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RECLAIMING DEMOCRACY
Rev. Dr. Dorothy May Emerson
Presented in October 2006 at the UU Church in Anaheim, CA, and at UU Community Church in Sacramento, CA

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Rev. Dr. Dorothy May Emerson is a Unitarian Universalist community minister with Rainbow Solutions, in Medford, Massachusetts, where she coordinates educational programs on socially responsible investing and on money and empowerment and serves as a consultant to organizations such as Promise the Children and Interfaith Worker Justice. Founder of the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society, she edited the Standing Before Us: Unitarian Universalist Women and Social Reform, 1776-1936 (Skinner House, 2000) and Glorious Women: Award-Winning Sermons about Women (iUniverse, 2004). She has written two feature articles for UU World: “The Microcredit Revolution” (March/April 2005) and “Seeds of Opportunity” (Spring 2006).

OPENING WORDS—Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry, 1949

We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; on another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the concept of perpetual warfare … But around and under and above it is another reality; like desert-water kept from the surface and the seed, like the old desert-answer needing its channels, the blessing of much work it arrives to act and make flower. The history of possibility … All we can do is believe in the seed, living in that belief.

MEDITATION—excerpts from Marge Piercy, “The Seven of Pentacles”

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground
You cannot tell always by looking at what is happening
More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet …

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses
Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after digging, after the planting
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

As we sit together now for a few moments of shared silence, may we pray to strengthen the connections we are weaving here in this community and around the nation and world. Amen. Blessed Be.

READING—from Cornel West, Democracy Matters, p. 22-23.

SERMON

I grew up in southern California. When I was in high school Herbert Philbrick came to town. His experience investigating communism as a counterspy for the FBI was the basis for a popular TV show, “I Led Three Lives.” The mother of a friend of mine was an active member of the local Republican group, and she got several of us girls invited to the private program before the big rally they let everyone out of school early to attend.

That day was my introduction to democracy as a game, not unlike football. Philbrick talked about how terrible it was to live under communism. People cheered democracy and booed communism, wherever it existed. And we were warned to watch out for communist infiltrators wherever we were.

For some reason, though, our little group of high school girls wasn’t impressed by the rah-rah atmosphere. The good vs. evil framework seemed a bit overdrawn to me. It was weird seeing this whole group of maybe 100 adults behaving like kids at a football game.

At the break a group of nuns asked us why we weren’t cheering. They wanted to know where we went to school, and when they found out, they said we had a really bad world history book and a teacher who might have communist leanings. Apparently the book said that in some ways the Russian people were better off under communism than under previous regimes, because under communism they had greater access to basic needs, like food, health care, and housing.

The nuns thought that no matter what communism provided for the Russian people, it was still evil—and that communist ideas and systems must be destroyed for democracy to survive.

I tell this story today not just for the local color, but because it demonstrates a clash of values not unlike that of today.

One view sees the world in terms of good and evil, although just what constitutes good and evil varies among different groups of people, some of whom are currently fighting each other. Some of these people believe we can make other countries adopt democracy by fighting wars. Others aren’t so sure they want democracy if it means so much killing and no improvement in their lives.

An alternative view understands that we are all connected, that we share a small planet that is in significant danger, and that we need to work together to solve our common problems. These people believe that democracy works best when it ensures that all citizens have equal opportunity to participate in decision-making and work for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Both groups believe in democracy, but they go about working for it in different ways.

Those in the first group understand democracy as a fixed system with certain institutional structures that can be set up and people taught to use. A key component of what makes democracy work is what they call a “free market economy.” War is justified as a tool to rid a country of its former government so a democratic system can be established in its place.

People in the second group do not believe democracy is a fixed system but rather “a set of system characteristics.” As Frances Moore Lappe writes in the recent UU World, this type of democracy is not about “dividing up power in new ways; it is about generating new power to create the world we want,” thus empowering people to manage their own lives and solve their own problems. This type of democracy must be lived to be learned. This group also believes in a market economy as long as it is managed by democratic principles—such as “inclusion, fairness, and mutual accountability.”

You may remember Frances Moore Lappe, as the author of Diet for a Small Planet, a book that revolutionized the way many people thought about the problem of world hunger and the inequitable distribution of food. In her recent book Democracy’s Edge, she describes two different forms of democracy. She calls what we have today, in most places in this country, “Thin Democracy.”

Thin Democracy believes that human nature is “selfish, competitive and materialistic,” and that government must be administered by elected officials who are responsible for solving any problems that might arise. Thin democracy assumes that once certain structures are in place—like multiple parties, fair elections, and an independent judiciary—the system can run pretty much on its own. Thin Democracy also assumes that a market economy based on the acquisition of wealth will provide sufficient resources for all citizens to get what they want and need to live.

