A force to reckon with
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
By Richard Anderson
It’s interesting – I really hadn’t thought about it before – but at a
Sunday night presentation on global climate change, Glenn Prickett of
Conservation International pointed out that many (all?) of the major
movements in the United States started out at the grassroots level
before they were embraced by the country’s elected leaders.
That seems like a true statement to me: abolition, women’s suffrage,
civil rights, Vietnam, right up to modern issues like funding for AIDS
and global climate change (I hope).
I’m sure each had its early champion in Washington, D.C. – a senator or
cabinet member or some such pillar of the community for whom it was a
pet cause – but mostly it was us, the people, the hoi polloi who spoke
loudly enough, clearly enough and in unison that elected officials and
their fellow power-brokers couldn’t ignore them.
The implications of that are profound.
On the one hand, it suggests that the United States really is a
democracy of the people, by the people and for the people, that the
direction of this country really is determined by its citizens, and
that the will of the masses really can force the hands of the fat cats
and entrenched politicians.
I, for one, had been wondering.
On the other hand, it also suggests that the forces of democracy are
not quite as orderly, predictable or malleable as political scientists
might think. It’s not always about counting ballots and taking polls.
It’s much quieter in many ways, like the grinding of tectonic plates,
and then much louder, like an earthquake – not to mention messier.
On the third hand, this sort of change from below appears to take a
long time. In their marble halls, politicians tend to be far removed
from the roiling masses – or at least they can pretend to be – so they
can maintain the status quo for a long time.
But once it acquires a critical mass and really gets rolling, a
grassroots effort has a huge amount of momentum, and anyone who gets in
its way is likely to get hurt.
Just imagine what else we Americans could accomplish if brought our
power to bear on healthcare, literacy, poverty, crime, our crumbling
infrastructure, our endangered natural resources…
But first things first, I suppose. We have a long way to go on the
daunting (but doable, CI’s Prickett assured) task of getting a grip on
our greenhouse gas emissions and stabilizing the forces that are
causing global climate change.
If we don’t get that one right, all the others may not matter.
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