There is an alternative way to do this kind of work, one that rests on a different foundation and which leads to different results. The next part will outline that model. The word ally is a fraught word among progressives who are engaged in organizing work. There are many definitions for ally, I am choosing a relatively broad one. An ally is anyone who works to be supportive of organizing to change unjust social structures, but who does not themselves identify as a member of the group being impacted by those structures. White people supportive of Black Lives Matter, men supportive of intersectional feminism, anyone could increase the list. There are hosts of excellent resources out there for how to do a better job at being an ally—don’t put yourself in the center and don’t make demands are a good start. My experience, however, is that the entire endeavor of being an ally is corrupted from the start. There are three fundamental problems with the basic model of being an ally.
The collision of these three realities can result in allies becoming a significant obstacle to a group of people organizing. These problems are so serious and so fundamental to being an ally that I believe that would-be allies should consider whether they are doing more harm than good. The first part of this will elaborate on the three problems and why they are inescapable under the normal model of being an ally. The second part will lay out an alternative model of what it means to forge alliances across difference and organize for change with diversity as a value. My immediate reaction to the Republican failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act was relief. Relief that people I care about wouldn't lose their health coverage. Relief that strident ideological conservatism had scuttled the ship and united opposition from the Democratic Party had won the day. After my first reaction, I was tempted to give in to a desire to gloat or mock or enjoy the sight of the humbling of boastful people. But this got me thinking about how we ought to behave when we win. If we are interested in building local organizations that have political power, we must think beyond the very first issue that we can win, and imagine how to build up our power. Ideology changes very little over time and when ideologies clash the winner seeks to fundamentally weaken the loser. If I'm engaging in a political clash of ideologies the ultimate goal is the silencing of my political enemies and the enshrinement of my own beliefs in the law. In Community Democracy, however, the goal is not to silence political enemies, but to build political relationship with people who are different. So when we win, if we want to build power for the long haul, we must be gracious to those who have lost. The reason is that we care about behavior. Behavior can always change, the past does not determine the future. Just because I am on opposite sides of an issue with an elected official today does not mean that we will be on opposite sides of the next issue that comes up. In the future, our former enemies may be crucial allies. It is not wise or necessary to weaken someone who is a potential ally in the future, they will remember how we treated them when they were stinging from defeat. I'm not saying that I expect the Democrats to magnanimously praise the Republicans for their commitment liberty. They are locked in an ideological struggle with the Republicans and both parties are looking to silence their opponents because each believes the other to be dangerous. For those of us who do local community organizing, though, we should not treat our local political opponents this way. Democracy needs local leaders to lead the way in charting a new path for our nations politics, which are poison at the top. Remember, we don't make peace to be nice. We make peace to build power. Having won on an issue, it's important for the victor to make peace, to publicly recognize the loser for the things they do well and that are shared in common. This helps maintain the possibility of relationship and working together in the future. If we want to make a difference in the world by organizing ordinary people, we need to have a plan for how to behave when we win. Item number one on the agenda when we win is to publicly thank and recognize our friends and allies, the people who were in the fight with us. Item number two on the agenda is to publicly praise and recognize our now former enemies.
