Monthly Archives: July 2015

Reflections on Northern Racism

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The Black Lives Matter protests that shut down two democratic candidates’ speeches at Netroots Nation highlights an emerging topic of the conversation around race.

While white southerners are arguing against the idea that racism is all Dixie’s fault, white northerners are being confronted with the troubling idea that they, too, might be part of the problem.

To be clear about my own identity, I am a white person born and raised in California. I’m fairly sure that makes me neither a Yankee nor a southerner, though California officially supported the north in the civil war. I have lived my entire adult life in Massachusetts.

I have spent very little time in the south, though thanks to my father – who grew up in 1940s Florida – I ate a lot of grits growing up.

All of that is to say that I am in no position to judge the south. Certainly recent events – such as our nation’s president being greeted by Confederate flag wavers in Oklahoma – indicates that there is important work to be done around racism in the south. But that’s hardly enough to write off the entire south, and only the south, as our nation’s problem.

I am also struck by the reflections of John Gaventa, exploring white powerlessness and poverty in Appalachia: “Programmes which present people like those of [Appalachia] do so usually as stereotypes of passive, quaint or backwards characters…What a society sees of itself on television may provide its mainstream with a kind of collective self-image, by which individuals and sub-groups evaluate themselves and others…the lack of coverage of a subordinate group keeps the members of the group isolated from one another, unaware that others similarly situated share common concerns or are pursuing challenges upon common issues.”

All of that is to say: stereotypes of white, racist southerners help nobody.

The south should indeed confront its racist past and present, but it is wrong to scapegoat the south as the home of all our nation’s racism.

Northern racism – or liberal racism or progressive racism, if you prefer – is just as real. It is somehow more proper, a fine veneer of inclusion over a troubling racist interior.

This northern racism is arguably more insidious: a norther says the right things and goes through the right motions. But all the while, the system pushes to ensure segregation and white dominance.

Historically, this has put white northerners in an enviable position of avoiding fault: They wanted the meeting to be inclusive, its just that only white people showed up. The dutiful liberal heaves a sigh. What could be done?

The reaction to the interruptions of Gov. Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders at Netroots reminds me of this type of liberalism.

As one reporter noted, “I, like many of the others there, was initially irritated by the protestors. I was there to hear the candidates and was frustrated that they weren’t being heard. Even a bit angry, in fact. “These are your allies,” I thought. “Why on earth are you attacking them? Why are you disrupting an event where the people there are sympathetic to your cause?””

That is the response of the white liberal. Sympathetic to the cause, but not to the method. Wanting there to be a chance, but not willing to work for it.

The author eventually reflected on his own experience of being silenced in that moment – emotions “felt acutely and painfully every single day by racial minority groups in our country.”

Yes, indeed, being silenced is frustrating.

But all is not lost for us well-meaning, white liberals who genuinely want to do more than sigh and blame the system. Paulo Freire proposes a path beyond liberalism – to radicalism:

Those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly. This conversion is so radical as not to allow of ambiguous behavior. To affirm this commitment but to consider oneself the proprietor of revolutionary wisdom – which must then be given to (or imposed on) the people – is to retain the old ways. The man or woman who proclaims devotion to the cause of liberation yet is unable to enter into communion with the people, whom he or she continues to regard as totally ignorant, is grievously self-deceived. The convert who approaches the people but alarm at each step they take, each doubt they express, and each suggestion they offer, and attempts to impose his “status,” remains nostalgic towards his origins.

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Elections, Partisanship, and the Call for Moderation in Civic Life

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One of things I like least about elections is partisanship. This is a strange thing to say, since of course if an election is to occur, it should be about differences in the candidates’ policy preferences and at the national level most voters must use political parties to get a clear sense of how the candidates would act in concert with other elected politicians.

In that sense, we seem to be getting much better at distinguishing our choices. Only a few generations ago, political scientists protested the lack of significant differences between the parties. They could hardly do so today: the last two decades have been a time of serious and growing polarization and enmity. Yet it seems we are rancorous on almost every question, from health care and same sex marriage to climate change policy and gun ownership. No gag rule can prevent the partisan spin that takes new issues and renders them fodder for our passionate disagreements. In that context, the most successful political activism will be sub-national or international: it will ignore the national institutions designated for politics but riven by paralysis.

