Lessig uses several really cool fonts, which we had to substitute for universal, less cool ones for the PowerPoint file. Check out corruptionismyissue.org for a list of these fonts.
Note: We transcribed the talk in full in this file. Each slide contains the portion of the actual speech that accompanied that visual.
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Editor's Notes
So thank you, and welcome to this event, and I'm very honored and happy to have a chance to talk to this movement, which in many ways began here but has spread across the country.
And I want to start by talking...
...about what I think of is the problem. And I'm told that out here, when you tell a story,
you need to begin with an image like this: so here we are: Once upon at time there was a place called Image of Cinderella Castle at Night: copyrighted alt: http://www.fotopedia.com/items/flickr-4535885901
"Lester-land". Now you don't know from the introduction because it's a secret, so please don't tell anybody, but my first name is actually "Lester," so I'm allowed to make fun of Lesters, and I want to make fun of Lesters for a moment in describing the problem, by understanding this place called "Lesterland."
So Lesterland looks a lot like the United States. Like the United States, it has about 300 million people, and of those 300 and some million people h Image of AVHRR View of the USA: http:// www.solarviews.com/cap/earth/usa.htm
144,000 are named Lester. So that means that Image of Lester Simpsons avatar @ make your own Simpsons avatar: http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/main.html Image of AVHRR View of the USA: http:// www.solarviews.com/cap/earth/usa.htm
0.05% of Lesterland is named "Lester." Image of Lester Simpsons avatar @ make your own Simpsons avatar: http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/main.html Image of AVHRR View of the USA: http:// www.solarviews.com/cap/earth/usa.htm
Now Lesters in Lesterland have this extraordinary power. There are two elections in every election cycle in Lesterland: There is a general election and there is a Lester election. And in the Lester election, the Lesters get to vote, and in the general election, all citizens over 18 (if you have an ID in some states) get to vote. But here's the trick: to run in the general election, you must do extremely well in the Lester election. You don't necessarily have to win, but you must do extremely well. Now this is a picture of democracy in Lesterland. Image of Lester Simpsons avatar @ make your own Simpsons avatar: http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/main.html Image of AVHRR View of the USA: http:// www.solarviews.com/cap/earth/usa.htm
What can we say about democracy in Lesterland?
We can say, number 1, as the Supreme Court said in Citizens United, the people have the ultimate influence over elected officials in Lesterland, because, after all, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Supreme Court of the United States. 2009. docstoc. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/23497308/Supreme-Court-Decision-on-Corporate-Campaign-Spending---Citizens-United-vs-FEC
there is a general election. But there is that general election only after the Lesters have had their way with the candidates who hope to run and win in that general election. Image of Lester Simpsons avatar @ make your own Simpsons avatar: http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/main.html Image of AVHRR View of the USA: http:// www.solarviews.com/cap/earth/usa.htm
Number 2,
obviously,
this dependence upon the Lesters produces a
subtle, understated, we might say camouflaged,
bending
to keep the Lesters happy.
And, number 3,
reform
that angers
the Lesters is, we might say,
unlikely.
OK, so that's Lesterland.
There are three things I want you to understand now that you understand Lesterland.
Number 1:
the United States is Lesterland; the United States is Lesterland.
The United States also looks like this, it also has two elections. Image of AVHRR View of the USA: http:// www.solarviews.com/cap/earth/usa.htm
There is a general election; the other we should call the "money election." In the general election, all citizens over 18 (if you have an ID in some states) get to vote. In the "money election," it's the funders who get to vote: the relevant funders of the campaign. And, as in Lesterland, if you want to run in the general election, you must do extremely well in the money election. You don't necessarily have to win, but you must do extremely well. Image of AVHRR View of the USA: http:// www.solarviews.com/cap/earth/usa.htm
And here's the key: Image of an old key: copyrighted alt: http://openclipart.org/detail/61171/old-key-by-j_alves
there are just as few
relevant funders in our democracy
as there are
"Lesters" in Lesterland. And you say
"really?!"
Point zero five percent? Well, here are the numbers: in this election cycle,
point three percent of Americans--one third of one percent have given $200 or more in an election. Stat: Recalculate using http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/donordemographics.php
Point zero five five percent have given the maximum amount to any congressional or presidential candidate. Stat: Recalculate using http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/donordemographics.php
Point zero one percent have given $10,000 or more in the election cycle. [additional note not in talk: 26,783 individuals (or slightly less than one in ten thousand Americans) each contributed more than $10,000.] Stats: Recalculate using http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/donordemographics.php
Point zero zero zero three percent have given $100,000 or more. Stat: Recalculate using http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/donordemographics.php
And my favorite number: point zero zero zero zero four two percent--for those of you doing the math, you know that is 132 Americans--gave 60% of the superpac money that was used in this last election cycle. Stat: http://www.demos.org/publication/election-spending-2012-post-election-analysis-federal-election-commission-data
So I look at this range--point three to point zero one, I'm a lawyer--and I think it is fair for me to say it's about
point zero five percent who are the relevant funders in these elections
and these funders are our "Lesters."