"You can pretend to care, but you can't pretend to show up." George L. Bell
There is an unprecedented movement in this country toward grass-roots progressive political organizing. Enormous marches, tireless phone call campaigns, creative alliances and the breaking down of old barriers, all of this and more is happening organically. Just as there is nothing like a bad boss to spur good union organizing, there is nothing like a bad president to spur good grass roots organizing. People are honestly afraid of what will happen to their loved ones and our democracy. People are not willing to wait until the next election to do something about it. The time is right for broad based organizing to flourish and thrive. At this point it bears repeating that this work is already going on under the banners of many groups of community organizers. From Black Lives Matter to Trans* Public Accommodations bills to the Sanctuary movement, Community Democracy is something that ordinary people have been leading and building for years. And given the state of advanced decay of our democracy, the tools of Community Democracy have never been more necessary. It's reasonable to ask, why not simply support the Democratic Party? Heaven knows they find themselves in need of assistance. Shouldn't a progressive simply work to further the interests of the Democratic Party? I think independent, grass roots organizing is more important for two reasons. First, party affiliation is no guarantee that an elected official will be responsive to the community's needs as you can understand them. A Republican (or Independent) official may be willing to work to address your concerns. A Democrat may not be willing to give you the time of day. Politics is personal, that is, the personalities of the people holding power cannot be ignored. To collapse all of politics into a single bifurcated identity and then choose a side is to miss opportunities to change the system. Second, many people live in districts in which only one party has a credible chance of winning an election. What's a Democrat to do in a Republican county? Or, what can be even more challenging, what is the point of doing progressive organizing in a Democratic stronghold? "The bubble", as it is being called, means that politically energized people find they have nowhere to direct their energy because their representatives are too liberal! Community Democracy refuses to accept the idea that an elected official's entire identity can be summed up by their party. What matters is not their ideology but their responsiveness to community need. By being rigorously independent, community democracy is able to achieve political change that is impossible for the Democratic party. There is much movement also toward having people run for local office, especially women. This is tremendously important. However, you do not need to be an elected official (nor a party official) to be actively engaged in changing governmental policy. The tools of Community Democracy allow ordinary people to fight to address the issues that matter most to them and to win. In the next post, I will address in some more detail the issue of being an ally. What does the philosophy of Community Democracy have to say, for example, about what white people should do about the police killings of black people? Or about what men should do about rampant institutional sexism? Or what citizens should do about deportations of undocumented immigrants? Community Democracy offers important tools to help progressive activists how to care about their own issues and to show up respectfully and powerfully for other people's issues.
"It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of [others]." Samuel Adams
Ideological Democracy is not the only way to organize collective action for political change. There are alternative ways to organize powerful movements of ordinary people to change governmental policy. There are many alternatives, I will highlight one of them. It is a philosophy already being practiced by activists and organizers. The philosophy is this: my role in politics is to build relationship with people who do not share my beliefs in order to collectively influence how elected officials use their power. I will call this philosophy Community Democracy, it a practical political philosophy that serves as a corrective to our democracy’s excesses. This is a practical philosophy, not a theoretical one. There are many organizations doing this work right now, many people making a difference in public life using the tools and practices of Community Democracy. The political victories that have been won are major and encompass a host of issue areas: criminal justice reform, police oversight, expanding health care access, improving public parks, protecting immigrant communities, and many many more. This argument owes its essence to the training I have received from the Industrial Areas Foundation, a nationwide organizing network. They are not the only organizing network doing the work of Community Democracy, but they are certainly doing this work well. Community Democracy is defined by many practices that make it a corrective to Ideological Democracy. Community Democracy focuses on building relationships with elected officials, rather than trying to influence the results of an election. Community Democracy works to address people’s concrete everyday interests, rather than pursue ideological goals. Community Democracy builds power by forging coalitions among people who do not agree, rather than trying to politically defeat opponents. Replacing the endless election cycle with relationships with public officials First, Community Democracy seeks to influence the behavior of elected officials regardless of ideology by forming relationships with those people. This practice is a powerful alternative to the endless election cycle because it introduces a fundamentally different means of evaluating a candidate as compared to an elected official. Community Democracy groups are motivated by the following question: will this elected official listen to our stories and (this is crucial) will they tell us their own story in return? That’s what relationship is, mutual knowing. Story is the basis of relationship and relationship is the basis of political agreement. But