August 27, 2020 • 53 mins
Baratunde shares the four pillars of How To Citizen. Eric Liu, founder of Citizen University, schools us on power - what it is, who has it, and how the practice of citizenship is empty without this literacy. They also discuss how this power needs to be coupled with civic character to prevent us from becoming finely-skilled sociopaths. Eric answers questions from the live audience and Baratunde gives you some ways to practice understanding and using power.
Show Notes + Links
We are grateful to Eric Liu for coming on the show and schooling us on power.
Buy his books here at our online bookshop for the show that supports local bookstores. Check out Citizen University for more tools for how to citizen and follow @ericpliu on Twitter.
We will post this episode, a transcript, show notes and more at howtocitizen.com.
ACTION FOR THIS EPISODE, HERE IS WHAT YOU CAN DO
External Action:
Start or join a club. Practice power by being in relationship with others in a self-organized environment.
Interacting with a group of people who are self-organized around a shared interest but who may be very different from you otherwise, allows you to experience and practice being a part of how groups of people make decisions, self-govern, be accountable to each other, negotiate different needs and perspectives, collaborate, and resolve conflicts. Because it is all self-selected, the dynamics are more peer-to-peer, mimicking how we work together as members of society as opposed to a work or family environment.
Internal Action:
Practice seeing and understanding power.
It will literally become your “super-power” as a citizen.
- Pick an issue that you care about that impacts a specific community or the general public.
- Who benefits from the current state of things, and who doesn’t?
- Lastly, how are the decisions about this issue made - is there accountability, transparency, and participation by those most affected?
- Who influences the decision-making process and what types of power do they use?
If you took either action or both, share with us what happened or how you felt - action@howtocitizen.com. Mention Episode 01 in the subject line.
We love feedback from our listeners - comments@howtocitizen.com.
Visit Baratunde's website to sign up for his newsletter to learn about upcoming guests, live tapings, and more. Follow him on Instagram or join his Patreon. You can even text him, like right now at 202-894-8844.
How To Citizen with Baratunde is a production of I Heart Radio Podcasts. executive produced by Miles Gray, Nick Stumpf, Elizabeth Stewart, and Baratunde Thurston. Produced by Joelle Smith, edited by Justin Smith. Powered by you.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to How To Citizen with Baritone Day, a show
where we reimagine the word citizen as a verb, reclaim
it from those who weaponized it, and remind ourselves how
to wield our collective power. Democracy means people power. Literally,
(00:24):
I just want to talk with you for a minute,
just me and you. I owe you a definition before
we head too far on this journey together. And yeah,
I know you thought this was like a podcast or
a show, but it's a journey and we're gonna go places.
That journey is called How to Citizen with Baritone Day.
(00:45):
I'm the Bartune Day. There's a definition there. But on
the citizen front, I need you to understand what we
are not. We are not interested in your legal status,
and we have a concept of what it means to
citizen that goes far are beyond voting, as important as
that is. We think there are four parts to what
(01:07):
it means to citizen. First two, citizen is to participate.
It's a verb, not a noun, not an adjective. It's
to show up, all right. Number two two citizen is
to value the collective and to work towards outcomes that
benefit the many and not just the few. Number three
(01:30):
to citizen is to understand power and the various ways
we have at our disposal to use it. And number
four to citizen is to invest in relationships with others
and recognize our interconnectedness. This definition of what it means
to Citizen is going to serve us throughout the series. Participate,
(01:53):
value the collective, understand power, and invest in relationships. In
this episode, we are going to talk about power. A
quick word on how we make this show. We've recorded
most of this episode in front of a live studio audience. Okay,
it with zoom. It was a live Zoom audience, but
(02:13):
that doesn't take nothing away from nothing, because zoom is
everything now when it counts. In the taping, you'll hear
me tell a short story, hold a conversation with our
featured guests, then open the floor to questions from the audience.
I would love for you to join a future live taping,
and you can do that by visiting how to citizen
dot com. Join my email list where those invites live.
(02:38):
And also some pretty dope content I send out on
a weekly basis. If I might brag a little bit,
I send the best emails. And while I love the
live audience, don't worry. It's just me and you right now. Remember,
and I'm gonna catch up with just you on the
other side, and I'm gonna give you some very specific
(02:58):
ways to sit as in not just principles actions. I
want to start with a story from high school, specifically
a classroom in my high school where I have some
distinct memories. This room was on the first floor, had
(03:19):
giant floor to ceiling glass windows, really well lit, and
the first memory I have is actually a video games
because my friends and I would wheel in this a
V cart with a giant TV on top to play
video games during off periods. It was a really unused
room and afternoons we played a lot of Madden. My
second memory from this room is of breaking in to
(03:41):
the school through this room. I spent a lot of
time on campus. I was part of the high school newspaper,
had a lot of excuses to be there after hours,
and one time I locked myself out of the building
had to get something back inside, and I knew that
these little hinged windows at the base of the wall
in this room would me into the building. So I'm
(04:01):
scrambling through this window and I heard this voice Mr Barratuna,
is that you, Mr Barretuna, is that you? And that
was the voice of the head of security for the school, Mr. Ford. Fortunately,
I had a great relationship with him because I haven't
advised early on the first thing you do in an
institution like this you make friends with the cleaning staff.
(04:22):
You make friends with the security staff. They might help
you get out of a jam later on. And that's
what happened. Because he didn't see some random black kid
breaking into a predominantly white institution in a predominantly white
and wealthy neighborhood in Washington, d C. He saw an idiot.
He saw the idiot that he knew, Barrattuna, and he
gave me the benefit of the doubt, let me inside
(04:43):
through proper entry and exit points, and I was able
to move on. The other memory I have of this room, though,
is actually a classroom setting a learning environment in Western Sieve,
the class we called Western City of Western Civilization. The
teacher wheeled out that a v card with a giant
at the time television on top, and we were forced
(05:03):
to watch this VHS of some old school like Socrates,
Plato Aristotilian looking dude leaning him back in his white robe,
with his white beard and his bald white head like
a lot of white saying something profound and grave. He said,
how should men live? And we were just supposed to
(05:25):
react to that question like, yo, that's the question, that's
the ones in future question to end all questions, like
how do we organize our society? How do we share power?
Have a voice, govern ourselves? And it was Aristotle who
gave us a simple framework for this. You got ruled
by the one, tyrany boom, ruled by the few, oligarchy,
(05:46):
still boo, ruled by the many. Democracy, yay. And we're
supposed to celebrate that idea and that word, which literally
breaks down in the Greek origin two people power. Being
a citizen is exercising power. But when I've been hearing
(06:06):
these conversations about the crisis of our democracy, about civic engagement,
about citizenship, I rarely hear the word power being used. Instead,
I hear a limited version of what we have as
our power in the society, the power to vote and
the power to act as individuals, and both of those
are far too narrow. Voting is mad important, don't get
(06:29):
me wrong, it's very important, but it's not the whole game.
And when you really think about it, voting is delegating power.
We have a lot of energy devoted to giving our
power over to professional politicians. That's like being asked to
sign up as a superhero. You're welcome to the Avengers,
baritune day, you're in the squad. I'm like, what's my superpower? Oh?
(06:50):
Your superpower? You get to give your power away if
you're lucky every two years. He's excited about that, Like,
I'm not that. I feel like you're missing some of
the point of the superpower. And it's even Hawkeye had
better powers than that. He got to run around looking
like a badass, had bow and arrows, ran real fast.
I might prefer that to just delegation of power. The
(07:11):
other oversimplification I think we have with our power in
the system is it's focused on the individual, especially in
the Western world, one person, one vote, your voice matters.
But we don't exist alone. We live among other people.
We only know ourselves as a reflection of the people
around us, and when we work with others, we multiply
(07:35):
that power. So what is this whole power thing. It's
who gets what, when and how, It's who decides that
now to jump into this conversation with me. We have
quite a human person. I'm gonna call him a human
person um. I first met Eric Leu virtually. We had
(07:56):
been introduced by many different people over the years, but
we met face to face in a non socially distant
space at the TED conference in Vancouver, Washington, and he
was giving a talk about the power of citizenship. I
was preparing to do my talk but somewhat secretly plotting
this show, and Eric said, when you're ready to do this,
reach out, let's talk. So he's one of the first
(08:19):
people I wanted to talk to about this. Eric is
the co founder and CEO of Citizen University, literally schooling
people on what it means to be a citizen. He
directs the Aspen Institute Citizenship and American Identity Program. He's
written several books. I feel proud of my one book Home.
He's got at least three books, The Accidental Asian Notes
(08:39):
of a Native Speaker, The Gardens of Democracy, You're More
Powerful than you think, A Citizen's Guide to make him
change happen, and actually a fourth one, more recently, Become
America Civic Sermons on love, responsibility, and democracy. Eric has
been in the game for a while. He wrote speeches
for Bill Clinton. He was a White House policy advisor.
He's been on the boy Words of the Washington State
(09:01):
Board of Education, and near and due to my heart,
the Seattle Public Library, because libraries rock. Eric Lou, welcome
to how this citizen. Thank you for being here with y.
It's so great to be with you. I just just
love your whole framding this whole thing and looking forward
to this conversation. Where are you joining us from, Eric,
(09:21):
and how are you right now? I'm joining you from Seattle, Washington,
which is where I live. I'm joining you more specifically
from my mom's condo because, to be real, I'm spending
a lot of energy help and take care of her
through some health challenges. So that's where I'm at. Yeah, Well,
my best to you and your mom. I'm glad you're
(09:42):
able to be close to her and help take care
of her. That's kind of what this is all about. It.
I looked through, and our team looked through a lot
of your work. It was more prolific and profound than
even understood when I met you at ted, So thank
you for your contributions to this whole question of what
it means to be a citizen. I want to talk
with you more about this idea of power, because you
(10:04):
have spoken and written and I think behaved in a
way that elevates the idea of literacy about power, and
so much of the literacy that I think we are
encouraged to pursue is literal right learning, how to read,
consuming information, be informed, know the news. But you talk
about power literacy, What is power to you? And what
(10:26):
do you think we need to understand about it in
the context of being a citizen in something that's at
least like a democracy. You know, such a great set
of connected questions, and you know, I start with just
in the first place, um, unpacking what we mean in
my organization, Citizen University, when we even talk about citizen
or citizenship, Right, So, how does citizen the name of
(10:48):
this show, Um, we think of citizenship not in terms
of documentation status and passport holding. We mean it in
the broader ethical sense of being a member of the body,
a contributor to community. Right, in a word, a non sociopath. Right,
which which seems like a low bar, but actually we
all around us is evidence that there are a lot
of people can't get over that bar right now, right. So,
(11:11):
but in that broader ethical sense, and when we think
about it in those terms, we often use this very
simple mock equation, which is that power plus character equal citizenship.
That that to live like a citizen in the steepest
way is both to be fluent in power, um, and
I'll unpack that in a moment, but also to couple
that fluency in power with a grounding in what you
(11:34):
might think of a civic character, which I don't mean
like personal individual virtue like work hard and you know, persevere,
I mean the social virtues of how do you live
in public, how do you behave in community? How do
you hold together a community? Right? So, those two has
of the equation are super important. And one of the
things that really struck us in our work is that,
considering we're new democracy, considering that theoretically, as you say,
(11:56):
we have the power, we the people, most people are
profoundly illiterate in power. Most people do not think about it,
do not want to talk about it, do not want
to name it. To the extent that it comes up.
