What A Citizen Can Do

Welcome to this conversation

Citizen! Episode 2: What A Citizen Can Do. A citizen can create the future for ourselves, our children, and our children’s children. It is what we are always doing, whether we know it or not. And if we don’t take our citizenship seriously, no one may want the future we leave them with. Apathy, discouragement and hopelessness are rampant in younger generations and they have seen little to make them feel differently. It’s time to change that, fellow citizens. Let’s listen deeply and act. This is about thought and action for November 3 and beyond.

What a Citizen Can Do

How are you feeling?

Anxiety and helplessness are higher surrounding this election than we usually see. There are many reasons, but how are you? What are you doing about it? Who are you connecting with?

Much of our anxiety comes from our present political climate and the impending election. Is being a citizen a cure for what ails us?

Consider whether these ring true for you.

Being a citizen offers

• A corrective to the individualistic forces that persistently pull us apart.

• It can slow the pendulum so that its swings are not so wide.

• It can make our wrestling with one another constructive,

• It can show us where and how we make a difference,

• It might even help us respect and value each other when we vehemently disagree.

From Kerri Miller’s MPR show on “The Role of the Young in 2020” LINK

These new members of society have never experienced a govt that wasn’t gridlocked and hyper-polarized. While the majority believed in our form of govt and were, in fact, interested in a stronger, more robust govt to solve our problems, they were disillusioned with how it was happening. Only 8% thought that government was working, and most thought that when it was working it was for corporations and the wealthy, not them.

The fear they expressed living with wasn’t from outside our borders, but things like climate change, student debt, access to housing, hate groups, and certainly the pandemic we are in now. Things, they expressed, that had to do with us, that we could be doing something about.

A definition of being a citizen from Eric Liu: To be a citizen is to be bound to others in mutual aid and obligation.

Something to contemplate:

The Social Fabric is woven with the threads of every individual. And when it is frayed, when it is unraveling, it is weaker for everyone. It also realizes that the picture that the fabric displays is more than any one individual or group in society can give to it. Who we are, what we will do and accomplish is an amalgam of what we all contribute. A design that uses us altogether in a way that is greater than any of us.

It’s only a hop, skip and a jump from there to see how this is a deeply spiritual enterprise.

Watch Eric Liu’s TED Talk, “There’s no such thing as not voting” LINK

“Voting matters because it is a self-fulfilling act of belief. It feeds the spirit of mutual interest that makes any society thrive. When we vote, even if it is in anger, we are part of a collective, creative leap of faith. Voting helps us generate the very power that we wish we had.”

What can Citizens do? 

• Citizens live with the tension of being an individual who exists in community.

“Voting isn’t intended to give you what you want, but to give us what we want. And that us and we are really big Us’s and We’s. The more we all buy into mutual aid and obligation the less our voting will feel like a win or a loss and the more it will feel like the way We move forward together.”

• Citizens respect their opponents

“That doesn’t mean to respect their ideas or actions, sometimes you will and sometimes you won’t, but respect the people behind them. All ideas are not of equal value, but all people are. The truth is that we don’t all have to like each other to be citizens together. It’s inevitable. As a population we are really different from each other! And that is a problem because it makes it really hard to work with each other. But it also holds strengths.

• Citizens don’t expect democracy to be a state, but they always work towards it.

“Democracy is not a state, it is a jenga tower with pieces being pulled out and placed on top, ready to topple over every day. It never quite works, but we can either be building it, or watching it crumble.”

From Eric Liu’s TED Talk:

“Why bother voting? Because there is no such thing as not voting. Not voting is voting, for everything that you may detest and oppose. Not voting can be dressed up as an act of principled, passive resistance, but in fact not voting is actively handing power over to those whose interests are counter to your own, and those who would be very glad to take advantage of your absence. Not voting is for suckers.”  

Last thought:

You are invited to imagine 100%. Everyone voting. A revolution of US happening.

You are invited to vote, and to invite others to vote. 

Make your voice be heard, but don’t just be a citizen for the election, work those bonds of mutual aid and obligation where and when you can, especially places and times you never thought of doing it before.

There is information about voting and how to participate in “Get out the Vote” type efforts at www.fabricmpls.com/vote

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