I don't think there's enough dialogue in this country.
You have to excuse me. I'm a peacemaker by temperament, and I'm a trained mediator, so I have a thing about dialogue. Let me explain.
There's not enough dialogue in the American culture. Between leaders and voters. Between party factions. With anybody. But I want to talk about politics and civic participation.
We are starved for real political dialogue in this country. The Party and our government is this separate behemoth. The public feel isolated, alone, not fully informed. People feel talked at, manipulated, condescended to, ignored. And we are left to speculation and gossip, and we feel they don't want our input, they just want us to just do what they say. "Give us your money and your vote and shut up."
I've got several dialogue stories below the fold:
First: Democratic Party Politicians:
I went to a DSCC conference in 2002, I believe, in DC where there were about 150 participants and about 20 Democratic Senators doing panel discussions about various issues including health care, education and foreign policy. It was a big donor event - you had to pay at least $1000 to attend the one-day event, and that included lunch with a bunch of them. The ratio of participant to Senator was pretty low so there were lots of opportunities to chat. I hadn't paid, however, for the reception in the evening, which cost an extra $5,000, I believe, but because of my enthusiasm and persistence, I suppose, I managed to get in anyway. The ratio was even lower there. Then there was the dinner which was even more expensive, (write or raise $10,000?) and I didn't expect to go to that, but as I was walking to the taxi stand, a staffer ran after me and said "Hey, we have some no shows and some extra seats. Why don't you come?" So I did. After sitting with the staff for a bit, a seat opened up next to Dick Durbin at a table of about 8 or 10 people. So I got to sit next to Durbin for dinner.
We had a nice chat about lots of things, including his daughter in art school and the movie business, and NAFTA. Around the table were people of various backgrounds but pretty much little political involvement except donating lots of money. Wealthy people. A textile businessman, a woman who worked at CISCO, a couple of artists, and I can't remember who else. We talked for a while about the difficulties of discussing trade issues and China with workers and also with farmers, if I recall, and then Durbin expressed his regret at having voted for NAFTA, and also expressed being a little frustrated at how to deal with the issue moving forward. People expressed their frustrations about jobs and China from their varying points of view, and Durbin expressed his. This was several years ago so I can't recall any more detail than that. Hopefully I got the gist of it, but what I want to point out is the insight I got into the world of a Senator from this conversation and a bit of insight from a variety of perspectives on trade including from the point of view of someone who had voted for NAFTA. It was very valuable to me. Now, people paid lots of money for that little dialogue, and it is a rare opportunity. Too rare. I managed to maneuver in to the opportunity without paying, but generally that hasn't been an option for most people. There was much more insight gained from that dialogue into Senator Dick Durbin than I would have been able to glean from his website and voting record alone.
Daily Kos has changed that and has given us this same sort of opportunity for and access to dialogue without having to shell out huge amounts of cash.
Opportunities like this are not an end in themselves. They are not the answer to all our problems, but they do expand us as citizens, and I would hope the dialogue also provides an opportunity for elected officials to get feedback and a deeper understanding of how they are perceived and how issues are perceived. Plus, since we like to hear from them, they get to ask for money and we often like to give it. But we also don't have to in order to get access. This is a massive breakthrough in participatory Democracy. It makes us better voters.
But why is it so important to talk to politicians? Isn't that just about hobnobbing with celebrities? Well, no, because they are the ones making the laws and taking the actions. We don't get to do that part. We only get to do the voting and campaigning part.
We just want answers, we want to feel listened to, to feel heard and valued. We want to know what's going on in our nation, and what they are thinking, what they are up to. This is why the overwhelming reaction of most voters when they get a knock at the door from a canvasser for a candidate, or even better, from the candidate themselves, is ENTHUSIASM. I remember walking for a Santa Monica city council candidate once, and this guy answered the door when I knocked by barely cracking open the door and peering at me very suspiciously and asking gruffly what I wanted. When I told him I wanted to talk to him about the city council race he threw open the door and came out on the porch and told me everything he was thinking about the race, and asked me lots of questions about my candidate. More often than not people said "You know, because you're the only one who has come by to actually talk to me, I'm going to vote for your guy!"
What I would like politicians to know is this: Fill us in. DailyKos is a tool for that. Include us as much as you can so we can help you. I tell ya, there'd be a whole lot more sympathy and support and a whole lot less rancor for Democrats over the NSA illegal wiretapping business if they would just TALK TO US about what they're thinking instead of saying "TALK TO THE HAND." Even just acknowledging "Yeah, we hear you, we understand how concerned you are, we are working on ways to impact this situation in concrete ways, we will let you know what we're thinking as soon as we can...." would have made SO much difference to us. WOULD STILL make so much difference. We wouldn't drop it, that's for sure, we want real action, but it would give us a little more room for faith.
