Stay ConnectedA show that takes the big ideas in civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for everyday people.
Join host Mila Atmos for in-depth conversations with citizen changemakers that inspire civic action and hope. Citizen participation is fundamental to a thriving democracy. Now more than ever, our engagement is critical.
Copyright: © 2023 Mila Atmos
Meet your Member of Congress
If a lawmaker has not yet made a firm decision on an issue, an in-person meeting has a ninety-four percent efficacy rate as an advocacy strategy. It's important for constituents to connect a personal story to pertinent information of how proposed legislation will impact the local community. This is what the lawmaker wants to know. Showing up at town hall meetings is also an effective way to share the needs and concerns of the community to the member of Congress.
Congress works for usMost members of Congress are decent people trying to do the best they can for their constituents. Engaging with them in a polite manner can be the best way for them to truly hear and understand the concerns of the people they represent. Congressional staffers are the unsung patriots of our democracy, who are dedicated to make the world a better place even though they often take a lot of grief on behalf of their members of Congress.
Virtual protest and dialogueVirtual protest is one of the most effective ways to interact with members of Congress. After the lawmaker has made remarks on a specific issue, posting comments on Facebook or Twitter that pertain to that issue will be seen. Email petitions also work as long as they are personalized so that they don't end up in a junk folder. Moderated online town hall meetings and telephone town hall calls are also good ways to dialogue with the elected representative.
Find out more:Brad Fitch is the President & CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation. He has spent 25 years in Washington as a journalist, congressional aide, consultant, college instructor, Internet entrepreneur, and writer/researcher. He is the author of Citizen's Handbook to Influencing Elected Officials Opens a New Window. Click here to read CMF's 2017 report, "Citizen Centric Advocacy: The Untapped Power of Constituent Engagement." You can follow Brad on Twitter @bradfitch
Effective advocacy
The Gathering excels at bringing coalitions together with a common agenda; rapid and urgent response to crisis situations in communities; organizing, like marching in protest to Washington, D.C., from New York; and advocacy for criminal justice reform bills with members of Congress. In addition, it works with incarcerated youth through cultural education and non-violence training, and facilitates dialogue between communities and formerly incarcerated people.
Kingian nonviolenceKingian non-violence is the practice of de-escalating tensions between groups who disagree and discussing their differences peacefully. Some of the principles are to suspend first judgments and to attack the forces of evil not the people doing evil. Meeting people where they are creates a level playing field, which makes it possible to champion others to your cause. In 2010 North Lawndale High School had the highest instances of daily violence in public school in the Chicago area. After training students in Kingian non-violence, the school went two academic years without a single violent incident.
The power of storytellingAt the intersection of art, theater, and activism, our stories can be shared for powerful effect. The Exonerated, a play of monologues by inmates on death row successfully showed their humanity and helped change the misconceptions and conversations around the death penalty. Bringing the stories of the actual, lived experience to the public provides a perspective that raises awareness and expands our discourse beyond stereotypes.
Find out more:Julianne Hoffenberg is the Director of Operations of The Gathering For Justice. She is also Co-Founder of Project A.L.S.; theater and film producer; Advisory Board member of SAY, an artistic home for children who stutter; and member of the theater company, Naked Angels. You can follow Julianne on Twitter at @JulesHoffenberg.
1963 March on Washington
The 1963 March on Washington was the first mass protest in America. Due to the anxiety around such a massive group descending on Washington, the March was carefully planned from the top down by both the organizers and the Kennedy administration. The route was mapped out to march by the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, away from the White House and the Capitol. All the signs were made by one entity and bore uniform messages.
Women's MarchThe Women's Marches of 2017 were a decentralized, grassroots effort that yielded 5 million protestors nationwide, in red states and blue states, in urban as well as rural areas. In many small communities, the Marches of 2017 were the largest protests they had ever seen. The geographic spread is as significant as the total number of marches.
The power of protestProtest can be a powerful tool to effect change in many forms. It can raise awareness on an issue and shift the debate surrounding it. Protest can intensify the urgency of an issue and expand the ideas of political possibility of public policies. On a personal level, protest is an act of faith, a way of registering discontent or stand behind an issue, and even a way to connect to something larger than ourselves.
Find out more:L.A. Kauffman is a longtime grassroots organizer who has mobilized mass protests against the war in Iraq in 2003-2004 and most recently collaborated with the artist Nan Goldin to hold a protest against the Sacklers at the Guggenheim Museum in February 2019. She is the author of How to Read a Protest, The Art of Organizing and Resistance and Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism. She also contributes to The Guardian. You can follow her on Twitter @LAKauffman.
Our new season examines the power of protest and other civic action. Guests include activists who protest and advocates who don't, from Brad Fitch of the Congressional Management Foundation and Jackie Zammuto of WITNESS to Micah White, co-founder of Occupy Wall Street, and more.
This is a bonus episode from the Democracy Works podcast, which examines what it means to live in a democracy. Host Jenna Spinelle interviews David Frum, the author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. He discusses how we can use the tools of civic engagement to build the democracy we want for ourselves and for future generations.
David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
Rebuilding democracy from the ground up
We need representatives who truly represent the people by directly engaging with and listening to their constituents. Removing the power of political action committees (PACs), special interests, and corporations is vital to getting our democracy back and making sure that elected government is responsive to the interests and concerns of human beings.
