Frances Moore Lappe: Democracy: Live It or Lose It

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• Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life
• Small Planet Institute

Worldwatch Live Online Discussion

Frances Moore Lappé

December 8, 2005 - 3:00pm EDT

According to Frances Moore Lappé, in a country where lobbyists outnumber politicians 56 to 1 and 75% of citizens agree with the statement, "Our government is run by a few big interests looking out only for themselves," it is little wonder voter participation is at an all-time low. Fortunately, Lappé believes we have the tools to break this downward spiral and breathe life into our 'thinning' democracy. By using the new tools of the communications and ecological revolutions, we can reclaim our status as 'midwives of living democracy' and ensure that our government serves all interests, not just the special ones.

Submit your questions now and return on Thursday, December 8th, 2005 at 2:00 PM EST to join Frances Moore Lappé, cofounder of The Small Planet Institute and author of Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life, for a discussion of her book and her efforts to make democracy an important and active part of every American's life.

Steve Conklin, Worldwatch Institute: Welcome to Worldwatch Live. Our guest this week is Frances Moore Lappé, cofounder of The Small Planet Institute and author of Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life. Welcome, Frances!

Frances Moore Lappé: Thank you. What great questions people have sent me.
Frances

Islamabad, Pakistan: In dysfunctional democracies of the South, where voter participation is low, such as in Pakistan, what special tools would you suggest to achieve the desirable results that you seek in Western democracies.

Frances Moore Lappé: Dysfunctional democracies arenít limited to the Global South! To bother to vote citizens need to know their votes count, and too many here in this country feel we have ìthe best democracy money can buy.î Three-fourths of Americans believe our government is run by insiders considering only their own interests. Ninety percent of us say corporations have too much say in Washington.

So a critical first step to genuine, effective democracy is ridding government of the influence of wealth both during campaigns and afterward. Public financing of elections is essential democracy. Itís critical also that voters know that all candidates have equal access to media to get their messages out ñ something, again, that we donít have here.

Fairfield CT: How do we get momentum to support campaign finance reform?

Frances Moore Lappé: Fight cynicism by spreading the word about the effects of campaign finance reform in states like Arizona and Maine.

Very, very few Americans know that in the five years after ìclean electionsî referenda succeeded in these two states that voter turn out and the number of candidates running for office went up 25 percent.

In Arizona a far Right, big money campaign in the 2004 election tried to overturn the reform but failed. None of the rules so far are perfect. Thatís not the point. The point is that we need to spread the word that, while loop holes seem gaping and results invisible at the national level, citizens are stepping up at the state level to get money out.

I would love to know what you think the new campaign rules your lawmakers passed in Connecticut last week. Even a lot of well-informed Americans havenít heard about it!

Fairfield CT: How can we get teenagers and young adults motivated to improve our country when there are no national leaders to inspire them?

Frances Moore Lappé: Young people can learn that democracy is not something we ìhaveî; it is what we do.
Most effective is not just teaching about democracy as a particular structure of government but actually experiencing it as a living practice. The approach is called APPRENTICE CITIZENSHIP and itís spreading to hundreds of schools. Students do not just engage in service projects but take part in roles in the community where they are tackling and addressing real-life problems. (Check out the Kids Consortium in Maine. They are leaders in this approach.)Young people experience the joy of power ñ of not being victim or complainer for being taken seriously as having something important to offer.
Where young people have the chance to share in school governance about issues that really matter, they come to believe in democracy in their bones. In Democracyís Edge one of my favorite stories is about a poor public school in Ohio where students have equal say with teachers in hiring teachers. This learning-by-doing democracy school has been transformed in only a decade by the approach: ten years ago only 20 percent of kids went on to college. Today 70 percent do.

Seattle WA: How can we reclaim the mass media for presentation of a wide variety of global problems, not just repetition of Iraq news and maybe one other story at a time like Social Security or the latest hurricane? As someone pointed out, there is ongoing tsunami of death of poor children in underdeveloped countries all the time. I saw almost no coverage of the African debt relief issue during the G8 conference.

Frances Moore Lappé: I think we need to act on two fronts at once.