Like you can say about Lesterland,
this is what you can say about USAland:
of course the Supreme Court was right: the people have the ultimate influence over elected officials, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Supreme Court of the United States. 2009. docstoc. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/23497308/Supreme-Court-Decision-on-Corporate-Campaign-Spending---Citizens-United-vs-FEC
because there is a general election; but, as in Lesterland, only after the funders have had their way with the candidates who wish to win in that general election. Image of AVHRR View of the USA: http:// www.solarviews.com/cap/earth/usa.htm
And number 2,
obviously,
this dependence upon the funders produces a
subtle, understated, we might say camouflaged,
bending
to keep the funders happy. Candidates for Congress, and members of Congress, spend between
30 and 70% of their time raising money to get to power, or to get their party back into power. And, as they do that, they develop, as any of us would, Lessig, Lawrence. Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group, 2011. *Updated stat on time spent fundraising: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressional-fundraising_n_2427291.html
a "sixth sense," a constant awareness about how what they do might affect their ability to raise money. They become, in the words of the X-Files,
"shape-shifters," as they constantly adjust their views in light of what they know will help them raise money, not in issues 1 to 10, but in issues 11 to 1000.
Leslie Byrne, a Democrat from Wisconsin, describes that when she went to Congress, she was told by a colleague, quote "Always lean to the green." And to clarify, she went on, Image of Leslie L Byrne: not found Alt: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leslie_L_Byrne_at_podium_DD-SC-07-29431.JPEG
"He was not an environmentalist." Schram, Martin. Speaking Freely. Center for Responsive Politics, 1995.
And then point 3:
Reform
that angers
the funders in our system we can say is
unlikely.
So, in this sense, I want to say the United States is Lesterland.
Here's the second point:
the United States is worse than Lesterland, worse than Lesterland.
Because you can imagine in Lesterland, if we Lesters got a letter from the government that said to us, "You guys get to pick who are the candidates that will run in the general election." You know, there are Lesters from every class--there are black Lesters, there are white Lesters--not many women Lesters, but OK, let's put that detail aside for a second--there are Lesters from every class, you can imagine there would be a kind of
aristocracy of us Lesters--right, it's at least possible we would think we need to Image of Lester Simpsons avatar @ make your own Simpsons avatar: http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/main.html
act in the good of Lesterland--it's our job, its our purpose, it's our role, they look up to us Lesters to help them pick the best candidates who will run.
But in our land,
in this land,
in USA-land,
the Lesters act for the Lesters,
because the shifting coalitions of interests that comprise the point zero five percent are formed on the basis of whatever issue is just over the horizon. So, if it is climate change legislation, you know that it is coal companies and oil companies that comprise a significant portion of the Lesters. If it's health care, you know that it is insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and doctors who form a significant component of the Lesters. Whatever the issue is, whatever the issue has to be blocked, whatever reform has to be stopped, you can read back from that and understand who makes up the Lesters. And when they gather together and make their contribution, they are not asking for legislation
in the public interest. They are asking for legislation in their interest.
So, in this sense, the United States is worse than Lesterland.
And, finally, point number 3:
whatever one wants to say about
Lesterland,
in our land,
in our version of Lesterland,
in USAland,
this conflicting dependence on the Lesters versus the people,
I don't mean is Rob Blagojevich corruption, where people are engaging in criminal acts, you see, I'm willing to stipulate that the complaint I have has no criminality attached to it at all. I'm willing to assume everything I'm describing is perfectly legal--perfectly legal. But even if it's perfectly legal, Image of Rod Blagojevich: http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2008/12/illinois_govern.html
it is still corruption relative to the baseline that our framers gave us.
Our framers gave us what they called a republic. And by "a republic," they meant a "representative democracy." And by a Image of Constitution mural: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/charters_mural_constitution_b.html#
"representative democracy, as Madison described in Federalist 52, they meant a government that would have a branch that would be Image of Federalist Paper: http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=682843
they meant a government that would have a branch that would be (quote) "dependent on the people alone." Image of United States Capitol Building: not found Alt: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-17778833-the-united-states-capitol-building-washington-dc.php
So here's the model of government: they have the people, and the government (isn't this cool, the way it bounces like that)--the people and the government. Exclusive dependency, exclusive dependency, and so would the public good be found, by that exclusive dependency. But here's the problem:
Congress has evolved a different dependence--
no longer a dependence upon the people alone, but, increasingly, a dependence upon the funders. Image of capitol dome: http://dir.coolclips.com/History/United_States/Landmarks_and_Monuments/Capitols/Capitol_building_arch0215.html
And this is a dependence, too.
