Today we complete our trio of episodes in collaboration with iCivics, where we explore why people of myriad groups are having a tough time, civics-wise. In this episode, we tell you how to eradicate your cynicism and make a difference.
First, we share Jill Lepore's presentation on conventions; how we used to interact with our many constitutions. And then, we talk with Eitan Hersh. Eitan is the author of Politics Is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change. He tells us what works (and what doesn't) when it comes to engaging in politics.
Transcript
Archival: In 2012, 52% of American adults voted. That means that almost half of the people over the age of 18 did not cast a ballot during the last presidential election.
Archival: So why don't people vote? Good question. America prides itself as one of the world's great democracies. So how can we explain why more than 100 million Americans simply don't vote more than 40% of the eligible population? And why does America rank almost dead last when it comes to turnout rates in developed countries?
Archival: Honestly, I haven't voted in about eight years. And because I [00:00:30] have a lot of knowledge about politics, I. I just think that it's a waste of my time because whoever's going to get into office is not going to be influenced based on what my goals are or what my needs are or what the public needs are.
Archival: A new Gallup Bentley University poll gives new insight into how Americans view institutions, which have the power to influence and influence to act in society's best interests. The federal government gets the lowest mark. A third of those surveyed said they don't trust Washington at all.
Nick Capodice: You're listening [00:01:00] to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: And today we complete our episodes on why various groups in America are having a tough time. And you know what? This one's for you. All of you civics wise. I mean, I don't know you and what you're going through in your life, but I'm talking about having faith in our democracy, faith in our government, and believing that we as Americans can actually do anything about it whatsoever. And I swear, Hannah, on my [00:01:30] sock of harmonicas in my board game collection, this episode is gonna be just full of good news. Pinky swear friends don't lie. Mccarthy. Stick around. So I want to go back to how I started this series in the first place. The first day, the opening ceremonies of Civic Learning Week in Philadelphia, Hannah and I are walking around talking to teachers and students and the heads of various organizations. And Jill [00:02:00] Lepore gets on the stage.
Danielle Allen: It's a pleasure to welcome her here today for her keynote remarks, Professor Lepore.
Hannah McCarthy: Now, for those of you who don't know Jill Lepore, you really, really should. She's an historian, a journalist, a professor of history at Harvard University. We interviewed her for an episode on how we vote a long time ago, and she recently won a Pulitzer for her book, We the People A History of the US Constitution.
Nick Capodice: So naturally, when Jill Lepore got on [00:02:30] the stage, I thought she was going to talk about something to do with James Madison or the Constitutional Convention. But instead she starts by sharing a statute that is on the law books in Vermont.
Jill Lepore: An act relating to designating the state pie and the state fruit is hereby enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont. The state pie shall be apple pie. When serving apple pie in Vermont, a good faith effort shall be made to meet one or more of the following conditions a. With a glass of cold [00:03:00] milk, B with a slice of cheddar cheese weighing a minimum of a half an ounce. C with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream. Also the state fruit shall be apple. Now there are two kinds of people in this room. There are people who are thinking, doesn't the Vermont Legislature have anything better to do? And then there are people who are thinking, My God, this is what good government looks like.
Nick Capodice: One thing that's special about this legislation is that it was written by elementary school children. [00:03:30] A member of the Vermont House of Representatives, Ed Paquin, who was gonna give kids a tour of the state House. He said, you know what? If these kids are going to get on a bus and come all the way down here, they shouldn't just walk around and listen to what I have to say. They should actually create a law.
Jill Lepore: They learn about how laws get made, and then they prepare for that field trip. And I picture them arguing about what kind of a law they want to propose meeting with their legislator. Legislator Ed Paquin asking him questions, touring [00:04:00] the state House, sitting in it's funny. Fancy seats, getting dressed up for the field trip. It's got everything that civic education requires the study and doing and exercising of rights and duties, the study and exercising of community rules, of conversation, of determination and action. And it also has ice cream.