Citizen groups such as Free Press and Media Rights are working to reclaim corporate media as an instrument of democracy ñ rather than simply a commodity to sell other commodities (ìa toaster with picturesî is the way a Reagan era Federal Communications commissioner described TV). They are working to bring citizens voices and values into corporate media. Three hundred citizens stood for hours in line to testify before a hearing of the FCC recently in Iowa, City, Iowa. See our story xxx

At the same time new communications technology ñ its accessibility and lower cost production ñ is beginning to democratize communication. And weíre only beginning to see the impact. Community access TV now produces more programming hours each week than corporate networks and PBS combined. Think of ìlow-power radioî that is becoming the new commons in communities from Spokane to southern Florida. Animation ìflashî is literally reaching millions: ìMeatrixî revealing the hidden horrors of industrial meat production has been seen by over six million worldwide and translated into five languages.

Thanks for the question! Frances

Seattle, WA: What do you think about efforts to change our electoral system to proportional representation (for election of legislative bodies) and instant runoff voting (for election of executive officers) as a way of promoting "third" parties and greater political diversity in the U.S. (without handing the country over to the Republicans, as happened in the 2000 presidential election)?

Frances Moore Lappé:

Thank you for your excellent question.

Any and all ways we can crack open the two-party lockdown are important. A new poll shows that the vast majority of voters don't feel really represented by either party.

Even without proportional representation, which I agree is more democratic but will take time, we can work for instant runoff (which is already happening a number of places) and what is called fusion (or cross endorsement) voting. Fusion voting was once commonly permitted in the U.S. Only only seven states allow it -- but citizen pressure could change that.Fusion voting is making a critical and rapid change for the better in New York politics.

Fusion voting means that if your budding new party can meet a certain proof of support (a certain # of signatures)the new party can get its own line on the ballot. The party can choose to run its own candidate or endorse a major party candidate. Working Families Party in only seven years has proven to the main parties that they have to pay attention to its members' priorites. In a number of cases WFP has been the margin of victory -- visible because they are shown on their own ballot line. WFP in drawing working people who've given up on both major parties new hope. Many are voting for the first time in decades. WFP has been widely acknowledged as key to passing an increased minimum wage in New York, affecting a million low-wage workers. A WFP candidate won a seat on the New City Council, the first for a non-major party in a quarter century.

Working Families Party is doing politics differently, too. It is engaging members in face-to-face meetings with candidates and encouraging members to reach out to neighbors. Let's spread the word and spread this possibility to more states. There is a movement underway in Massachusetts called Voter Freedom.

Thanks again, Frances

Whitehouse Station, NJ: I live in Readington Township,Hunterdon County, NJ. We just elected a write in candidate in the local election who was opposed by an outside "stealth PAC" supported by national developers. It was one of the greatest examples of electing a candidate of the people, by the people and for the people I have ever seen. After our celebration, what would you consider the next most important step to keep our local democracy alive.

Frances Moore Lappé: Congratulations!! Tell the world! Please, please blast your story far and wide so that others can see whatís possible. Despair is our greatest enemy.

What about setting up regular ìlistening sessionsî in which this newly elected officials simply listens to a RANDOMLY selected group of citizens about their greatest concerns. What if you encourage this candidate not to just see him/her self as answering to complaining citizens but engaging them him/her in helping to create solutions. Work to use this election to shift the norms about the relationship between citizens and officials ñ to one of mutual responsibility. Study the examples of ìparticipatory planning and budgetingî in places like St. Paul, Seattle, and especially in Brazil. Try what might apply to you. Work for transparency in local government ñ using interactive web technologies. And use the web to go beyond the web: Meetup is a tool for citizens to gather face-to-face by interest.

Thanks for the question and all you have achieved. Frances

Los Angeles: Is it not likely that American style democracy has physically outgrown its effective limits? Does America's vast size and population guarantee a central government out of touch, unaccountable to citizens, inefficient, and hopelessly corrupt? Should a declining empire be broken up so that its citizens have a fighting chance to have a say in their collective destiny? Has the federal government made a positive move for its people in the last 30 years?

Frances Moore Lappé: Thank you for your question.

I feel that scale is much less of a problem than the very thin definition of democracy we hold. It is bound to fail.

We grow up learning that we inherited democracy. Itís two things joined at the hip: elections plus a market economy. With these in place, weíre home free. Thereís little for us to do.

But just look around the world. From India and the Philippines to Latin America are societies with both and still their majorities live in misery.

We didnít inherit democracy, it turns out; we have to create it -ñ first by recognizing something pretty obvious: Democracyís core premise is the wide dispersion of power so that we all have a voice. But our market economy is driven by another premise. Itís driver is one rule ñ- highest return to existing wealth, those who own corporate stock. With that one rule, economic power concentrates and concentratesÖand concentrates until it becomes so powerful that it subverts the political process.