It seems like it's a kind of a dirty word,
a dirty topic. Right, It's all conniving and it's Game
of Thrones in House of Cards kind of stuff, right,
Power brokers, brokers, power trip, you know power, you know,
(12:18):
power mad, power hungry. All the connotations are negative, right,
And our most basic thing that we try to teach
in our work is that power is simply I mean,
it just is. It's like fire, right, It's neither inherently
good nor evil. And just because fire can be put
to bad use doesn't mean that you should just turn
away and put your head in the sand, not think
about ways that it could be put to good use. Right,
(12:40):
And so it is with power and civic life. We
define power really simply, which is a capacity to ensure
that others do as you would like them to do. Yo,
that sounds I mean that sounds like power, like to
make other people it ensure that others do you would like.
Now that sounds super messing and right, and people like
whoa whoa like? But let's be real in every scale
(13:03):
of our lives, right, I'm not talking about voting and protesting.
I mean like you and the people you love, you
and your workmates, you and your neighbors. We as humans
are always trying to get other people to do as
we would like them to do right, and that is
just what we're wired to want to be able to
do in the world. And that capacity, when applied to
questions of common interest and common consequence public concern, is
(13:27):
civic power. UM. I think the central question of all
civic power is this who decides right? And so when
we talk about literacy or illiteracy in power, what that
boils down to is that most people have no freaking
idea who decides on anything right. So there are most
people answer the question with a default they. I can't
(13:48):
believe they decided to start school in person or start
school online. I can't believe they cancel bus service. I
can't believe they haven't yet built a grocery store in
this food desert. I can't believe they whatever right and
they don't want you to X. And the fundamental lesson
that we teach US cities the university, but I think
the fundamental teaching of democracy itself is there is no they,
(14:11):
they is weak right, And we have an obligation to
actually get particular about in each case, well, who does
the deciding and how can I actually insert myself into
that map of who does the deciding? Right? UM? That
is a literacy, just like reading and writing. Who decided
that these kinds of protests happening in cities around the
(14:31):
United States right now would be met by unmarked federal agents?
Right they decided? Maybe Trump decided, you know, maybe some
people who pay attention to the news. Maybe Attorney General
bar decided, okay, yeah, But really, like when you boil
it down, who decided that? Who can stop that? How
do you mobilize people? Ideas money forced to resist that? Right?
(14:53):
And I think questions like that that are not just theoretical,
they are live in every community in the country right now.
All turned on this question of who decides? And that
is the heart of civic power. Why do you think power,
the term and the literacy of it has been absent
from so much conversation about civic engagement and our role.
I think there's two reasons. One is democracy and civics
(15:17):
gets taught, if it gets taught anymore at all. But
to the extent that still does get taught. Teachers in
our more polarized, controversy filled age do not want to
get in trouble. They do not want to go there, right,
so there's an often an instinct to go to the
lowest common denominator, talk about the process stuff how bill
becomes a law, but not talk about the structure stuff
(15:40):
that precedes process. Right, Well, who gets to decide how
Bill becomes a law? Uh? Well people in the Senate, well,
and people in the House. Well, why because the constitution will?
Why because a group of people made a deep set
of compromises with slaveholders about who was going to have power,
and say, okay, so that's how Bill becomes a law. Right.
(16:01):
They don't want to go there, right, And and yeah,
it's not in a little animated cute thing from the
exactly right. And I think the deeper question, apart from
just the you know, allergy to controversy that exists in
a lot of places, um, is frankly our culture. Right.
So everything in our small, d democratic culture says, you know, you, barotone,
(16:22):
you have the power to remake your life, the brand
of you. You can do this all the time. Right.
It's the it's the civic equivalent of the economic message
we get all the time, which is you can pull
yourself up by your own bootstraps. And if your situation
isn't great, that's because you suck. That's your problem. Right,
that's on you, and I think in our culture there's
this allergy also to talking about collective action, collective responsibility,
(16:46):
and collective power and how things got rigged the way
they got rigged and why. Maybe it's not because you're
lazy or not effective or not smart enough that you
keep getting smoothed down. Maybe it's because the game has
been stacked in, rigged against you and people like you
for generations. Um. I often think about the conversation that
you and I are having, and the and the whole
(17:06):
point of your show as part of a greater cause
right now, which is we've got to make civic sexy again, right,
civic engagement, you know it just it just forces you
to not all you make civic sexy again by being
honest about what it is and what it is. It's
about power, it's about people claiming power, about people contesting powers.
(17:27):
Right And and for the same reasons we are drawn
to Game of Thrones or House of Cards, we ought
to be drawn to participation. Except we're not just spectators now,
we are participants and we can actually exercise this stuff.
And that's uh that that's worth learning. There's an irony
in here that I'm trying to tease out democracy means
people power, and we use the verb version of that
(17:51):
word to democratize to indicate the distribution of some good.
We've democratized access to information, meaning more people have access
to it. Everything we need and can claim is in
that word people power. And yet we haven't democratized the
meaning of the word itself. We have kind of kept
(18:13):
the deep meaning, the power part of it, and the people,
the multiple people, not just the person, not the army
of one inside of you, not brand you. We've buried
that and we've muted the power and trimmed it down.
And so we've got to democratize democracy itself, at least
our interpretation of it. That is so absolutely right. And
(18:34):
I think part of that is about narrative and culture
and projects like this show and some of the things
that we try to do it Citizen University, you know,
we we have programs that are about not just teaching
in a workshop way, but creating communal rituals where people
can come and gather and practice this stuff. But I
think the other thing that you're really pointing to, again
(18:54):
back to what we're talking abobout literacy and power, you know,
I often talk about how there's three laws of power
that are really worth understanding. Love laws. Here we go,
so law number one, power compounds, Right, that's as obvious
as the world we live in right now, Right, the
world of the one percent or the point one percent
and everybody else power like interest power, power compounds. Those
(19:16):
who have will have more, right, those who have not
will have even less over time. Right, Law number two,
power justifies itself at every turn. Those who hold power
will spin elaborate narratives about why this allocation of things
is the God given way of the world. Right, this
is just the natural order of things. Uh. And in
(19:37):
different times that's taken on different casts. But that is
the backstory of white supremacy. That is the backstory of
male supremacy. Right. And you might think, oh, well, that's history,
that's old stuff. You've spent time in Silicon Valley. Silcon
Valley is a bastion of both white and male supremacy, right,
And there are storylines about why people who are not
white or male aren't cut out for this world. The
(19:57):
narrative trickle down economics is all around us. The idea
that a few super rich people are capital J, Capital C.
Job creators, and we shouldn't tax them too much, we
shouldn't regulate them too much because we want their prosperity
to leak its way down to the rest of us. Right,
That's a wonderful fable. But as as economics is complete, bs, right,
the true source of prosperity is not a few rich
guys at the top. It's the rest of us. And
(20:19):
when workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Right,
that's how you create prosperity. That's a counter narrative to that, right.
And so if these first two laws of power, that
power is always compounding into fewer and fewer hands, and
it's always justifying itself. And those few are telling you
why you should be happy with the crumbs you've got,
you being a pretty grim doom loop. Right. What breaks
us out of that doom loop, though, is law number three.
(20:42):
Power is infinite. Power is infinite. What I mean by this,
I'm not you know, you might think, Oh, here's the
dude from Seattle coming to sell me a new age,
a new age kind of manifest your power. You know,
I'm not doing new age stuff. I'm saying this. It
is in even the most rigged situation, and even those
unea cool staff situation. It is entirely possible to generate
(21:03):
brand new power out of thin air through the magic
act of organizing and generating power at at a thin
air is the only thing that saves us in a
democracy that you can actually change that equation right now.
Of course, incumbent power holders also can generate power thinner,
and they will counter organized to block you. And this
you have this perpetual game of organizing, counter organizing, mobilization,
(21:26):
counter mobilization. You know what. There's a word for that, politics,
politics and a democracy. Right, that's what we got to do.
That's our responsibility for showing up right, And there's no
it's not one and done. It's not oh I organized,
we fixed it, right. It's a perpetual, never ending thing.
And if you start relaxing then you will in fact
see power over time. I think it's it's humbling and
(21:50):
hopeful at the same time, because we've all felt acted
upon by power and this thought that there's a cabal somewhere,
and sometimes there really is a cabal. Like it's not
a conspirat those like a pretty small room with a
bunch of dudes in it making decisions about say the
borders that will comprise the continent of Africa, for example,
or tax policies in the United States as another example.
(22:12):
But I there is hoping to me and the idea
that we can generated ourselves and that we can kind
of spin up or accelerate a perpetual motion machine at
some velocity and some mass to it to get more
momentum behind our desired allocation of that power. We're living
through it right now. I mean absolutely, the waves and
(22:32):
waves of awakening and activism that followed the murder of
George Floyd Uh and even prior to that, the creativity
brought to bear in new forms of organizing since the
pandemic hit both of these. There are some tectonic things
going on in our country right now. Something is shifting, right,
and that shift depends on us not again, not acting
(22:54):
like Americans often act, which is a short attention spans
squirrel like what what's the next distraction? Right? And um?
But actually like, no, persist in practicing power and the
other piece of it that you were talking about earlier.
I gotta come back to because remember I said at
the beginning, we have this equation that citizen university power
plus character equal citizenship. Right. I gotta say a note
about the character side of this, Right, Because if all
(23:17):
you do is get really practice a power and learn
and figure out ways to move money, move ideas, move people,
you know, mobilize uh, you know, those who have means
of force and violence, and it's untethered actually to any
ethical or moral purpose, then in fact you are just
becoming a finely skilled sociopath, right. Um. And that is
not what we're that's not what we're trying to cultivate
(23:39):
in our work. And I know that's not what you're
you know, that's not how to citizen? Right? How to
citizen is both coupling that literacy and power with who
am I doing it for? How am I bringing more
people into the fold? How do I actually take a
knee literally and metaphorically for somebody who's not here? Um?
How do I circulate whatever power privilege I might have,
um in a way that to actually to the benefit
(24:01):
of the whole. And how do I change the narrative
so that doing that isn't the act of a sucker
or an altruist. Doing that is understood as self interest
properly understood because we're all in it together. I want
to step back to the power thing, because you took
us through these laws. Is there like a menu of
(24:24):
power that we get to choose from or to get
it out of the vagueness of power? Yeah? I love that. Um.
To get it out of the vagueness is the key, right, Um.
In just the same way that there's no they, there's
a particular we or a particular group of people who
we can insert ourselves into power. Isn't just some mystical
blob um. It takes you know. In my book, and
(24:47):
you're more powerful than you think. I talked about six
different sources of power. Okay, I love the numbers. You've
got three laws, You've got six sources of power. This
is we're gonna love the next I got nine strategies
of power to nine baseball exponential. But you know sources
of power, so the obvious ones money. People like numbers. Right.