Nick Capodice: Vermont's not alone. A lot of states do this, and it's great. And it is not always this fun, cute [00:04:30] story of kiddos going and seeing some innocuous bill get passed. For example, in 2015, a group of students in New Hampshire proposed a bill to make the red tailed hawk the state raptor.
Archival: They wore this t shirt as they spoke to a subcommittee. Then in the gallery, they understood the bill could fail, and it did. But some of the debate still stings.
Nick Capodice: And not only did this bill fail to pass, but it was mocked and derided on the floor by [00:05:00] members of the House. One lawmaker was like, what's next? A state hot dog? And another one. I'm just gonna let his words speak for themselves.
Archival: But it grasps with its talons and then uses its razor sharp beak to rip its victim to shreds, tear it apart limb by limb. And I guess the shame about making this a state bird is it would serve as a much better mascot for Planned Parenthood.
Hannah McCarthy: Wow.
Nick Capodice: Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: How old were these kids?
Nick Capodice: They were in fourth grade. [00:05:30] They were sitting up there in the gallery, just excitedly waiting to see their legislation make the red tailed hawk the state raptor.
Hannah McCarthy: I am really sorry to hear that. That is the reaction they had to hear. I don't think that kids should have to listen to things like that, but I do have to say it is an accurate representation of politics and the legislative process. Any bill, no matter how innocuous, runs the risk of being used as a straw man to further a political agenda.
Nick Capodice: Yeah it does. And [00:06:00] let me add, nowadays, in the world of omnibus legislation, it would not be surprising to me to find an amendment sneaked into an apple pie bill that creates a funding package for a concrete production plan. Can I play the Jon Stewart clip on this, Anna?
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, is this the one where he was trying to get legislation passed that would help pay for the medical bills of nine over 11 responders?
Nick Capodice: Yeah. That one.
Hannah McCarthy: All right. Go ahead.
John Stewart: And I have yet to hear a reasonable explanation for why it'll get stuck in some transportation bill or some appropriations bill and [00:06:30] get sent over to the Senate, where a certain someone from the Senate will use it as a political football to get themselves maybe another new import tax on petroleum, because that's what happened to us in 2015.
Nick Capodice: I tell you, that clip never gets old. That right there is maybe one little part of the reason why people can feel quite cynical about our government these days. But the purpose of me telling everyone about the Vermont ice cream bill and the New [00:07:00] Hampshire State Raptor bill, which eventually passed four years later, by the way, is that students were for one day actually part of our government and school, even not during field trips to state houses. School is the primary place where Americans learn what it means to be a citizen. Classrooms have rules. Some have their own constitutions that the students draw up at the start of each year with their teacher. Teachers teach students every day how [00:07:30] to be civil with one another, how to talk, how to disagree, how to listen, how to advocate for what they want and what they need.
Jill Lepore: It also used.
Jill Lepore: To be that there were many, many other civil society institutions that did this work exceptionally well, raising democratic citizens, inculcating the habits of representation, participation and deliberation. Those institutions included labor unions, Temperance societies. Ymcas. Chambers of Commerce. Chapters of the [00:08:00] Urban League. The farmer's Grange. All of those institutions are in decline. And frankly, I think it's important to note that K 12 public education is, by some measures, the only civil society institution that is really left standing.
Nick Capodice: So students learn and practice this in school. All right. But what about the rest of the time the rest of their lives? What is their role in the legislative process? What [00:08:30] say do they have in the federal and more importantly, state laws that actually govern them? They can protest. They can argue on social media. They can write their congressperson. But when it comes to creating a law to actually changing how things work in this country, the only thing they have really is once they turn 18, their vote every four years or two years. If they're politically [00:09:00] active, they can say who they want to represent them, and they hope if that person wins, that that person will generally do stuff that makes their lives better. And to get real civics 101 here, all laws that are written and passed must be applicable under your state constitution, and then those statutes must be in accordance with the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, and whether or not they are, is determined by nine unelected [00:09:30] officials who serve for life. You see what I'm getting at here, McCarthy?