Work together and set aside differencesAchieving bipartisan collaboration comes through putting the small differences, including parties, behind us. Compromise is key in being able to pass legislation that will benefit all Americans on issues as diverse as healthcare, the cost of higher education, and immigration.
Big Money corrodes our democracyOur representatives are not corruptible on the issues that they really care about, but they often vote along with special interests when they are not experts, and don't have a specific need to vote a certain way. It's these little decisions in the aggregate that create dysfunction and disconnect between Congress and the people.
Find out more:Beto O'Rourke is the former US Representative for El Paso, TX, and is running for President. He regularly shared his thoughts from his Senate campaign on Medium.
Rebuilding democracy from the ground up
We need representatives who truly represent the people by directly engaging with and listening to their constituents. Removing the power of political action committees (PACs), special interests, and corporations is vital to getting our democracy back and making sure that elected government is responsive to the interests and concerns of human beings.
Work together and set aside differencesAchieving bipartisan collaboration comes through putting the small differences, including parties, behind us. Compromise is key in being able to pass legislation that will benefit all Americans on issues as diverse as healthcare, the cost of higher education, and immigration.
Big Money corrodes our democracyOur representatives are not corruptible on the issues that they really care about, but they often vote along with special interests when they are not experts, and don't have a specific need to vote a certain way. It's these little decisions in the aggregate that create dysfunction and disconnect between Congress and the people.
Find out more:Beto O'Rourke is the former US Representative for El Paso, TX, and is running for President. He regularly shared his thoughts from his Senate campaign on Medium.
Revisit some of the highlights of this season that gave us so much insight into poverty in America, added to our discourse, and helped us revise our thinking.
The end of welfare
Welfare ceased being guaranteed after reform in 1996. Although the safety net for the working class was strengthened through tax credits, the safety net for those who are jobless disappeared. In its current state, the welfare system is overwhelming and underfunded. States are given block grants that they can spend at their discretion. For example, Louisiana spends its money on anti-abortion clinics. As a result, over the course of a year, about 3.5 million children live in households with virtually no cash income for at least 3 months.
Cash is kingCash has the ultimate function: it can be used to pay rent, utilities, food, school supplies, and more. Although food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid help needy families, these cashless forms of assistance cannot address other necessities in life. Access to cash can be pivotal to keeping a job – to fill your car with gas so you can go to work – or a roof over your head while you look for a new job after being downsized.
The poor are true AmericansAmerica's poor are the very embodiment of American ideals. Living in poverty is incredibly complex, a daily challenge to which the poor rise. They take pride in their work and find purpose at the workplace. They are hard-working, resourceful, and enterprising. Poor families spend their money wisely to keep their children fed and sheltered, and they stretch every dollar to make ends meet.
Find out more: Kathryn Edin is one of the nation's leading poverty researchers, working in the domains of welfare and low-wage work, family, life, and neighborhood contexts through direct, in-depth observations of the lives of low-income populations. A qualitative and mixed-method researcher, she has taken on key mysteries about the urban poor that have not been fully answered by quantitative work, such as how do single mothers possibly survive on welfare? Why don't more go to work?
She has authored 8 books and some 60 journal articles. $2 a Day: The Art of Living on Virtutally Nothing in America, co-authored with Luke Shaefer, was met with wide critical acclaim. It was included in the NYT 100 Notable Books of 2015, cited as "essential reporting about the rise in destitute families."
Poverty is widespread
Hardship in America is common. In all of rich democracies, we have the highest rates of poverty among the elderly and also among children. In fact, the majority of Americans will be poor for a significant period of time over the course of their lives: 62% percent will have their income at the bottom 20 percent for a year or more in their adult life, and 42% percent have income for a year or more at the bottom 10 percent of the distribution. About 21% of children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level.
Misconceptions about povertyAmericans perceive poverty to be the result of bad decisions and judgments, a moral failure of an individual. Most poverty is, in fact, insecurity because the poor do not have stable, well-paying jobs. Most of the poor do have jobs, but they slip in and out of the official poverty rate on a regular basis. They are living on the margins and are one crisis away from devastation. The immense stress due to being poor causes a cognitive impairment load in both children and adults that reduces their ability to engage in good decision making. Finally, inequality makes it difficult for democratic political systems to function effectively.
Assistance that worksThere is a convergence among researchers that the single most efficient and effective means of reducing poverty is cash assistance. Successful public policy examples include the GI Bill after WWII, which provided free college education, a living stipend, free medical care, and subsidized mortgages; Social Security lifted 27 million people above the poverty line in 2017; and in the same year, the Earned Income Tax Credit that benefits the working poor with a tax refund helped 8 million Americans out of poverty.
Find out more:Stephen Pimpare is a nationally recognized expert on poverty, homelessness, and U.S. Social policy. He is also a Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire and teaches courses on American Politics and Public Policy. His second book, A People's History of Poverty in America, received the Michael Harrington Award from the American Political Science Association "for demonstrating how scholarship can be used in the struggle for a better world." His most recent book is Ghettos, Tramps, and Welfare Queens: Down & Out on the Silver Screen, a history of poverty and homelessness in the movies.
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