Sam Smith – Too seldom mentioned in discussions about increasing attacks on democracy and decency is the importance of local action. We assume that our response must be national, just like the crisis. In fact, while clear national action must be taken, we as citizens still have an underrated power to change things by acting locally. This has been repeatedly demonstrated through the effectiveness of local action on issues such as the environment and the rights of women and minorities. It is so much easier organizing at the local level and, as history has shown, it is an important element in positive social and political change.
Living in a small town in Maine, I have recently been reminded of this by a couple of incidents. For example, a local paper reported, “Over 50 people gathered in front of Town Hall Friday to show support for targeted minority communities after a series of recent incidents of racist and antisemitic vandalism. ‘Hatred and oppression thrive in darkness and flourish through inaction,’ Dan Piltch, councilor for District 1, said at the rally. ‘It’s our shared responsibility to bring them to light.’”
Our school system is also working on a decent and fair policy for transgender students. As reported in another story, “The stated goals of the policy are to ‘foster a learning environment that is safe and free from discrimination, harassment, and bullying,’ and to ‘assist in the educational and social integration of transgender and gender expansive students in our schools’”
As the announcement for one meeting put it, “This gathering is intended to be a safe space for people to process their thoughts and emotions following the meeting, and to create opportunities for community building.”
While ethnic and social evil is often carried out low down, we tend to treat our response as only effective at a high level such as federal legislation. We often ignore the importance of rebuilding cultural decency as not just a matter of national justice but a positive aspect of a well functioning community.
One of the groups that has historically understood the importance of what has been called reciprocal liberty – i.e. I can’t have my liberty if you don’t have yours – are the Quakers. As Big Think describes it:
Around 23,000 Quakers, migrating from Northern England to the Delaware Valley in Pennsylvania, and later to the Midwest. These religious liberals believed in ‘reciprocal liberty’: granting others the freedoms they wanted for themselves, including the right to vote, to own, to be free, to worship, and to a fair trial…
Believing everybody intrinsically good, they practiced tolerance, pacifism, gender equality, and racial harmony. They opposed slavery, the death penalty, and cruelty to animals and children.
Today, even liberals tend to emphasize the evil of unfairness without celebrating the fact that while we are all different, we share in common the multiple characteristics of humanity.
Local communities are good places to express this. In short, don’t just regard sexism or racism as a negative characteristic to be suppressed, but make diversity part of the pride of the community and something to learn about.
This is one reason why I have suggested that churches open their space to non-Sunday, non-religious gatherings of diverse citizens to further the unity of their community, giving them an opportunity to discuss not just their concerns but share the numerous things community members have in common, despite the color of their skin or their gender.
Further, as Robert Reich well describes, reviving civic education in our schools would be a wonderful reversal of the negative civics of too many of our leaders these days.
In short, we need to find ways to resurrect the good values that are being destroyed by those invading our media and other national centers of power. And more of the answer than we realize lies right in our neighborhood.
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