Hannah McCarthy: I do we the people have a pretty limited set of tools when it comes to actual change.
Nick Capodice: So, Hannah, if I asked you, after we turn off our microphones to tell me ten laws that you personally feel would make this country better, you could do that, right?
Hannah McCarthy: I can think of a lot of things. I would like to figure out how to pass laws.
Nick Capodice: About what? About amendments to the Constitution.
Hannah McCarthy: Possibly. But of course, amendments are [00:10:00] far more difficult to pass than local laws. We have only amended the federal Constitution 27 times. The last time was in 1992, and it wasn't even a new amendment. It was originally proposed in 1789. Amendments required two thirds of both chambers of Congress and three quarters of all states.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. Very hard. Now, there is another way to amend the Constitution, which we've talked about, but it's not talked about a ton because the odds of it actually happening are pretty [00:10:30] slim. That method is for two thirds of all the state legislatures to call a convention to amend the Constitution. I am admittedly thinking about it sort of through a Frank Capra lens. 34 state legislatures all waving goodbye on a train platform, crowds cheering, or going to D.C. and we're gonna figure this out. Frank Capra aside, it shocked me to my core when Jill Lepore told the audience, yeah, this has never happened. But [00:11:00] states did have conventions to amend their constitutions.
Jill Lepore: U.s. states used to hold constitutional conventions all the time. Meetings in rooms like this have elected delegates who were elected to write or revise state constitutions, which were then sent back to voters for ratification. These conventions were widely reported in the newspaper, avidly followed by ordinary people. There was an effect, a near unceasing constitutional argument, going on all over the United States [00:11:30] all the time. Remember, laws govern people, but constitutions govern government. So holding these conventions was a way of asking really frequently, is this how we wish to live, or ought we to amend our fundamental law?
Nick Capodice: You could actually vote for someone because you thought they were going to come up with something cool, and if the people liked it, they would vote to ratify it.
Hannah McCarthy: How many state constitutional conventions have been held in total.
Nick Capodice: So far in the US? 233. [00:12:00] The most recent state to actually have one was Rhode Island, and it did so in 1986. But I think Jill's point is that when we did this all the time, we actually were involved and how our government worked, we were part of it.
Jill Lepore: Americans learned about constitutional democracy by writing and revising and ratifying or protesting state constitutions, and by following that process in the newspaper. A convention is the provided machinery of peaceful [00:12:30] revolution, said one US senator. The very act of assembling, of gathering gatherings like these. The convention itself became the symbol, the visible enactment of the sovereignty of the people. As the Supreme Court of Indiana put it in 1855, a constitutional convention of eminent citizens is the substitute for the armed mob of other countries.
Nick Capodice: The convention was the way that we interacted with the government and other non-governmental systems, [00:13:00] too.
Jill Lepore: Because these state constitutional conventions before the Civil War, they were for white men and for white men only. But all of the people excluded from these kinds of meetings held their own conventions in which they drafted, ratified, and amended their own constitutions and statements of purpose and principle, and organized petition campaigns and proposed amendments to federal and state constitutions. Black men held what were called colored conventions, where they elected delegates in what [00:13:30] can properly be considered extraconstitutional conventions. Between 1830 and 1861, black delegates met in 49 conventions in the state's two regional conventions and 11 national conventions.
Nick Capodice: There were conventions to determine women's rights. There were native nation conventions to amend their own constitutions.
Jill Lepore: The militant abolitionist John Brown held a convention that wrote A constitution when the Southern States seceded. They held conventions and wrote constitutions. Americans in these years invented the first nominating convention [00:14:00] in 1831, and everyone knew what it meant to be the writer of your own constitution.
Hannah McCarthy: Nick. It sounds magical and involved and, well, fun. But we don't do it anymore.
