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The People’s Voice: Dr. Marjan Ehsassi on Citizen Assemblies & Change
25 Plays25 days ago
In this episode of Unsolicited Perspectives, host Bruce Anthony sits down with Dr. Marjan Ehsassi, a leading expert in democratic innovations and author of Activated Citizenship: The Transformative Power of Citizen Assemblies. Together, they dive into Dr. Ehsassi’s work in international affairs and her commitment to strengthening democracy by engaging everyday citizens in the policymaking process. The conversation unfolds around the structure and potential of citizen assemblies, highlighting their role in fostering genuine civic duty, tackling political polarization, and enabling communities to address shared issues through meaningful deliberation.
Dr. Ehsassi explains how citizen assemblies offer a fresh approach to policy creation by involving a diverse cross-section of society and shares the compelling benefits these gatherings bring, such as increased political engagement and a stronger sense of community. Bruce and Dr. Ehsassi also explore the broader challenges of modern democratic governance, discussing the impact of social media and technology on public discourse, and consider ways we might ensure a truly representative democracy in the future.
This episode of Unsolicited Perspectives concludes on a hopeful note, encouraging listeners to embrace active citizen participation as a critical component of a thriving democracy. #CitizenAssemblies #DemocraticEngagement #ActivatedCitizenship #democracy #unsolicitedperspectives
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Thank you for tuning into Unsolicited Perspectives with Bruce Anthony. Let's continue the conversation in the comments and remember, stay engaged, stay informed, and always keep an open mind. See you in the next episode!
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to Unsolicited Perspectives
00:33 Introducing Dr. Marjan Horst Ehsassi
02:14 Dr. Ehsassi's Background and Inspiration
04:51 Understanding Citizens Assemblies
08:52 Challenges and Solutions in Citizens Assemblies
12:13 Citizens Assemblies in Different Countries
16:11 Impact and Future of Citizens Assemblies
25:34 Increasing Citizen Involvement in Democracy
30:57 Strategies to Strengthen Democracy
34:08 The Role of News and Local Issues
38:27 Future of Democratic Governance
41:28 Defining an Engaged Citizen
44:12 Reaching the Apathetic and Skeptical
47:39 Final Thoughts and Hope for Democracy
50:54 Closing Remarks and Call to Action
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Unsolicited Perspectives' and Bruce Anthony
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome. First of all, welcome. This is Unsolicited Perspectives. I am your host Bruce Anthony here to lead the conversation in important events and topics freedom that are shaping today's society. Join the conversation to follow us wherever you get your audio podcasts. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch our video podcasts. Rate, review, like, comment, share, share with your friends, share with your family, help, even share with your enemies.
00:00:33
Speaker
On today's episode, I'll be interviewing Dr. Majan Assisi. She's the author of Activated Citizenship, the Transformative Power of Citizen Assemblies. She's got her doctorate in international affairs at John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, with a concentration in democratic innovations, deliberate democracy, and citizen assemblies.
Introduction to Dr. Majan Assisi and 'Activated Citizenship'
00:00:55
Speaker
She's also a Senior Innovations Fellow at the Institute of Democratic democratic Engagement and Accountability at The Ohio State University. I'm really excited to do this interview because we're going to be talking about democracy and how people can get involved in democracy. freedom freedom But that's enough of this intro. Let's get to the interview.
00:01:22
Speaker
As I said at the top, I'm here with Dr. Marjan Asasi, author. Oh, the incredible book, Activated Citizenship, The Transorative Power of Citizens' Assemblies. We're going to be talking about democracy, y'all. Dr. Marjan, thank you so much for joining me on today's episode.
Dr. Assisi's Background and Transition to International Development
00:01:40
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
00:01:43
Speaker
It's my pleasure because we're talking about something that's very, very important in a very timely time, because in just a few days, our election will be taking place. Democracy will be taking place. So it's very important for people to hear this episode, to understand citizenship and citizenship assemblies and what that means as a chance to democracy.
