Citizenship - "Not Leaders, But Leadership"

People are programmed to avoid painful decisions, and these days it appears as though many politicians are as well, for obvious reasons. Basic choices force people to analyze their deepest motives. As long as politics is around, and political representatives say that are willing to make those choices on our behalf, we put off having to make such judgments.  That all changes with citizen politics, and the shifting of responsibility from a political task to one of politicians and citizens deliberating together.A group of citizens coming together to consider the larger issues of their community life must understand that getting an education is job one. If we’re going to be making those difficult decisions then we have to know what the issues truly are – their complexities can drive you mad. But we don’t have to all go running to a bookstore for help. Numerous resources are available to citizens, but the best educators are those we perhaps had doubts about in the first place. Bureaucrats and politicians attain impressive knowledge on issues – the bureaucrats by training; the political representatives by legislating. They are not to be ignored but conscripted into the new citizen model. It isn’t designed to replace politics but to enhance it. Significant resources were put into training civil servants and political representatives and citizen groups should plumb them instead of developing a parallel initiative.This education is essential because citizens have to make choices that give direction to governments and define the common purposes and aspirations of our communities. In citizen politics, leaders aren’t the important component – leadership is. If we are introducing a new kind of politics into our communities – public politics – then the direction must come from collaborative citizens, not just gifted or elected individuals. We need education in order to transform politics, not replace it.Once that education is underway (it never ends), we must settle into the task of becoming a “mediating” institution that will serve as a buffer between ourselves and the dizzying structure that is official government. Tocqueville caught this almost on his first day touring America, as when he noted: "Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are thousands … of different types … If they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association."Such assemblies of citizens were pulled together not to hold political representatives accountable but to express their desire to be part of the overall life of their respective communities. This last facet delighted Tocqueville.I’ve been to Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, and found it fascinating – a city designed and built before people populated it. It was vast, an architect’s dream, and an interesting human experiment; but it was weird. Every other community I’d visited grew like an organism, developing opportunities, problems, and characteristics over time. We can’t build totally new cities or towns in order to escape the endemic difficulties of our communities, and so we must work within the systems of management that are already present. And if we desire to take part in the bigger picture, it will inevitably have us dealing with politics – the very kind of oversight that agitated us for change in the first place. We want to be part of a public rather than just a mass of unassociated people and supporting the political process with new community insights and empowerment will be the way we do that.But we won’t be there to play the game or press our own partisanship. We will be dedicated to changing the way politics operates, to changing its character. And what makes this kind of citizen politics different is that it focuses on community as a whole, rather than on one specific issue. There are already many groups of dedicated citizens functioning like that; we will aim more broadly. To do so, we study the links between a variety of difficulties within our community instead of one specific problem. We will build a comprehensive outlook and will be dedicated to working it out over the long-term. This concept is what will keep us from becoming mired in individual pursuits and problems because it seeks to build community rather than just examining one of its issues.Such a group won’t be made up of special interests, but of individual citizens who form alliances with others – citizens, researchers, bureaucrats, media, etc. – to support the well-being of the entire community. It doesn’t require staff, per se, but learns to depend on expertise already present in the community and a strong volunteer spirit – citizens do the work. It encourages people to join forces, by creating networks and partnerships. In a phrase, it builds a civic infrastructure as a complementary support to the political infrastructure already in existence. The whole of its efforts will be greater than the sum of its individual parts or issues.This isn’t about responding to a crisis, where citizen support can dissipate as quickly as it arrived, but about long-term development that requires patience and sacrifice. Such a group is in it to deal with the problem, not just the symptoms, and that will take copious amounts of time. It will relate with institutions and governments, believing it can be of some assistance and a source of gathering community support – a source of support to politics, so to speak. It builds a bridge between the public realm and the complex worlds of governments and institutions. This is largely the one great missing piece in our democracy today and it will require citizens, not governments, to put it in place.