(25:08):
What we've seen all around the country the power of ideas. Right.
The idea, not not even something as abstract as liberty,
but the idea, for instance, of black lives matter. That's
an idea that a few years ago it was much
more on the margins. And now you've got practically you know,
every fortune five companies rushing out there to say they
(25:29):
agree black lives matter. Right. Um, there's there's another one
that comes to mind, kind of on a different end
of the spectrum. But the idea of an inheritance tax
being rebranded as a death tax. Absolutely right, the way
you frame things, that's a form of power, right, absolutely right.
So you've got you know, money people ideas. Social norms
(25:50):
is another super important source of power. How we together
to find what's okay and what's normal? Right, So again,
look at the unfolding debates about trans identity, right, and
about pronouns like we are in the midst of a
collective reckoning and rearrangement of what social norms are. Right.
(26:11):
We've already now had the Supreme Court literally sanctify and
bless what had been an agreement amongst so many of
us as a matter of social norms that love is love,
whether the couple is the same sex or not, Love
is love. Right. Um, that didn't happen because Politician A
said so. It didn't happen because Corporation A didn't add
campaign if he happened because in a distributed way, millions
(26:33):
upon millions of people had conversations with each other and
started changing their sense of you know what I have.
I used to have this belief, but this person in
my life, this person I'm connected to, is changing my heart,
in my mind, in my sense of norms. Right. So
social norms is a fourth important source of power. The
fifth one, of course, which we are seeing unfortunately and
powerful in evidence right now, is force violence. Right, whether
(26:58):
that is organized under the ages of the state eight
in Bill Barr's you know masked Gestapo, or whether it
is you know, the self organizing militias of a K
forty seven carrying protesters in Michigan at the state capital,
who didn't want to have the tyranny of wearing a
mask imposed upon them. Right, Um, we're going without a haircut,
(27:18):
which I can understand. I mean, this is why I
was worried that we were doing video, because this is
this is not my best look. But but force is one, right, Ultimately,
in the final one is the state. The power of
the state to actually set rules and norms, whether it's
about something as tangible as hey, how much did you
(27:39):
get for an hour of flipping burgers? Seven fifty? How
about fifteen? How about fifteen dollars an hour. Right. And
why well, because enough of us convinced our government, the state,
to say that fifteen dollars is the minimum wage. Fifteen
dollars is the minimum basis for dignity and security for
an hourly wage. Right. And so you take all these
(28:01):
different sources of power, and they're all on display right now,
in good, bad, and ugly forms all around us. Right.
And again you gave my bio at the beginning. My
worldview is left of center. But our work at Citizen
University we work with and learn from people across the
ideological spectrum. Right. Um. We gather folks ranging from Black
Lives Matter and Fight for fifteen activists and dreamers UM
(28:22):
to Tea Party co founders. Right. Because what animated them
on one level, as much as they may disagree fiercely
on policy, what animates them on one level is some
interest in activating bottom up citizen power, right, bottom people power.
And my view is, to your point, we've got a
democratize democracy. We gotta make sure everybody, whatever their politics,
(28:44):
whatever they're from a small rural town or a big city, UM,
get some baseline literacy and then let us fight it out.
Let us argue it out, let us debate it, out,
let us do that thing called politics. Right, but the
politics will be more meaningful to the extent that we've
actually gained that initial literacy in the laws and sources
of power. Thank you for that deeper explanation. Three laws,
(29:07):
six sources. And I think that for me, um it
gives me a sense of power. And I holpefel like
I'm overusing the word just to have options. You know,
I don't want to feel like there's only one thing
I can do. And so if I'm starting to think
about money as a source of power, that gives me
a certain lens and a certain approach versus mass mobilization
(29:29):
or even small or mobilization of of someone other than
myself versus ideas, which is a place I naturally live
in and less so in the world of money. So
I think you you allow an entry point for everyone
when you do that, I want to take this time.
We've got some questions starting to come in during this
(29:50):
recording from our community around us, and so Robert Beats
has a question, how can you define a citizen with
out ultimately excluding people that live in a country. Is
that okay? Talk more about that, the idea that you
can be a citizen without having the right paperwork file.
I mean, of course there is a legal definition of
(30:12):
U S citizenship. Uh, and that matters, right, I I
get that. I mean the vote is tied to that
for instance. Right. But in the work that we're doing,
and I think the work that you're doing here, we
are trying to open up a much broader, capacious idea
of what it means to live like a citizen. Right.
And again, whether you have the papers or not, how
you live like a citizen has to do with whether
(30:32):
you join, whether you serve, whether you listen, whether you
argue well, whether you participate, whether you vote, whether you
protest if you can't vote, whether you encourage others to write. Basically,
it all boils down to whether you show up for others, right, Um?
And I think that you know to the second part
of that question, you know, well who do we show
(30:53):
up for? I mean sometimes I get the version of
the question of well, why talk only about the United States? Right?
I mean, there's global sitizenship and we're all you know,
we're all humans, and yes that's true. Um. And again,
nothing like a pandemic to teach us that many problems,
including novel coronaviruses, don't care about our borders or about
our national institutions. But at the same time, the pandemic
(31:16):
is also teaching us painfully in the United States right now,
compared to people you know, right up the way from me,
in Canada and in other parts of the world, that
nations still matter because nations still are the unit of
moral agency. They are the unit at which we can
actually ask somebody for redress of our grievances. Right, you've
(31:38):
got a problem. You don't have health insurance. You cannot
go petition the World Health Organization. Right, they're busy right
now doing other stuff. But you know, even if they
weren't busy, you couldn't go petition them for health insurance, right.
You would petition your national government flawed as it may be,
rigged as it maybe that's who you'd go to, right.
And so nations still matter, and this nation particular matters,
(31:58):
I think because you know, frankly, there might be conversations
going on about citizenship and democracy in other places right now,
but not a lot that looks like you and me
talking and the other people in this community participating and
listening right. Um. In the United States in particular, we
realized right now that democracy works only if enough of
us believe democracy works. And it's a it's kind of
(32:20):
a faith based, faith based right. And we in the
United States have the special burden to try to live
up to that because we can't just default to, well,
we're all part of the same vulcan, you know, with
all the same kind of bloodlines and legends and all
that stuff. No, we're not. We're just a group bunch
of people bound together by a set of ideas about
how we're going to try to do this thing together. Right. No,
(32:40):
that and that togetherness and the relationships and the with
others and the four others that empathy is I think
it just again, it unlocks an entry point for people,
and especially you know, one of the consequences of limiting
our power to the interpretation of you get to vote
and you get to have your atomic unit of self
(33:02):
interest is that you leave a lot of people off
to the side. You leave people who don't have documentation
off because you can't vote without that, or if you're
formally incarcerated in certain states or by age. You know,
and we have seen so much mobilization one of those
um sources of power that you talked about earlier with
people under voting age in this country and around the world,
(33:24):
the climate crisis and the response to it is being
led powerfully by groups of young people who are prohibited
from exercising one form of power but have infinite amounts. Again,
I'm trying to reflect back what I've heard from, like,
am I doing it right, Professor, to exercise that power
in different way and that relationship, you know, even the
(33:46):
way you've talked about the openness of your university, not
just the left of center people, that we need a
space to kind of build that relationship if all are
interested in at least that basic premise, Like if there's
someone who just down for to Ernie, I'm not sure
if they have a place, But if you believe in
power to the people, and as you say that, we're
gonna try to test that with each other, then that's
(34:08):
a relationship. We spoke with Valerie Power for this show
as well. Her new books called No Stranger, and it's
built on a similar premise that your opponent one is
not necessarily your enemy, but that a stranger is just
a part of you who you have yet to know um,
And so how do you integrate others even as you
(34:29):
disagree with them in a process of humanity, which is
to see them as part of you? And I think
there's a connective tissue here with the idea of valuing relationships,
about working with others, about humanizing even opponents in the
project of democratizing democracy through citizening. This is absolutely right,
(34:50):
you know, And I think that you know, we often
talk about in our work when we're training people to
lead these civic Saturday gatherings, right that it's about cultivating
bonds of trust affection. Right. So trust requires in the
first place, that like, I know, if I walk in here,
you're not going to ambush me, You're not here to
flame me. Like where this is not a one and done,
you know. The point of this is not scores Earth.
(35:11):
This is we're in a game of infinite repeat play
right together, and we're gonna earn each other's trust by
continuing to come back here. But the affection part of
that doesn't mean that I actually have to like you,
but I have to. I love how you put it
that that to see you the stranger as a part
of me that I haven't yet discovered right um, And
that rehumanization is so much a part of you know,
you've you've emphasized a couple of times now in things
(35:33):
that you've said Barton Day about kind of the access
to this stuff. Right, This is concept laws of power.
I know that can sound kind of high minded and stuff,
but this is stuff for everybody, right And you talk
about young people. So where I live in Seattle, in
King County See, which is the county that surrounds Seattle.
Over the last number of years, when the Black Lives
Matter movement started to pick up steam, several years ago,
(35:54):
a group of unheralded, unknown young people of color, mainly
African Americans, started organizing to block the creation of a
new youth detention center, right um. And they went under
the slogan no new Youth Jail, and they organized, they activated,
they showed up at council meetings, and you know what
happened over and over again. They lost, They kept losing votes.
(36:15):
The thing kept on going, the project kept on getting approved,
and they started, they laid the ground and they started
building this thing. Right But these young people kept on organizing,
they kept on building allies, they kept on sharpening their
skills and their literacy and power. And then what happened
and the combination of the pandemic and the post George
Floyd uprisings led to this incredible shift in the frame
(36:38):
of the possible. And they were ready for it, and
they've been organizing. They had those bonds of trust and
affection not just with each other but with allies in
power all over the place in this community, and all
of a sudden they were able to take that moment
and applied pressure on the elected officials and the decision
makers who decides of this and say, now, I think
it's time for you to reconsider this. And guess what,
(36:58):
just last week the King County executives said, you know what,
We're going to depopulate this youth detention center. We're gonna
take down this youth jail. So what looked like a repeated, repeated,
repeated defeat and set back turns out right now to
have been a victory. Right. These are young people who
just showed up and started teaching each other by showing
up and practicing this stuff. Um ideas like the stuff
(37:18):
we're talking about hopefully helped inform them. And you know,
some of them were involved in stuff that we've done
it citizen the university. But I take no credit at
all because these are just this is a rising generation,
as you said, of people who are figuring out by
doing it, and that is super exciting. What you and
I can do is help shine a light, help them
make sense of what they're doing, and give it some
(37:38):
frameworks and then again democratize this stuff about democracy. Right. So, um,
my friend and I believe your friend to Brittan Pat
McK cunningham is one of the co founders, is something
called Campaign Zero, right. Um. Campaign Zero is this policy
platform and framework for people who initially joined the activism
after a whole host of police killings of unarmed black
(38:02):
men and boys, and wanted to figure out, well, how
do we pivot, how do we pivot from showing up
in the streets to changing the system? Um? And they
made they answered that question with this incredible menu of
things that break it down for you. Right. It's again,
it's not just the system. There's the piece of the
system that's about police training. There's a piece of the
system it's about prosecutors who can be unelected if they
(38:23):
don't serve the people. Right, there's a piece of that
puzzle that is about the media and how you educate
the media in following these stories before the fact, before
something goes down, rather than after it goes down. Right. Um,
And there's this an incredible menu of tools there. And
I think that what they did with Campaign zero can
and should be done across every possible issue. Your issue
(38:44):
might be climate, your issue might be guns, your issue
might be gender equality, whatever the issue is, there's a
way to go from that initial burst of protests, which
is often pushing against something, to a concerted, systematic way
to build for something. Right and again, just to repeat
your refrain, you can't do that alone. You've got to
(39:05):
join others. You can join a club, you can join
a group of people hanging out at the corner. You
can join you know, a party, it doesn't matter. Just join.