Nick Capodice: We don't. Which isn't to say we won't ever again, but we really don't do conventions these days. And maybe that's one of the reasons we feel politically powerless. So to that point, I [00:14:30] spoke with someone who wrote about what Americans can actually do when they feel that way, and I'm going to tell you about that right after the break. We're back. You're listening to civics 101, and today we are talking about why Americans, full stop. Are civics wise a little disengaged.
Hannah McCarthy: So, Nick, you said you had some tips in terms of what Americans [00:15:00] can do besides vote. And by the way, please vote if you are eligible to get the change they want. So let's hear it.
Eitan Hersh: Yeah. You know, like I've thought about this in different ways. I mean, one way to say it quickly is that a lot of people want to pay attention to important things and not themselves be important.
Nick Capodice: This is Eitan Hersh.
Eitan Hersh: My name is Eitan Hersh. I'm a professor of political science at Tufts University, and I'm the new director of our center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education.
Hannah McCarthy: All right. So what is the [00:15:30] center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education?
Nick Capodice: Their mission is to help students, quote, more broadly, embrace difficult topics and challenging conversations to break out of ideological bubbles, to drive research and teaching forward, end quote. So Etan told me his students at Tufts were by an overwhelming majority liberal.
Eitan Hersh: The culture on campus, and I think in the public was very constrained. It was hard to ask questions about, you know, the other side of issues, [00:16:00] even ones that like gerrymandering or voter ID laws where, um, the conversation felt like very, very hard to learn about what other people were seeing on these same issues as, as our students were inspired me to design a whole course on conservatism and public policy.
Nick Capodice: Etan is also the author of a book, politics is for Power How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism Take Action and Make Real Change.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, that's right. This is the book that you talked about in [00:16:30] another episode where Etan compared someone thinking they're politically engaged by following politics, obsessively reading the news, watching the news to a sports fan, considering themselves a quarterback by watching the Super Bowl.
Eitan Hersh: It is when you're paying attention to national politics, when you're paying attention to something like that's happening on the Supreme Court that's happening in Congress. Like that stuff is important, but you have no role. Like you have no role to play in [00:17:00] that. So you are not an important person. And if we reframe what political activity ought to be mostly about, it's about ways where an individual can actually be important.
Nick Capodice: And I'm going to reiterate the name of Etan's book here. Politics is for power. So think of, I don't know, five things that you did this month that could be tied to politics. Sharing an article, having an argument with a relative, reading [00:17:30] a Supreme Court opinion, listening to the news, whatever. And then ask yourself, how did this action change the power structure? How did it move power from a place or a party, or a person you don't feel has your best interest at heart to a different place that does.
Hannah McCarthy: What are the actions that do actually shift power?
Nick Capodice: Unsurprisingly, Hannah and I know yes, we say this all the time, but this time I'm saying it in thunder. It is through [00:18:00] state and local politics.
Eitan Hersh: It's kind of remarkable, actually, how easy it is to get power at the local level. If you just think about the fact that, you know, we live in a country where, you know, we have something like 15% voter turnout at the local level, uh, not that many people are civically engaged, if you want to be. It's like really not that hard. So the way that you make a difference in your own community, in the laws that are happening in your town, it could be an electioneering activity. It could be in a political campaign [00:18:30] getting different people elected. It could be in in lobbying or advocacy. But like you actually understand the connection between what you are doing and the outcome that you see, like the strategic outcome that you want, then you are like an important person all of a sudden. And, and then you don't have to feel that sense of, of dismay. I think, you know, it's really damaging for people to have such a national orientation towards politics, where they will always feel like they have no role to play.
Nick Capodice: So [00:19:00] if you want to lose that sense of dismay, if you're tired of feeling unimportant, you have to do some research to find out who where you live is doing work that you support and is doing work that has an effect.
Eitan Hersh: So, so the first thing is to think about like what organizations around you have a strategic mindset. Like they actually have a set of goals they're trying to do. In my book, I highlight all these examples of a Latino coalition in Massachusetts [00:19:30] that had a big effect on city politics and electioneering group in Pennsylvania that is, you know, moving people towards its political goals, but also like a 90 year old guy in an old age home that gets people supporting the candidates that are important to his his constituency. Some of the stuff could be solitary. It's usually not as fun when solitary.