It is different and conflicting from
a dependence on the people alone,
however, so long as
"the funders" are not "the people." This is corruption--corruption of the design that was to be this constitutional democracy.
Now this corruption has an effect.
Its first effect is that,
Americans believe because of it--
and I think Americans are right to believe this, but this is a separate question--let's just focus on what Americans believe.
Americans believe that
money "buys results in Congress"--quote, unquote. [see: Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost. Original from a survey by Global Strategy Group (January 11, 2011) on file with Lessig.]
75% of Americans, according to a poll we conducted for the book I published last Fall. [see: Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost]
So here it is folks, the one thing we Americans all believe: money buys results in Congress. Image of Republican/Democrat logos: http://vicentemanera.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/republican_democrat_logos1.jpg
Leading to point number 2:
that belief erodes trust in the institution of Congress.
ABC and the New York Times found last year that 9% of America had confidence in Congress. note this is a CBS/New York Times poll: 9%. Now, we should put that in context: It is certainly the case, it is certainly the case, at the time of the American Revolution, a higher proportion of Americans Zeleny, Jeff, and Megan Thee-Brenan. “New Poll Finds Deep Distrust of Government.” The New York Times. Oct 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/us/politics/poll-finds-anxiety-on-the-economy-fuels-volatility-in-the-2012-race.html?_r=0 Image of US Capitol Building: not found. Alt: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-17778833-the-united-states-capitol-building-washington-dc.php
had confidence in the British Crown than who have confidence in our Congress today [see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalist_%28American_Revolution%29 ]. Image of King George III: http://southcarolina1670.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/george-iii-on -how-not-to-handle-a-crisis/ Image of US Capitol Building: not found. Alt: http://www.isto ckphoto.com/stock-photo-17778833-the-united-states-capitol-building-washington-dc.php
And that leads to point number 3.
This erosion erodes participation in this system.
Rock The Vote, which in 2008, organized and turned out the largest number of young voters in the history of voting in America (we still don’t have the numbers from this election), found that in 2010, a significant number of their young voters were just not going to show up. So they polled them to ask them why. And the number one reason by far, two to one over the second highest reason, was Image: not found Alt: rockthevote.org
no matter who wins, corporate interests will still have too much power and prevent real change. [see: http://www.rockthevote.com/about/about-young-voters/polling/ Nationwide Baseline pdf, question 15]
And it’s not just kids.
The vast majority who could have voted in 2010, did not vote, in part, at least, because of this belief, and even in this election,
forty percent did not vote [see: http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2010G.html ], in part, at least,
I suggest, because of this belief. Corruption.
And these are its consequences.
Ok, so,
what’s the solution to that corruption?
There’s a systemic problem here:
It is that The Funders are not The People.
There’s a systemic solution
to that problem.
It is to make The Funders The People.
To give them a way - I know, it makes it sound like I mean to give Congress away, and nobody would take Congress, so I don’t mean that. But I mean, to give Congress one way
to fund their campaigns at least
without selling their souls
and thereby without alienating America.
And the one way, and I think the only way, to do this is to openly and firmly and loudly yell,
“ We believe in citizen funded campaigns.” Now, what is that, right?
These are systems of small dollar funded campaigns. And at least right now, they are systems for Image of cash money: not found Alt: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hundred_dollar_bill_04.jpg
candidates to get to opt in to a world where they agree
to take small dollar funded contributions only,
and the system amplifies those contributions, to make it so they can win campaigns, never taking large contributions from anybody.
many ways to do this, but the most striking fact about politics circa 2011 Now there are many versions of this,
there’s matching grant systems,
such as Arizona [see: http://www.cleanelections101.com /], or Maine [see: http://www.mainelegislature.org/ legis/statutes/21-A/title21-Asec1125.html ], or Connecticut [see: http://se arch.cga.state.ct.us/sur s/sur/htm/chap157.htm] - Connecticut adopted their syst em, in its first year, 78% of the elected representatives were elected using the system where they took small contributions only, never had to take any large contributions, Democrats and Republicans alike [see: http://www.ct.gov/seec/lib/seec/publications/2010_citizens_election_program_report_final .pdf ]. And New York City has a similar system [see: http://www.nyccfb.info /], which now migh t become the model for the whole of New York Stat e [see: http://www.nyt imes.com/2012/12/02/opinion/sunday/gov-cuomo-and-campaign-finance-reform.html ]. Image of US: not found
There are tax credit systems,
like Oregon, to give people the ability to contribute small dollars to candidates who take small contributions and then get a credit on their tax system see: [http://www.oregon.gov/dor/PERTAX/pages/personal-income-tax-overview/credits.aspx ] Image of Oregon: http://www.licecompany.com/Oregon_Map.jpg
There are voucher proposals.
