Searching for Inspiration on Dark Days

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I’ve been thinking a lot about actionable steps, recently. Amid the murders in Charleston. Following the deaths of Walter Scott, Kalief Browder, Michael Brown, and far, far too many others.

I’ve read articles on how to be an ally, read commentary and analysis on the perpetual racism pervading our society. I’ve added my voice to those calling for change. I’ve joined mailing lists calling for action, attended protests and demonstrations. I’ve given financially where I can.

And none of it feels like enough. Nothing feels like it’s changing.

I woke this morning with the words of Oscar Wilde ringing in my head:

We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.

I rather wanted to spend the day hiding in my closet sobbing silently at all the ills in the world, but that didn’t seem like it would do anybody much of any good.

Besides, who am I to take the bench when people of color are dying? Not everyone has the privileged to just look away.

As I am wont to do at such times of despair, I re-read Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.

They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

I generally suspect that I’m the only one who finds the words of Camus a comfort. Who, after all, likes to imagine that “the workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd” than the fate of Sisyphus. The man who defied the gods and was pushed to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain.

Sisyphus, “powerless and rebellious.” (impuissant et révolté)

What an interesting juxtaposition of words!

Sisyphus knew he was powerless and yet he rebelled. The Gods couldn’t punish him, for still, he rebelled.

In Power and Powerlessness, John Gaventa examined the role of social power in maintaining the oppression of the poor in the Appalachian Valley.

Gaventa identified what he calls the three dimensions of power.

In the first dimension, A has power over B insofar as A is has more resources or can use more force to coerce B. The first dimension is a fair fight, where one side is stronger than the other.

In the second dimension, A constructs barriers to diminish B’s participation. Voter ID laws, monolingual meetings. In the second dimension, A rigs the game.

The third dimension is the most insidious. Not only does A control and shape the agenda, but A’s power is so absolute that A influences the way B sees the conflict. In the third dimension, B is not even sure she’s oppressed. It’s a woman who just naturally does all the house work.

I sometimes think that the pervasiveness of racism in America stems from Whites’ inability to reach this total level of dominance.

We brought people over as chattel and expected them to obey. We beat them and tortured them and did unspeakable things to break them, but they continued to resist.

We fancied ourselves as gods, and yet among those who were most powerless we found ourselves impotent. Unable to exert total power. Still they rebelled.

There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.

Sisyphus is stronger than his rock.

But I imagine that it’s of little comfort to one who looks back on generations of oppression, who looks around to see their brothers and sisters dying. It’s of little comfort that some dead, French philosopher thinks you’ve won.

Yet there is something in this, I think –

For the battle goes on.

The battle goes on, and slowly bending the arc of the moral universe can feel very much like futile labor, it can feel like an effort in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.

But still the work goes on.

For we know that all is not, has not been, exhausted, and we know that fate is a human matter, which must be settled among men.

And there is so much work for us to do.

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Alinsky does a one-on-one

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In the Summer Institute of Civic Studies yesterday, we briefly listened to Saul Alinsky talking to Studs Terkel in 1971. The tape is both an evocative glimpse of Alinsky as a person (you should picture a chain-smoking older man in a suit and small round glasses, talking like James Cagney) and an example of how he envisioned one of the basic tools of community organizing, the one-on-one interview. Near the end, he says:

I run into you. You’re on welfare, you know, standing on the corner. So we get into kind of a session. So I say, ah, where do you live?

–Over there. Well, where do you expect me to live? I’m on relief. Where do you want me to live–in a 14-carat palace?

–You pay anything to live there?

–Ah, come on, you trying to be funny?

–Well no, I don’t want to be funny. Jeez, ah, the place looks like it’s loaded with rats, roaches, everything.

–You damn well know it is.

–Hmm, what would happen if you didn’t pay your rent?

–What would happen? They’d throw me out, my kids, everybody else. What do you mean?

–Yeah. [Pause.] What would happen if nobody paid their rent over there?

–Why they’d …! Well, truthfully, they’d have a little trouble throwing us all out, wouldn’t they?

The tape ends there, but the next move would be for Alinsky to say, “Hey, mac, we’re having a meeting tomorrow night down at Our Lady of Sorrows. Interested in stopping by for a while to talk with some other tenants on relief?”

 

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With Thoughts of Charleston

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I often wonder what moments will be remembered in history. Which moments, in retrospect, will seem to mark a turning point, a watershed change.

Will history remember a church founded by Reverend Morris Brown? A church burnt to the ground in 1822 for its involvement with a planned slave revolt. A church rebuilt, only to be forced underground for 30 years after Charleston outlawed all black churches in 1834.

Will history remember the day in 2015 when nine black men and women were murdered at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church?

To be surprised is to be naive.

All this has happened before, and we’ve done far too little to keep it from happening again.

