"We the People"

[John D. Bostrom]

This point is key in terms of how we define ourselves and the attitude and presence we bring to other people, which has everything to do with whether or not we will ever grow strong enough to make a major impact on American society and achieve the goals we've set, almost all of which require a majority consensus of voting Americans.

 

Lauri is right about the approach Alice mentions, the "we the people" thing. This is the key attitude and approach of those imbued with the spirit and legacy of the leftist/communist/socialist ideal - that deep down in our souls, we all (except, of course, the filthy rich) are peace-loving, generous folks, and if we just come together to act as one our true selves united, everything will be peachy and we'll have global nuclear disarmament and ecological paradise, etc. Nothing is easier than documenting how utterly ineffective this approach has become, but regardless, it remains a seductive presence in the peace and justice movements, supported not only by the need to maintain a long legacy going back to the days of the Wobblies, but also by the very real sense of community that comes from working together with other activists on shared goals.  If only, we dream, everyone would just join our group.  Surely they want to!  We the people! 

 

In fact, as Lauri points out, the reality of "we the people" is a lot different from that idealistic dream. Approaching people with this attitude, in fact, generally turns them off immediately.  It's not just that "we the people" are more ignorant, venal, and prone to violence than peace activists are willing to admit. It's that there's something fundamentally off about approaching a person as a member of "we the people."  That concept doesn't really allow for any real personal contact. Rather it's basically an attempt to connect with the other person as a unit in a mass - a unit who has no meaning and value individually, but only insofar as he or she is a member of that mass, or "the masses."   I suspect that this, more than any economic or political deficiency in the programs of peace activists, is what mostly turns off most Americans to any form of political activism.  American culture very rightly and very effectively celebrates the individual, the personal, and the meaningful relationships between people who respect each other as individuals. This is the fundamental cultural reality behind the concept of "freedom" that resonates so strongly with Americans, and activists who ignore it get nowhere.

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Flaunting this reality with the attitude of "we the people" keeps activists organizations not only small, but ineffective. The more an organization is imbued with this dream, the more individuals who happen to disagree with very good ideas, or dislike the people who put them forward, can get these ideas shot down merely by demanding that everyone must agree with them, per "the democratic process." When this practice takes hold, the whole organization can be regularly be consumed in worthless debate over the most inconsequential things, and a huge chasm can develop between the levels of any personal interinteraction and the decisions made to act in public.  This in turn reinforces the general tendency of the group to remain small, as it's a rare newcomer who will stay very long in a group with such a process.

 

Awareness has been building for some time that we need a completely different approach, and that it can't just be a superficial makeup job, a front limiited to PR techniques, while our essential organizational processes remain the same, but that we need to lay everything on the table and be willing to start from scratch, questioning everything we're doing.  The U.S Insitute of Peace, to mention just one development, bases everything it does on a comprehensive understanding of a threefold process of conflict prevention, resolution, and post-conflict stabilization that is applicable all the way across the spectrum, from the individual through interpersonal relations and groups to international politics.  Many other developments are unfolding that leave behind the outdated and ineffective "we the people" approach.

 

What Peace Action needs both nationally and locally is greater awareness of, committment to, and immersion in this different approach.  We have to understand that we must give as much constant attention to means and methods, attitudes and approaches, as we now give merely to goals and issues.  The old methods, means, attitudes, and approaches simply don't work, but they remain powerful forces until they are consciously recognized as ineffective and replaced with new methods, means, attitudes, and approaches.

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From: Lauri Kallio [mailto:mrl...@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2010 4:38 PM
To: ma...@zsc.org; paaffi...@xmail.peace-action.org
Subject: [paaffiliates] "We the People"

Mario, although I fully endorse the need for every citizen to do all he or she can to make our country a better society and the world a better place, I don't agree with Alice Walker that "We the people" will do this.   I follow polling of the American people very closely and by this time I have become immune to shock as to how clueless and contradictory they can be. A few examples will illustrate how little we should respect the fabled grassroots wisdom of the American people.   1) At a time when we were being drained of our moral and material fiber by two wars, 56 percent of the respondents in one poll favored bombing Iran. 2) In two separate polls, a solid majority of respondents were in favor of the Arizona law permitting police questioning on immigration status, but even higher majorities in both polls agreed that the law would result in racial profiling. 3) In a poll in which almost two-thirds of the respondents said the country was going in the wrong direction, they split almost evenly on whether the solution is more government or less government. 4) And then there was the infamous poll in which a majority of respondents were against enacting as basic law specific language from the Bill of Rights.   When I was in the congressional district of the conservative Republican, Henry Hyde, he did the most comprehensive survey I've ever seen from a congressperson on spending for specific programs. Although Hyde interpreted the results as showing his constituents were in favor of lower taxes and smaller government, my own evaluation showed that the number of programs for which Hyde's constituents wanted more spending, tax increases to pay for programs, or even new taxes -- on pollution and business lunches -- well exceeded the programs for which they wanted less spending. Yet, I'm sure that the people in Hyde's conservative district would have responded that they wanted smaller government and lower taxes if asked that question in isolation from specific governmental programs.   On a more general level, I've seen polls in which the respondents will support specific suggested action and then conclude in another part of the survey that the situation will worsen if the suggested action is taken -- for example, a majority "Yes" to the invasion of Iraq and a majority "Yes" to the proposition that the world will be a more dangerous place if Iraq is invaded.   Although not totally germane to the discussion above, the scariness of polling results was brought home to me whern I stayed with my niece and her husband one Christmas. They showed me a poll of how people respond to common, everyday situations and even some bizarre, made-up situations. When three percent of respondents said they would kill someone for $10,000, I concluded that in my hometown of about 300 people there were nine people who would kill me for $10,000.