how would that work in practice? Elected officials mostly ignore individuals by having low level staffers or interns listen to them in order to mollify them. How does an ordinary person enter into relationship with an elected official? By becoming part of an organized political base built on relationships among diverse people. Entering into a relationship with an elected official requires gathering a base of people large enough to make it worth that elected official’s time to meet. That means acting locally, by which I mean acting as an organized constituent group. You can go into action with your US Representative, or with a state senator, or a mayor. Any level of government is fine as long as the group of people being organized are represented by the same people in government. Remember, in Community Democracy we still vote, we just vote based upon our relationships with elected officials rather than agreeing with their beliefs. Where we are in ever lengthening election cycle is not particularly important. Say that you are part of a group of 250 people concerned about a statewide law and want to meet with your state senator. Be creative in getting a meeting, powerful people are people too and respond to humor and creativity and drama. Send your state senator 250 homemade birthday cakes for their birthday. Or frame photos of all 250 of you and mail them to their office. Do something unforgettable, show your numbers, ask for a meeting. If you don’t get it immediately, persevere. It is more time consuming and draining than you might imagine to try to ignore motivated people. Once your group secures a meeting, tell your stories and make it clear that the political issue you’re there to discuss matters personally. What someone believes is secondary to revealing why they hold that belief. This requires training people to tell their own stories powerfully, and training them also to listen to and care about other people’s stories. You have to practice telling your stories among one another, you have to know who from your group has a powerful story. Once you’ve told your stories to the elected official, be sure to ask them about themselves, why they believe the things they do and what is most important to them. All this story telling and relationship building is for a purpose, however, which is pushing elected officials to address your group’s concerns about public life. Replacing partisan gridlock with concrete solutions to community needs Community Democracy organizes ordinary people in order to enter into a working, productive, public relationship with elected officials. If a person lives in a community where nearby industry is polluting the air, Community Democracy will fight to clean up the air. If a person is from a community where the cost of daycare is prohibitive, Community Democracy will fight to provide alternatives that are affordable. How do you know what those interests are in your community? From all that story telling and relationship building. That step cannot be skipped. When a broad array of people who are in real relationship are all impacted by a problem, then getting elected officials to do something about it becomes a real possibility. When you’ve told the elected official you’re meeting with about the problem you are facing, make a proposal to them about what you would like to have done about it. This obviously requires research, and an understanding of who specifically in government has the authority to grant or deny your request. Ask the official you’re meeting with what they think about the proposal, who they think is most important in moving the idea forward, ask them if they would be willing to help set up a meeting with those key parties. Don’t just ask them to deliver something on a silver platter. Ask them what it will take to address your concerns and ask them to be a partner in making it happen. If they help you, find a way to creatively and publicly thank them for having done the right thing. This is a powerful alternative to partisan gridlock because officials who offer real solutions to real problems addressing ordinary people will stand to benefit politically. No longer will their strategy be dictated by what electoral gains they hope their party will achieve in the next election. Instead, their political future can be strengthened by delivering real solutions to the real problems of their constituents. Action, rather than inaction, is rewarded. This helps break political gridlock. Replacing bitter partisanship with intentional diversity It may be quite possible for you to pull together a few hundred people who care about a single important issue. But what if you are trying to change something that requires an act of the Governor of your state? Or a US senator? 250 people will not rise very high in a governor or senator’s priorities. You would need to pull together thousands of people, from a variety of communities, willing to stand together on an agreed upon platform. It’s not easy to get even like minded people to agree on a single course of action. This is why Community Democracy builds truly diverse coalitions of people, because they are powerful. Community Democracy creates multi-issue bodies, organizations composed of a diversity of people with many (sometimes competing) interests. Being part of an organization like that will require you to do hard work to advance causes that don’t impact you personally. You do this not out of charity, but because others in the organization will in turn work to advance causes that do impact you personally. This is an alliance in the most straightforward sense of the word. Two or more groups decide that they will fight alongside one another. Each will further the interests of the other, precisely because they expect reciprocal support in the future. How does that actually work, though? How can this go beyond mercenary and temporary relationships? Through relationships built upon stories. Again, that step cannot be skipped. How this might Work Sharing stories brings people together who are different. A mother sharing a vulnerable story about losing a child to a drug overdose can create real relationship with someone different from her. That story may prompt a man whose son was shot in an encounter with police to tell his story of grief and loss. The