“I have to do it,” the gunman was quoted as saying. “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”

Then he murdered people at church.

It may be the act of one deranged man, but its the rhetoric of too much of our nation. For too long we have allowed such hateful speech to flourish, giving a pass to hateful ideas – too afraid or unsure of how to intervene.

Where did the gunman learn to hate like that?

He learned it from us. From white America. From people who nurtured his hate or who simply left it there, unconfronted.

They say the gunman sat with parishioners for an hour before opening fire. He sat with them as they discussed biblical verse and prayed.

But in that garden of Gethsemane, it was Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s and Cynthia Hurd’s cup that would not pass. It was Myra Thompson, Sharonda Singleton and Tywanza Sanders who had to die to remind us that there is still hate and evil in this world.

That there is still hate and evil in our communities.

You wouldn’t think we’d need reminding, but clearly we do – since black churches are burned and black bodies are scattered in our streets. And yet we, white America, continue to sit by and sigh.

And nothing changes.

I want to make sense of this senseless horror. I want an action I can check to solve this problem once and for all.

But there are no easy answers, and it will take hard, long work for solutions.

All I know is that we can do better, and amidst this heartache, this pain, and sorrow we must do better.

How many more have to die?

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Property Rights, Inequality and Commons

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I recently spoke at a conference, “Property and Inequality in the 21st Century,” hosted by The Common Core of European Private Law, an annual gathering of legal scholars, mostly from Europe.  They had asked me how the commons might be a force for reducing inequality.  Below are my remarks, “The Commons as a Tool for Sharing the Wealth.”  The conference was held at the University of Göteborg, Sweden, on June 12-13, 2015.

Thank you for inviting me to speak today about the relationship between property law and inequality – a topic that receives far too little attention.  This should not be surprising.  Now that free-market ideology has become the default worldview and political consensus around the world, private property is seen as synonymous with freedom, economic growth and human progress. 

Oh yes, there is this nasty side issue known as inequality.  Malcontents like the Occupy movement and renegade economists like Thomas Pikketty have brought this problem to the fore after years of neglect.  Their success has been quite an achievement because for years the very existence of inequality has been portrayed as an accident, an aberration, a mysterious and shadowy guest at the grand banquet of human progress. 

I wish to argue that hunger, poverty, inadequate education and medical care, and assaults on human dignity and human rights, are not bugs in the system.  They are features.  Indeed, market ideologues often argue that such deprivations are a necessary incentive to human enterprise and economic growth; poverty is supposedly needed to spur people to escape through the work ethic and entrepreneurialism. 

Property rights lie at the heart of this dynamic because they are a vital tool for defining and patrolling the boundaries of private wealth, and for justifying the inevitably unequal outcomes.  So it’s important that we focus on the role of property rights in producing social inequality – without ignoring the many other forces, including social practice, culture and politics, that also play important roles.

I’d like to focus on the obsession in modern industrial societies to propertize everything, including life itself, and to use law as a tool to impose a social order of markets and private property as expansively as possible.  This cultural reflex is known as the enclosure of the commons.  The term describes how property owners assert sweeping rights – often with the active complicity of governments – as a way to appropriate collectively owned resources for private gain. 

We can see this dynamic in the international land grab now underway, the incessant attempts to privatize groundwater and municipal water systems, the grotesque expansion of copyright and patent law to privatize scientific knowledge and cultural works, and the use of the Earth’s atmosphere as a free waste dump by polluters.  The mania for privatizing the world has reached such an extreme stage that even intangible wealth as public spaces, microorganisms, genetically created mammals, artificially created nanomatter and human consciousness itself are claimed as objects of private property rights.  

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the launch of Brigade

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Yesterday, Sean Parker of Facebook fame launched Brigade, a new app that lets you express opinions about political issues (including new issues that you introduce), discuss and persuade other users, identify people with similar concerns and views, and recruit them to your own “projects.”

If a random person invented such an app, I would be highly skeptical that it could attract enough users to be valuable. A network’s value is proportional to the square of its users (Metcalfe’s Law), which is why Facebook itself is a valuable place to engage and participate, and most startups go nowhere. But with Parker’s fame and his almost $10 million of initial funding, Brigade could “go to scale.”

I think it will do good if the design causes people to engage in relatively substantive (yet fun) ways, without degenerating into trollery or being taken over by organized interest groups. I think it will do even more good if users routinely introduce and share valuable content from other news and opinion sites in their efforts to persuade.

I can envision dangers if Brigade’s scale becomes huge and it gains some control over our public sphere, but that seems a distant hypothetical problem. As I told the Huffington Post’s Alexander Howard, I am rooting for Brigade to gain a substantial user base because I think it can be educational and energizing.