But one of the things that I think I know is that no matter how much we might disagree about one law or policy, that disagreement should not be allowed to destroy the possibility of a future alliance on a different problem. Citizens tempted by partisanship have to find a way to hold their ideas and convictions loosely. They have to preserve civic friendship and reject permanent divisions. In a society where a few issues become the signal issues of note, our enmity grows until it encompasses every other issue where we might share interests. Thus, deep partisanship is paralyzing not just because it comes from real intractable disagreements, but because those intractable disagreements radiate out into the rest of our civic lives.

Thus a good society will tend to suppress those areas of passionate disagreement in favor of the alliances and collaboration that less contentious matters make possible. The trick is that areas of passionate disagreement tend to be pretty important. Consider Stephen Holmes’ Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of a Liberal Democracy, where Holmes points out how often the liberal order has survived in the US by creating a political system that deliberately ignores the most pressing and passionate politics of the day. After all, the republic was founded to preserve slavery and ignore the very pressing arguments against it. Holmes even recounts the brutal beating of Senator Charles Sumner by the coward Albert Brooks in a discussion of the Senate’s tacit gag rule on discussions of slavery. For this reason, Holmes praises the liberal and undemocratic institutions like the Supreme Court that can dissolve passionate disagreements without invoking the brutal passions of citizens who must find a way to work together the next day.

This is moderation: a position every bit as as compromised at the example of anetebellum Senators standing by the beating of an abolitionist by a slave owner, along with ignoring the enslavement of their fellow human beings. The things we feel most deeply, including the evils in which we reject complicity, are not things we should ignore. Indeed, we should see opponents who support such acts and policies as irredeemable, evil, monstrous; not fellow citizens and sometimes allies but perpetual enemies. We should reject compromise with such people until the battle is won.

But here’s the problem: they think the same thing. And there are systemic facts about our political constitution that will always work to create partisan identities of roughly equal size in our national political life. Most arguments in Congress are tied to changes in spending and taxation that amount to a few points of GDP either way. Most radical conservatives and radical liberals actually hold a group of varied and contradictory beliefs, very few of which fit into this frame of enmity and hatred. So terms like Republican and Democrat and conservative and liberal are free-floating signifiers that don’t really track particular policy preferences or ideologies over time, even as they mark a long-term division among those who ought properly to concern themselves with the co-creation of our shared world.

Almost all of the things we think about politics, especially about the other party, just aren’t true.

Here’s what’s true, to the best of my knowledge:

There are real differences between the parties. But they’re not nearly as big as the parties and their adherents like to pretend, even as the parties have grown a lot more polarized (which is to say, the differences used to be even smaller!) One of these parties is not communist, and the other party is not libertarian. At most, Democrats want to raise federal spending by a few points of GDP. At most, Republicans want to cut federal spending by a few points of GDP.

African-Americans are still killed and incarcerated in large numbers by cops in Democratic cities. Women are still raped and abused in Democratic strongholds. The things that matter most to these groups are very rarely even on the ballot or in front of the relevant politician: the one exception is abortion, and in the states where it’s on the ballot, women (50% of whom think abortion is morally wrong) are voting against it too.

Political radicalism among our representatives is mostly drive by: (1) the way that we have sorted ourselves into partisan enclaves, (2) the way the primary system has changed, (3) and the strong restrictions on “pork” which used to grease the skids of bipartisanship. (4: Campaign Finance issues matter, too.)

There are many questions about whether the electorate has changed as well, but the best evidence suggests that we’re just as mixed up ideologically as we always were: as an empirical matter, ordinary Americans do not use these abstract terms in the same way partisan intellectuals do. Self-classified liberals tend to have liberal views on specific policy issues, but self-classified conservatives are much more heterogeneous; many, even majorities, express liberal views on specific issues, such as abortion rights, gun control and drug law reform.

That is, the supposed polarization of the electorate is just as much a myth as any supposed moderation. It’s probably more sensible to say that we’re all over the place, radically liberal and conservative and sometimes moderate too: citizens often support policies on both sides of the ideological spectrum, but these policies are often not moderate.

What’s more, President Obama has largely left Bush-era foreign policy in place.

The one place where the parties’ policies and practices really diverge is LGBT rights. And that’s only recently: remember that it was Clinton who signed the Defense of Marriage Act, and the divergence is not going to last for long.

Medicare and Medicaid (NIFI Issue Guide)

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The National Issues Forums Institute published this 16-page Issue Guide, Medicare and Medicaid, in 2015. This guide is to help facilitate deliberation around the health-care choices.

From the guide…

NIFI_medicareNearly everybody will, at some point, get sick and need the help of health-care professionals. Finding the resources to cover these public programs is an ever-increasing challenge at a time when our national debt is at an all-time high. Ultimately, all Americans—policymakers as well as citizens—will have to face painful decisions about reducing the cost. This may mean fewer choices in health care for the tens of millions of people enrolled in these programs. The choices are difficult; the stakes, enormous.

