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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A force to reckon with | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

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