Brigade emphasizes issues rather than candidates and campaigns. In talking to the Washington Post’s Ana Swanson, I exaggerated the following point:

Parties, candidates and analysts alike have also found that Millennials are more willing to organize around particular issues rather than political parties. “For all human beings, it makes more sense to talk about issues than parties – who cares about parties[?] Most people are more interested in solving issues,” says Levine. “But I think it’s especially true for young people, who have a particularly weak attachment to political parties.”

In fact, a lot of people are driven by partisan attachments, which can even determine where they stand on specific issues. For some, loyalty to party comes first, and the issues follow. I nevertheless believe that there is a substantial proportion of Americans–especially young ones–who do not have strong partisan loyalties, and for whom Brigade’s focus on issues will be appealing.

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Davenport Offers CA Cities $50,000 for Public Engagement

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We encourage our NCDD members in California to check out an exciting grant opportunity being offered by NCDD organizational member the Davenport Institute. Davenport is offering $50,000 worth of training and support for public engagement work, and the deadline to apply is Sept. 14th, but don’t wait to apply. You can learn more in the announcement they recently made below or by clicking here.

2015 Davenport Institute Public Engagement Grant Program Application Period Now Open!

DavenportInst-logoIf you have a public engagement project that could use some financial support, now is the time to apply for the eighth annual Davenport Institute Public Engagement Grant Program! This year we will be awarding up to $50,000 in funded consulting services to California cities, counties, special districts, and civic organizations looking to conduct legitimate public processes on issues ranging from budgets to land use to public safety to water policy.

The Grants are made possible through funding from the James Irvine Foundation’s California Democracy Program. We anticipate awarding 2 – 4 grants with a minimum individual grant amount of $5,000 and a maximum individual grant amount of $20,000. Prior to beginning their public engagement campaign, grantees will receive training and consultation from the Davenport Institute to build understanding and support for the civic engagement effort amongst administrative and elected officials.

The deadline for the 2015 Public Engagement Grant is Monday, September 14.

Here are some FAQs:

Q1: Does the proposed public process need to occur immediately?

A: No. Most of our granted projects have taken place within one year of the application date.

Q2: Can we recommend a facilitator or web platform to receive support from the Grant Program?

A: Yes. Again, the purpose of our grants is to fund participatory (as opposed to “PR”) projects. Of course, we’d like to interview your recommended facilitator, but we’ve worked with designated consultants before. This actually helps us build our own “rolodex” of consultants!

Q3: Is the Davenport training an added expense?

A: No. Training for the grant recipient is now an integral part of the Grant Program, and is offered as part of the grant. All expenses – including travel – are assumed by Davenport.

Q4: How many grantees do you anticipate this year?

A: We tend to support between 2-4  grantees each year with the Grant Program.

Q5: Do you support “capacity building” efforts like “block captain”, “neighborhood watch”, “citizen academy”?

A: No. As a practice, the grants are intended to support actual public projects around “live” issues – from budgets to land use. We find with the training added, these grants build “civic capacity” through actual engagement.

The criteria are straightforward and the online application form is easy.

After reviewed by members of our Advisory Council, our 2015 grantees will be announced by early October. Please feel free to contact Ashley Trim at ashley[dot]trim[at]pepperdine[dot]edu or 310-506-6878 with any questions.

Happy Bunker Hill Day

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Today, June 17, is Bunker Hill Day, a little known holiday celebrated, I believe, only in parts of Massachusetts’ Suffolk and Middlesex Counties.

While the Boston Globe reports that it used to be a day “on which city government offices would close,” the day is still celebrated within my city of Somerville, MA. Perhaps that’s just some of the civic-mindedness that got us recognized as an All America City.

And just what is Bunker Hill Day?

Why, it commemorates, of course, the June 17, 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill, which took place largely on Breed’s Hill in Charleston.

It’s not all madness, though. In fact, Bunker Hill was intended site of the battle.

But let’s back up: The battle took place during the siege of Boston – April 19, 1775 to March 17, 1776 – when American militiamen effectively contained British troops within Boston.

After taking Boston, the British sought to fortify their position by seizing the nearby Charlestown peninsula.

Before the British could act on this plan, though, Colonels Putnam and Prescott set out with orders to establish American defenses on Charlestown’s Bunker Hill. However, “for reasons that are unclear, they constructed a redoubt on nearby Breed’s Hill.”

The British, “astonished to see the rebel fortifications upon the hill” led two costly and unsuccessful charges against the Americans.

After receiving reinforcements, the British led a third and ultimately successful attack against the fortification, taking 1054 casualties – nearly 40 percent of the British ranks – in the process.

At the time, Somerville was part of Charlestown – “Charlestown beyond the neck.” Though Somerville was established as its own town in 1842, we still proudly remember the game-changing battle.

“While for the Army of New England the battle was technically a tactical defeat, it was also a symbolic victory of strategic proportions. A small colonial force of men from all races, classes, and occupations made a defiant stand against some of the best trained and equipped soldiers in the world.”

