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