LEAD...OR LEAVE II: A New Political Pledge For Crowdocracy & Community Rights
Zevin X. Cruz
LEAD OR LEAVE ii
(A Political Pledge For Community Rights & Crowdocracy As U.S. House of Representative: 22nd District, State of NY)
In August, 1992, the most ambitious Generation X (those born between 1961-1981) political activism began when Rob Nelson and Jon Cowan co-founded and launched “Lead…or Leave (LOL), the largest Gen X political organization in the United States, and was a leading force in the effort to put generational issues on the national map. They worked to energize tens of thousands of younger Americans in the fight for a more sustainable economic, social and environmental future. They educated millions about our economic and social crisis, organized hundreds of protests with people of all ages, and joined forces with many other groups, including Rock the Vote, United We Stand, the National Coalition for Student Empowerment, the Association of Big Ten Schools, the National Taxpayers Union, and the National Wildlife Federation. Over the next two years, LOL became the most prominent Gen X political organization in the country with 30,000 official members, chapters in all 50 states, a loosely affiliated college network spanning 150 universities, distributed an economic curriculum to thousands of High Schools across America and created as active Internet forum called ActioNet,” (Rob Nelson, 2000).
“Politics in America was [much like today] a sham. Despite an electoral system that promised citizen control at the ballot box every two and four years, politicians were [and continue to be] completely unaccountable. Their shortsighted thinking, and our willingness to go along, had put at risk an entire generation of Americans [leading to the launch] of LOL, a grassroots citizen accountability movement with a simple but huge mission: a radical call to hold the political system accountable by having every member of Congress pledge to quit office unless the federal deficit was chopped in half by 1996. The pledge warned that the national debt and rapidly rising federal deficit were putting at risk the future of an entire generation of Americans; that Congress had tried and failed for over a decade to fix the problem. When you came right to it, most members of Congress didn’t really want to be accountable to the voters. They preferred to hide behind the constitutional façade of biannual elections to argue that they were. Convinced that a stronger form of accountability was needed, and determined to be heard—even if LOL failed—they sent all 535 of them a copy of the pledge. […] During the next two months, LOL organized a national campaign that pressured over 100 candidates for Congress to “Take the Pledge.” The ranking Republican in Congress, Illinois Congressman Bob Michael, took it. So did long shot Georgia senatorial candidate Paul Coverdall, who after taking the pledge, won support of both LOL and Ross Perot’s United We Stand Party, helping him defeat incumbent Wyche Fowle, Jr. by only 7,000 votes. Ross Perot even took the pledge on national television during the third presidential debate. People all over America joined their cause creating the first of its kind citizen accountability movement in American history—an outcome based term limit, administered nationally and enforced by a self-imposed pledge to leave office if the goal wasn’t met. Mini LOL chapters sprang up all over the country creating pressure on their respective congressional candidates to take the pledge. Challengers often led the way, forcing incumbents to an uncomfortable place; meet the bid or lose credibility. In Colorado this forced each of the three candidates for the US Senate, (the Republican, Democrat and Independent) to take the pledge so as to not lose votes to the others. Talk radio boosted the effort and helped the spread the word. At one point, albeit briefly, the leadership of both parties in Congress considered having their candidates take the pledge en masse to galvanize support and sweep their party into office. President George H. Bush even considered taking it. Maybe, it would have helped him win. By 1995 LOL closed its doors due to financial and logistical difficulties caused by being a non-partisan, youth organization [without a comprehensive approach] and no sustainable stream of donors from the older generation,” (Rob Nelson, 1999).
Today’s Millennial Generation (1982-2002) are facing a far greater crisis—a Megacrisis—of not only school shootings but the converging crises of civilizational collapse and possible near-term human extinction due to climate change, overpopulation, pandemics, peak production of fossil fuels, a coming second great depression and technological disasters like the Fukushima nuclear power plant. In order to solve such wicked problems of our present predicament, it will require new integral modes of thoughts, behaviors, culture and social system.