stories are related, but not because they’re about the same issue, they are related because they both come from the depths of a person’s motivation. Deep calls to deep, as the scriptures say. These two people do not share the same interest—drug overdoses and police brutality are not the same thing—but because they have a relationship they can work together in furtherance of one another’s interests. A grieving mother will help a grieving father because of a relationship forged by sharing private pain. Our human compassion for one another's pain is crucial for building the political power needed to address that pain. Political power in Community Democracy is built on relationships in which people honestly share about the public causes of their private pain, and then fight to change things. This is how it works on an individual level, the same is true of communities. Communities that do not share the same interests can unite with one another in common action. Private pain is not so private, after all, and the tragedies of individual life add up to public problems on a large scale. A father grieving his son’s death at the hands of police may live in a predominantly black community where people all-too-often experience deadly violence from police. Such a community likely has many people fighting for greater community oversight of police. A mother grieving the overdose death of her daughter may live in a predominantly white neighborhood where drug overdose deaths occur all-too-often. Such a community likely has many people fighting for good Samaritan laws and for police to be trained in using Narcan. Were these two communities, filled with people motivated by heartbreak, to agree to stand with one another, they could much more powerfully address their concerns. By expanding their base, they are capable of influencing elected officials at higher levels of authority than they could independently. If one community can get a meeting with the chief of police, two can get a meeting with the mayor to whom the chief of police reports. If one community can meet with their state representative, two can meet with the state senator chairing the committee overseeing law enforcement. It is in each community’s interest to be in relationship with the other because being in relationship increases their power. There is a deep relationality and mutuality to the arrangement. The white community shows up to police accountability actions. The black community shows up to overdose reversal actions. But how could such agreements be reached? How could trust be built between two communities that are unfamiliar with or even suspicious about the other? Story telling and relationship building is absolutely indispensable. The white community needs to meet the individuals whose hearts are broken because of young lives cut short by overzealous police. The black community needs to meet the individuals whose hearts are broken because of young lives cut short by drug overdoses. By hearing one another's stories, face to face, each community can come to count the other as an ally. It is fortunate in one sense that government policy takes so long to change—it gives community activists ample time to learn to trust one another. When someone shows up to a community meeting at 7pm on a Tuesday month after month, it’s possible to trust them when they say they will show up next month on a Tuesday at 7pm. Communities can come to trust one another when, issue after issue, fight after fight, they show up for one another. People show up for one another first because they have come to know one another's stories and care about each other as people. They show up for one another, second, because it allows them to more effectively further their own interests. I show up for you because I want you to show up for me. The more diverse that a coalition is, the more powerful it becomes. The more people engaged, the more interests represents, the more issues at stake, the more powerful the coalition can be. The only limit to their power is the degree to which they can maintain real relationship among the groups represented and maintain real progress on the issues that are important. This relies upon the value of negotiation and the dignity that comes by people making agreements with one another and being held accountable to those agreements. Negotiation is built upon the power of compromise, the idea that people with competing interests are able to value their own interests without demonizing or seeking to politically neutralize those whose interests are different. This is a powerful alternative to bitter partisan anger, because it allows people to experience the political power that comes from being in real relationship with people with whom they don’t agree or who they don’t know.
"Every kingdom divided against itself it brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand." Matthew 12:25
Ideological Democracy Creates the Endless Election Cycle When an election comes along, as an engaged and active voter, I have to decide who among the candidates I want to support. What I will tend to do is consider their stated positions and their track record and ask myself a question: Does this candidate agree with my beliefs? Will they work to ensure that the law reflects my beliefs? I will try to discover who among the candidates aligns most closely with my beliefs, while also assessing whether I think that they can win. This sort of decision—repeated millions of times over—represents the building blocks of Ideological Democracy . Say for example that I supported a candidate because they say they want a law requiring women to be paid equally as men for comparable work. If my candidate wins the election, what then? Ideological Democracy offers one and only one overriding means of evaluating them. Are they wielding their power such that my belief in equal pay for woman has actually become the law? If not, then I will be disappointed, perhaps deeply so. I will question whether this person was ever a real champion of my beliefs or if their promises were just talk. If after years of being in office the law has still not changed to my satisfaction, I will turn against them. I may support a challenger from within their same party. I may give up hope that my belief will become the law