The act of joining is the beginning of creating that
infinite sacific power. All Right, we're gonna bring in and
(39:29):
speaking of joining, NAT tousand, I believe that is coming
to us from New York City, New York. Yeah. So
I'm coming to you from Brooklyn, New York, in my
kitchen because it's close to the WiFi router. Uh. And
so my question is how do we convince people who
have no demonstrable empathy that they should care about other people?
And if you want to look at that in a
(39:50):
political system, how do we convince Americans who bought into
the myth of American individualism that individualism has failed us
and that collectivism, uh is the way that society should
function for the betterment of everyone in that society. It's
a great question because it's not easily answered, you know.
(40:10):
I mean, I think that you're you're asking you're asking
a tactical question about how you deal with individuals in interactions,
and then you're asking a much bigger strategic question about
how do we deal with our culture. Right, So let
me say a word about each of those levels, because
you know, on the tactical level, when you're you know,
whether it's online, invite people into conversation where again, where
it's possible to build trust, where you actually know who
(40:32):
you're talking to, right. But you know, I think on
that human level, I still think that even the person who,
for a variety of reasons, and many of them just
have to do with their kind of tribal, polarized political identity,
dig into a set of talking points in a point
of view that well, you should have been more careful,
you shouldn't have done this. You take it away from that,
and you begin with a series of questions, right, and
(40:53):
so one layer of questions is basically like, how do
you feel like you are most misunderstood? Okay, that's a
disarming question. How are you most misunderstood? Right now, you're
kind of getting them to let down their guard a
little bit and open up a bit more of their
three dimensional humanity. Um. But then the second question is
what are you most afraid of if your side loses? Right,
(41:16):
if your worldview does not prevail? Like, what are you not?
What are you afraid of? In the abstract and theory?
Like what are you afraid of? For you and those
around you and those you care about? Right? And again
it gets to some of the um the fear, the fear,
the shame, the hurt that often animates UM, some of
these most anti social, civic and political attitudes. Right, And
(41:38):
if you can somewhat detoxify them at the outset, you
might have a shot in this one on one conversation
where if you've earned some trust and you know you're
not just kind of a one and done, I'm gonna
flame you and and and be off this platform. You
have a shot there. Now we get to the very
interesting question, which you know is the question of culture
and media, right of how do you scale from one
(41:59):
to one in like epiphanies to culture change? Right? How
do you scale that? And I think part of it
is we do it by doing what we're doing here, right,
not just me and bartuned I having a conversation, but
you joined this conversation. You decided to show up and
participate in the middle of the day and then shape
it and we over time in ways that are much harder,
(42:20):
have to again make it more possible for more people
to enter into conversations where they can question that mythology
of rugged individualism and you can do in a way
that's not got you, but you ask you like again,
I have a different pair of questions that I often
used with people in work that I used to do
around mentorship, which is who's influenced you? And how do
you pass it on? Right? You asked that question. If
(42:41):
I asked Bartuny that question, we did an hour on that.
He would unscroll this list of mentors, tor mentors, people
who have shaped him, people who've you know managed him,
people have coached him. And you can't start answering that
first question without realizing, no man is an island, No
one is self made. There is no such thing as
a sell made man or woman. Right. We are all
made by each other. We all make each other right,
(43:04):
And then you immediately go to that second question of well,
how am I passing that on? How am I passing
on the good, the bad, and the ugly of how
I was formed? Right and again, it's an invitation for
people to get out of their political combat avatar identity
and into their actual humanity, right and um. And if
we do that in setting after setting, it's why we
do Civic Saturdays. That's why we created the Civic Civic
(43:26):
Seminary Program to train people like you actually to lead
civic Saturdays in Brooklyn, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in Dallas, in
San Diego, wherever it may be um to you know,
to lead these conversations and to create that kind of space. Right.
That's how we change the culture is we create that.
We commit to creating that space over and over and
(43:47):
over again. It's gonna take some time, because it took
us some time to get to the level of sickness
in our culture that we're dealing with. But I'm net
hopeful man. I mean, just conversations like this give me
give me a surplus of hope. Thank you Nat for
thoughtful question, but eric great answer. And to encourage people
to engage with questions is such a shortcut to changing
(44:09):
how we relate to each other. You know, as opposed
to statement versus statement, questions or invitations, statements are often
closed doors. Um so I really resonates with me so
much personally, I'm gonna give you one more kind of
parting opportunity, And truly, if you don't have an answer
right now, we can follow up. We like to give
people an opportunity to actually take a step to give
(44:30):
them something tactical, tangible to do. Could be a writing exercise,
could be signed up for a thing, could be a
set of questions to ask the person in their lives.
But as we've been talking so much about citizenship and
civic power and the forms of it and the sources
of it and the ways we can wield it, do
you have one or very short list of things you
(44:53):
would encourage someone listening to this to experiment with themselves
to feel that power yeah. You know, the shortest answer
I can give is join or make a club. I
honestly don't even care what it's about. I mean, ideally
you something civic or political or social cultural issue. But
it can be a gardening club, it can be a rotistry,
(45:14):
baseball club. It can be a you know, eighties, early nineties,
you know, hip hop rap club, you know whatever floats
your book, right, But join or start a club in
which you can actually rebuild that incredibly atrophied muscle we
have in the United States our citizen muscle. Right, My
friend Annie Leonard, who who runs Green Piece USA, talks
(45:35):
about how we as Americans, we have this hugely overdeveloped
consumer muscle. Right. We know how to buy fifty different
kinds of toothpaste, we know different kinds of you know, uh,
platforms for our music streaming choices and all this stuff,
but our civic muscles are pitiful and weak. Right, Well,
how do you build that? Sure you can go protests,
Sure you can vote. But the simplest thing to do
is actually to join or start a club. To gather
(45:56):
up with a few people with a commitment to repeat
your gathering, create a sense of unity and identity, create
a sense of ritual about how you gather and then
keep adding over time you will figure out that well.
Having to come together to create a common agenda, to
find common goals, to do common activities requires negotiation. It
(46:16):
requires reckoning with the fact that you've got money and
I don't have money. You've got time and I don't
have time. It requires us to deal with our inequalities
or iniquities. It requires us to deal with our difference
in the way that you you speak with an accent
and I don't speak with an accent. Whatever. Right for
the next three to six months, to dive deep on
that issue, learn about it, read about it, talk to
people about knock on virtual doors about it, Like, hey,
(46:38):
I heard that you know about something about this. Can
I pick your brain about this, join or start a
club on that issue? Right? Okay? After three to six months,
maybe you'll decide that issue is your life's passion. Maybe
you'll be like, okay, I got it, Like I'm done
with that issue. But now what guess what you will have?
You will have civic muscle. You will have practiced on
something concrete and specific over and over again, instead of
(47:00):
just generally I'm thinking about power I'm thinking about power
no no, no lift stuff. So if you just go
to our website Citizen University dot us, there's ways read
to join that club, participate in a citic Saturday, start
your own kind of find ways to get them connected
with others who care about this stuff. And I think
you know, of course a lot is lost during zoom times,
(47:21):
but I would say a lot of game too. There's
a focusing that happens. And the kind of conversations that
you and I are having here are two day and
the ways that people realize, okay, like they're listening to this,
they're seeing ideas in the chat like today they can
start learning how to lift stuff. Uh and uh, that
to me is kind of beautiful and pretty exciting. Eric
lou Ceo, co founder of Citizen University. Thank you for
(47:46):
the explanations and the breakdowns. Thank you for the examples
on the ground. Thank you for the tangible calls to action.
Thank you for your energy and and and building a
relationship with us for this time that we've had together.
So appreciate you. And good luck to you, to your family,
to your mother in particular. We'll be in touch. Thank you,
(48:07):
thank you, thank you. Hey you. It's me again. It's
just us, just me and you, and I got to
tell you that I am fired up after that, what
really connected with me was the idea that power justifies itself,
and we create very convincing stories to explain the very
unequal distribution of that power. But the good news is
(48:31):
we can create news stories of power and actually shift
it and generated That's what we're doing with this show.
That's what we're doing with you. But we are just
here to think about and talk about power. We're here
to lift stuff. In each episode, we're gonna share things
you can do internally and externally to strengthen your citizen practice.
(48:56):
Don't worry about the details. We've posted them to how
to sit is in dot com. For this episode is
two things you can do. The first is inspired by
Eric and the work of Citizen University. You already heard
him say it. Start or join a club. Ideally it's
something useful to your community, but you can have a
(49:17):
broad interpretation of useful. Maybe it's about supporting kids in
your neighborhood. Maybe it's a film club. The point is
to help you practice power in relationship with others, ideally
some strangers. This is big citizen stuff. Right here, you'll
practice how groups of people make decisions self governed, are
accountable to each other, negotiate different needs and perspectives, collaborate,
(49:42):
and importantly, resolve conflict. After you do this, let us know,
send an email to action at how to citizen dot com.
Include episode one somewhere in the subject line and tell
us about your club. Or go one step bigger and
shouted out publicly on social media. Use the hashtag how
(50:04):
to citizen and say something like I don't know, I
started a text message group for local business owners in
my neighborhood. What what and then what? What would be
completely optional, like if that's not your voice, like definitely don't.
Don't do it just because I did it? Like you,
you do you. This next action is something less public.
We want you to practice seeing an understanding power what
(50:28):
Eric calls reading and writing power. It will literally become
your superpower as a citizen. And we are gonna put
this episode to use. So this is something that you're
gonna need to say some time with write things down,
type it up, I'll say it to you. But again
the details are at how to citizen dot com. Four
(50:49):
steps to this here process Number one, pick an issue
that you care about that impacts a specific community or
the general public. Whatever works for you. For example, could
be police budgets and how large they are. I have
some interest in that topic. Number two, I want you
to write down who benefits from the current state of
things and who doesn't. Make a list three. Answer the
(51:14):
question how are the decisions about this issue made and
in that process is their accountability, transparency and participation by
those most affected by that decision. In the last step,
number four, write down who influences the decision making process
(51:34):
and what types of power do they use. Now you
don't have to write it down. You can rewind, pause,
think out loud to yourself, give us soliloquy. Doesn't matter
too much how you do it, only that you do it,
and we welcome you sharing it with us, typing it,
or with an audio memo if you want. Send that
email again to action at how to citizen dot com.