This is the form of democracy we are currently seeking to establish in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Before we do that though, we might want to evaluate the results of this system in our own country.

First of all, fair elections are one of the basic building blocks of both types of democracy, yet in this country we need “clean election” campaigns and laws to insure that wealthy people and special interests don’t buy elections, that every vote cast is counted, and that elected officials are not indebted to special interests once they take office. Right now in Washington there are approximately 60 paid lobbyists for every elected representative. Their influence is huge—and no one elected them.

Secondly, the American economy is in decline. The top 1 percent of households in this country has more wealth than the entire bottom 95 percent combined. One in five workers in the US is paid less than is needed to keep a family of four out of poverty. The buying power of the so-called minimum wage has dropped 25% in the last 5 years. As a result personal bankruptcies—over half of which are triggered by a health crisis—are up a third since the turn of the century.

Poverty in America is so bad that people are dying because of it. 18,000 American citizens die each year because they lack—or can’t afford—adequate health care.

But the worst result of our current system, in my mind, is that 35 million Americans—many of whom are children—face hunger on an almost daily basis. 35 million, by the way, is the approximate total population of Canada. It’s as if we had a whole country in our midst at risk of starvation. In the United States of America. The land of democracy. Something isn’t working, folks. Thin Democracy isn’t working.

The alternative Frances Lappe calls “Living Democracy.” Living Democracy believes that “within human nature are deep needs for fairness, cooperation, and effectiveness,” and that people themselves are capable of learning skills that enable them to solve their own problems. Living Democracy is not a fixed structure but rather “an evolving, values-driven culture” created by the people who are living it. Like Thin Democracy, Living Democracy relies on open, competitive markets. The difference is that Living Democracy believes these markets need to be based on principles that serve people and the planet and guided by democratic policies in order to provide adequate wealth distribution so that all people are enabled not only to survive but to thrive.

Cornel West, in his book Democracy Matters, also identifies two different understandings of democracy. The first he also calls “thin democracy.” He writes: “To focus solely on electoral politics as the site of democratic life is myopic. Such a focus fails to appreciate the crucial role of the underlying moral commitments and visions and fortifications of the soul that empower and inspire a democratic way of living in the world.” In contrast, he traces expressions of what he calls “deep democracy” back to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, he says, “understood that democracy is not only about the workings of the political system but more profoundly about individuals being empowered and enlightened … in order to help create and sustain a genuine democratic community, a type of society that was unprecedented in human history.”

Sometimes I think we fail to appreciate what an amazing experiment democracy really is—and what a challenge it presents if it is to be actualized. Both Cornel West and Frances Lappe challenge us to step up to the plate and make democracy real.

The first step is seeing what the problems are. Frances Lappe and Cornel West both identify significant obstacles to living deep democracy.

One of the obstacles is the idea that we cannot limit campaign spending because to do so would be to limit free speech. This myth is being challenged by the success of clean elections laws which have the opposite effect of increasing access to public dialog, rather than allowing those who can afford it to dominate the conversation by buying all the air time.

Another obstacle is the belief that the so-called free market brings us all prosperity. Cornel West calls this “free-market fundamentalism,” which “trivializes the concern for public interest,” puts “fear and insecurity in the hearts of anxiety-ridden workers,” and renders “money-driven, poll-obsessed elected officials deferential to corporate goals of profit, often at the cost of the common good.”

The problem is there is no such thing as a free market. In California, that may be a dangerous thing to say, since it was Ronald Reagan who convinced people that the “magic of the market” would cure all ills.

The idea that deregulation is a way to get government off our backs is, as Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation, puts it “just plain wrong. When you deregulate,” he explains, ”you’re not reducing the state’s involvement one iota. You’re merely shifting whose interest government is acting for. Every time the state rolls back standards for environmental quality, worker safely, or consumer protection in the name of deregulation, what’s actually happening is that the state is creating more rights for corporations …. In a deregulated economy, the state remains heavily involved in the economy, but now on the side of corporations rather than on the side of citizens and the environment.”

Thomas Jefferson, one of the primary architects of American democracy, warned: “I hope we shall … crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country.”

Seeing problems like these--and more--is one step, but what can we do to change things, to make democracy come alive more fully? That is the question, isn’t it? What are we going to do?

On the new TV show “Jericho,” the one about the town that survives after a nuclear explosion, one of the community leaders put the question this way: “Are we going to use our imaginations to solve problems or to cause them?” Fortunately, the imaginations of our citizens are leading to innovative solutions to the problems at hand. Here’s just one example.