first proposed by Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres [see: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300101492] Image of Voting with Dollars: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41DIKlK30nL._SL500_AA300_ .jpg
I’ve described a proposal in my book, Republic, Lost, Image of Republic, Lost: http://cdn.tripwiremagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/us-capitol-building-dollar-bills.jpg
which I call the Grant and Franklin project, where everybody gets a 50 dollar voucher they can give to any candidate, or a part of it to any candidate, who agrees that he or she will fund his or her campaign with vouchers only, plus contributions of up to a hundred dollars from any citizen [see: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/14357153028/the-grant-and-franklin-project] . So Grant - 50, Franklin - 100. Image of Franklin: http://ak3.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/1358605/preview/stock-footage-mo ve-into-extreme-close-up-of-an-american-one-hundred-dollar-bill.jpg Image of Grant: http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/akova/akova1011/akova1 01100166/8220158-portrait-of-u-s-statesman-inventor-and-diplomat-ulysses-s-grant-as-he-looks-on-fifty-dollar-bill-obv.jpg
And I think, most importantly now, we have a proposal introduced, just this week, the American Anti-Corruption Act [see: http://anticorruptionact.org/] , which has a tax credit to fund a voucher program of a hundred dollars to make it so candidates can opt to take small dollar contributions and have an extraordinary resource and source for those small contributions. Image of The American Anti-Corruption Act logo: http://anticorruptionact.org/
Or there are proposals that drop them all together.
Congressman Sarbanes from Maryland has a proposal called the Grassroots Democracy Act, which has a matching fund proposal, it has a tax credit proposal, and it has a pilot for the voucher proposal all in one low-priced package [see: http://sarbanes.house.gov/free_details.asp?id=123] . Ok. Image of Grassroots Democracy Act logo: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdjrrdQTfL1qdlgq 4o2_400.jpg
But each of these systems funds from the bottom up.
Each of them is aiming to reduce the gap between The Funders and The People.
And each of them has as its objective to reverse the extraordinary inequality that exists in our system now where the top one percent have ten times the per capita influence that the bottom 99 percent have [see: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/19188135593/the-economist-weighs-in] ,
to aspire to the ideal which is at the center of the way we allocate votes, which is one person, one vote.
That is what citizen funded campaigns means.
Only citizens fund campaigns, and all citizens fund campaigns.
And if we had that,
if we had a system where candidates took small dollar contributions only,
then we all could believe as we desperately want to believe, that whenever Congress did something crazy, it was either because there were too many Democrats, or because there were too many Republicans, Image of I Want to Believe: http://jorge8adotcom.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/i_want_to_believe2.jpg
but not because of the money. Because we would have removed that cynical assumption from the only plausible way to interpret what Congress does because we would have made it so that the funders were all of us.
Ok, now
the question, though, that gets constantly presented when people like me and others, hundreds of others, push this kind of proposal is
is it even possible, to imagine Congress embracing such an idea? Is it even possible? And there are moment where I wonder whether it’s even possible.
This man made me the most cynical I could possible be about this. This is Jim Cooper, Democrat from Virginia, man who has been in Congress for as long as about twenty other members of Congress. He said to me when I was interviewing him for my book, “You have to understand, Capitol Hill has become a kind of farm league for K St.” K St., where the lobbyists work. What he meant was, Image of Jim Cooper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jim_Cooper.jpg
members and staffers and bureaucrats
have an increasingly common business model,
a business model focused
on their life after government,
their life as lobbyists.
A study done by Public Citizen, an advocacy group, found that half the senators and 42 percent of House members who left Congress between 1998 and 2004 became lobbyists. So 50 percent of the Senate between 1998 and 2004, according to Public Citizen [see: http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/pressroomredirect.cfm?ID=1999] , left the Senate to become lobbyists,
42% of the House, and as United Re:public calculated just last spring, the salary increase for those they tracked as they moved from the House to becoming lobbyists was
1,452 percent [see: http://www.republicreport.org/2012/make-it-rain-revolving-door/] . Pretty good business model, even in Washington.
So in a system where everybody depends
upon this system surviving, so that their retirement is set so their kids can have their education paid, so that their two other vacation houses at least have something to support the mortgage, so this system can survive,
how is it possible that we could imagine
attacking the cancer which is this beltway, through themselves? Image of a breast cancer cell: http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/37/ca/37ca087ae46149fbbb87c659a278017f.jpg
Because here’s the fact: cancer does not cure itself. It does not cure itself.
And it won’t be cured
by dinky little reforms, tiny little ideas, tinkering, crumbs at the table, that are being proposed by people who think we just do a tiny little switch, we will magically change this system.
