My last couple of days have been full of questions and conversations about activism and the U.S. political system and, since I’ve gotten a bit of friendly flack for never finishing up my alphabet, I thought I might return to the blogosphere on this blackout day to share some thoughts.
Let’s start there, at the blackout. It has been hard to ignore the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign. My Facebook and Twitter feeds are abuzz with re-posts about internet censorship and First Amendment rights. WordPress, Google, Wikipedia, and more of my frequently accessed sites are all in visible protest of these bills. I’ve joined the protest by penning a couple of letters to my congressional representatives. I am heartened by what seems to be widespread civic participation on an important issue. This participation is clearly motivated by corporate power – when Wikipedia restricts access to its services and Google offers people an easy petition to sign, people respond. I don’t think this is a bad thing. In fact, I’d argue that this serves as an example of corporations using their influence for good. Still, I find myself baffled that we can rally so quickly and so powerfully for the defeat of this bill, but we can’t get ourselves together to support legislation that would, say, end homelessness.
The blackout is working already, and the protests against the construction of the potentially hugely destructive Keystone XL pipeline seem to be gaining some major ground. Three cheers for democracy in action! I just wish we were better at getting good legislation passed, rather than just defeating bad legislation.
And on that note, yesterday I attended a forum hosted by the Annie E. Casey and W.K. Kellogg Foundations called “The Politics of Economic Opportunity: Will Growing Poverty Affect Election 2012?” The forum’s first panel contained a bipartisan spread of pollsters and famed political strategists who all said that despite the public’s growing concern about poverty in the U.S., the presidential candidates are not doing enough to address the issue in their campaigns. In a Kellogg-funded study:
- 88% of likely voters said that poverty is “very important” when deciding their votes for president.
- 88% also said candidates’ positions on equal opportunity for children of all races is important to their decision.
- Half of the voters surveyed also said they had not heard enough from the candidates or the media about reducing poverty during the campaign.
I’m glad to see people saying that poverty issues are important to them, but I find myself suspicious. If that many people care that much about these issues, we can force the point. We can demand that our candidates answer tough questions about poverty in order to get our votes, but we’re clearly not. How do we change that? How do we motivate each other to demand that our government representatives actually do something about these issues we say we care about?
Our disapproval rating of Congress is now at 84%. That’s a historic high.
The blackout and these initial Keystone pipeline victories demonstrate that the power of the collective still exists. The Occupy movement and Tea Party demonstrate that we’re still willing to organize. My hope is that the strength of “we the people” is on the uptick, and the change we’ve been waiting for is just around the corner.
