Infrastructure Campaign Blues

Across the spectrum of those who work for progressive issues and candidates (climate change, civil rights, Hoeffel for Governor, etc), there is a special little corner of those of us who work on what I call ‘infrastructure issues.’

What we do affects the outcome, in some small way, of the rest of the fights. What we do is to try to change the framework of rules that govern the flow of money and influence and power (and, in my case, the flow of information) that, in turn, decide which voices get heard in all the other debates.

It sounds like it would be understood as important, but unfortunately, to care about infrastructure reform, or to understand why it is necessary, requires a deep understanding of how the American political system works and a desire to work on obscure issues, both of which do not often simultaneously occur. The types of reforms I am talking about span from voter enfranchisement, to media democratization, to campaign finance reform, to public finance of campaigns, and reform of the redistricting process itself.

We toil somewhat in obscurity, and these issues are generally some of the hardest to organize on, because they require fairly extensive political education. Most folks already have their issues, and at best, what we do is seen as secondary. I had been meaning to write about this for a while, but my hand was forced by the very grievous injustice perpetrated upon the American people this week by the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. The American people – and all those who live here, citizens or not – deserve so much better than they got this week.

I work on the same floor of a Dupont Circle office building as the headquarters of Common Cause. They are my friends. Bob Edgar brings in coffee cakes for the staff. On our floor, Common Cause is known for their amazing holiday decorations.

Campaign finance reform was one of the first political causes I ever cared about, before I had even ever worked in politics or covered elections. The Media and Democracy Coalition, for whom I work, comes out of the same lineage, and I remember, after about 7 months of organizing on media reform, how amazed I was that Common Cause had managed to build state chapters – state chapters for an infrastructure campaign! It seems almost quaint, imagining a time when Americans still felt that they had enough control over their own government to go to a Common Cause chapter meeting about how to change it. It’s one thing to do that in Philadelphia, it’s another thing entirely when it comes to Congress. There’s a poster on the wall in the Common Cause offices: EVERYONE IS ORGANIZED BUT THE PEOPLE – John Gardner.

I’m an organizer, and the apathy on the part of the American populace is so overwhelming at times.

It’s become so obvious for me during the last two jobs I’ve had. In one of the jobs I had in 2008 (it was healthcare reform), everyone believed that the healthcare system sucked, but felt powerless to do anything.

Now, in my current job, everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) HATES the media, hates almost everything about it, without any limit: the crappy radio, the lack of good information on television, the sensationalism, the reality shows, the high cable or dish TV rates, the portrayals of women, the portrayals of African Americans, the portrayals of any other racial minority, of seniors, of immigrants, of teenagers, of pretty much everybody except white male serial killers or plastic surgeons wearing sexily weathered J. Crew t-shirts, the fact their local newspaper doesn’t actually tell them what’s in the healthcare bill, the fact that games from their publicly-funded sports team sucking the tax dollars out of their nearly-bankrupt city are only available to paying cable customers, they pretty much hate EVERYTHING ABOUT THE MEDIA as it is now, with the exception of the Internet, which is facing an onslaught of pressure by people who are hellbent on ruining it like the rest of the media. And even with all that, all those grievances, they still don't believe they can change anything.

That’s how people feel about the campaign I work for now. They all already agree with how messed up everything is. It’s exactly how the American public feels about money in politics. It is universally understood, the need for campaign finance reform.

So where does the transfer stop? How is there universal agreement on what’s wrong, and so little hope that one can change it? How do we go from ‘core American value’ – the easiest thing on which to motivate a group….to waking up one morning to Citizens United?

On CSPAN radio the day that CU went down, I heard a commentator say, “this decision really highlights the loss of Sandra Day O’Connor from the bench, with her legislative experience.”

Yeah.

I haven’t read the decision, but the implication of this comment was that the rest of the Supreme Court did not think that corporate campaign contributions have an undue influence on Congress.

Yeah.

I do not know how you get to be a Supreme Court Justice without understanding such a thing, but there seems to be a failure in our educational system on that point. My friend on Facebook wrote today, “it’s okay, it can be overturned, remember, Plessy vs. Ferguson was overturned by Brown vs. Board of Education.”

There is that much sorrow. It is a death, especially when you think about the minor voodoo miracle it took to pass McCain Feingold in the first place.

There was a part in Michael Moore’s Capitalism that was hard to forget. It was the part about the Citigroup memo, leaked to a reporter in 2005, that outlined CitiGroup’s political sociology about globalization. I’ve linked to it here, but I just want to highlight the point Moore made in the movie: that CitiGroup analysts truly felt that the top 1 percent of earners in America were running the country again, and that there was only one last bothersome thing getting in the way: the fact that the American Constitution still guaranteed “one person, one vote.”

We are at a time of such great flux that it is hard to see the future. In a way, there might be something very real, and very good, coming out of this (and I don’t just mean it the way my dear friends mean it: as in, you have to smack your head against the concrete to wake up and fight again, etc etc.)

In a world where the media has so fragmented and exploded, in a way that devalues the word and overwhelms the Story itself, and where political advertising becomes more openly corporate (depending on transparency law), it’s possible that we might actually have to, out of necessity, return to the good old-fashioned form of political communication – talking to our neighbors and friends. Which is what people like me - who like talking - have been hoping for all along.

It has occurred to me that political communication online now, especially on friendship-networks Facebook – where you get your ideas and news from your friends – is not really all that different from community-based organizing, or even ye olde Philadelphia ward system. The apathy and trust levels have sunk so low that this is really the last space where political communication is taken at face value. To have all of this devalued might not be a tremendously bad thing at all. We'll see. I would really appreciate any thoughts you have.