Today 56 lobbyists ñ- doubling since George Bush took office -- walk the halls of Congress for every one person weíve put there to represent us.

We have been warned of this danger. Thomas Jefferson warned us. Dwight Eisenhower warned us. Most pointedly, Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned us, as I quote in the World Watch piece. Our thin fails because it is always vulnerable to takeover by a narrow, self-interested group.

Thin democracy has always been inadequate to serve our interests. But today it is deadly.The bullet points below I posted on my son's news site this morning: www.gnn.tv.

·Thin democracy canít solve todayís problems from global warming to global hunger. They are too complex, pervasive, and interconnected to be addressed from the top down. Solutions depend on the insights, experience, and buy-in of people most affected -- all thwarted when citizens are cut out and manipulated as decisions get made secretly by the few.

·Thin Democracy is deadly because it assumes the worse -ñ that weíre nothing more than selfish little competitors out to get our stuff. This shabby caricature of humans fails to tap our deep positive needs to connect in strong, fair communities and to be problem solvers ourselves.

·Thin Democracy, ironically, fails to register our destructive capacities, too. From Nazism to Abu Ghraib to notorious lab psych experiments in which normal people set in oppressor roles become brutes, the proof is in: ìNice peopleî do evil things when conditions encourage it, and Thin Democracyís extreme power imbalance is one proven condition.

·Finally and perhaps most dangerous: Thin Democracyís materialistic premise that weíre nothing but selfish sheep canít satisfy our higher selvesí yearning for transcendent meaning. Its insulting premise canít inspire dedication and sacrifice, so it makes for weak competition against extremists and fanatics -- right or left -- offering a high moral calling, an uplifting, absolutist vision.

As Thin Democracy fails, fortunately, and in the nick of time, a more powerful, uplifting idea of democracy is emerging here and around the world. I call it Living Democracy.

It is not a new formula, blue print, or ìism.î It takes the premise of democracy -- powerís wide dispersion -- seriously. It assumes that human beings arenít just shoppers and whiners; we have deep needs to connect in real community and affect that larger than our own survival. Living democracy isnít something done to us for us; itís what we ourselves create.

Citizens creating living democracy are removing the power of wealth from governance and infusing the power of democratic values into economic life. While campaign finance reform remains a cynical joke for many Americans, in Maine and Arizona publicly financed elections in just a few years have drawn more voters and encouraged more people to run for office. And last week Connecticut lawmakers made history, voting special interest money out of the system and setting up voluntary public financing. Bringing democratic values to economic life, ìfair tradeî ñ- the simple notion of a living wage ñ is burgeoning, already benefiting over a million desperately poor coffee-producing families, and socially conscious investing is going mainstream, leaping 53-fold in two decades. In hundreds of schools, young people are learning democracy by doing it. Living Democracy is gaining strength.

Itís time to reframe the very meaning of democracy and get on with creating a real one -- as so many Americans are doing!

Frances

Alexander, Manitoba: How does one ensure that governments act in the public interest unstead of the corporate interest when they simply change the law when citizens are successful in asserting the public interest?

Frances Moore Lappé:

Thank you for your question.

I think the first step is giving people hope that we don't have to settle for a corporate-run government. (What in my WorldWatch piece FDR defined as fascism.) We can fight despair by demonstrating the "the corporation" is not unmoveable. In fact what we accept as given today is brand new; an it is changing moment to moment.

In Democracy's Edge, I include stories of real change underway in each of five forces shaping what I call the "elephant in the living room" -- most of us feel we have to step around!


One: A movement is under way to rewrite corporate statutes to ensure corporate accountability. (Corporate charters have already changed in about 40 states in the last 20 years to allow broads to consider broader concerns when fighting hostile takeovers. Now a movement is working to add a "do no harm" clause to corporate charters.)

Two: Corporate rights and protections are being challenged, even in some very unlikely places.(Even some tiny Republican townships are denying constitutional protections to corporations that allow them to trump the interests of flesh-and-blood citzens.)

Three: In many states and localities, citizens are pushing elected bodies to set additional values boundaries around the actions of corporations. (As Nebraska has done in barring nonfarm corporations from owning farmland -- basically saying that healthy rural communities and farmland are more important than a corporations' right to buy.)

