We the People
Get a random group of Americans together around some good food and a couple of hours with nothing else to do. Get them talking about themselves and telling stories about their lives.
And in that place where food and lives are shared, the “hot buttons” aren’t so hot anymore.
Ask them something like: Do you think it’s good that people from other countries want to move to the United States and settle here? I bet most people around that table would not only say “yes,” but would tell you that a close family member or friend is an immigrant.
What if we then took the next step and asked that group of Americans to imagine that their little dinner party was now in charge of designing the country’s immigration system. Ask them to imagine that they are starting from Square One and making over the immigration system from the ground up. What would that immigration system look like? How would it work?
I have a lot of confidence in most of the Americans I know that they could come up with a decent plan–not a perfect plan or a plan that satisfies everyone 100 percent–but a decent plan that considers most of the angles. A plan that gets the job done well enough for the country to function well enough until the time comes for improvements and revisions. This is politics as it should be.
I believe America is set up to work this way. Local politics–block clubs, city councils, civic organizations, community groups, local boards of governance, parent-teacher associations, and school boards–make up the basic building blocks of a healthy and strong Republic. At the local level, we don’t have energy, money, or time for the federal-level bullshit. At the local level, we have to get things done.
Sometimes, I wonder if we can find a way as a country to take a step back from the federal-level bullshit. I wonder if the national parties are way off the narrative. They’re just posting memes in hopes of getting a lot of “likes” and “shares” from the American public as we mindlessly through current events.
I believe in the American people. All of them. I believe that We the People will grow tired of what our political leaders are selling us. Eventually, we will have enough of the divisiveness and shouting and slander. We will demand better and we will demand more.
The question is: Where will we find better? Where will we find more?
If we believe in self-government, we already have the answer: We find better government and better leaders among ourselves. We the People have to make the government if the government we have is failing to make itself function for the good of all.
How do we do that?
The first step is to renounce social media is citizenship. If the sum total of our citizenship and civic engagement is what we post and share on social media, We the People are done for.
The second step is to get active in local politics. This is so easy to do, I don’t know why more citizens don’t do it.
Apply for a local government board, get active on the PTA, join a block club or civic organization in your community, or run for local office.
I suggest you try to do something that will put you in constant constructive contact with the neighbors on your street. When I walk the dog along our street every morning, I find lots of houses with Biden signs out front. I also find lots of houses with Trump signs out front. Why let two distant politicians none of us will ever know have power over our relationships? In fact, I’m good friends with some of the people on my block who have the biggest yard signs for the candidate I oppose. Could we not work together to organize a block party? Or help out elderly people on our street? Or form “pods” for our kids who are going to school online this year? These are all forms of politics. When we put them into practice among ourselves on a place like a neighborhood, we learn a lot more about what we can make for our entire country. We no longer need what partisans are trying to sell us from Washington; we already know what we can do together because we’re doing it at home. Together.
The call that goes forth to America now is not so much to choose one candidate over the other (though I believe that is important). Rather, the call that goes forth to America now is to choose your fellow Americans. Choose to believe in each other. Choose to not listen to professional partisans who are paid to divide. Instead, choose the listen to the people who live on your street. Choose to believe them. To believe in them. And then go to work with them making something in your community.
If all Americans do this, our best days are yet to come. We the People will prove that self-government can indeed “long endure.”