and decide on a new belief or set of beliefs to champion. I may become disillusioned with electoral politics in general and stop voting. I am—of course—concerned about more than one single issue. But when I evaluate an elected official, I consider their stated positions and their track record and ask myself a question—will they make my beliefs into the law? But this is the same fundamental judgment being made when deciding who to support in an election. Nothing changes about how I evaluate a politician based upon the fact that they are in office rather than a candidate. There is only one means of evaluation. A savvy politician knows they are always either gaining or losing votes. The distinction between one election season and the next is really only a semantic one. Ideological Democracy lacks a framework for evaluating an elected official as a servant of the public good rather than a proponent of certain beliefs. And so the work of governing becomes synonymous with rallying a political base. Responses to policy proposals become not about the merits of the policy itself but about how it will play in the next election. Recall in President Obama’s first term that Republican legislators named their number one goal as being making sure Obama was a one term president. Republicans were already campaigning against the President because their goal was to remove him from office, not to work with him. Similarly, Democrat legislators are talking about how their votes will affect the midterm elections and speculation has already begun over who will challenge Trump in 2020. The public goal of any figure within the Democratic party right now is to remove President Trump from office, not work with him. In the politics of Ideological Democracy, there is one and only one judgment being made—will this person turn my beliefs into the law. There is not an honest means of evaluating elected officials on non-ideological grounds. And so in the politics of Ideological Democracy there is one and only one season. Election season. Ideological Democracy Creates Intractable Gridlock Elected officials of all stripes understand quite well that they must please their political base, and that if they do not deliver the things their base wants then they will eventually lose their support. In reality, however, no single elected official is able to deliver the kinds of laws that their base demands entirely on their own. Turning a belief into the law depends not only upon they themselves being elected to office but also on whether their political party is in the majority or minority. What determines an elected official’s day to day behavior politically is not their professed beliefs but rather the position of their party as either the majority or minority. The goal of the majority is to expand their majority. The goal of a minority is to retake the majority. This determines what goals officials pursue and how. It also creates intractable gridlock which worsens over time. When the majority puts forward an agenda, the particular details of the agenda are not relevant to how the minority will respond. What matters is not the substance but the source. When the majority is pursuing an initiative to further its political platform, it is strategically important for the minority to argue that the proposed actions of the majority are essentially harmful. What I mean by essentially harmful is that the minority will argue that the majority is acting upon dangerous principles and in furtherance of dangerous goals. Only an outright defeat of the proposed act will suffice. For example, Republicans argued President Obama’s actions represented a betrayal of American exceptionalism and traditional values. Republicans were not interested in fine tuning proposals to redistribute wealth or regulate industry and financial markets. These proposals in their view moved the country in a fundamentally wrong direction and they attempted to block Obama’s agenda outright. Similarly, Democrats are arguing that President Trump’s action represent a betrayal of America’s commitment to diversity and compassion. Democrats are not interested in fine tuning proposals to ban Muslims and vilify LBGT people and build a border wall with Mexico. These proposals represent moving the country in a fundamentally wrong direction and they will attempt to block Trump’s agenda outright. This dynamic isn’t going to change, other than by getting worse. Whether it is the Democrats or the Republicans, the minority will always argue that the majority’s actions represent significant change. This is because it is easier to publicly justify outright opposition to an initiative if it is a major departure from the past. Over time, however, this leads to smaller and smaller actions being resisted as very bad and dangerous. Stopping legislation turns into stopping judicial appointments turns into stopping cabinet appointments turns into stopping the functioning of the government. Democrats who once lamented Republicans’ shutting down the government are now refusing to commit to keeping the government running. So atrocious is Trump’s budget, they argue, that it is worth the cost to shut down the government if it stops his agenda. This was, of course, exactly the thinking put forward by Republicans when they shut down the government in protest of Obama’s budget. The minority opposes the actions of the majority because it is politically advantageous for the minority to cast the majority as always and at every stage furthering a harmful agenda. Even formalities—such as a State of the Union speech (you lie!) or a swearing in ceremony(the smallest crowd in years!)