Instead, what it needs is a movement
unlike any we’ve seen
since the civil right’s movement, Image: not found Alt of civil rights protesters: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279610622/
or the progressive movement. Image of Teddy Roosevelt: Progressive rights movement Date Created/Published: c1912 October 23, photograph taken October 17, 1912. - Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Bain Collection - Reproduction number: LC-USZ62-78053 (b&w film copy neg.) - Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
Taking on a
corruption greater than anything we’ve seen
since we ousted George the Third. image:Portrait of King George III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:King_George_III_by_Sir_William_Beechey_%282%29.jpg
Ok, now
we have
an opportunity for that movement,
it’s a kind of gift. It was a gift given to us by an unlikely institution, they don’t give many gifts, image of giftbox: stock photo, available on many stock photo/clipart sites http://www.canstockphoto.com/present-box-with-red-bow-vector-7094421.html http://graphicleftovers.com/graphic/1_yxznmtnfndkuanbn.eps/ http://deposi tphotos.com/6481621/stock-illustration-Present-box-with-red -bow.-Vector.html
I get the outrage this place, the Supreme Court. It’s a gift given to us in the form of an opinion called Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission, an opinion that held corporations have an unlimited power to spend whatever they want, independent of political campaigns, to promote or oppose any political candidate [see Opinion: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (Docket No. 08-205) : http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/08-205] . That opinion spark ed extraordinary outrage across the country. Outrage, image of Supreme Court: http://www.clker.com/clipart-146547.html
which was across the political spectrum. So the Washington Post a week after the opinion came out found that 84 percent of Democrats opposed the opinion, 81 percent of Independents, and 76 percent of Republicans [see: Washington Post-ABC News poll Feb 4th-8th, 2010 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021701151.html] .
Outraged, at the idea that corporations would have this role in our political process. And that outrage,
translated into inspiration, as an extraordinary range of new organizations
like Move to Amend or Free Speech or People or 99 Rise began to embrace this cause, http://movetoamend.org http://freespeech forpe ople.org http://www.99rise.org
and joining all sorts of organizations that have been around for much longer than this opinion, Logos of these orgs: http://moveon.org http://amend2012. org http://coffeepar tyusa.com http://citi zen.org http://www.pfaw.o rg
demanding that this decision be reversed.
And in the process, in the process of these organizations taking up this cause,
millions have been recruited
to this cause. Millions. And many of the people in this room are responsible, for that extraordinary activity of recruitment and awakening that has led America to recognize exactly what the problem here is.
This is incredibly important. It will be remembered, this movement, as the first steps of the most important progressive movement we’ve seen in America in a hundred years,
as the first steps,
as the beginning, because these steps can’t be
the end to that movement.
This framing,
this framing alone image of “Corporations are NOT PEOPLE T Shirt: http://skreened.com/scarebaby/corporations-are-not-people-tshirt
or money is not speech images: dollar sign, http://openclipart.fabricatorz.com/detail/167782/money-7-by-dripsandcastle ; is not equal, http://openclipart.org/tags/is%20not%20equal; speech, http://vector.us/bro wse/249153/speech_9
is the first step
these means
the idea of calling upon congress to pass an amendment Image of website from http://www.united4thepeople.org/local.html
is a first step, a brilliant first step, because what these means did was to
build the recognition in America
that something must be done, and we saw the product of that recognition
<slide was missing> in a pole that was conducted by Gallup in July of this year [see: http://www.gallup.com/poll/159035/congress-retains-low-honesty-rating.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines] . When Gallup asked Americans what was to be the priority for the next president, and on that list of ten priorities, number two on that list was reducing corruption in the Federal Government, number two! 87% of Americans identified this issue, and of course they weren’t thinking about Rob Blagojevich, they weren’t thinking about Randy Duke Cunningham, they weren’t thinking about bribery or criminal behavior. What they were thinking about was the unbelievable amounts of money in the political system, the sort of recognition which this movement had made salient to them
now of course when you turn to the actual political campaigns
that issue was invisible
neither Obama image of Obama’s campaign website: http://www.barackobama.com
nor Romney on their web page even mentioned this issue
and indeed it was the only issue on the top ten
which was not mentioned anywhere in a political campaign, and more troublingly
its the first time in
as long as we can see where an issue on that top ten list was not at the center of either the democrat or republicans platform for addressing the issues America thinks need to be addressed. So this is a measure of your success, a success you should be proud of and you should celebrate.
But now we need to ask
what’s next, what’s next
what are the next steps
for this movement
what’s the message
what are the means?