In 1994 food bank workers in Baltimore, Maryland, noticed that many of the people they served were employees of city contractors. Even though they worked full time, they weren't making enough money to provide for the basic needs of their families.

The food bank workers did not think this was fair, so they launched one of the first contemporary living wage campaigns. Now some 120 communities have living wage ordinances, requiring government agencies and companies that contract with cities and towns to pay wages sufficient for people to live in their communities. What a concept—getting paid enough to live on. One interesting result from this imaginative solution is that in many cases, these new policies have reduced the need for taxpayer dollars to fund public subsidies to provide basic needs. And certainly workers feel better knowing that they can support their families with their own earnings.

But still many people feel that whatever they do just isn’t enough to really make a difference. As Frances Lappe explains: Many people “disparage their acts as mere drops in the bucket, as useless. But think about it,” she says. “Buckets fill up really fast on a rainy night. Such feelings of powerlessness come not from seeing oneself as a drop, but from not seeing the bucket.”

We need to understand our actions in support of deep, living democracy as part of a larger whole. One of the people who learned to do this is Marge Mead. Marge is originally from Wisconsin, lived in California for a few years, and moved to Arizona in the 1980s. She and her husband raised eight children and now have 10 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. In her 70s now, Marge took her first college class at age 42 and got her master’s degree at 51. Then she taught at the community college where she had begun her own college education. When she retired from teaching about 10 years ago, Marge decided to join a number of organizations she had been interested in but too busy to join earlier in her life.

One of those organizations was the League of Women Voters. Shortly after she joined, several leaders of the group were going away for the summer and asked Marge to fill in by attending some meetings on campaign finance reform.

At that point, Marge says she was “pretty ignorant about politics in general,” but felt strongly about the power of money to corrupt the election process. She puts it this way: “It stands to reason that there’s going to be quid pro quo. Big campaign donors aren’t in it for altruism. They don’t consider their money a contribution; they consider it an investment.”

At the first meeting Marge attended, no one was taking notes. Marge had been a secretary earlier in her life, so she volunteered. This launched her new career as a political activist—what Frances Lappe calls “a citizen leader in a critical battle for democracy.”

At first Marge was in awe “of all of the ramifications of writing an initiative [that might] become law.” She says: “At first, I felt insecure. The law is complicated.” But as she traveled around talking to different groups about the issues, she became increasingly confident. To get the Clean Elections Act on the ballot, the coalition needed to collect over 100,000 signatures. They managed to do it, and to win the election.

After the law took effect in 1998, Marge went out in her precinct to help candidates collect the many small contributions they needed to qualify for public funding. People were really impressed when they got to meet an actual candidate. Making contributions helps people feel invested both in the candidate and in the electoral process, Marge says.

I asked Marge what the results have been of having a Clean Elections program in the state for eight years. She reports that candidate participation has increased from 25 percent in 2000 to almost 60 percent this year. Currently, 10 of 11 Arizona statewide elected officials, including the governor, secretary of state, treasurer, and attorney general were all elected with public financing. The amount of private, mostly special interest, funding for candidates has dropped from $11 million in 1998 to $2.3 million in 2004, while the number of candidates and contested races has risen. Now more women and people of color are running for office, and voter turnout is growing. Sounds to me like Living Democracy is on the rise in Arizona.

Practically everywhere you look there are people like Marge who are reclaiming democracy and making it real, confronting the very real problems of our world today and working with others to create solutions. These are the stories we need to hear, to help us know that we too can be part of bringing democracy to life. Knowing that this congregation and many other citizen groups around the country are also engaged in this process gives me hope that this remarkable idea of government “by the people for the people” shall not only not perish but shall thrive. If we can learn to make democracy work here in this country, I have no doubt others will want to learn from us how to make it work in their countries.

“Democracy is not a separate, distant sphere—something done to us or for us by faraway forces,” Frances Lappe writes. “It is part of the very essence of the good life, fulfilling our deep needs for meaning and community and for meaning in community. … Our challenge is not simply to reclaim what’s been lost. It is to push democracy’s edge. We learn that to save the democracy we thought we had, we must take democracy to where it’s never been.”

We live in paradoxical times. May we see beyond the social and environmental decline that fills us with fear and sadness and see the breakthroughs that are happening every day. May we be empowered not only to reclaim the democracy we thought we had, but also to push democracy’s edge and take democracy to where it’s never been. Amen. Blessed Be.

For more information, visit www.rainbowsolutions.us

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