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notes on Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution

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For use in today’s Summer Institute of Civic Studies. The morning’s readings are

  • Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, pp. 18-25, 37-48, 240-7
  • “Hannah Arendt” from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

I first asked participants to name various kinds of freedom, and categorized the answers as positive and negative, inner (such as freedom from anxiety) and outer (such as freedom from coercion), and individual and group.

Arendt’s reading of the American Revolution: the founders were after freedom, which they didn’t initially define all that sharply but which probably meant mostly negative individual freedom: “the more or less free range of non-political activities which a given body politic will permit and guarantee to those who constitute it” (p 20). But in creating new institutions that would protect that kind of freedom, they discovered public freedom—the freedom to create together. And this was a source of happiness for them. P. 24: “they were enjoying what they were doing far beyond the call of duty.”

In the French Revolution, however, the leaders felt themselves compelled by great forces beyond their control and they also lost interest in creating new institutions or even following the rules they had constructed as they declared the “social problem” the only thing that mattered. As a result, they lost all forms of freedom (pp. 40-1).

Relation between freedom and equality

Many might see freedom and equality in tension. But for Arendt, public freedom requires equality. People are not naturally equal but they are made equal in “artificial” political spaces, “where men [meet] one another as citizens and not as private persons” (p. 21.) The tyrant, the master and the slave are not free because they are not engaged in equal politics.

Politics as performance and self-discovery

Arendt is not a deliberative democrat, envisioning public life as a discussion about what should be done, in which people try to discipline their own interests and personalities in the interests of the common good. She appreciates competition and the pursuit of excellence in public life. And people discover their full humanity by displaying their personalities in public. “Freedom was understood as being manifest in certain, by no means all, human activities, and that these activities could appear and be real only when others saw them, judged them, remembered them. The life of a free man required the presence of others. Freedom itself therefore needed a place where people could come together—the agora, the market-place, or the polis, the political space proper” (p. 21)

Civic republicanism/liberalism

Arendt sees political participation as a source of happiness (at least for some) and self-discovery. It is thus an intrinsic good, not just a means to justice, or security, or happiness, or other goods. And you need government not so much to guarantee good outcomes for communities as to be a space for politics.

That reflects what is now being called the “civic republican” tradition, in contrast to what is sometimes called “liberalism,” which holds that politics and governments are costs we must pay to get benefits. The liberal tradition encompasses a great variety of answers to the question: how much government and politics do we need? (Some liberals say: a lot.) But all see government and politics as a cost, whereas Arendt sees politics as a benefit and government as the space that allows politics.

Must/should everyone participate?

The civic republic tradition poses the question: who should participate? Granting that politics has intrinsic value, does it have value for all (or only some) and is it the highest value or only one valuable pursuit?

On p. 271, Arendt suggests that there are just some “who have a taste for public freedom and cannot be ‘happy’ without it.” And it’s OK not to participate, because “one of the most important negative liberties we have enjoyed since the end of the ancient world [is] freedom from politics.” (p. 272)

But on p. 247: “no one could be called happy without his share in public happiness, that no one could be called free without his experience in public freedom, and that no one could be called either happy or free without participating, and having a share, in public business.”

How to keep public freedom alive?

Most of us are not in the position of the American founders, able to discover happiness and freedom by creating institutions and feeling that “man is master of his destiny, at least with respect to political government” (p. 41).

So what are some options?

  • Frequent revolutions?
  • Co-creation in other domains? (What about a startup enterprise?)
  • Radical decentralization—Jefferson’s proposal for “ward” government?

Private and public

In the civic republican vein, Arendt is a great defender of public life. But she is also an explicit and strong defender of the private life and, indeed, of privacy. Sometimes she takes the latter to a fault, as in her “Reflections on Little Rock,” where she argues that sending paratroopers to Arkansas was a violation of the private sphere. But it makes sense that we need a strong private domain to create an impressive public space. The “four walls, within which people’s private life is lived, constitute a shield against the public aspect of the world. They enclose a secure place, without which no living thing can thrive” (Between Past and Future, p. 186). After all, her public space is not about agreement but contention, and one needs a private space to develop enough individuality to contend.

See also: Hannah Arendt and thinking from the perspective of an agent; Hannah Arendt and philosophy as a way of life; homage to Hannah Arendt at The New School; when society becomes fully transparent to the state; and on the moral dangers of cliché.

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Participatory Budgeting in Alagoinhas

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Case: Participatory Budgeting in Alagoinhas

Jun 16 '15
Author: 
paolo spada
Preparing a write-up of this case will require knowledge of Portuguese (PBcensus 1 - complete raw data). Although there are no existing case studies in English on Alagoinhas, the city was surveyed in the Participatory Budgeting Census 2012 (Spada et al.). Thus, many of the fixed data fields provided by...