(51:56):
Include episode one in the subject line, we are so
grateful to Eric lou for helping us democratize democracy. Check
out Citizen University dot us for so much more about
their activities, their trainings, their virtual events, and find one
(52:16):
of Eric's mini books wherever you like finding books and
supporting those booksellers. You can also follow Eric online. He
is on Twitter, Eric p Lou. That's Eric with a C.
The letter p l I. You now. We're gonna post
this whole episode, a transcript, show notes, and more resources
(52:39):
at how to Citizen dot com. Do check it out,
and if you like what you experienced here, please share
this show. Leave review five stars is my humble suggestion
and sign up from my newsletter at baritunda dot com,
where I will announce the upcoming live tapings and more
(52:59):
from audience members like you. You can even send me
a text to two O two eight nine four eight
eight four four let me know you found me. I
just put in the word citizens. I know where you
came from, and I'm saying you updates that way as well.
How does Citizen with Barratune Day is a production of
I Heart Radio podcast executive produced by Nick Stump, Miles Gray,
(53:23):
Elizabeth Stewart and Barrattuone Day Thurston, produced by Joel Smith,
edited by Justin Smith. Power by You
Welcome to How To Citizen with Baritone Day, a show
where we reimagine the word citizen as a verb, reclaim
it from those who weaponized it, and remind ourselves how
to wield our collective power. Democracy means people power. Literally,
(00:24):
I just want to talk with you for a minute,
just me and you. I owe you a definition before
we head too far on this journey together. And yeah,
I know you thought this was like a podcast or
a show, but it's a journey and we're gonna go places.
That journey is called How to Citizen with Baritone Day.
(00:45):
I'm the Bartune Day. There's a definition there. But on
the citizen front, I need you to understand what we
are not. We are not interested in your legal status,
and we have a concept of what it means to
citizen that goes far are beyond voting, as important as
that is. We think there are four parts to what
(01:07):
it means to citizen. First two, citizen is to participate.
It's a verb, not a noun, not an adjective. It's
to show up, all right. Number two two citizen is
to value the collective and to work towards outcomes that
benefit the many and not just the few. Number three
(01:30):
to citizen is to understand power and the various ways
we have at our disposal to use it. And number
four to citizen is to invest in relationships with others
and recognize our interconnectedness. This definition of what it means
to Citizen is going to serve us throughout the series. Participate,
(01:53):
value the collective, understand power, and invest in relationships. In
this episode, we are going to talk about power. A
quick word on how we make this show. We've recorded
most of this episode in front of a live studio audience. Okay,
it with zoom. It was a live Zoom audience, but
(02:13):
that doesn't take nothing away from nothing, because zoom is
everything now when it counts. In the taping, you'll hear
me tell a short story, hold a conversation with our
featured guests, then open the floor to questions from the audience.
I would love for you to join a future live taping,
and you can do that by visiting how to citizen
dot com. Join my email list where those invites live.
(02:38):
And also some pretty dope content I send out on
a weekly basis. If I might brag a little bit,
I send the best emails. And while I love the
live audience, don't worry. It's just me and you right now. Remember,
and I'm gonna catch up with just you on the
other side, and I'm gonna give you some very specific
(02:58):
ways to sit as in not just principles actions. I
want to start with a story from high school, specifically
a classroom in my high school where I have some
distinct memories. This room was on the first floor, had
(03:19):
giant floor to ceiling glass windows, really well lit, and
the first memory I have is actually a video games
because my friends and I would wheel in this a
V cart with a giant TV on top to play
video games during off periods. It was a really unused
room and afternoons we played a lot of Madden. My
second memory from this room is of breaking in to
(03:41):
the school through this room. I spent a lot of
time on campus. I was part of the high school newspaper,
had a lot of excuses to be there after hours,
and one time I locked myself out of the building
had to get something back inside, and I knew that
these little hinged windows at the base of the wall
in this room would me into the building. So I'm
(04:01):
scrambling through this window and I heard this voice Mr Barratuna,
is that you, Mr Barretuna, is that you? And that
was the voice of the head of security for the school, Mr. Ford. Fortunately,
I had a great relationship with him because I haven't
advised early on the first thing you do in an
institution like this you make friends with the cleaning staff.
(04:22):
You make friends with the security staff. They might help
you get out of a jam later on. And that's
what happened. Because he didn't see some random black kid
breaking into a predominantly white institution in a predominantly white
and wealthy neighborhood in Washington, d C. He saw an idiot.
He saw the idiot that he knew, Barrattuna, and he
gave me the benefit of the doubt, let me inside
(04:43):
through proper entry and exit points, and I was able
to move on. The other memory I have of this room, though,
is actually a classroom setting a learning environment in Western Sieve,
the class we called Western City of Western Civilization. The
teacher wheeled out that a v card with a giant
at the time television on top, and we were forced
(05:03):
to watch this VHS of some old school like Socrates,
Plato Aristotilian looking dude leaning him back in his white robe,
with his white beard and his bald white head like
a lot of white saying something profound and grave. He said,
how should men live? And we were just supposed to
(05:25):
react to that question like, yo, that's the question, that's
the ones in future question to end all questions, like
how do we organize our society? How do we share power?
Have a voice, govern ourselves? And it was Aristotle who
gave us a simple framework for this. You got ruled
by the one, tyrany boom, ruled by the few, oligarchy,
(05:46):
still boo, ruled by the many. Democracy, yay. And we're
supposed to celebrate that idea and that word, which literally
breaks down in the Greek origin two people power. Being
a citizen is exercising power. But when I've been hearing
(06:06):
these conversations about the crisis of our democracy, about civic engagement,
about citizenship, I rarely hear the word power being used. Instead,
I hear a limited version of what we have as
our power in the society, the power to vote and
the power to act as individuals, and both of those
are far too narrow. Voting is mad important, don't get
(06:29):
me wrong, it's very important, but it's not the whole game.
And when you really think about it, voting is delegating power.
We have a lot of energy devoted to giving our
power over to professional politicians. That's like being asked to
sign up as a superhero. You're welcome to the Avengers,
baritune day, you're in the squad. I'm like, what's my superpower? Oh?
(06:50):
Your superpower? You get to give your power away if
you're lucky every two years. He's excited about that, Like,
I'm not that. I feel like you're missing some of
the point of the superpower. And it's even Hawkeye had
better powers than that. He got to run around looking
like a badass, had bow and arrows, ran real fast.
I might prefer that to just delegation of power. The
(07:11):
other oversimplification I think we have with our power in
the system is it's focused on the individual, especially in
the Western world, one person, one vote, your voice matters.
But we don't exist alone. We live among other people.
We only know ourselves as a reflection of the people
around us, and when we work with others, we multiply
(07:35):
that power. So what is this whole power thing. It's
who gets what, when and how, It's who decides that
now to jump into this conversation with me. We have
quite a human person. I'm gonna call him a human
person um. I first met Eric Leu virtually. We had
(07:56):
been introduced by many different people over the years, but
we met face to face in a non socially distant
space at the TED conference in Vancouver, Washington, and he
was giving a talk about the power of citizenship. I
was preparing to do my talk but somewhat secretly plotting
this show, and Eric said, when you're ready to do this,
reach out, let's talk. So he's one of the first
(08:19):
people I wanted to talk to about this. Eric is
the co founder and CEO of Citizen University, literally schooling
people on what it means to be a citizen. He
directs the Aspen Institute Citizenship and American Identity Program. He's
written several books. I feel proud of my one book Home.
He's got at least three books, The Accidental Asian Notes
(08:39):
of a Native Speaker, The Gardens of Democracy, You're More
Powerful than you think, A Citizen's Guide to make him
change happen, and actually a fourth one, more recently, Become
America Civic Sermons on love, responsibility, and democracy. Eric has
been in the game for a while. He wrote speeches
for Bill Clinton. He was a White House policy advisor.
He's been on the boy Words of the Washington State
(09:01):
Board of Education, and near and due to my heart,
the Seattle Public Library, because libraries rock. Eric Lou, welcome
to how this citizen. Thank you for being here with y.
It's so great to be with you. I just just
love your whole framding this whole thing and looking forward
to this conversation. Where are you joining us from, Eric,
(09:21):
and how are you right now? I'm joining you from Seattle, Washington,
which is where I live. I'm joining you more specifically
from my mom's condo because, to be real, I'm spending
a lot of energy help and take care of her
through some health challenges. So that's where I'm at. Yeah, Well,
my best to you and your mom. I'm glad you're
(09:42):
able to be close to her and help take care
of her. That's kind of what this is all about. It.
I looked through, and our team looked through a lot
of your work. It was more prolific and profound than
even understood when I met you at ted, So thank
you for your contributions to this whole question of what
it means to be a citizen. I want to talk
with you more about this idea of power, because you
(10:04):
have spoken and written and I think behaved in a
way that elevates the idea of literacy about power, and
so much of the literacy that I think we are
encouraged to pursue is literal right learning, how to read,
consuming information, be informed, know the news. But you talk
about power literacy, What is power to you? And what
(10:26):
do you think we need to understand about it in
the context of being a citizen in something that's at
least like a democracy. You know, such a great set
of connected questions, and you know, I start with just
in the first place, um, unpacking what we mean in
my organization, Citizen University, when we even talk about citizen
or citizenship, Right, So, how does citizen the name of
(10:48):
this show, Um, we think of citizenship not in terms
of documentation status and passport holding. We mean it in
the broader ethical sense of being a member of the body,
a contributor to community. Right, in a word, a non sociopath. Right,
which which seems like a low bar, but actually we
all around us is evidence that there are a lot
of people can't get over that bar right now, right. So,
(11:11):
but in that broader ethical sense, and when we think
about it in those terms, we often use this very
simple mock equation, which is that power plus character equal citizenship.
That that to live like a citizen in the steepest
way is both to be fluent in power, um, and
I'll unpack that in a moment, but also to couple
that fluency in power with a grounding in what you
(11:34):
might think of a civic character, which I don't mean
like personal individual virtue like work hard and you know, persevere,
I mean the social virtues of how do you live
in public, how do you behave in community? How do
you hold together a community? Right? So, those two has
of the equation are super important. And one of the
things that really struck us in our work is that,
considering we're new democracy, considering that theoretically, as you say,
(11:56):
we have the power, we the people, most people are
profoundly illiterate in power. Most people do not think about it,
do not want to talk about it, do not want
to name it. To the extent that it comes up.
It seems like it's a kind of a dirty word,
a dirty topic. Right, It's all conniving and it's Game
of Thrones in House of Cards kind of stuff, right,
Power brokers, brokers, power trip, you know power, you know,
(12:18):
power mad, power hungry. All the connotations are negative, right,
And our most basic thing that we try to teach
in our work is that power is simply I mean,
it just is. It's like fire, right, It's neither inherently
good nor evil. And just because fire can be put
to bad use doesn't mean that you should just turn
away and put your head in the sand, not think
about ways that it could be put to good use. Right,
(12:40):
And so it is with power and civic life. We
define power really simply, which is a capacity to ensure
that others do as you would like them to do. Yo,
that sounds I mean that sounds like power, like to
make other people it ensure that others do you would like.