For it’s my view they must evolve
This message must evolve image: http://skreened.com/scarebaby/corporations-are-not-people-tshirt
and here’s the point
this change
this attack on that cancer Image source See Slide 176
must be fundamentally
cross partisan
I don’t mean bi-partisan in a kind of “kum ba yah, we all agree with each other” we don’t agree with each other,
but I mean it cuts across partisan lines
because there’s been one time in American history where we have attempted a fundamental reform like this that was not cross-partisan,
that was 150 years ago in the context of a civil war. Instead every other major movement to change the fundamental way in which government functions was essentially cross-partisan. And in a world where we’re calling for an amendment that requires 38 states to join with us image of Civil War battlefield: www.civilwar.org/battlefields/antietam/history/antietam-federal-flank.html
we can not win
if the issue is polarized,
if the nation is divided about this question
and what that means is
we have to learn to speak so the other side can hear, speak so the other side can hear. And of this I was reminded after talking to a friend who studies the history of the civil rights movement, that there’s a parallel in the civil rights movement. If you think about the civil rights movement at the end of the 1950’s and the beginning of the 1960’s, the fundamental struggle the movement had was how do they get people to show up, to turn out, to express their anger and frustration with the existing injustice of the American system, and to demand a change. And there were two schools.
There was a school associated with Malcom X, that said the way to get them to show up was to tell them to be incredibly angry, to be furious, and to demand the changes which hundreds of years ago should have been granted to African-Americans, and to use whatever means including, if it came to it, violence, to demand this change. And in response to that completely plausible, at the time seemed eminently sensible, recommendation for how to bring about and demand the changes that African-Americans were entitled to, Martin Luther King had a different view. King’s view was, look, you can get 12% or 14% of Americans to show up and demand change, but 14% of America is not enough. Instead he counseled a movement images: Malcolm X, http://www.corbisimages.com/Search#p=1&q=malcolm+x; Rev. Martin Luther King, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing right, speaking at a rally in Crawfordville, Georgia]." United Press International telephoto,1965 Oct 11. Prints and Photographs Divison of the Library of Congress.
that could speak image: Rev. Martin Luther King, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing right, speaking at a rally in Crawfordville, Georgia]." United Press International telephoto,1965 Oct 11. Prints and Photographs Divison of the Library of Congress.
so the other side could hear. Not speak with violence where if whites saw violence they would shut their eyes and close their ears and demand the violence end, but speak through non-violence, so that when whites from the North saw African-Americans being beaten up and bitten by dogs and not respond with violence they would have to stop and listen and hear, and understand. Speak so the other side can hear,
and here too.
It’s my view we need a certain discipline here. A discipline in this movement, a discipline that makes it possible
so that we speak so the other side in this debate can hear what we’re saying too.
So here are the ways to that end.
The first thing is to recognize what the power is that we have. Now the chatterati in America think that the really interesting division in American Politics is between the Left side and the Right side. I think the interesting division in American Politics is between the inside and the outside.
The inside, the kind of world inside that beltway in Washington, DC, and then the outside, the rest of America. And when you listen to what they talk about, and contrast it to what the rest of us talk about, it’s just a remix of a very famous book Image of DC detail: www.conorspeace.com/2012/11/dcva-life.html
Washington is from Mars, and we are from Earth! Remix of copywrited Image: copyrighted, Harper Collins. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006016848X?ie=UTF8%20&tag=hcbrowseinsideus-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006016848X
Now the point to recognize is that these outsiders have a certain politics, following Nigel Cameron let me just call it, to be kind of geeky, Exopolotics.
And the exopolitics is not a politics of politicians,
it’s a politics of citizen politics, citizens demanding that their politics change. Citizens who are not congressman wanna-bes, or representative wanna-bes, citizens who want to have the freedom to go back to their life but recognize they need to stand up for a week or a month or a year or five years, and shake the insanity out of their government.
And there are many instances, many examples of this over the past 15 years
and I think their increasingly frequent,
these waves of “open-source” energy that bubble up, and have an effect, and begin to define what this movement could be.
I think the move-on in 1998 was the first of these, when two Berkeley programmers look up from their computer screens and recognize that the United States Congress is considering impeaching a man because he lied about having sex, and they said, “What the hell? What the hell? There are real problems that America needs to address, this is way down that list, way down that list.” And so they started a movement that gathered signatures from millions of people within a couple weeks, from Democrats and Republicans alike, that said “Censure the man and move on.” And that movement, appearing out of nowhere, shocked Washington, and forced Washington to reconsider the craziness that had swept over the inside.
I think the Tea Party, the grass-roots component of the Tea Party movement, not the beltway Tea Party people, but the grass-roots Tea Party movement was a similar exopolitical movement using what they self-describe as the open-source energy of the internet to rally people behind their cause. Logo of http://teapartypatriots.org
I think the occupy movement was an exopolitical movement, which manifested itself and was created solely by the way in which people noticed and recognized and followed the online activity that made them salient and significant. Image of Occupy Fist logo at http://occupydesign.org/gallery/sites/default/files/images/Occupy_Logo.png
I think the extraordinary movement to stop the latest craziness emanating from this part of the country to regulate what’s called quote “Piracy on the Internet,” a bill which when it was introduced, Chris Dodd, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, you know that’s the same Chris Dodd who was Senator from Connecticut who promised he would never become a lobbyist, he’s the guy I’m talking about, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, said he had sixty signatures in the senate to support this act, and yet within a couple of weeks, after an extraordinary net uprising including Wikipedia shutting down for a day, and hundreds of thousands of telephone calls to Capital Hill telling them to stop, SOPA was withdrawn.