00:02:09
Speaker
So I'm gonna kick things off with the first question that I always ask all my guests. Can you give us a little bit about your background and what inspired you to not only write your book, but what was it a particular moment or a trend that maybe you realize was important in citizenship engagement?
00:02:28
Speaker
Well, thank you for that question. um So just to give you a little bit of background. So I'm an immigrant to this country. I came to the United States to practice law. um I spent a few years in New York City as a litigator, and then we moved to Washington, DC. And I had two kids, and I wanted to be able to spend more time with my children. So I moved into international development because they are and as an immigrant, you know you don't really it felt like that's where my value at was.
00:02:53
Speaker
And so I spent um some time at the World Bank. I was at the National Democratic Institute at the American Bar Association, always working on governance and rule of law issues. So basically going around the world, helping countries that were developing or that were not very developed strengthen their democratic institutions.
00:03:14
Speaker
And I was really enjoying that work until, honestly, 2015-16. And I have a mother-in-law who is lives in Baltimore, who always used to say to me, what are you doing going around the world? There are so many problems with our own democracy. And it didn' didn't resonate with me in the way that it suddenly did in 2015-16. And I think part of it was, you know, at that point, I'd spent a number of years in this country raising two kids and misfearing I'm far more loyal to this country and invested in the United States. And I think of that election, and I'm not the only one, I think a lot of people
Motivation Behind 'Activated Citizenship' and Citizen Assemblies
00:03:50
Speaker
who are working sort of internationally kind of decided that they wanted to pivot and really look at our own country.
00:03:55
Speaker
And so I'd always wanted to go back to school after law school. And I went back to school. I went to Johns Hopkins and did my doctoral degree. um And at the time, the sort of what was really kind of what I wanted to understand was why are citizens in Western democracy so disengaged from political institutions? That was one part of my question. The other part of my problem statement was, OK, so we understand why.
00:04:24
Speaker
Are there platforms out there that once you participate in them, make you want to engage in your democracy more? Because we all see people who are apathetic. Are they really apathetic because they don't want to involve themselves in their democracy? Or are they apathetic and unengaged because they don't really think there are really meaningful ways to be involved in our democracy? And so that's really what began my journey.
00:04:51
Speaker
Okay, so what is Citizen's Assemblies? In the book, you kinda explained it for before the audience. Can you give us a little bit of a ah bigger explanation without giving away the book? Because, ladies and gentlemen, go buy the book. But just give us a little explanation of what exactly Citizen's Assemblies are.
00:05:12
Speaker
Citizens' assemblies are the absolute best way to engage citizens in it in your democracy. And what they are, and i I thank you for the question. I spent about four years researching citizens' assemblies in other countries because we in the United States are really laggards when it comes to these types of deliberative democracy platforms. But basically, they have four ingredients, I usually say.
00:05:34
Speaker
The very first one is that it's it involves government. And so, you know, I spent some of my time, I grew up in Iran for from from the age of 10 to 18. And so I'm a real social movement kind of protest kind of girl, and I believe in social movements. But I think that as I've gotten older, I think that in order for our democracies to be strong, we need government and citizens to be in partnership together.
00:05:58
Speaker
And so the very first part of the Citizens' Assembly is that there has to be a government body that champions this. So for instance, it's a mayor, it's a city council member, it might be the president of a country or a governor that says, we have a public problem, any public, and we can talk about the different issues, and we want citizen import. So we want to bring citizens together to tell us how they want this policy to change. So that's number one.
00:06:25
Speaker
Number two is we don't just kind of have sign up sheets like we usually do with citizen engagement all over the world and and in this country as well. We do what's called a democratic lottery, so sortition. So we use sortition to
Understanding Citizen Assemblies: Structure and Engagement
00:06:40
Speaker
cast a very wide net and try and invite as many marginalized voices as possible.
00:06:46
Speaker
So truly when you use democratic partition, I can get into more details if you want, but you basically try and bring together a truly representative sampling of that population, whether it's the city again or the state or the nation. And so we use a two tier system where we send invitations and we tell people what it is that we want them to come and learn about and write policy about.