Now that sounds super messing and right, and people like
whoa whoa like? But let's be real in every scale
(13:03):
of our lives, right, I'm not talking about voting and protesting.
I mean like you and the people you love, you
and your workmates, you and your neighbors. We as humans
are always trying to get other people to do as
we would like them to do right, and that is
just what we're wired to want to be able to
do in the world. And that capacity, when applied to
questions of common interest and common consequence public concern, is
(13:27):
civic power. UM. I think the central question of all
civic power is this who decides right? And so when
we talk about literacy or illiteracy in power, what that
boils down to is that most people have no freaking
idea who decides on anything right. So there are most
people answer the question with a default they. I can't
(13:48):
believe they decided to start school in person or start
school online. I can't believe they cancel bus service. I
can't believe they haven't yet built a grocery store in
this food desert. I can't believe they whatever right and
they don't want you to X. And the fundamental lesson
that we teach US cities the university, but I think
the fundamental teaching of democracy itself is there is no they,
(14:11):
they is weak right, And we have an obligation to
actually get particular about in each case, well, who does
the deciding and how can I actually insert myself into
that map of who does the deciding? Right? UM? That
is a literacy, just like reading and writing. Who decided
that these kinds of protests happening in cities around the
(14:31):
United States right now would be met by unmarked federal agents?
Right they decided? Maybe Trump decided, you know, maybe some
people who pay attention to the news. Maybe Attorney General
bar decided, okay, yeah, But really, like when you boil
it down, who decided that? Who can stop that? How
do you mobilize people? Ideas money forced to resist that? Right?
(14:53):
And I think questions like that that are not just theoretical,
they are live in every community in the country right now.
All turned on this question of who decides? And that
is the heart of civic power. Why do you think power,
the term and the literacy of it has been absent
from so much conversation about civic engagement and our role.
I think there's two reasons. One is democracy and civics
(15:17):
gets taught, if it gets taught anymore at all. But
to the extent that still does get taught. Teachers in
our more polarized, controversy filled age do not want to
get in trouble. They do not want to go there, right,
so there's an often an instinct to go to the
lowest common denominator, talk about the process stuff how bill
becomes a law, but not talk about the structure stuff
(15:40):
that precedes process. Right, Well, who gets to decide how
Bill becomes a law? Uh? Well people in the Senate, well,
and people in the House. Well, why because the constitution will?
Why because a group of people made a deep set
of compromises with slaveholders about who was going to have power,
and say, okay, so that's how Bill becomes a law. Right.
(16:01):
They don't want to go there, right, And and yeah,
it's not in a little animated cute thing from the
exactly right. And I think the deeper question, apart from
just the you know, allergy to controversy that exists in
a lot of places, um, is frankly our culture. Right.
So everything in our small, d democratic culture says, you know, you, barotone,
(16:22):
you have the power to remake your life, the brand
of you. You can do this all the time. Right.
It's the it's the civic equivalent of the economic message
we get all the time, which is you can pull
yourself up by your own bootstraps. And if your situation
isn't great, that's because you suck. That's your problem. Right,
that's on you, and I think in our culture there's
this allergy also to talking about collective action, collective responsibility,
(16:46):
and collective power and how things got rigged the way
they got rigged and why. Maybe it's not because you're
lazy or not effective or not smart enough that you
keep getting smoothed down. Maybe it's because the game has
been stacked in, rigged against you and people like you
for generations. Um. I often think about the conversation that
you and I are having, and the and the whole
(17:06):
point of your show as part of a greater cause
right now, which is we've got to make civic sexy again, right,
civic engagement, you know it just it just forces you
to not all you make civic sexy again by being
honest about what it is and what it is. It's
about power, it's about people claiming power, about people contesting powers.
(17:27):
Right And and for the same reasons we are drawn
to Game of Thrones or House of Cards, we ought
to be drawn to participation. Except we're not just spectators now,
we are participants and we can actually exercise this stuff.
And that's uh that that's worth learning. There's an irony
in here that I'm trying to tease out democracy means
people power, and we use the verb version of that
(17:51):
word to democratize to indicate the distribution of some good.
We've democratized access to information, meaning more people have access
to it. Everything we need and can claim is in
that word people power. And yet we haven't democratized the
meaning of the word itself. We have kind of kept
(18:13):
the deep meaning, the power part of it, and the people,
the multiple people, not just the person, not the army
of one inside of you, not brand you. We've buried
that and we've muted the power and trimmed it down.
And so we've got to democratize democracy itself, at least
our interpretation of it. That is so absolutely right. And
(18:34):
I think part of that is about narrative and culture
and projects like this show and some of the things
that we try to do it Citizen University, you know,
we we have programs that are about not just teaching
in a workshop way, but creating communal rituals where people
can come and gather and practice this stuff. But I
think the other thing that you're really pointing to, again
(18:54):
back to what we're talking abobout literacy and power, you know,
I often talk about how there's three laws of power
that are really worth understanding. Love laws. Here we go,
so law number one, power compounds, Right, that's as obvious
as the world we live in right now, Right, the
world of the one percent or the point one percent
and everybody else power like interest power, power compounds. Those
(19:16):
who have will have more, right, those who have not
will have even less over time. Right, Law number two,
power justifies itself at every turn. Those who hold power
will spin elaborate narratives about why this allocation of things
is the God given way of the world. Right, this
is just the natural order of things. Uh. And in
(19:37):
different times that's taken on different casts. But that is
the backstory of white supremacy. That is the backstory of
male supremacy. Right. And you might think, oh, well, that's history,
that's old stuff. You've spent time in Silicon Valley. Silcon
Valley is a bastion of both white and male supremacy, right,
And there are storylines about why people who are not
white or male aren't cut out for this world. The
(19:57):
narrative trickle down economics is all around us. The idea
that a few super rich people are capital J, Capital C.
Job creators, and we shouldn't tax them too much, we
shouldn't regulate them too much because we want their prosperity
to leak its way down to the rest of us. Right,
That's a wonderful fable. But as as economics is complete, bs, right,
the true source of prosperity is not a few rich
guys at the top. It's the rest of us. And
(20:19):
when workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Right,
that's how you create prosperity. That's a counter narrative to that, right.
And so if these first two laws of power, that
power is always compounding into fewer and fewer hands, and
it's always justifying itself. And those few are telling you
why you should be happy with the crumbs you've got,
you being a pretty grim doom loop. Right. What breaks
us out of that doom loop, though, is law number three.
(20:42):
Power is infinite. Power is infinite. What I mean by this,
I'm not you know, you might think, Oh, here's the
dude from Seattle coming to sell me a new age,
a new age kind of manifest your power. You know,
I'm not doing new age stuff. I'm saying this. It
is in even the most rigged situation, and even those
unea cool staff situation. It is entirely possible to generate
(21:03):
brand new power out of thin air through the magic
act of organizing and generating power at at a thin
air is the only thing that saves us in a
democracy that you can actually change that equation right now.
Of course, incumbent power holders also can generate power thinner,
and they will counter organized to block you. And this
you have this perpetual game of organizing, counter organizing, mobilization,
(21:26):
counter mobilization. You know what. There's a word for that, politics,
politics and a democracy. Right, that's what we got to do.
That's our responsibility for showing up right, And there's no
it's not one and done. It's not oh I organized,
we fixed it, right. It's a perpetual, never ending thing.
And if you start relaxing then you will in fact
see power over time. I think it's it's humbling and
(21:50):
hopeful at the same time, because we've all felt acted
upon by power and this thought that there's a cabal somewhere,
and sometimes there really is a cabal. Like it's not
a conspirat those like a pretty small room with a
bunch of dudes in it making decisions about say the
borders that will comprise the continent of Africa, for example,
or tax policies in the United States as another example.
(22:12):
But I there is hoping to me and the idea
that we can generated ourselves and that we can kind
of spin up or accelerate a perpetual motion machine at
some velocity and some mass to it to get more
momentum behind our desired allocation of that power. We're living
through it right now. I mean absolutely, the waves and
(22:32):
waves of awakening and activism that followed the murder of
George Floyd Uh and even prior to that, the creativity
brought to bear in new forms of organizing since the
pandemic hit both of these. There are some tectonic things
going on in our country right now. Something is shifting, right,
and that shift depends on us not again, not acting
(22:54):
like Americans often act, which is a short attention spans
squirrel like what what's the next distraction? Right? And um?
But actually like, no, persist in practicing power and the
other piece of it that you were talking about earlier.
I gotta come back to because remember I said at
the beginning, we have this equation that citizen university power
plus character equal citizenship. Right. I gotta say a note
about the character side of this, Right, Because if all
(23:17):
you do is get really practice a power and learn
and figure out ways to move money, move ideas, move people,
you know, mobilize uh, you know, those who have means
of force and violence, and it's untethered actually to any
ethical or moral purpose, then in fact you are just
becoming a finely skilled sociopath, right. Um. And that is
not what we're that's not what we're trying to cultivate
(23:39):
in our work. And I know that's not what you're
you know, that's not how to citizen? Right? How to
citizen is both coupling that literacy and power with who
am I doing it for? How am I bringing more
people into the fold? How do I actually take a
knee literally and metaphorically for somebody who's not here? Um?
How do I circulate whatever power privilege I might have,
um in a way that to actually to the benefit
(24:01):
of the whole. And how do I change the narrative
so that doing that isn't the act of a sucker
or an altruist. Doing that is understood as self interest
properly understood because we're all in it together. I want
to step back to the power thing, because you took
us through these laws. Is there like a menu of
(24:24):
power that we get to choose from or to get
it out of the vagueness of power? Yeah? I love that. Um.
To get it out of the vagueness is the key, right, Um.
In just the same way that there's no they, there's
a particular we or a particular group of people who
we can insert ourselves into power. Isn't just some mystical
blob um. It takes you know. In my book, and
(24:47):
you're more powerful than you think. I talked about six
different sources of power. Okay, I love the numbers. You've
got three laws, You've got six sources of power. This
is we're gonna love the next I got nine strategies
of power to nine baseball exponential. But you know sources
of power, so the obvious ones money. People like numbers. Right.
(25:08):
What we've seen all around the country the power of ideas. Right.
The idea, not not even something as abstract as liberty,
but the idea, for instance, of black lives matter. That's
an idea that a few years ago it was much
more on the margins. And now you've got practically you know,
every fortune five companies rushing out there to say they
(25:29):
agree black lives matter. Right. Um, there's there's another one
that comes to mind, kind of on a different end
of the spectrum. But the idea of an inheritance tax
being rebranded as a death tax. Absolutely right, the way
you frame things, that's a form of power, right, absolutely right.
So you've got you know, money people ideas. Social norms
(25:50):
is another super important source of power. How we together
to find what's okay and what's normal? Right, So again,
look at the unfolding debates about trans identity, right, and
about pronouns like we are in the midst of a
collective reckoning and rearrangement of what social norms are. Right.
(26:11):
We've already now had the Supreme Court literally sanctify and
bless what had been an agreement amongst so many of
us as a matter of social norms that love is love,
whether the couple is the same sex or not, Love
is love. Right. Um, that didn't happen because Politician A
said so. It didn't happen because Corporation A didn't add
campaign if he happened because in a distributed way, millions
(26:33):
upon millions of people had conversations with each other and
started changing their sense of you know what I have.