This is a kind of power
It’s a ground up power
It’s new. Some from the geeky community
think it’s GNU
but if there’s hope for this movement
I think it is in this exopolitics.
But here’s the problem with exopolitics:
too much in this exopolitical movement is fundamentally polarized.
Like everyone
like politicians
like the political parties
like the media
like the dot orgs that try to rally us,
they practice this business model of polarization. They recognize, their managers recognize
they profit
the more they divide us, the more they teach us to hate them. The more they rally us to the loyalty to our side, the more they profit from us, the more they destroy the possibility that we can work with that side to bring about the change we need.
We’ve produced what we can call the Ray-Ban culture, polarized, and very, very cool. OK. image of sunglasses: copyrighted alt: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ray_Ban_Original_Wayfarer.jpg
Now the answer, I think, is to begin to focus
on the right message
and the right method
So let's focus first on the message. There is a way of talking about this problem that everybody can assent to, from the left and the right.
That's to focus on this root; the root is corruption.
This picture of the way our government functions image of capitol dome: http://dir.coolclips.com/History/United_States/Landmarks_and_Monuments/Capitols/Capitol_building_arch0215.html
In my view it is only this frame image: not found alt of frame: http://openclipart.org/search/?query=gold%20picture%20frame
that can unite people as diverse as these and these. image: Tea Party [top], Associated Press; Eat the Rich, Mario Tama / Getty Images
It is my view that this frame will not unite people from the left and the right image: Eat the Rich, Mario Tama / Getty Images
instead this at the core. And in pushing this at the core,
we've been given another gift,
not by Stephen Colbert image: Colbert + Lawyer: Associated Press
but by Stephen Colbert's lawyer and a team that he worked with in pulling this together.
That is the American Anti-corruption Act, which as you pour through it, you will recognize it to be an extraordinary collection of changes that, if implemented, would fundamentally reshape the corruption of Washington. logo from http://anticorruptionact.org
So there's a provision that basically shuts down the Farm League for K Street. There's a provision that creates citizen-funded campaigns, building on the idea of vouchers funded through tax credits. There's a provision that fundamentally changes and challenges Citizens United, building on an idea, an observation that I made in my book, Republic Lost. And there's fundamental enhanced transparency that builds on the insights of the Sunlight Foundation to make it possible for us to understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, and how much time they're spending raising money in order to do it. image: K Street: AP / Charles Dharapak alt K St at : http://www.flickr.com/photos/glynlowe/7393130104/
This package is what I mean by bold,
not puny, reform. It is this kind of bold reform, not the puny reform, that we should be pushing.
Because in my view, this would work to change the way this system functions. So that's the message, a message focused on corruption.
Here's the method. It's a method that
the Wolf PAC has embraced. (Chang's sitting over here) image: http://www.wolf-pac.com /
So there's been enormous success in this progress towards petitioning our government to do the right thing. We write them letters, letters in the form of resolutions.
Those letters get filed. image: not found alt: http://pixabay.com/en/icon-office-cartoon-metal-free-30481/
Sometimes they get filed in a circular filing cabinet. Basketball hoop: Steven Johnson Flickr photostream
And my suggestion is we need to think about how we can act with more consequence. More consequence.
Ordinary way is Congress proposes, states ratify. Every amendment has followed that path -- except the original constitution Image of Article V: http://pixabay.com/en/constitution-united-states-usa-62947/
Article V embeds a procedure by which the States can call on Congress to call a Convention, a convention which proposes amendments, which like the other amendments are only valid of three fourths of the states, 38 states, ratify them.
Now there are two characteristics of this way of proceeding that I think are central.
First, it is cross-partisan, because people can be calling for a convention for any reason they want. And there is a strong conservative movement calling for a convention to address the problems of debt, the problem of a balanced budget, ideas that I don't have much sympathy for, but I do have sympathy for the idea that we need a way to address questions that isn't controlled by Congress.
And it is also the only procedure that has in our history actually worked to peacefully bring about a fundamental change in the way the government is structured.
Now you can say, "Never before have we had a convention." That's true.
But we've been close once.
That was 100 years ago, 1911, when the Senate was still appointed by the legislatures [see: http://foavc.org/file.php/1/Amendments]
and Congress was called upon to fix the Senate, because people perceived that to be the core of the corruption inside of the system, and Congress refused to fix the Senate by refusing to send out an amendment that could be ratified to change the way the Senate was elected.