—can be an opportunity for the minority to resist the action of the majority as unacceptable. The next election is held up as the opportunity to definitively stop the majority’s agenda. But the election cycle is never ending. Contentious resistance simply begins again, earlier and louder than before, either with the same parties holding the same roles of minority and majority, or with the roles reversed. This cycle is not dependent upon which party is in the majority and which the minority. This is the result of Ideological Democracy playing itself out. Ideological Democracy Creates Ever-Widening Partisan Divides The party that is in the minority tends to create gridlock through obstruction. The majority party behaves differently and it is their behavior that tends to worsen partisan divides. In response to the minority resisting their agenda, the majority will unilaterally pass whatever they can on their own, all the while making promises of what they could achieve were it only the case that the minority had no power whatsoever. Any slowdown in the majority putting their agenda into law will be ascribed to sheer obstructionism on the part of the ideologically wrongheaded minority. What’s more, the majority will argue the actions of the minority are inherently unfair and undemocratic. They will say the minority lost the election and, as such, should give up trying to obstruct the will of the majority. The strategy the majority will put forth in the short term is to change the law as much as they possibly can, while blaming the obstructionism of the minority for why they can’t achieve more. This is their essential case for expanding their majority at the next election—the next election which is already going on. In the face of Republican obstructionism, President Obama expanded what could be done via Executive Order, saying that such actions were justified given the unfair and undemocratic way the Republican minority refused to work with him. This meant that on matters as diverse as climate change and trans* rights, President Obama simply acted unilaterally, knowing that the Republicans would never work with him. Similarly, President Trump is making use of an expansive idea of what can be done through Executive Order. On matters as diverse as climate change and trans* rights, President Trump is acting unilaterally, rightly guessing that Democrats would never work with him on such goals. In Ideological Democracy the majority is always working to enshrine their ideology in the law even over the objection of their opponents. If I am in the minority, when I meet a zealous from the majority I am facing someone who wants to see me stripped me of all power to influence the world and who is actively working to force me to live under beliefs that are contrary to my own. Such a figure is a threat to what I believe to be the proper order of public life in this country. Such a figure does not seem so much a political opponent, as a dangerous enemy, someone actively working to harm my loved ones and strip me of any political power to resist. This is not dependent upon which party is in the majority and which the minority. The ever-widening partisan divide is a natural extension of Ideological Democracy playing itself out. This will not change, other than to get worse. Summary of the Problem of Ideological Democracy The basic notion behind Ideological Democracy seems reasonable enough; I should try to get people elected to public office who agree with my beliefs and who will try to enshrine my beliefs in the law. Ideological Democracy, however, is radically dangerous and destructive to public life. We should expect that every upcoming election will be viewed as the most important election that has ever been. And in many ways it’s true. The next election will be the most important ever, followed only by the one after that and the one after that. The next election season will be longer and more expensive and more divisive than ever before. The minority will engage in new heights of obstructionism, arguing that the majority is so dangerous that unprecedented action is needed. The majority will argue that they have won the right to govern as they wish and will expand what is possible under unilateral action, all the while arguing they are the victims of undemocratic sabotage and gearing up to expand their majority in future elections. We should expect to see calls for ordinary political behavior to be subject to criminal prosecution. Bitter partisan hatred—which has already overflowed into isolated violence—will become only ever more bitter. Politically motivated violence will become more common. These problems flow from the philosophy of Ideological Democracy, the idea that democracy is about seeing one’s own beliefs become the law. And these problems will get worse and worse over time. Each side will always hold out hope that the next election will improve things. But election after election, the problems only get worse. Which party plays which roles may change but the plot remains the same. An honest look at even the last few decades of national politics will reveal that our democracy has decayed beyond the point of being able to self-correct through the process of partisan political elections. A different, alternative democratic movement is now needed.
Democracy in the United States is broken. The 2016 election exposed the problems, making them obvious and undeniable. But the problems existed before November. The election cycle is never ending. Bi-partisan cooperation is a thing of the past. The political divide is vast and widening. A huge reason our democracy is broken is because of a dangerous philosophy of public life that is agreed upon by both major parties at the grass roots level.
The philosophy is this: my role in politics as an individual is to try to get people elected to public office who agree with my beliefs and who will try to make those beliefs into law. I will call this philosophy Ideological Democracy. This philosophy may seem harmless at first glance. Trying to elect people who agree with my beliefs may even seem synonymous with democracy itself. Elections would seem to be a powerful way to live out my beliefs by means of collective action. But when Ideological Democracy is put into practice it creates a host of problems that get worse and worse over time. Ideological Democracy creates the endless election cycle. It creates intractable governmental gridlock. It creates a vast and ever-widening partisan divide. These are features of Ideological Democracy playing themselves out. This philosophy is a huge reason our democracy is broken. But it is not the only way for individuals to engage in collective action or to change the law. This argument has two sections—describing the problem, and offering an alternative. |
AuthorI'm a Christian, a progressive, a pastor, and a community organizer. Archives
August 2017
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