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.
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"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
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