Therefore, I, Zevin X. Cruz, as a Metamodernist (Integral Neo-Transcendentalist) and founder of the emerging, new, avant-garde political third party called the Society of the Third Millennium (S3K), do hereby declare, if elected to a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the 22nd District of the State of New York, to commit to sponsor or co-sponsor and vote in favor of legislation for many of the policy positions derived from the Never Again Movement (NAM), DACA Movement (Immigrant Rights), Women’s March (MeToo / Times Up) Movement, Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement, Community Rights Movement (CRM) and Economic & Environmental Justice Movements like: 1) Banning bump-stocks, 2) Raising the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, 3) Banning semi-automatic weapons for civilian use like the AR-15; 4) Comprehensive background checks; 5) Overturning Citizens United; 6) Election integrity; 7) Government investment in our crumbling infrastructure; 8) Implementing bold measures to address climate change (through massive public investment and tax incentives for sustainable sources of energy); 9) Mandating independent investigations of all police brutality and fatal force; 10) Free higher education tuition (in public colleges and universities throughout America); 12) Abolish corporate personhood; 13) Eradicate the economics of empire; 14) More leadership positions and pay equity for women; and 15) Break-up Too Big To Fail Banks, to name a few from the Liberal end of the political spectrum. While also introducing legislation from socially-conscious conservative issues like: 1) Ending unconstitutional wars (Afghanistan and Iraq); 2) Terminating unnecessary military exploits across the globe; 3) Reducing military budget by a minimum of 20%; 4) Eliminate unconstitutional federal income tax; 5) Unfair corporate trade policies; 6) Abolishing asset forfeiture (illegal property seizure); 7) Violations of individual and privacy rights; 8) Self-determination; 9) Home rule (local self-governance); 10) Dismantle the dysfunctions of the U.S. Government; 11) Ending the Federal Reserve; 12) Reversing trade policies that drive down wages and cause the loss of millions of domestic jobs (like NAFTA, CAFTA & PNTR) and permanently blocking TPP and TIPP; 13) Invalidate IRS Authority For Abusive Actions; 14) End corporate welfare; and 15) End speculative financial instruments, derivatives, and credit default swaps and to stop all primary residential home foreclosures—all to create a “Future Forward Left” and “Future Forward Right” by transcending the mushy middle through a grand unifying new legal framework for “Constitutional Community Rights” instead of the current, well-disguised “Corporate Constitutional Rights” that have been in place since before 1886. However, in order to legislate these and other more positive populist policies, the following must be acknowledged of our current dysfunctional and oligarchical system of governance in the United States of America:
Our extreme political paralysis due to divisive cultural polarization has demonstrated our unsuitability for the global challenges we face in the 21st century. Democracy itself, despite being a very positive and powerful force in the past has gone beyond its peak performance and is no longer adequate to address our complex and interdependent wicked problems. Therefore, democracy requires a comprehensive overhaul due to the following eight reasons: 1) it is not majority rule; 2) supreme power is held by the lobby and vested interests; 3) fosters superficial and inadequate focus on the issues; 4) promotes division and fragmentation; 5) produces politicians who struggle under the weight of escalating complexity; 6) it is not a meritocracy; 7) politicians don’t have a voice either—their vote is “whipped” by party leadership; and 8) the system facilitates self-interest and scandal.[1] In essence, democracy has become fundamentally flawed and it is no longer fit for purpose. We urgently require its next evolutionary stage of development.