The guide presents three options for deliberation:

Option One: “Do What It Takes to Maintain Our Commitment”
Keeping the programs solvent may mean higher taxes for workers and companies, or raising the age of eligibility for Medicare. It could mean asking Medicaid patients to share the cost of their coverage. We need to do what is necessary to continue the commitment even if that costs everyone more. But, raising taxes to pay for both programs may cost them the broad-based support they now enjoy. Making people wait longer to collect Medicare or forcing the poor to pay part of their health care may cause people to delay getting help, resulting in higher costs later on.

Option Two: “Reduce Health-Care Costs Throughout the System”
It is critical to put Medicare and Medicaid on a better financial footing. We need to pay for fewer lab tests people get and reduce money spent on end-of-life care. The U.S. government should negotiate for lower drug costs as other countries do. But, fewer tests may mean more people will die from undiagnosed illnesses. Less end-of-life intervention may mean that more people will die sooner than they would otherwise need to. And lowering the profits of drug companies will mean less money for research into better drugs that benefit everyone.

Option Three: “Get Serious about Prevention”
One reason Medicare and Medicaid are headed for a crisis is because so many Americans have unhealthy lifestyles that cause them to develop preventable illnesses like diabetes and heart disease. We should stop expecting others to pay for the consequences of our bad choices. Government incentives should reward those who weigh less, eat right, and exercise more. But, an emphasis on prevention and requiring that people adopt healthier lifestyles would invite unfair scrutiny of their behavior and would increase government intrusion into people’s lives.

More about the NIFI Issue Guides
NIFI’s Issue Guides introduce participants to several choices or approaches to consider. Rather than conforming to any single public proposal, each choice reflects widely held concerns and principles. Panels of experts review manuscripts to make sure the choices are presented accurately and fairly. By intention, Issue Guides do not identify individuals or organizations with partisan labels, such as Democratic, Republican, conservative, or liberal. The goal is to present ideas in a fresh way that encourages readers to judge them on their merit.

Issue Guides are generally available in print or PDF download for a small fee ($2 to $4). All NIFI Issue Guides and associated tools can be accessed at www.nifi.org/en/issue-guides.

Follow on Twitter: @NIForums.

Resource Link: www.nifi.org/en/issue-guide/medicare-and-medicaid

Ford Foundation to Include Civic Engagement in New Funding Priorities

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We recently read some news that our NCDD members and others in the D&D field should find encouraging. The Ford Foundation – the nation’s second largest philanthropic organization by assets – recently announced that after long deliberation and consultation with non-profit organizations, it is changing some important aspects of its focus in giving and how it gives. And we would all do well to take note.

In his letter about the change, Ford Foundation president Darren Walker wrote that the Foundation will turn its funding focuses to fighting global inequality. And in positive news for those in our field, Ford has identified “unequal access to the government and decision making” as one of six key drivers of global inequality, and has named “civic engagement and government” as one of the five areas that they will dedicate more of their funding toward to address political inequality.

Here’s an excerpt of the letter Ford released:

Among these many trends, the one we returned to again and again was the growth of inequality in our world. Not just the economic disparities that have emerged in global debates these past few years but also inequality in politics and participation; in culture and creative expression; in education and economic opportunity; and in the prejudicial ways that institutions and systems marginalize low-income people, women, ethnic minorities, Indigenous peoples, and people of color…

Remarkably, although manifestations varied by region, the assessment of underlying drivers was strikingly constant across the world. Broadly stated, we found five factors that consistently contribute to inequality:

  • Cultural narratives that undermine fairness, tolerance, and inclusion
  • Unequal access to government decision making and resources
  • Persistent prejudice and discrimination against women as well as racial, ethnic, and caste minorities
  • Rules of the economy that magnify unequal opportunity and outcomes
  • The failure to invest in and protect vital public goods, such as education and natural resources…

To address and respond to these drivers of inequality, we will be working in six program areas, very much reflective of the five drivers. They are:

  • Civic Engagement and Government
  • Creativity and Free Expression
  • Gender, Ethnic, and Racial Justice
  • Inclusive Economies
  • Internet Freedom
  • Youth Opportunity and Learning

The naming of “civic engagement and government” as a focus area for funding is obviously great news for those of us who have become familiar with the sad reality that it is quite a challenge to find money for the kind of work that we in the D&D field do. Much of our work fits quite naturally into this category, so hopefully Ford’s shift is an omen that this dynamic may be changing down the road.