Nick Capodice: So, Hannah, you were a reporter at NPR before you came to the podcast unit, right?
Hannah McCarthy: I did, I covered the New Hampshire Statehouse, [00:20:00] local politics, that sort of thing.
Nick Capodice: Did you ever go to a town meeting?
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, I can remember at least one that I attended. It was people actively being a part of their political process, even if they were simply making decisions about, you know, getting a new fire truck or something. And then in terms of the state House committee hearings were my favorite to cover.
Nick Capodice: All right. Tell me about those. What were they?
Hannah McCarthy: So in New Hampshire, it is a tried and true tradition that bills proposed in the House or Senate get a committee hearing and a vote on the floor. And [00:20:30] anyone can look up when the hearing might be for a particular piece of legislation and just attend. You can then testify in front of the committee, explain to them that you support a bill or oppose it and why.
Nick Capodice: So this sort of thing, the committee hearing or the town meeting. These are the rooms where the power lives and moves. So Aten told me about one time he was at a zoning board meeting with some of his students in a [00:21:00] town in New York state.
Eitan Hersh: And it turned out that there was a woman who basically attends the weekly zoning board meeting of this town and has been doing it for years, and she's done it. You know, I don't know what night it is like Wednesday nights for two hours. She instead of watching Netflix, she goes to the zoning board meeting. And, um, she's developed real expertise. She has a perspective, she has goals around, you know, what should be built and what shouldn't be built. She's [00:21:30] kind of a thorn in the side of this zoning board. You know, I only saw this interaction for a couple hours. But, you know, I don't think she has a constituency, but she has actually a substantial amount of power in her town because she knows the procedures of how this is supposed to work. She knows what she can raise a stink about, and it was sort of remarkable to see someone who actually doesn't have a church group, a ag group, a campaign, just one person. But, you know, if you just sort of are persistent and [00:22:00] you're like, I'm gonna do this every week. And by the way, it's kind of interesting. Like, I will both be smarter for it. Uh, when I see my friends later in the week, I'll be able to tell them some like fun war stories.
Hannah McCarthy: I think we've all met some version of this person, and I appreciate the fact that this person who, you know, might be the thorn in the side of the committee hearing, the person who everyone in town knows, the person who maybe gets an eye roll is recognized for being, in a way, one of the most powerful people around.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. So [00:22:30] if you're a listener to Civics 101, I'm going to make the leap of faith here and assume you're someone who cares about politics. So I want to end this episode with a personal request, find something that you care about and then figure out how that thing is affecting you in the town or the city where you live. Search for a local group that is [00:23:00] actively working to change that thing and go to their next meeting. And when you're there, look for the power and try to figure out how this group tries to shift it.
Eitan Hersh: The thing that politics is, is to get power so you can do what you want. That's what that's what politics is. And if you're not trying to get power so you can do what you want. Bye bye. Do what I want. I mean, do selfishly what you want, but do what you think is right for the government. Or it could be selfishly, if you're not doing politics for power you [00:23:30] like, you're just not doing politics at all. You're doing some other thing which I call political hobbyism, which is like, you know, the same thing as, you know, equivalent to some kind of like sports fandom.
Nick Capodice: This is what people in power do. So why not you? That is it for this episode on why we're having a tough time, and that is it for this whole [00:24:00] series on myriad groups having a tough time. Huge shout out to Icivics who collaborated with us on these. Again, if you're not familiar with their work, check it out. This episode was made by me Nick Capodice with You Hannah McCarthy. Thank you always. Our staff includes Dana Cataldo, Marina Henke, and executive producer Rebecca LaVoy. Music in this episode from blue Dot sessions, Azura Epidemic Sound and the power shifter of power chords Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is a production of NPR, [00:24:30] New Hampshire Public Radio.