Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [12]
We learn at every turn to defer to others “better qualified.” But that’s changing. Bertha Gilkey, a woman living in the housing projects in St. Louis, got fed up. She wanted to get rid of rampant drugs and crime but was told, she recalls, that “we couldn’t do nothing because we were poor folks and not experts.” She thought that over for a moment and then responded: “Experts got us into trouble in the first place.” Her confidence sparked changes within the project that have transformed it into a desirable place to live and raise a family.17
Bertha Gilkey’s liberating moment is occurring for more and more of us. With the S&L debacle costing taxpayers the equivalent in real dollars of the entire cost of World War II, with the toxic waste crisis causing vast and needless harm, and with “experts” producing radioactive waste that remains dangerous for millennia while they have no plan for safe storage—more and more citizens are shedding a sense of deference to the authorities “up there.”
Understanding citizen democracy as empowering individuals to shoulder responsibility involves us in a radical rethinking of power itself. In the dominant political tradition, power is a one-way force. The cue ball sinks the eight ball in the corner pocket—that’s power! As a one-way force, it is also a zero-sum notion: The more I have, the less for you. You must yield to my power, or I to yours. In striking contrast, empowerment as the core of public life returns us to the original meaning of power, from “poder”—to be able. Power is that which enables us to express our interests and values. It is no longer a one-way force, nor zero-sum. Indeed, we can acknowledge the oh-so-frequent instances where my willingness to shoulder responsibility—to assume more power—benefits you. Certainly Bertha Gilkey’s story is a case in point: her power catalyzed community power, benefitting the entire housing project and larger community as well.
Citizen politics is values based and values driven. Most of us have also come to think of public life as a series of “issues” driven by narrow interests. But in the most successful citizen initiatives, issues “are dessert, not the main course,” as one effective organizer put it.
The main course is our values. What motivates people to act, to get involved? To stay involved? What we care about most—our children’s future, peace, security, protecting the integrity and beauty of the natural world, fairness for everybody. These are widely shared values. They manifest in issues. But power in public life derives from consciously naming the values that motivate action.
Such an understanding of motivation belies the dominant understanding of self-interest—simply a synonym for selfishness. Realizing the many dimensions of one’s own interests makes it possible to see that they cannot be furthered except in relationships—public and private. In fact, self-interest derives form the Latin interesse—“to be among.” As political philosopher Bernard Crick puts it:
… the more realistically one construes self-interest, the more one is involved in relationships with others.18
Thus, citizen democracy is not about learning to give up one’s interests for the sake of others. It is about learning to see one’s self-interests embedded in others’ interests. From concerns about environmental health and neighborhood safety to effective schools and job security—none can be achieved by oneself. Each depends upon the needs of others being met as well.
In this light, we see that selfishness—narrow preoccupation with self—can actually be an enemy of self-interest. In citizen democracy, self-interest is not to be squelched or simply indulged, but consciously developed in relationships with others. It is the basis of constructive political engagement.
Citizen politics is about solving problems. In today’s political world, moral grandstanding and vicious mud-slinging are the order of the