00:07:08
Speaker
And then we use different criteria to make sure that that population of 40 or 185 truly represents that population. And we use different criteria to do this, and I'm happy to go into that. The third part, the third component of Citizens' Assembly is that every Citizens' Assembly has three parts.
00:07:25
Speaker
The very first part is learning. So for me, this was a huge draw to Citizens' Assembly because at a time of such polarization where people just argue about things without really being very knowledgeable about the issue, one third of every Citizens' Assembly is dedicated to learning.
00:07:42
Speaker
So we bring different experts from a diversity of perspectives. So before you argue, before you deb debate, before you even deliberate, you're learning together. And the research shows that when you learn together, your position changes because you're listening to experts who are providing you with balanced perspective.
00:07:59
Speaker
So that's the first part of an assembly. The second part is deliberation. So everybody in small sessions and also in primary sessions deliberate around the topic. And then they write policy. So people, average people, are actually writing policy proposals. And these policy proposals are then put together in a final report that is then submitted to government.
00:08:21
Speaker
So the same governing body that called the Citizens' Assembly, you're again, I'd worked with with the president of France when he did this, or a mayor of a city, that person then will receive the Assembly members, accept the final report, and at that point explain whether it's six months, nine months, that they will review it, and then they'll come back with their decisions about what they're going to implement or what they're not going to implement. So those are basically the four different real criteria for citizens.
Challenges and Strategies for Effective Citizen Assemblies
00:08:51
Speaker
So there's so much that I want to tap into, but ah the cynic in me says that what you're describing is a lot of group projects that I had in college where you would pull people together, you give them a topic, you teach them about the topic, you debate about the topic, you do a project about the topic, you give an answer to whatever question it is about the topic. So it reminds me very much of college.
00:09:19
Speaker
the large per There's a large percentage of the population here in this country that doesn't go to college. And there's a large percentage of the population that is getting information that they deem as fat from unreliable sources. So the cynic in me says that it's going to be so hard to get people to just sit down and learn because They're going to bring their, whether it's real facts or alternative facts, into the discussion and not want to learn. So how do you combat against something like that? So such a good question. And listen, like there is no question that what you're saying applies to a certain percentage of every citizen.
00:10:01
Speaker
So you absolutely, with every assembly, we have a small percentage of people. I often say, you know, in society at large, you probably have about 10% that are troublemakers. That's probably true of an assembly as well. So if you have any assembly members, four of them are probably people who are going to come in, who are very dogmatic, and have their opinion, and they're not going to change their opinion.
00:10:22
Speaker
on But for the most part, so we use really kind of, we we try really hard to make sure that one, everybody arrives at the same frame. So some, you know, we don't send reading materials before because we realize that some people are not going to read materials if you send it to number four.
00:10:38
Speaker
We really try and make the learnings kind of in a way that everyone can learn together. We also do a lot of things around this so that we make sure that everyone is tended to. So I've been in assemblies where if we find that some people are having trouble keeping up with the learning, without them knowing, we'll assign a mentor to them. We'll assign a buddy. So someone will help them with that learning. I mean, the goal here is to make sure that every single person has a positive experience.
00:11:07
Speaker
how work And I think that to your point, yes, there are people who, you know, get their facts from other places and then sometimes they try to bring those facts into an assembly. But for the most part, people are there because I mean, you can't imagine how novel it is for a citizen to get an invitation from the government that says, I want you to help me change this policy.
00:11:32
Speaker
And so they take their role very seriously. And we often, depending on the practitioners, we often will say to them, you know, the 45 that are in this room, other people want it to be in this room. So take this job really seriously. And there is this sense that they're not there just to represent their own preferences, but they're there to do right by their comm community. And that is really palpable.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah, real civic duty. You would take
Comparative Analysis of Citizen Assemblies Globally
00:12:00
Speaker
on something of a I'm doing this for not my not just myself, but for those people that are in my community. So I have to do this right. I can understand that perspective. You said you've done a lot of citizen assemblies in other countries and and and here as well in the US.