But this also doesn't just apply to politicians. How many times have you read a book or an article and thought "Hey waitaminute, what about this or that fact, or issue? What did they mean by that." Most people don't think to write the authors, or get up the nerve to, although some do, but usually the chances of a dialogue, a response with the authors is slim to none. Until blogs came along, Now at least we get the value of experts (Jerome a Paris, etc) or journalist bloggers (Josh Marshall) to critique these things so that we don't have to read them in isolation, inside a vacuum. We get the value of the accumulated knowledge of thousands of other people who have read the same things and put in their two cents. Hugely valuable for us as citizens. It expands our knowledge base, allows us to test out our instincts, ask our dumb questions. Lots of people out there have never had the opportunity to play in the field of ideas at the level that more fortunate people have. I noticed quite the contrast when I moved to Buffalo from LA in the lack of opportunity for access and to dialogue and hear first hand from leaders in various fields, from the world's leading minds. The internet democratizes this knowledge quite a bit more.
That's what's so great about DailyKos. We get bonddad, teacherken, others with real expertise, life experience that is different than ours and we don't just get to read what they say and make assumptions about it, we get to TALK to them about it. We get to talk to Jerome in Paris, the Welshman (hey...where is he?) Plutonium Page in Holland, Armando in Puerto Rico, Jay Elias who lives in New York but has lived in Israel, Cletus from Canuckistan, people all across the country in cities, towns, rural areas, south, east, north, west, young and old about their perspectives and give input from our own.
This is good for Democracy. This should be nurtured and expanded upon. DailyKos is unique in that it is the leading internet destination not for just information to be read and absorbed, but for democratized political discourse.
Another story: Parallel conversations instead of dialogue.
As I mentioned in my diary about good, bad and ugly protest, I was involved in anti-death penalty actions back in the `90s in California. I was at this protest at San Quentin, annoyed at the uselessness of this particular event, and sat back on a curb and just watched as the nuns and the rednecks waved their signs at each other. What the hell good was all this doing? Then I saw this woman talking to a couple of guys who were clearly pro-death penalty. I went over and listened to what was happening, and much to my surprise, they were having a very civilized conversation. The woman was very carefully and compassionately explaining the perspective of family members of the condemned while respecting the families of the murder victims. Turns out she was the wife of a death row inmate. The pro-death penalty guys were listening, and engaging. I joined the conversation and started talking to this guy whose photo could have been in the dictionary next to "redneck stereotype." Calling Central Casting! Blond buzz cut, dirty jeans, work boots, red friggin' flannel shirt with a wife beater underneath. And a Budweiser. He and I ended up talking the whole night. We talked about what we had in common, not what our differences were. We talked about the value of human life. We talked about juvenile crime and the importance of juvenile diversion and programs for at-risk youth. We talked about activism. I learned that he was a lot like me, that after a friend had been imprisoned for killing the man that was raping his sister, he and his friends wrote to their elected officials and made legislative visits bringing concerns to them about their communities. He talked about how this friend ended up in jail for just a few years, but after having been there and gotten on the wrong side of a gang fight, he was murdered shortly after getting out of prison. At the moment of execution at San Quentin, he and I bowed our heads in a moment of silence while the rest of the protestors shouted at each other. (Ok, the nuns weren't shouting....., but they were holding signs while others yelled at them.) Then we shook hands, and exchanged numbers to continue the dialogue. We talked for months after that about Polly Klaas's murderer, about his friends on the edge of jail, about at risk youth programs, and about dialogue in general across divides where people don't generally think it's possible to have dialogue.
This is kind of an extreme example, but how often in our lives do we avoid these conversations because we think we know how they'll turn out? How many times do we choose to talk to those we agree with instead? These sort of parallel non-intersecting conversations happen all over our society and in our day-to-day lives. How many times do we make assumptions about people and make decisions based on those assumptions about how a conversation will go without even having the conversation and then we write the whole thing off? Particularly in the political arena, I have noticed this happening. Oh, that person doesn't like Howard Dean so what's the point of talking to them about changing the way the party operates? This person worked with Jane Harman so they will never be on our side. This person is a new grass/netroots member so therefore they won't appreciate my experience over the years and value what I have to say. He's DLC - written off. He didn't come to this protest - written off. This person is a consultant - written off. This person is just about the Iraq vote - written off.
Try on that you don't know how the conversation will go.... so have the conversation anyway.... When we don't do this, we are left with parallel conversations that don't intersect, with gossip, misinformation, and conventional wisdom has nothing to do with what is really happening, but if it's talked about enough inside a vacuum, then it becomes truth. And that's bad for Democracy and for our country.
There are people who have never met any elected official, or best selling author, or people who feeel like they do but have been out in the world a little more. People might feel like they could never approach people like that or be able to get a question answered by Jimmy Carter, for instance. But here they can, and not by being the highest bidder. And if that helps them speak up when they run into their congressperson or legislator in their hometown or region when they wouldn't have before, that's outstanding. I think that's something that differentiates DKOS from other blogs. We don't just write and post. We TALK. Many people just read here. MOST people just read here. But lots of serious people TALK, too. A not insignificant amount, I might add, even when you reduce the count to only the couple of thousand who post comments or diaries. It is always a substantial gathering of Democrats and progressives here every day. Every day there are way more people than any single democratic club could ever handle. And as we saw from Yearly Kos, many who read and do not comment still participate and get great value and motivation not just from the initial posts themselves, but the comments and the dialogue too.
I'm going to keep asking for dialogue of every person who comes here. Sirota, Feingold, Harman, Vilsack, any of them and all of them, and all of you. And I won't apologize for asking, because dialogue is powerful. It teaches people, it empowers people way more than just reading what other people write does.