I used to have this belief, but this person in
my life, this person I'm connected to, is changing my heart,
in my mind, in my sense of norms. Right. So
social norms is a fourth important source of power. The
fifth one, of course, which we are seeing unfortunately and
powerful in evidence right now, is force violence. Right, whether
(26:58):
that is organized under the ages of the state eight
in Bill Barr's you know masked Gestapo, or whether it
is you know, the self organizing militias of a K
forty seven carrying protesters in Michigan at the state capital,
who didn't want to have the tyranny of wearing a
mask imposed upon them. Right, Um, we're going without a haircut,
(27:18):
which I can understand. I mean, this is why I
was worried that we were doing video, because this is
this is not my best look. But but force is one, right, Ultimately,
in the final one is the state. The power of
the state to actually set rules and norms, whether it's
about something as tangible as hey, how much did you
(27:39):
get for an hour of flipping burgers? Seven fifty? How
about fifteen? How about fifteen dollars an hour. Right. And
why well, because enough of us convinced our government, the state,
to say that fifteen dollars is the minimum wage. Fifteen
dollars is the minimum basis for dignity and security for
an hourly wage. Right. And so you take all these
(28:01):
different sources of power, and they're all on display right now,
in good, bad, and ugly forms all around us. Right.
And again you gave my bio at the beginning. My
worldview is left of center. But our work at Citizen
University we work with and learn from people across the
ideological spectrum. Right. Um. We gather folks ranging from Black
Lives Matter and Fight for fifteen activists and dreamers UM
(28:22):
to Tea Party co founders. Right. Because what animated them
on one level, as much as they may disagree fiercely
on policy, what animates them on one level is some
interest in activating bottom up citizen power, right, bottom people power.
And my view is, to your point, we've got a
democratize democracy. We gotta make sure everybody, whatever their politics,
(28:44):
whatever they're from a small rural town or a big city, UM,
get some baseline literacy and then let us fight it out.
Let us argue it out, let us debate it, out,
let us do that thing called politics. Right, but the
politics will be more meaningful to the extent that we've
actually gained that initial literacy in the laws and sources
of power. Thank you for that deeper explanation. Three laws,
(29:07):
six sources. And I think that for me, um it
gives me a sense of power. And I holpefel like
I'm overusing the word just to have options. You know,
I don't want to feel like there's only one thing
I can do. And so if I'm starting to think
about money as a source of power, that gives me
a certain lens and a certain approach versus mass mobilization
(29:29):
or even small or mobilization of of someone other than
myself versus ideas, which is a place I naturally live
in and less so in the world of money. So
I think you you allow an entry point for everyone
when you do that, I want to take this time.
We've got some questions starting to come in during this
(29:50):
recording from our community around us, and so Robert Beats
has a question, how can you define a citizen with
out ultimately excluding people that live in a country. Is
that okay? Talk more about that, the idea that you
can be a citizen without having the right paperwork file.
I mean, of course there is a legal definition of
(30:12):
U S citizenship. Uh, and that matters, right, I I
get that. I mean the vote is tied to that
for instance. Right. But in the work that we're doing,
and I think the work that you're doing here, we
are trying to open up a much broader, capacious idea
of what it means to live like a citizen. Right.
And again, whether you have the papers or not, how
you live like a citizen has to do with whether
(30:32):
you join, whether you serve, whether you listen, whether you
argue well, whether you participate, whether you vote, whether you
protest if you can't vote, whether you encourage others to write. Basically,
it all boils down to whether you show up for others, right, Um?
And I think that you know to the second part
of that question, you know, well who do we show
(30:53):
up for? I mean sometimes I get the version of
the question of well, why talk only about the United States? Right?
I mean, there's global sitizenship and we're all you know,
we're all humans, and yes that's true. Um. And again,
nothing like a pandemic to teach us that many problems,
including novel coronaviruses, don't care about our borders or about
our national institutions. But at the same time, the pandemic
(31:16):
is also teaching us painfully in the United States right now,
compared to people you know, right up the way from me,
in Canada and in other parts of the world, that
nations still matter because nations still are the unit of
moral agency. They are the unit at which we can
actually ask somebody for redress of our grievances. Right, you've
(31:38):
got a problem. You don't have health insurance. You cannot
go petition the World Health Organization. Right, they're busy right
now doing other stuff. But you know, even if they
weren't busy, you couldn't go petition them for health insurance, right.
You would petition your national government flawed as it may be,
rigged as it maybe that's who you'd go to, right.
And so nations still matter, and this nation particular matters,
(31:58):
I think because you know, frankly, there might be conversations
going on about citizenship and democracy in other places right now,
but not a lot that looks like you and me
talking and the other people in this community participating and
listening right. Um. In the United States in particular, we
realized right now that democracy works only if enough of
us believe democracy works. And it's a it's kind of
(32:20):
a faith based, faith based right. And we in the
United States have the special burden to try to live
up to that because we can't just default to, well,
we're all part of the same vulcan, you know, with
all the same kind of bloodlines and legends and all
that stuff. No, we're not. We're just a group bunch
of people bound together by a set of ideas about
how we're going to try to do this thing together. Right. No,
(32:40):
that and that togetherness and the relationships and the with
others and the four others that empathy is I think
it just again, it unlocks an entry point for people,
and especially you know, one of the consequences of limiting
our power to the interpretation of you get to vote
and you get to have your atomic unit of self
(33:02):
interest is that you leave a lot of people off
to the side. You leave people who don't have documentation
off because you can't vote without that, or if you're
formally incarcerated in certain states or by age. You know,
and we have seen so much mobilization one of those
um sources of power that you talked about earlier with
people under voting age in this country and around the world,
(33:24):
the climate crisis and the response to it is being
led powerfully by groups of young people who are prohibited
from exercising one form of power but have infinite amounts. Again,
I'm trying to reflect back what I've heard from, like,
am I doing it right, Professor, to exercise that power
in different way and that relationship, you know, even the
(33:46):
way you've talked about the openness of your university, not
just the left of center people, that we need a
space to kind of build that relationship if all are
interested in at least that basic premise, Like if there's
someone who just down for to Ernie, I'm not sure
if they have a place, But if you believe in
power to the people, and as you say that, we're
gonna try to test that with each other, then that's
(34:08):
a relationship. We spoke with Valerie Power for this show
as well. Her new books called No Stranger, and it's
built on a similar premise that your opponent one is
not necessarily your enemy, but that a stranger is just
a part of you who you have yet to know um,
And so how do you integrate others even as you
(34:29):
disagree with them in a process of humanity, which is
to see them as part of you? And I think
there's a connective tissue here with the idea of valuing relationships,
about working with others, about humanizing even opponents in the
project of democratizing democracy through citizening. This is absolutely right,
(34:50):
you know, And I think that you know, we often
talk about in our work when we're training people to
lead these civic Saturday gatherings, right that it's about cultivating
bonds of trust affection. Right. So trust requires in the
first place, that like, I know, if I walk in here,
you're not going to ambush me, You're not here to
flame me. Like where this is not a one and done,
you know. The point of this is not scores Earth.
(35:11):
This is we're in a game of infinite repeat play
right together, and we're gonna earn each other's trust by
continuing to come back here. But the affection part of
that doesn't mean that I actually have to like you,
but I have to. I love how you put it
that that to see you the stranger as a part
of me that I haven't yet discovered right um, And
that rehumanization is so much a part of you know,
you've you've emphasized a couple of times now in things
(35:33):
that you've said Barton Day about kind of the access
to this stuff. Right, This is concept laws of power.
I know that can sound kind of high minded and stuff,
but this is stuff for everybody, right And you talk
about young people. So where I live in Seattle, in
King County See, which is the county that surrounds Seattle.
Over the last number of years, when the Black Lives
Matter movement started to pick up steam, several years ago,
(35:54):
a group of unheralded, unknown young people of color, mainly
African Americans, started organizing to block the creation of a
new youth detention center, right um. And they went under
the slogan no new Youth Jail, and they organized, they activated,
they showed up at council meetings, and you know what
happened over and over again. They lost, They kept losing votes.
(36:15):
The thing kept on going, the project kept on getting approved,
and they started, they laid the ground and they started
building this thing. Right But these young people kept on organizing,
they kept on building allies, they kept on sharpening their
skills and their literacy and power. And then what happened
and the combination of the pandemic and the post George
Floyd uprisings led to this incredible shift in the frame
(36:38):
of the possible. And they were ready for it, and
they've been organizing. They had those bonds of trust and
affection not just with each other but with allies in
power all over the place in this community, and all
of a sudden they were able to take that moment
and applied pressure on the elected officials and the decision
makers who decides of this and say, now, I think
it's time for you to reconsider this. And guess what,
(36:58):
just last week the King County executives said, you know what,
We're going to depopulate this youth detention center. We're gonna
take down this youth jail. So what looked like a repeated, repeated,
repeated defeat and set back turns out right now to
have been a victory. Right. These are young people who
just showed up and started teaching each other by showing
up and practicing this stuff. Um ideas like the stuff
(37:18):
we're talking about hopefully helped inform them. And you know,
some of them were involved in stuff that we've done
it citizen the university. But I take no credit at
all because these are just this is a rising generation,
as you said, of people who are figuring out by
doing it, and that is super exciting. What you and
I can do is help shine a light, help them
make sense of what they're doing, and give it some
(37:38):
frameworks and then again democratize this stuff about democracy. Right. So, um,
my friend and I believe your friend to Brittan Pat
McK cunningham is one of the co founders, is something
called Campaign Zero, right. Um. Campaign Zero is this policy
platform and framework for people who initially joined the activism
after a whole host of police killings of unarmed black
(38:02):
men and boys, and wanted to figure out, well, how
do we pivot, how do we pivot from showing up
in the streets to changing the system? Um? And they
made they answered that question with this incredible menu of
things that break it down for you. Right. It's again,
it's not just the system. There's the piece of the
system that's about police training. There's a piece of the
system it's about prosecutors who can be unelected if they
(38:23):
don't serve the people. Right, there's a piece of that
puzzle that is about the media and how you educate
the media in following these stories before the fact, before
something goes down, rather than after it goes down. Right. Um,
And there's this an incredible menu of tools there. And
I think that what they did with Campaign zero can
and should be done across every possible issue. Your issue
(38:44):
might be climate, your issue might be guns, your issue
might be gender equality, whatever the issue is, there's a
way to go from that initial burst of protests, which
is often pushing against something, to a concerted, systematic way
to build for something. Right and again, just to repeat
your refrain, you can't do that alone. You've got to
(39:05):
join others. You can join a club, you can join
a group of people hanging out at the corner. You
can join you know, a party, it doesn't matter. Just join.
The act of joining is the beginning of creating that
infinite sacific power. All Right, we're gonna bring in and
(39:29):
speaking of joining, NAT tousand, I believe that is coming
to us from New York City, New York. Yeah. So
I'm coming to you from Brooklyn, New York, in my
kitchen because it's close to the WiFi router. Uh. And
so my question is how do we convince people who
have no demonstrable empathy that they should care about other people?