00:12:20
Speaker
What are some of the similarities and differences from doing them in other countries as opposed to here? Is the engagement the same? Is it similar or is it different um when people come to these assemblies and learn and try to create policies that that would be for not just themselves, but for the entire community?
00:12:45
Speaker
I mean, I think that we like to think as Americans that we're very different from the rest of the world and that we have more polarization than the rest of the world does. I don't think that is the case. I think, again, you know, first of all, we don't have many citizens. We haven't had many citizens in some days in the United States.
00:13:03
Speaker
We had one Citizens' Assembly two years ago in the city of Petal Duma, north of San Francisco, and I wrote a case study of that, and that's included in the book, and great practitioners called Healthy Democracy organized and ran that. I was a researcher at the time, and we just there was just that I was not involved in it, but there was a um ah Citizens' Assembly in the city of Bend, Oregon, which was completed in September.
00:13:28
Speaker
The organization that we have launched is called the Federation for Innovation in Democracy in North America, and we are currently supporting different cities around the country and in Canada to organize these. I mean, Canada has done many, many more citizens this year. They are far more experienced than this.
00:13:45
Speaker
But to answer your question, I don't think that in Petaluma, there was a big difference in the way that people approached the assembly. I think that the same things that I saw in other countries, in France, in Belgium, in Canada,
00:14:00
Speaker
I also observed in the U.S. I mean, people come together. At first, they're a little bit unsure. And with every session that goes by, you see them becoming more comfortable, becoming feeling more and more like they're experts in that issue. And then the bonds that you see with people that don't know each other. I mean, in Petal de Ville, we had people from vastly different neighborhoods that he had never actually been together.
00:14:23
Speaker
um sit together and really, really start establishing bonds. And I often say, you know, one of the things that is really important for me with Citizens' Assemblies, beyond the just the policy and impact, is the fact that at a time when we talk about pervasive loneliness in this country, where people feel isolated, Citizens' Assemblies really bring people together, especially because you're together over sessions. You know, it's not just a three-hour session where you go to a town hall and you meet with your representative. You're actually working together. And those bonds, we see them continuing after the citizens assembly. So there's a sense of community, there's a sense of
Citizen Assemblies and Traditional Politics: A Complementary Approach
00:15:00
Speaker
belonging that is truly powerful. And the other piece I think that I'd like to add, and this is true outside of the US and in the US,
00:15:08
Speaker
is the that this this muscle, this um the muscle of collective problem-solving, which I think we've lost. We've lost in the U.S. I think with people have lost in other parts of the world as well, where you know you have the experts coming in and making decisions and government making decisions in a way that is kind of not really inclusive of people.
00:15:28
Speaker
Citizens brief bring people together, and the whole point is that you're not representing, as I said, yourself, you're representing your collective. And so together, you see after learning the sense of considered judgment that emerges, you know collective intelligence, we call it, and you see that. And that sense of solving problems together is a really powerful tool as well.
00:16:01
Speaker
Okay. i I actually believe in everything that you're saying. But. No. Well, it's a it's a sort of but. It's a half but. Okay. Not a full but, a half but. I'm curious how Citizen Assemblies could play a role in really
00:16:23
Speaker
polarizing issues and how would traditional politics handle that? So politics, like you have these quote unquote town halls where politicians go and they hear, they hear the questions from the people of that area and they're supposed to take that to go try to make change. That's not what you're talking about that. So how can we,
00:16:51
Speaker
get the citizen assemblies and politicians on board. it with just Everything is just so polarizing right now. And most politicians have a firm stance on certain issues.
00:17:09
Speaker
How can we merge those two? I know this is ah this is a loaded question, but but ah but i'm I'm genuinely curious because what you're describing to me is almost a utopian democracy, a democracy of maybe what the founding fathers were thinking of when they wrote it. Everybody wasn't included, but what they were thinking of when they when they wrote it, truly a representative democracy.