But we should also note that the naming of “youth opportunity and learning” as another focus area could be important for our field as well. As many of you know, NCDD has been thinking since the run up to our NCDD 2014 conference about how our field can support Democracy for the Next Generation – both in terms of integrating next generation technology, but also in terms of involving young people, our literally “next” generation of adults and citizens. D&D work is especially impactful when it gives young people the skills, knowledge, and access they need to participate in deliberation and public choice work in their communities. And given that many of us already work with young people or could conceivably shift our work in that direction with relative ease, we should not forget that Ford’s new focus on youth could present an opportunity for groups in our field to attract funding by focusing simultaneously on civic engagement and youth learning.

The other important shift that Ford announced in the letter is not only will it shift its funding in different a direction, but it will also be changing how it funds non-profits. Walker wrote in his letter that, having heard a great deal of feedback about the instability that solely project-based funding can create for non-profit organizations, Ford will also begin working to make more of its funding work to help non-profits achieve long-term financial sustainability by funding more operational and day-to-day costs that organizations need to handle. This should also come as welcome news, as many of us are far too familiar with the conundrum of finding funding that will not only keep our projects afloat, but also our organizations.

If a leading foundation like Ford is shifting its focus and giving methods in these ways, it may also signal that other foundations will be paying attention and soon following suit. Maybe that’s reading too much into the announcement, but either way, the news from Ford bodes well for the future of our work.

We wanted to share this bit of hopeful news with you all not to encourage everyone to go running to Ford with new grant proposals, but to help us all stay aware of the shifting dynamics of our field and keep an eye on the ways our work and influence can continue to evolve in positive directions.

You can find the full text of the Ford Foundation’s letter at www.fordfoundation.org/equals-change/post/whats-next-for-the-ford-foundation.

Donald Trump as the schoolyard bully

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(Winston-Salem, NC) Recent events involving The Donald strike me as powerfully reminiscent of an unpleasant schoolyard. Wanting to be popular and the leader of the cool clique, he picks on the most marginal group–in real life, Mexican immigrants. The other would-be leaders don’t necessarily like his bullying, and they worry that everyone may get in trouble for it, but they see that the abuse is popular among the bystanders, so they keep their objections to a low mutter. As for the bystanders, they are looking for a bad boy who will make trouble for the teachers and the school. Plus a lot of them dislike the marginal kids in the first place, or they want to differentiate themselves from them.

Then the bully, who is stupid as well as mean, makes a mistake. Instead of just picking on the weakest kids in the schoolyard, he says something utterly offensive about one of the cool kids. In real life, The Donald insults a Republican senator, war hero, former presidential nominee of the party, and son of an admiral. Now all the other would-be alpha dogs see an opening. This is not cool. They can criticize him. And once the mood has shifted, they can start throwing all kinds of other objections at the bully. They still won’t say anything in defense of the weak and the marginalized, but they can start questioning the bully’s claims to be cool. In a schoolyard, they would ridicule his clothing or musical tastes. In real life, they can all start saying that Trump isn’t a conservative because he has been pro-choice, has donated to the Clintons, etc. And whoever does the best job taking down the bully has the best chance of replacing him. That is the phase that has now begun.

The post Donald Trump as the schoolyard bully appeared first on Peter Levine.

Obama’s Politics and the Nuclear Deal With Iran

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In his presidential announcement speech on February 10, 2007, Barack Obama said that as a young community organizer in Chicago, "I received the best education I ever had." Later that year, at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, he expanded. As a community organizer, he said, "I found a community that embraced me; a church to belong to; citizenship that was meaningful; the direction I'd been seeking."

The lesson he took for the general citizenry was service. "Every American can give back to their communities and help their fellow citizens through service," said Obama on September 12, 2008, during the campaign. "Many Americans serve their nation through military service. Others serve by volunteering in schools, shelters, churches, hospitals, and disaster relief efforts. Still more are firefighters, teachers, or police officers. As a young man, I served as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where I learned ways to create opportunities for other people to achieve their dreams. Our nation faces serious challenges in its neighborhoods and schools, and we must empower Americans with the resources they need to give back and improve their communities."

In fact a different kind of politics that engages people across their differences is the genius of the kind of broad-based community organizing he experienced in Chicago. Such organizing revived the older non-ideological, productive meaning of the term.

