Sunday, July 7, 1996
Active participation the best medicine for election-year
malaiseBy Mark Gerzon
As this election year heats up, our citizens are inundated with
negative advertising, fake facts, well-financed accusations and
indignant denials. In this toxic environment, is it any wonder that
many Americans choose to stay home?
Please don’t. Our democracy needs you.
You can survive the mudslinging and mayhem of this election year
if you listen to the civic wisdom that I have distilled from
interviews with more than 100 veteran community leaders from across
the country, all working to improve the quality of life in their
communities. What follows is some of their best advice:
1. Take stock before you take sides.
Look before you leap. Issues are often framed in a polarized
way. "You’re either with us or against us" is the line you may
often hear. Don’t let yourself be bullied by these "true
believers." Step back for a moment and look at the conflict from as
many sides as you can.
2. Check to see if politicians are telling the truth.
Facts matter. So does telling the truth. In the short run,
playing loose with the truth can sometimes fool voters. But in the
long run, it usually backfires. When candidates concoct half-truths
or manipulate the facts to persuade you to vote for them, don’t
fall for it.
3. Think like a minority  because you are one.
Whatever your skin color or ancestral country, let go of the
idea that you are the norm. Today, no ethnicity is the mainstream,
no group is the standard of measure for American-ness and no one
person is average. The 1990 census identified 300 races, 600
Native-American tribes, 70 Latino groups and 75 multi-racial
combinations. And if you think "Caucasian" is a racial majority,
think again. According to demographers, by the time our children
reach retirement age, even whites will be a minority in
America.
4. Watch your "media diet."
Just as a food diet heavy with salt, fat and sugar will affect
your physical health, so will a media diet laced with hostility,
blame, confrontation and violence corrode your civic outlook. The
point isn’t to filter out whatever is uncomfortable or
disconcerting, but rather to chart a more carefully conscious
course through the sea of words and images that reach you through
the media.
5. Develop your public judgment.
You use your judgment every single day of your personal life,
asking yourself who can be trusted, how much and why. Just as you
value your private judgment, take responsibility for honing your
knowledge, skills and intuition about public matters. No one is
born with the full understanding that citizenship requires. "The
public is not magically endowed with good judgment," says veteran
pollster Daniel Yankelovich. "Good judgment is something that must
be worked at all the time and with great skill and effort."
Pick an area that concerns you. Follow it in your local paper.
Then use your own judgment to decide which candidates make
sense.
6. Know your "enemies."
"Ignorance is preferable to error," wrote Thomas Jefferson. "He
is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who
believes what is wrong."
Acknowledge and respect your own ignorance. Not knowing is a
vital part of citizenship and the first step toward learning.
Whenever we are willing to admit what we do not know, we open
ourselves to learning something new  including the
possibility that we can sometimes be wrong and that our adversary
can sometimes be right. Read what your adversaries write. Tune into
their radio and TV shows or attend their meetings. Even if you
consider them your enemy, you’re better off knowing what they’re up
to.
7. Build bridges.
Whether you are black or white, rich or poor, conservative or
liberal, you may feel cut off from the "other side." Because they
think, act and look different than you do, you’ll often feel
tempted to write them off. But many problems can’t be solved
without them. In Spartanburg, S.C., for example, a black Baptist
church and white Episcopalian congregation teamed up to build a
health clinic in a poor neighborhood. Although the two groups
differed enormously, they needed each other to get the job
done.
8. Remember that local matters.
Whether conservative or liberal, citizens on both sides of the
ideological fence have gotten lazy. Instead of solving local
problems at the local level, the buck gets passed up to the state
or federal level.
"What happens in your house," said former First Lady Barbara
Bush, "is just as important as what happens in the White House." In
other words, don’t be so fixated on what happens nationally that
you forget to be active closer to home. Although candidates for
national office may grab the headlines and dominate the airwaves,
you can help lower the political center of gravity by working in
your own community.
9. Practice democracy.
If you don’t like the way the campaigns are being run, join with
your neighbors and start a "clean campaign" movement. Democracy
won’t work just because we preach it; we have to practice it
too.
When it was time for the Founding Fathers to select a committee
to draft the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, the
youngest delegate, received the most votes and was immediately made
chairman. Although Jefferson was firmly on the side of revolution,
he refused to be antagonistic toward those who felt differently
because he knew that they would ultimately all be partners in the
grand experiment of democracy. If they wanted a truly United States
of America, they had to treat each other with respect.
It was true 200 years ago. And it is still true today: Democracy
is not just something we believe in, but something we do.
Gerzon is co-director of the Campaign for Common Ground.