00:17:34
Speaker
ah kind of We don't have that now, even though that's what it's called. So so how can these assemblies attack current politics? I guess that's the simplest way that I can ask that question. Solar, i mean I mean, your question, I think, is a really, really good one. And I don't think it's utopian democracy. I think it's what democracy was designed to be. I think we've just really, really moved away from the ideals of a true democracy, partly because To your point, we have electeds who are not representing the will of the people. I mean, if you look at all the data, people more and more are feeling alienated by government decisions and policies that they're supposed to live by on a day-to-day because they don't respect their preferences. So a citizen's assembly allows our policies to reflect the preferences of citizens.
00:18:21
Speaker
Now, there will continue to be elected officials who don't care about this, right? Especially actually like the United States, where they are so bound by big lobby and and interest groups. So that is definitely a problem. But if an elected representative is truly, truly eager,
00:18:38
Speaker
to know what their constituents want. This provides them with the best buy-in, because you bring those constituents together, they debate, they deliberate together, they learn together, and you see what they really want. So whatever it is that if you move in that direction, you're actually moving in the direction that the majority of people want. Now, that majority may not choose policies that I agree with, right? And that's something that we should think about. so I think part of what has happened around our definition of democracy is that many of us,
Success Stories: France's Citizen Convention on Euthanasia
00:19:10
Speaker
whether we're on the right or the left, we want democracy to represent certain outcomes. And that's a problem. Democracy is supposed to be about respecting process.
00:19:20
Speaker
Right. So it's a process and a citizens assembly allows you to to really have some kind of an integrity with the process of coming up with policy. Now, I may not like that. You know, it's very possible that you have a citizens assembly in an area that is more conservative and around immigration. And as an immigrant, I may not like what those people have to say.
00:19:43
Speaker
I have to be able to respect the fact that those are the policies that they want for their district, right? so so So I think that it's something that's complicated. But I will say to you that what a Citizens' Assembly does is, and I'll give you an example. Last year in France, they had a Citizens' Convention on the end of life.
00:20:02
Speaker
So the president of France wanted to make a promise to the country that if he were elected, he would ask the citizens and he would engage in a national debate around whether they want euthanasia and assisted suicide to be introduced as law for the for the country.
00:20:17
Speaker
We had 185 people, and I was there. I was one of four guarantors and was there for four and a half months back and forth in Thorthing from Washington, DC, and the design and the implementation. Of the 185 French citizens that came together over 27 days, nine weekends from all over the country,
00:20:34
Speaker
76% of them were in favor of a change of the law. 27% were against it. And as you know, euthanasia and and assisted suicide is a very emotional subject. It touches on all sorts of things, personal experience, odd religion. So it was a very, very heavy subject.
00:20:53
Speaker
But what we did is in the process of the design, we made sure that initially the 185 came together. So trust was built in the first sessions. And then they got involved in very difficult conversations. And at the last session, the 26%, one of the people who represented the minority view said, I want to thank the majority, so the 76%, for allowing the minority 50% of the time.
00:21:21
Speaker
It's really, really powerful. So we make sure in the design of these things that even if it's a polarizing issue, that the minority voice as it emerges has enough time so they feel respected, they feel heard, and that's something you can do in a citizens assembly. You can't really do that in a town hall. No, you can't. How, okay, I don't know what, what was the outcome? What did they decide to do? What did France decide to do? So, so the Citizens' Assembly um offered, so the, you know, the final report that I was telling you about. So there are 67 proposals that were very wide ranging, um not only on changing the law, but also on how there was there was a need for more training, for more hospice care. So it was really a very wide set of proposals.
