SENTIENT TIMES • February/March 2007

Bringing Democracy to Life

By Frances Moore Lappé

Most of us love to settle in with a judgment, to name our experience good or bad and be done with it. But this extraordinary moment in human history calls us to stretch our hearts—and our minds—to hold this era’s pain as well as its promise.
We can acknowledge the terrifying, rapid degradation of democracy’s core institutions and values … And, at the very same time, we can perceive and then pour ourselves into the emerging, powerful practice of democracy—Americans in every walk of life are discovering power within themselves to stay true to democracy’s core principles and to create solutions to our toughest problems. I believe it’s possible to hold both truths.
Contemporary social critics see America divided—left versus right, conservative versus liberal, religious versus secular. I disagree and even find these framings destructive. They deflect us from the most critical and perhaps the only division we have to worry about. It is that between those who believe in democracy—honest dialogue, basic fairness, mutual respect, inclusivity, and reciprocal responsibilities—and those who do not. In the latter category are those willing to put ends over means, violating these core principles in pursuit of an ultimate goal.
Democracy for me is hardly a yawn; it is a glorious concept that makes my heart sing. It conjures up a world of human striving, a journey in which we human beings keep on risking belief in ourselves.
Not in any abstract sense, but in my very bones, I have come to appreciate its power. That appreciation has grown as I’ve seen ever more clearly that our top-down strategies can’t fix our problems, whether they be homelessness, joblessness, environmental devastation, faltering health care, failing schools, AIDS, or discrimination. They can’t be solved simply by giving orders or by applying new technologies. They’re complex and interrelated; they touch us all.
To take the next step, to push democracy’s edge, we surely need help—help in imagining what is only barely coming into being, asking only that we allow ourselves to imagine the way that comes naturally to most people from the sparks others ignite in us:

• From the ingenuity and courage of those saying no to our increasingly centralized, inefficient, unfair economy and igniting a more human-scale, efficient, and just one.
• From those dismayed by our degraded media, excluding the voices of most Americans, and becoming media makers themselves.
• From those alarmed by the failure of their children’s schools and remaking them so that their kids love learning and contribute to their communities.
• From those fed up with top-down, money-driven politics and rewriting the rules so that citizens find their place at the center of public problem solving.
• From those frightened by the current approach to security and discovering the power of community connectedness to reduce violence and enhance peace of mind.

They’re demonstrating that democracy is not a separate, distant sphere—something done to us for us by faraway forces. It is part of the very essence of the good life, fulfilling our deep needs for meaning and community and for meaning in community. They tell us 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.

Frances Moore Lappé first drew international acclaim with the publication of her seminal book Diet for a Small Planet. She has written a series of influential books since then, including her latest, Democracy’s Edge, from which this piece was excerpted. A group of Rogue Valley organizations interested in strengthening local economies, supporting sustainable community-scale agriculture, and exploring the relationship between food and democracy is hosting Ms. Lappé in Ashland at SOU’s Britt Ballroom Wednesday Feb. 28, 7–9 pm. See page 25 or contact kirstenl@opendoor.com. (541) 488-2143.

SENTIENT TIMES
PO Box 1330 Ashland, OR 97520
PHONE (541) 512-1084 • FAX (541) 512-1085
dmokma@jeffnet.org