And if you want to look at that in a
(39:50):
political system, how do we convince Americans who bought into
the myth of American individualism that individualism has failed us
and that collectivism, uh is the way that society should
function for the betterment of everyone in that society. It's
a great question because it's not easily answered, you know.
(40:10):
I mean, I think that you're you're asking you're asking
a tactical question about how you deal with individuals in interactions,
and then you're asking a much bigger strategic question about
how do we deal with our culture. Right, So let
me say a word about each of those levels, because
you know, on the tactical level, when you're you know,
whether it's online, invite people into conversation where again, where
it's possible to build trust, where you actually know who
(40:32):
you're talking to, right. But you know, I think on
that human level, I still think that even the person who,
for a variety of reasons, and many of them just
have to do with their kind of tribal, polarized political identity,
dig into a set of talking points in a point
of view that well, you should have been more careful,
you shouldn't have done this. You take it away from that,
and you begin with a series of questions, right, and
(40:53):
so one layer of questions is basically like, how do
you feel like you are most misunderstood? Okay, that's a
disarming question. How are you most misunderstood? Right now, you're
kind of getting them to let down their guard a
little bit and open up a bit more of their
three dimensional humanity. Um. But then the second question is
what are you most afraid of if your side loses? Right,
(41:16):
if your worldview does not prevail? Like, what are you not?
What are you afraid of? In the abstract and theory?
Like what are you afraid of? For you and those
around you and those you care about? Right? And again
it gets to some of the um the fear, the fear,
the shame, the hurt that often animates UM, some of
these most anti social, civic and political attitudes. Right, And
(41:38):
if you can somewhat detoxify them at the outset, you
might have a shot in this one on one conversation
where if you've earned some trust and you know you're
not just kind of a one and done, I'm gonna
flame you and and and be off this platform. You
have a shot there. Now we get to the very
interesting question, which you know is the question of culture
and media, right of how do you scale from one
(41:59):
to one in like epiphanies to culture change? Right? How
do you scale that? And I think part of it
is we do it by doing what we're doing here, right,
not just me and bartuned I having a conversation, but
you joined this conversation. You decided to show up and
participate in the middle of the day and then shape
it and we over time in ways that are much harder,
(42:20):
have to again make it more possible for more people
to enter into conversations where they can question that mythology
of rugged individualism and you can do in a way
that's not got you, but you ask you like again,
I have a different pair of questions that I often
used with people in work that I used to do
around mentorship, which is who's influenced you? And how do
you pass it on? Right? You asked that question. If
(42:41):
I asked Bartuny that question, we did an hour on that.
He would unscroll this list of mentors, tor mentors, people
who have shaped him, people who've you know managed him,
people have coached him. And you can't start answering that
first question without realizing, no man is an island, No
one is self made. There is no such thing as
a sell made man or woman. Right. We are all
made by each other. We all make each other right,
(43:04):
And then you immediately go to that second question of well,
how am I passing that on? How am I passing
on the good, the bad, and the ugly of how
I was formed? Right and again, it's an invitation for
people to get out of their political combat avatar identity
and into their actual humanity, right and um. And if
we do that in setting after setting, it's why we
do Civic Saturdays. That's why we created the Civic Civic
(43:26):
Seminary Program to train people like you actually to lead
civic Saturdays in Brooklyn, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in Dallas, in
San Diego, wherever it may be um to you know,
to lead these conversations and to create that kind of space. Right.
That's how we change the culture is we create that.
We commit to creating that space over and over and
(43:47):
over again. It's gonna take some time, because it took
us some time to get to the level of sickness
in our culture that we're dealing with. But I'm net
hopeful man. I mean, just conversations like this give me
give me a surplus of hope. Thank you Nat for
thoughtful question, but eric great answer. And to encourage people
to engage with questions is such a shortcut to changing
(44:09):
how we relate to each other. You know, as opposed
to statement versus statement, questions or invitations, statements are often
closed doors. Um so I really resonates with me so
much personally, I'm gonna give you one more kind of
parting opportunity, And truly, if you don't have an answer
right now, we can follow up. We like to give
people an opportunity to actually take a step to give
(44:30):
them something tactical, tangible to do. Could be a writing exercise,
could be signed up for a thing, could be a
set of questions to ask the person in their lives.
But as we've been talking so much about citizenship and
civic power and the forms of it and the sources
of it and the ways we can wield it, do
you have one or very short list of things you
(44:53):
would encourage someone listening to this to experiment with themselves
to feel that power yeah. You know, the shortest answer
I can give is join or make a club. I
honestly don't even care what it's about. I mean, ideally
you something civic or political or social cultural issue. But
it can be a gardening club, it can be a rotistry,
(45:14):
baseball club. It can be a you know, eighties, early nineties,
you know, hip hop rap club, you know whatever floats
your book, right, But join or start a club in
which you can actually rebuild that incredibly atrophied muscle we
have in the United States our citizen muscle. Right, My
friend Annie Leonard, who who runs Green Piece USA, talks
(45:35):
about how we as Americans, we have this hugely overdeveloped
consumer muscle. Right. We know how to buy fifty different
kinds of toothpaste, we know different kinds of you know, uh,
platforms for our music streaming choices and all this stuff,
but our civic muscles are pitiful and weak. Right, Well,
how do you build that? Sure you can go protests,
Sure you can vote. But the simplest thing to do
is actually to join or start a club. To gather
(45:56):
up with a few people with a commitment to repeat
your gathering, create a sense of unity and identity, create
a sense of ritual about how you gather and then
keep adding over time you will figure out that well.
Having to come together to create a common agenda, to
find common goals, to do common activities requires negotiation. It
(46:16):
requires reckoning with the fact that you've got money and
I don't have money. You've got time and I don't
have time. It requires us to deal with our inequalities
or iniquities. It requires us to deal with our difference
in the way that you you speak with an accent
and I don't speak with an accent. Whatever. Right for
the next three to six months, to dive deep on
that issue, learn about it, read about it, talk to
people about knock on virtual doors about it, Like, hey,
(46:38):
I heard that you know about something about this. Can
I pick your brain about this, join or start a
club on that issue? Right? Okay? After three to six months,
maybe you'll decide that issue is your life's passion. Maybe
you'll be like, okay, I got it, Like I'm done
with that issue. But now what guess what you will have?
You will have civic muscle. You will have practiced on
something concrete and specific over and over again, instead of
(47:00):
just generally I'm thinking about power I'm thinking about power
no no, no lift stuff. So if you just go
to our website Citizen University dot us, there's ways read
to join that club, participate in a citic Saturday, start
your own kind of find ways to get them connected
with others who care about this stuff. And I think
you know, of course a lot is lost during zoom times,
(47:21):
but I would say a lot of game too. There's
a focusing that happens. And the kind of conversations that
you and I are having here are two day and
the ways that people realize, okay, like they're listening to this,
they're seeing ideas in the chat like today they can
start learning how to lift stuff. Uh and uh, that
to me is kind of beautiful and pretty exciting. Eric
lou Ceo, co founder of Citizen University. Thank you for
(47:46):
the explanations and the breakdowns. Thank you for the examples
on the ground. Thank you for the tangible calls to action.
Thank you for your energy and and and building a
relationship with us for this time that we've had together.
So appreciate you. And good luck to you, to your family,
to your mother in particular. We'll be in touch. Thank you,
(48:07):
thank you, thank you. Hey you. It's me again. It's
just us, just me and you, and I got to
tell you that I am fired up after that, what
really connected with me was the idea that power justifies itself,
and we create very convincing stories to explain the very
unequal distribution of that power. But the good news is
(48:31):
we can create news stories of power and actually shift
it and generated That's what we're doing with this show.
That's what we're doing with you. But we are just
here to think about and talk about power. We're here
to lift stuff. In each episode, we're gonna share things
you can do internally and externally to strengthen your citizen practice.
(48:56):
Don't worry about the details. We've posted them to how
to sit is in dot com. For this episode is
two things you can do. The first is inspired by
Eric and the work of Citizen University. You already heard
him say it. Start or join a club. Ideally it's
something useful to your community, but you can have a
(49:17):
broad interpretation of useful. Maybe it's about supporting kids in
your neighborhood. Maybe it's a film club. The point is
to help you practice power in relationship with others, ideally
some strangers. This is big citizen stuff. Right here, you'll
practice how groups of people make decisions self governed, are
accountable to each other, negotiate different needs and perspectives, collaborate,
(49:42):
and importantly, resolve conflict. After you do this, let us know,
send an email to action at how to citizen dot com.
Include episode one somewhere in the subject line and tell
us about your club. Or go one step bigger and
shouted out publicly on social media. Use the hashtag how
(50:04):
to citizen and say something like I don't know, I
started a text message group for local business owners in
my neighborhood. What what and then what? What would be
completely optional, like if that's not your voice, like definitely don't.
Don't do it just because I did it? Like you,
you do you. This next action is something less public.
We want you to practice seeing an understanding power what
(50:28):
Eric calls reading and writing power. It will literally become
your superpower as a citizen. And we are gonna put
this episode to use. So this is something that you're
gonna need to say some time with write things down,
type it up, I'll say it to you. But again
the details are at how to citizen dot com. Four
(50:49):
steps to this here process Number one, pick an issue
that you care about that impacts a specific community or
the general public. Whatever works for you. For example, could
be police budgets and how large they are. I have
some interest in that topic. Number two, I want you
to write down who benefits from the current state of
things and who doesn't. Make a list three. Answer the
(51:14):
question how are the decisions about this issue made and
in that process is their accountability, transparency and participation by
those most affected by that decision. In the last step,
number four, write down who influences the decision making process
(51:34):
and what types of power do they use. Now you
don't have to write it down. You can rewind, pause,
think out loud to yourself, give us soliloquy. Doesn't matter
too much how you do it, only that you do it,
and we welcome you sharing it with us, typing it,
or with an audio memo if you want. Send that
email again to action at how to citizen dot com.
(51:56):
Include episode one in the subject line, we are so
grateful to Eric lou for helping us democratize democracy. Check
out Citizen University dot us for so much more about
their activities, their trainings, their virtual events, and find one
(52:16):
of Eric's mini books wherever you like finding books and
supporting those booksellers. You can also follow Eric online. He
is on Twitter, Eric p Lou. That's Eric with a C.
The letter p l I. You now. We're gonna post
this whole episode, a transcript, show notes, and more resources
(52:39):
at how to Citizen dot com. Do check it out,
and if you like what you experienced here, please share
this show. Leave review five stars is my humble suggestion
and sign up from my newsletter at baritunda dot com,
where I will announce the upcoming live tapings and more
(52:59):
from audience members like you. You can even send me
a text to two O two eight nine four eight
eight four four let me know you found me. I
just put in the word citizens. I know where you
came from, and I'm saying you updates that way as well.
How does Citizen with Barratune Day is a production of
I Heart Radio podcast executive produced by Nick Stump, Miles Gray,
(53:23):
Elizabeth Stewart and Barrattuone Day Thurston, produced by Joel Smith,
edited by Justin Smith. Power by You
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