00:22:10
Speaker
And those proposals are now in front of the Assemblée Nationale, so the French legislative body for change. And they are arguing it to change the law. And so it's very, very likely that by 2025, the law in France will change and it will have been driven by the citizens' convention. And the minority of the group, very grateful for having that 50% of the time, were they Obviously their minds weren't changed, but was there wiggle room? In other words, when they came in where they so far ingrained in their position, that with was there a change that they say to themselves, well, okay, I kind of understand your point of view. I don't agree with it, but I understand why somebody else would what do this or do that. Or were they still entrenched at the end, just happy,
00:23:06
Speaker
that they at least got hurt they got hurt. So a couple of things, I think for some of them, they actually changed their opinions, maybe changed their opinions on minor things. Some of them changed their opinion on major things. And it also has to be said that there were some people who came in thinking that the law should change.
00:23:24
Speaker
and last, not thinking it should change. So on both sides, and what you see in a Citizens' Assembly is typically that on both sides, both extremes, and even in those sort of the closer to the middle, moves to the middle. So you see a lot of that movement, and the research does show that. The other piece that I think is really important here is that at the end of most Citizens' Assemblies, we ask the assembly members to give a vote for whether they're in favor or not in favor of the process.
00:23:50
Speaker
You know, even if you don't agree with the proposals, do you respect the process? And 92% of the 185 said that they were in favor of the process. Which again, tells you something. And you know, that I would just want to add, because we're talking about this assembly is, how many people do you think dropped out of the 185 that started that process?
Engaging the Disillusioned: Strategies for Inclusion
00:24:12
Speaker
If there was 92% approval at the end, I'm going to say maybe a handful. One person.
00:24:20
Speaker
One person. Only one person. And that was because he got a job. The rest. Okay, so that doesn't even tell you didn't really. Anytime people say, you know, people are just not interested in politics. It's not that people are interested when you give them real work to do.
00:24:35
Speaker
Well, that's okay. So yes, I don't think people are interested in politics. I think people are disillusioned in politics, or at least from my personal view, especially as you do, I live here in the Washington DC area. So we're surrounded by politics, but, um This is one thing that I've noticed the last couple of election cycles is that people often feel powerless um because considering the fact that our elections are coming up, and yes, it's a presidential election, but there are other people on other ballots and other issues in other states.
00:25:12
Speaker
It's not solely a presidential election, that but it's an election season. And there are a lot of people that live in certain states that say, well, my vote doesn't matter anyway because of the way that our electoral college is is is brought up.
00:25:29
Speaker
How do we change that so that people feel like they have more of a say in what goes on in this country? right So, oh God, that is such a, I love that question. So first of all, I write about this in my book and I call it voice insecurity. I think that much like food insecurity, Western democracies right now, I think citizens feel like they don't have access to adequate sources of books, which being that you can go out there and yell and scream. You can go to a town hall meeting. You can even write an email to your member of Congress, but does it really matter? I don't think it does.
00:26:12
Speaker
And I live in Washington and I don't think my voice really works. So what can government do? And I think this is really important because we are going through an election and I know who I want in the White House. but And I hope that the administration that I want actually takes advantage of this new leaf and this new season that we're going to have hopefully after January. But there are two things that really need to change. The first thing is we need to really, really kind of change our democratic culture to be more inclusive, to be more consistent. Democracy isn't just about elections. It's not just that every two years or four years I cast my vote. Democracy has to be a daily practice. And so we need to really start thinking about how do we give voice and place to our citizens in between elections. So that space in between is one that I think we need to really think about. much more seriously. And I don't just mean, again, going to a town hall, but it's about how do we give voice in between elections to citizens to actually be able to hold government accountable.
00:27:18
Speaker
Right? Because if you elect someone and you don't like what they're doing, well, you can't really do anything until next time, right? You're voting and you can kind of not vote for them. But when you're allowed to have citizens assemblies and you're allowed to be involved in the policy making, in the government decision making, you are then able to hold government accountable in a different way.
00:27:38
Speaker
I think the other part of that is really to um to make sure, again, with and I think this is something citizens' assemblies do, is to be able to make sure that policies reflect the preferences of citizens. I mean, if you looked at this country, whether it's gun reform or abortion,
00:27:55
Speaker
policies don't really reflect the preferences of the majority of the people, right? And so making sure that our government actually does things, introduces new laws, introduces new legislation that does that. And then finally, I think, you know, we don't hear from a lot of voices in our democracy and making sure that those voices are heard and those voices are given what I say consequential and meaningful input. I think those are all
Future of Democratic Governance with Technology
00:28:20
Speaker
things that hopefully the next administration will do.