Long-time community organizer and philosopher of organizing Gerald Taylor describes such politics as a shift "from protest to governance, moving into power." For Taylor "moving into power means learning how to be accountable, being able to negotiate and compromise. It means understanding that people are not necessarily evil because they have different interests or ways of looking at the world."

Obama clearly took these ideas about a different kind of politics with him after community organizing into his political career. They formed the centerpiece of his second book, The Audacity of Hope. He brought them to the campaign and his early years as president, when he sought to bring them to Washington.

"What's stopped us from meeting [our] challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans," he continued in his announcement in 2007. "What's stopped us is...the smallness of our politics -- the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems."

One unmistakable lesson of Obama's presidency is that "a different kind of politics" is not going to trickle down from Washington. His efforts to work across the aisle brought scant success and a great deal of derision from pundits and Washington insiders.

Obama has long championed active citizenship. "The role of citizen in our democracy does not end with your vote," he declared in his victory speech after the 2012 election. "America's never been about what can be done for us. It's about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government." But through his presidency, as during the 2008 campaign, he has consistently equated citizenship with service, not politics. Service can be important, but it doesn't teach the lessons of democratic politics.

In fact, acquiescing to the ways of Washington, the president has often taken a top-down approach, the opposite of engaging people in ways that respect their interests and their agency.

In foreign affairs, however, Obama's willingness to try a different kind of politics, seeking to understand and engage others of diverse interests and backgrounds, has been an outstanding feature of his administration. Such politics may well have prevented foreign policy disasters like the Iraq invasion. And it has paid off in the new nuclear agreement with Iran. As Peter Baker put it in a New York Times analysis of the difference between Obama and critics of the accord, "What distinguishes Mr. Obama is his willingness to see the situation from the other side's position, a trait that tends to outrage domestic critics because the other side is generally viewed as loathsome."

In an interview with Thomas Friedman, Obama argued that engaging others offers hope for change that demonization and polarization cannot generate. "When we are able to see their country and their culture in specific terms, historical terms, as opposed to just applying a broad brush, that's when you have the possibility of at least some movement."

Beyond the posturing and ad hominem attacks we can expect in the forthcoming national argument about the nuclear deal, it is good to keep in mind the elemental point of politics. Politics in the older sense of the word, descending from the Greeks, conveys the practice humans have developed to negotiate the irreducible plurality of the human condition. It is the method to negotiate different, often conflicting interests and views in order to get things done.

At times diverse interests can be integrated through politics, but the aim is not to do away with conflict--politics is a never-ending "rough and tumble" activity. Sometimes it surfaces previously submerged clashes of interest. Rarely does it achieve consensus. Politics aims rather to avoid violence, contain conflicts, generate common work on common challenges, and achieve beneficial public outcomes.

Making the connection between politics and citizenship is up to all of us. At home as well as abroad - and in every environment, not simply government -- we need productive politics if we are to navigate the dramatic challenges of our time.

The Iran nuclear agreement offers an example of politics' possibilities.

Harry Boyte edits Democracy's Education: Public Work, Citizenship, and the Future of Colleges and Universities (Vanderbilt, 2015), with many contributors describing a different kind of politics.

Creating Space for Dialogue

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A few different conversations over the last few weeks have made me more deeply appreciate just how difficult it is to have real dialogue.

It might be easy to brush this off as a problem of the Internet caused by a few particularly nasty trolls – and I have no doubt that is a problem – but I think the problem is broader than that.

Most of us don’t have opportunities to participate in productive dialogue in person, much less online. It’s generally considered polite to avoid contentious items, instead sticking to those topics where everyone can agree.

In Pygmalion, for example, Henry Higgins’ explains his plan to pass Eliza Doolittle off as upper class, saying, “I’ve taught her to speak properly; and she has strict orders as to her behavior. She’s to keep to two subjects: the weather and everybody’s health.”

Sticking to those topics may avoid conflict, but they in no way help people have real conversations across differences.

Having no experience with productive dialogue tends to lead to one of two responses when conflict does arise: either engaging in the conflict by arguing your point of view or shying away from the conflict by changing the topic.

But those aren’t the only options.

Those who have participated in productive dialogue know that conversation shouldn’t be about avoiding conflict or about having your way. It should be about learning.

I myself am still learning how to create safe spaces for real dialogue, but, I think, the most important thing I’ve learned is this:

Dialogue should be about trying to understand someone else’s point of view. It should about trying to see where someone else is coming from and appreciating the logic that leads them to their beliefs. It’s about respecting another person’s point of view and about expanding your own thinking by trying to see through someone else’s eyes.

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