Humanity has gone through several historical stages of decision-making processes and systems of governance. We have evolved from the anarchy of hunting and gathering (self-serving, day-to-day survival decisions to fight, flee, forage and fornicate) to tribalism during the horticulture and pastoralism era (collective survival decisions by considering the needs of others in the group that degrades to mob-rule, gangs, kleptocracy and traditionalism); from Autocracy during the agricultural age (based on power and dominator hierarchy that entails feudalism, dictatorship, fascism and despotism) to Monarchy during the era of traditionalism and mercantilism (coalition and co-leadership that can erode to oligarchy, bureaucracy and theocracy); from Democracy during the industrial age of modernism (theoretically based on meritocracy and capitalism) to Sociocracy of postmodernism during the era of post-industrialization (that included social democracy, consensus and degraded to plutocracy). Today we are trying to transition from Holacracy (whole/part distributed power) during our current information age to tomorrow’s Crowdocracy (and perhaps someday Cybernetic Governance) in the coming Post-Carbon Cyber-Industrial Age. And what is the common prevailing trend or arc of history among all of these different eras and forms of human governance? It is the ever-increasing enfranchisement of more and more people. It is The Narrative, Vision and Grand Unified Theory & Strategy (GUTS) for Radical Evolutionary Transformation through the enfranchisement of the entire world—“Everyone Everywhere!” This is the promise of the emerging new independent third party, the Society of the Third Millennium (s-3-k.org), the first “Community Rights” (www.communityrights.us) & “Crowdocracy” (www.crowd.ngo) Party in the United States and the world that vows to be the “Last Party,” because, in essence, we all become the legislators in a true Direct Democracy; therefore, no further need of corrupt career politicians, divisive political parties and virtually eliminating all bribing lobbying organizations, crony capitalist donors and special interest groups.
Crowdocracy is the governing foundation that allows for the maximum access to more developed thinking and sophisticated technology by eventually letting the maximum number of people engage in the decision-making process through “smart crowds.” Under the right circumstances the crowd is often smarter than even the smartest person in the crowd. “Different authors have suggested different characteristics or attributes that facilitate wise crowds,[17] many of which have merit. These are the four conditions […] considered essential in the context of political governance and how to facilitate wise crowds: 1) Diversity of knowledge and opinion—where each person has some private information even if it is just their personal opinion or interpretation of the ‘facts’. 2) Independence of thought and collaboration—so one person’s opinion is not unduly influenced or colored by other people’s opinion. 3) Decentralization of power—no power hierarchy exists where the ‘boss’ determines the answer so people can specialize and draw on local knowledge, data or information. 4) Integration—where a system or mechanism exists to turn private judgement into a collective decision. This mechanism requires us to integrate not aggregate information.”[2]
From intelligent crowd-based processes like crowdsourced research methodologies, Wikipedia, Kickstarter, Google’s algorithms and Amazon analytics emerge the principles of “Crowdocracy.” This may make most people understandably apprehensive and downright skeptical considering the venomous anger and fake news swirling around social media that many believed played a negative role in electing Donald Trump President of the United States and forced Facebook to create new algorithms to sort out misleading information. However, “in terms of people power, social media and the ability for ordinary citizens to voice their opinion—the genie is out of the bottle. There is no going back—people are used to and expect to be able to express their opinion on just about anything. And they do. While there may still be people who fundamentally believe that ‘ordinary’ citizens are poorly informed, have no serious interest in public affairs and are generally ill-equipped for political participation, the evidence would indicate otherwise.[37] It is therefore vital that we start to organize this development, and the desire and willingness to participate, so that we can give the crowd a forum to make their voice heard. This forum must exist within a strong and ethical governance framework, underpinned by democratic principles that cannot be swayed by whatever hot topic ignites the crowd at any given time or whatever section of the crowd shouts the loudest. Without that framework, including a strong constitutional guide book that all participants co-create and adhere to, we won’t actually evolve to a better system. Instead we simply have a noisier version of what we have now. […] Crowdocracy would facilitate the very best of what the crowd has to offer while mitigating our less helpful group behavior such as groupthink, conformity and bullying […].”[3]