00:28:24
Speaker
When you say voices, can you give me a specific example? Are you talking about the politicians? Are you talking about the policymakers in the politician's office, like the staff? Are you talking about lobbyists? Because I think a lot of the reasons why sometimes an every average day citizen's voice doesn't get heard is because they don't have the money or the power behind them that lobbyists do.
00:28:51
Speaker
So which voices or are you specifically speaking about that you would want to hear more from? Average citizens. I want the average citizen to feel empowered. I want the average citizen and to feel like their voice matters. Okay, so...
00:29:10
Speaker
What do you say to the skeptics who worry about increasing citizenship involvement might slow down the decision making process of policies and make the government less efficient? Like if you have too many cooks in the kitchen,
00:29:28
Speaker
not been really gets done. I think that's a terrible skeptic. I'd love to take on that skeptic because I don't think that government decision making can get any slower than it currently is. I mean, really. yeah And I don't think we have the right cooks in the kitchen. And again, like Susan's assemblies is not meant to replace our representative democracies.
00:29:46
Speaker
Citizens assemblies are really meant to strengthen the tie between government and citizens. I mean, that relationship right now is really broken. And the only way to try and strengthen it and is for government to show that it really does care about what average citizens have to say, you know, and to bring them in the fold and to give them a seat at the policymaking table.
00:30:09
Speaker
So this couldn't happen overnight, of course. Like, you're not going to change the way things are done overnight. How could we implement this process so that maybe in your children's adult lives, right? that That it will, the democracy will be the way it was intended to be. and I call it a utopia because but It's not what it is right now. It's never been that way in my lifetime. But you're right. It's not a utopia. It's the way it's supposed to run. So so how can we implement these processes so that we can get there?
00:30:50
Speaker
Wow, that's ah that's a really big ask. We have launched a small organization called the Federation for Innovation and Democracy in North America that's trying to accelerate and sort of raise awareness and accelerate the number of citizens, assemblies in the United States. We do capacity building schools. We provide technical guidance around citizens' assembles.
00:31:08
Speaker
But your question is much bigger than our little organization. And I think what I'd like to see is maybe a threefold strategy. The first part of it is I think we need to come together collectively and accept that our democracy is not working the way that it needs to. And I think we need a really big communication strategy around it. like democracy is not like the voices of average people are not being heard. They're not involved. I think that what do we expect from our democracy? What do we want our democracy to be? Because I don't want to call it utopic. I want to call it real. I want to be involved. You know, I want myself and anybody else who wants to be involved to be able to meet. You know, I was reading the other day that Abraham Lincoln apparently used to have visiting hours at the White House.
00:31:56
Speaker
Like Abraham Lincoln used to have people lined up, and they could go into the White House and meet with the president. Like, why do we not have systems like that? It could be as simple as the next president saying, once a month, you can sign up on Zoom, not even in person, and I will speak to four Americans for half an hour each, two hours of my time per month.
00:32:16
Speaker
Can you imagine how connected that will feel and how that will rever reverberate across society that the president is meeting with even like a handful of citizens every month for a half an hour exchange, where they actually get to tell them, tell the president
Model of Engaged Citizenship by Dr. Assisi
00:32:30
Speaker
what they think and what they're going on, what's going on. So a communication strategy that really talks about the problems with our democracy. Second, we need in the United States funding for cities to be able to really their game and engagement. I don't think need resources to strengthen our democracy. Most of the money that's around for democratic reform is about elections. Again, it's about our very minimalistic definition of what a democracy is. We set up in the 1980s, we set up an institution called the National Endowment for Democracy that helps democracies outside of the United States.