And when the movement to call a convention was one state shy of the number it needed to call a convention,
Congress was terrified, and Congress' terror quickly changed their refusal into an agreement
to send out to the States an amendment that would eventually be the amendment that would make the Senate elected. So the very process of bringing about the movement for a constitutional Article V convention image: http://cdn.dipity.com/uploads/events/5c306326b89994541adbe1d642d8839e_1M.png
forced the change inside the system that those who pushed that convention wanted.
Every new state
is one step closer to there being a convention.
Every new state
has consequence for the potential that is needed to bring about the pressure necessary to force that cancer to be cured. So this is the method that I think we need to increasingly consider, to talk about openly, and to discuss and debate, and recognize there are questions it raises I get, but we need to move and evolve to address those questions if we're going to have a strategy that can in the end win.
So here it is. I have a slogan. I am not good at slogan-writing, but here's the slogan.
"Exopoliticians of the world, we have to unite behind the AA Act and force change with an Article V convention." There it is. OK, it's not quite a bumper sticker yet. It could be tweeted, but you know, not quite a bumper sticker yet. But this is the work we need to push to understand how this architecture, these architectures of changes can be the next step of this incredibly important movement
for change.
Now let me just end with this. I had the honor of going to New Hampshire earlier in this week to talk to some climate change scientists about the problem of money in their field, and I had to start by confessing to them that, I know, though, this is controversial.
Uploaded on June 30, 2006 by Steve Rhodes Al is still my hero here, and I showed them this clip from a TED talk that Al gave. http://www.flickr.com/pho tos/ari/178779981/
Al Gore: "I'm a big advocate of changing the light bulbs and buying hybrids, and Tipper and I put 33 solar panels on our house, and dug the geothermal wells, and have done all of that other stuff, but as important as it is to change the light bulbs, it is more important to change the laws. And when we change our behavior in our daily lives, we sometimes leave out the citizenship part and the democracy part. In order to be optimistic about this, we have to become incredibly active as citizens in our democracy. In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis." [From Al Gore’s Ted Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_on_averting_climate_crisis.html]
The democracy crisis. Now I have never been to an event that depressed me more than that event with climate change scientists talking about the state of climate change knowledge, because as we sat there and focused on the fact that indeed
the problem was much worse than we thought. It turned out Al Gore and his film-maker Davis Guggenheim, who's in the room here, were apologists, because they described it (I'm joking of course, right?), they described it in a way that turns out not to be as profoundly threatening as it is. I reflected on the fact that we're not making progress on this fundamental, for me the most fundamental, question. Indeed, after 2008, when both candidates ran saying this was a priority, 2012 happened, and neither candidate even mentioned the issue. Incredibly depressing. And then as I sat there and thought about every other issue that we think of as important -- image of smokestacks: not found alt: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_everett82/2290063942/
getting a health care system that works and that we could afford, image of syringe and pills: http://www.123rf.com/photo_815164_close-up-of-syringe-and-tablets-isolated-on-white-shallow-dof.html
getting reform on Wall Street that doesn't make our economy vulnerable to the gambles of the richest people in our society, i mage of Wall St. sign: Occupy Wall Street: Flikr user f-l-e-x http://www.flickr.com/photos/f-l-e-x/page3/
finding a way to address the fundamental debt crisis that will burden our children, and our children's children, and our children's children's children image: US National Debt Clock http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
I came back to this democracy crisis. This democracy crisis. You know, what the hell are we doing about this democracy crisis? I don't think of it so much as the democracy crisis.
I think of it as the republic crisis.
It's the crisis of living in Lesterland. The crisis of living in Lesterland,
and we were warned about this crisis. When Franklin was carried from the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and stopped in the street in Philadelphia by a woman, she said, "Mr. Franklin, what have you wrought?" Franklin said, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it." [see story at: http://www.bartleby.com/73/1593.html] Attribution: James McHenry’s notes we re included in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand, vol. 3, appendix A, p. 85 (1911, reprinted 1934), a footnote stated that the date this anecdote was written is uncertain. Image of Ben Franklin: benjamin-fran klin-0708-lg-23110915.jpg
A representative democracy.
A representative democracy.
A government dependent on the people alone.
We have not kept that republic. We have lost that republic.
And we must urgently find a way to act
to get it back.
And how?
Through a certain discipline. Image: Rev. Martin Luther King, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing right, speaking at a rally in Crawfordville, Georgia]." United Press International telephoto,1965 Oct 11. Prints and Photographs Divison of the Library of Congress.
Through a charity of that movement
We
Us
This movement
needs that discipline and charity now, if we are going to stop the insanity that is destroying this Nation