Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [11]
With this perspective, citizenship becomes simply the defensive posture a prudent person assumes to protect her or his solitary self-interest. A recent poll conducted for People for the American Way found that young people hold a markedly passive notion of citizenship. It means not causing trouble. Eighty-eight percent of the teenagers polled thought that getting involved in politics has nothing to do with being good citizens.15
While these views dominate, I sense a profoundly different understanding emerging. I think more and more Americans are realizing that the problems we face are simply too great—too deeply rooted, too widespread, and too complex—to be met without our active engagement. Solutions require the ingenuity of those most affected, the creativity that emerges from diverse perspectives, and the commitment that comes only when people know they have a real stake in the outcome. It takes an active citizenry to create public decision making that works—decision making that is accountable and creative enough to address the root causes of today’s crises.
In the emerging alternative, democracy becomes no longer a set of static institutions, but a way of life. Democracy as a way of life means we each share responsibility for making the whole work. Democracy is not as much structures or laws as relationships.
Democracy as a way of life is what the term “citizen democracy” suggests to us. We see its potential emerging in several distinct themes:
Citizen democracy re-dignifies the public realm. It challenges today’s privatization of meaning. The 1980s celebrated only private reward—money, career, family. Such was the good life. Neglected was the deep human need for purpose larger than one’s self.
Public life is the larger stage—all our relationships in the workplace, school, religious group, social concern organization, or formal political process. It is on this stage that we express our values—including our commitments to our family’s future—and develop distinct human capacities that can only be cultivated in public life. It is on this stage that we express our need to “make a difference.”
Thus, the most successful community-based citizen organizing today sees itself as preparing people for effective, sustainable public life—not just achieving victory on a given issue. Ernesto Cortes, a founding force in creating the successful Communities Organized for Community Service in San Antonio, calls citizen groups “universities where people learn the arts of public discourse and public action.”16
For we’re not born citizens, as Cortes’ words frankly acknowledge. We learn the arts of citizenship. That’s why the Institute for the Arts of Democracy is an appropriate name for an organization promoting citizen democracy. These arts include active listening, storytelling, dialogue, critical thinking, mediation, creative controversy, the disciplined expression of anger, and reflection.
In a recent speech, Ralph Nader asked: While one can go to an Arthur Murray dance studio to learn how to dance, where do we go to learn the practice of citizenship? Our answer is that every public encounter—in school, at work, in the community or social group, can become an opportunity for learning.
I’ll return to this key theme. Now let me suggest other aspects of citizen democracy coming to life throughout American society.
Citizen democracy is about empowerment through action. Most of us have learned to submerge our common sense, even our own values and tastes, and turn to the “experts”—whether in child rearing, making workplace decisions, or even in decorating our homes. (I recall a few years ago sitting in a café and overhearing a conversation that summed up our