Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [10]
But I knew I couldn’t do it alone. Were there others ready to take the leap with me? Then, in mid-1990 I received a letter of support for my new direction that also offered a brilliant critique. It came from Paul Du Bois, a person about my age with a remarkable career in community organizing and academic and nonprofit leadership posts. Within minutes, I had Paul on the phone. And in less than two months of intense brainstorming and planning, we made the decision: we would throw in our lots together. We would devote ourselves to creating a vehicle for the thousands of people we sensed were—like us—ready to move from complaint or mere protest to positive work for what Paul and I came to call “citizen democracy.” Our goal is nothing less than helping citizens transform the very meaning of democracy.
The year 1990 was a heady time for us. In the fall, we incorporated as the Institute for the Arts of Democracy and began a journey worthy of the rest of our lives. By the end of the year we had volunteers on board and several thousand people who’d expressed interest in our work.
In this work, we are, of course, hardly starting from scratch! Worldwide, people are searching for democracy—democracy that works. And here at home, in communities all across the nation, people are experimenting with new, more sustainable, effective ways of engaging citizens in public life. The role of our new center is naming, catalyzing, and further developing a search already under way. By “naming” we mean that we see our role in part as articulating an emergent philosophy—giving conceptual shape to what many are already experiencing. This process is itself empowering.
Here I’ll just try to give you a taste of what we mean. Please use the coupon at the end of this book to get in touch with us to learn more.
First we acknowledge that anyone searching for real democracy must start with an admission: There exists no functioning model. No current concept of the social order legitimates the central role of citizens—their responsibility, their capacities for common problem solving. All inherited models share the mechanistic assumptions. In the now discredited state-socialist model, the producer is central—and who makes decisions? The Party. In the capitalist system, the consumer is all important—and who makes decisions? Owners of capital. In welfare capitalism a new role is added: the client—and who makes decisions? The professional, the “expert” service provider.
In other words, there is no vision of public life that puts citizen responsibility at its center. Thus, none of our inherited models takes seriously the task of creating capable citizens. In fact, “activists” are oddballs. (I recall judging a debate last year for my daughter’s high school. All one debater had to do to discredit an opponent was to label her source an “activist”!)
Here in the United States, democracy’s become a thin, weak notion, buttressing social atomism. Democracy and government are conflated. Democratic government is viewed as a necessary evil to sort out collisions of competing “social atoms.” Government is traffic cop—or, at best, protector of individual rights. Democracy’s only economic job is to keep the market functioning smoothly.
Government and politics are something done for us—or, more frequently, to us. We feel disconnected, far removed, from the decision makers. On the “Phil Donahue Show” last year, an irate member of the audience challenged funding of the Savings and Loan bailout. Leaping to his feet, he exclaimed: “I don’t understand why taxpayers have to pay for the bailout, why can’t the government pay for it!”
Government is them. Not us.
This notion reflects our view of democracy itself. Sitting on a long flight last week I chatted with my seat-mates. One was a Marine major; the other an engineer with General Electric. Because they were