Collective wisdom, while counterintuitive, has been proven scientifically valid.[4] However, to avoid de-evolving into the “herd-instinct” fundamental elements of crowdocracy and underlying democratic codes like the separation of powers of the Legislative, Executive and the Judiciary must safeguard this new decision-making process by ensuring “the four conditions for the emergence of crowd wisdom are met and to distinguish crowdocracy from other systemic approaches, there are certain principles to be upheld. They will serve to underpin crowdocracy in order to maintain system integrity while allowing the crowd to flourish. In the end the crowd will decide what they will be. Each community and organization will create its own version, but some principles will need to apply universally for the system to be crowdocratic like: 1) Everyone can and should be encouraged to participate in crowdocracy; 2) No crowd delegation; 3) Semi-anonymity; 4) Basic rules laid out in a constitution; and 5) Integrative process. The process itself needs to facilitate integration and the “Shapers” (the Legislative) and citizens (the Crowd) need to develop the ability to integrate multiple perspectives effectively. Guardians (the Judiciary) need to be masters at integration and need to guide the crowd in how to develop this ability. Semi-anonymity will help, because we will read comments and suggestions at face value—not through the lens of who has written them […]. To get the wisest (balanced, integrative) solution available at any given time the Crowdocratic Policy Making Process will consist of the following six-phase procedure: 1) Proposing, 2) Shaping, 3) Public Consultation, 4) Final Check, 5) Vote, and 6) Execution. [W]e will need to learn to embrace second person perspective taking: putting ourselves in the shoes of others to create a shared view. As said, in today’s world we usually either operate from the first person perspective (what I do/I think/ want/feel/ need /etc?) or third person perspective (what are the data/facts/circumstances?) When we become responsible for our collective governance, we have to learn to embrace the situations and perspectives of where others come from to reach a united view. […] The technology platform should also help in this integration. Just like the ‘git’ in Linux, the technology itself should be able to weed out duplicating views or identify similar views. With the development of artificial intelligence, the technology itself may have an increasingly important role in finding and articulating the best solutions.”[5]
All of the aforementioned pathologies of our current system of governance makes it virtually impossible to legislate any or all of the prescribe policy issues listed herein, therefore, it now incumbent for us, We the People, to end politics as we know it by reinventing government for the 21st century, much in the same manner that American Revolutionaries argued for like Thomas Paine in his political pamphlet, Common Sense and our founding fathers did with The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation and the Bill of Rights within the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, I, Zevin X. Cruz, do hereby declare to first introduce policies to develop the ethical governance framework, legal constitutional structure and Community Bill of Rights underpinned by democratic principles to create “Crowdocracy” as our new form of governance before any other legislation.
I will not resist, discourage, or in any manner put up an impediment to, and will in fact publicly and on the floor of the House of Representatives actively promote, any and all legislation which exclusively supports these measures. If no other legislator comes forth to propose such individual pieces of legislation for Community Rights and/or Crowdocracy, I will create and introduce by my own initiative, within 180 days of taking office, legislative acts for all of the foregoing, for consideration by Congress and/or The People through Crowdocracy.
I further understand and fully agree to the following: If I violate the above-stated terms of this agreement, I will tender on the 181st day after taking the oath of office for my legislative seat, my unconditional resignation from this elected position. Moreover, within one year of my resignation, I will refund all contributions made by individual donors in support of my candidacy for this office.
This agreement constitutes a legally-binding contract between myself and that class of citizens who will be my constituents, should I win the upcoming election. In the event that I fail to perform the above-required actions, redress may be sought by those same citizens in the form of removal from office by vote in the next election.
I sign this contract voluntarily and with full appreciation of my obligations and responsibilities under this agreement to the citizens of the 22 District of the State of New York, should they choose me as their elected representative. I accept the terms of this document as legally-binding, and with a thorough and lucid understanding of its requirements and consequences.
Print Name: _______________________ Signature _________________________ Date: _________________
“We Must Become The Leaders We Have Been Waiting For!”—Zevin X. Cruz