Four: Shareholders are joining together to exert real influence on corporate behavior. (Shareholder action has already moved Home Depot and a half dozen other large corporations to stop using old growth wood -- only one of dozens and dozens of examples of shareholder organizing.)

Five: New expectations are emerging that corporations should be accountable for the consequences of their acts, and some are responding. (In Europe producer responsibility laws now require manufacturers to take responsibility for the life cycle of their products. The approach is having huge effects. We can work to institute this approach here in the U.S.!)

Most important...history has not stopped.
It is not possible to know what's possible. Virtually none of what gives me hope today could I have predicted even a couple decades ago.

Frances

Hilo, Hawaii: Considering the billions of people who want to consume far more resources than the planet can possibly provide sustainably, is universal democracy possible long-term or even a desirable objective? Can it attain anything close to an egalitarian distribution of resources without depleting them?

Frances Moore Lappé:

Dear thoughtful person in Hilo,

I believe there is evidence that if people are engaged in deliberative problem solving in which they have real power -- and can see the consequences of their choices -- that they have the capacity to live within the laws of the biotic community.

I feel that the life-destroying imbalances and excesses we see today flow from citizens' NOT feeling that power. So neither do we feel accountable. Instead we are simply bombarded with unrelenting messages to consume and numb ourselves through consumption.

So the key is what I call "living democracy" -- creating new structures and practices that engage citizens directly. In Brazil, for example, where landless people are getting land and creating new, democratically organized communities they are choosing technologies that are benign (such as organic agriculture) and teaching their children to value nature and rural life and to withstand the corporate message to see oneself only as a consumer.

When I asked one member of this movement why he decided to go organic I thought at first he would tell me it was to protect his own health. Rather he said: Why would I risk so much and work so hard only to create that which might harm a consumer? What I take from this is that when we feel we have a real "say" and dignity we become capable of considering the consequences of our choices.

Thank you, Frances

Bahia, Brazil: Dear Francis LappÈ, congratulating for this distinguished publication, allow me to add a few thoughts. In a globalized world, the word "americans" may also be applied to north, meso and south inhabitants of AmÈricas. For every north american well fed with all of the supports of democracy - ruined as shown - there must be, at least, a few other americans illiterate, homeless and hungry, in other parts of the Americas. How can we enlarge the horizon to broaden the democracy efforts into this ìSmall Planetísî life? Eduardo Athayde Worldwatch representative in Brazil

Frances Moore Lappé:

Dear Eduardo,

Thank you for your question. I think Worldwatch is contributing to answering your quesiton by sponsoring this global forum, for which I am very grateful.

I agree strongly with what I take from you question: that we must break down the idea that the world is divided between rich and poor countries and make clear that poverty is being created in most of the world's countries because we've not democraticized economic life. I believe that we can not have political democracy with an anti-democratic economic life.

The premise of democracy is the widest dispersion of power but our one-rule (highest return to existing wealth)economy inevitably concentrates wealth. The two are driven by opposing principles.

Thus, we must demonstrate that for the market system to remain open and fair (simply to work!)real, democratic governance is key. Wealth and power will not remain widely distributed without a democratic polity free of the corruption of wealth. The market and government are not enemies. A functioning market DEPENDS ON demoratic governance.

This is the conversation that must be happening across culture and continents. I congratulate you in Brazil for being leaders in the movement to engage citizens in "participatory budgeting" that is being taken up in other parts of the world because it works.

All good wishes, Frances

Fredonia, NY: How can we break the cycle of misinformation when people do not question biased information presented by the press and radio?

Frances Moore Lappé:

Dear thoughtful person in Fredonia,

Actually, I think skepticism of the media is growing. I think we've only barely begun to see the impact of the internet revolution to democratize communication. It is becoming harder and harder to keep secrets -- as the Bush administration is finding out!

I say...spread the word about all the incredible sources of news out there that are not corporate or government sponsored. Check out the foreign press on-line. What an eye opener!

And work to make engagement in the conversation of democracy an exciting adventure (with high stakes) not a boring duty.(Like Worldwatch is doing!)

Thank you for your question,
Frances

Steve Conklin, Worldwatch Institute: Thank you once again for joining us in today's Worldwatch Live discussion, Frances, and thanks to all of our participants for your great questions!

Frances Moore Lappé: What a pleasure. It is so helpful to me learn about what is most pressing on people's minds in these diverse communities.
Thank you, Frances