00:33:05
Speaker
It was great, and they do amazing work, but we now need an endowment for U.S. democracy. How do we strengthen our own democracy? So funding, I think, resources, making resources available to cities. um I talk to a lot of cities that don't have the resources to do more when it comes to engagement.
00:33:24
Speaker
not to mention the fact that we have a lot of local electives who don't really even make a lot of money. you know Their salaries are not sufficient and they have to they're representing their constituents. And then I think finally, I just think that we need to wake up. I think that we are marinating in what I call democratic inertia. And I think we need leaders. We need leaders at every level um to say, you know what, we want to do things differently.
00:33:50
Speaker
um and let's just go back to being that visionary country that I think this country has been in the past.
00:34:06
Speaker
This was not on the list of questions and I just want to ah just want to get your opinion on this. With cable news and i as somebody who went to school for journalism,
00:34:20
Speaker
i I use that term news really lightly. I put in a quotation marks because whether it's Fox, and MSNBC, CNN, they are commentators. They aren't pure journalists. That's just giving you the facts in the news. What do you think we can do?
00:34:43
Speaker
Okay, well let me put it this way. Do you think citizenship assemblies should be the point of which people get their local information and news as opposed to the news organizations where stuff is happening but nowhere near them? In other words, the people that live in Boise, Idaho are not affected by the southern border, not directly.
00:35:11
Speaker
but they have their own issues that may not be addressed because what they see on the news are the big issues. So could the assemblies be that, hey, we are, this is what's going on for the learning part. This is what's going on in your area. Here are the facts. How can we improve it?
00:35:35
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's a big question again. You're asking really? I don't know. I mean, I don't think that citizens assemblies will ever replace our news sort of the providers of news. I think that they can be helpful in that regard. Right. So let's say we in a, in an amazing sort of turn, we have national assembly. We could have a national assembly, a national citizens assembly on immigration.
00:36:01
Speaker
And so let's say the 200 people who come to that assembly will learn, ah much will receive a much more balanced perspective and good sort of good information, positive, no fake news, no misinformation, around in it immigration and the data that's involved, right? The role that's around it.
00:36:19
Speaker
So they will be educated. And let's say we do a big education campaign around that. So more people learn about this. Yes, it can help. But I think that fixing the problem that we have currently with news, our news services and our news providers and just the what's the word, the um the responsibility of
Reaching the Indifferent: Demonstrating Political Impact
00:36:41
Speaker
these different news sources to really provide objectives um objective and unsettered news. I think that's a huge beast that needs to be attacked, and I'm not sure how to do it.
00:36:55
Speaker
ah What I meant was is that yeah those news organizations, we're always going to get our news from the right from these news organizations, but typically they handle really big issues that aren't affected. I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Citizen Assemblies would really be great starting local because it can help fix local problems And in that regard, people get the facts and information of what's going on in their community because it may not be addressed in these news organizations that's dealing with these big tech issues.
00:37:34
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I do agree that local local citizens' assemblies would be a great way to start in the United States, but I will also tell you that I think there is huge value in national assemblies. I mean, national assemblies have huge power, both in terms of just educating that smaller number of people, but also in kind of sending a message across the country that this is the way that we're going to do democracy.
00:37:58
Speaker
You know, and so in that sense, I think it can be very powerful. I mean, you'd need to do a lot of national citizens assemblies to then really kind of correct the the sort of the the the problems that we have with our information channels. um So I don't know. I mean, I do think that it's a good start. um I don't think that it's the solution to our learning problem, but it is a good start.
00:38:21
Speaker
Now, I agree with you. I think it's a really good start. Where do you see democratic governance heading in, like, say the next 20 years? but Especially in the age of social media and rapid technological change. Now we have AI, which will not give you information on politics right now. It won't. It won't give you any information on election or politics. It just won't do it. But... I assume that there are some workarounds that technology is going to advance and people will be able to get their information out there with that, but you still have social media. So with these, where do you see our democracy heading in the next 20 years? I don't have the answer to that. I'd have to do a another doctoral degree to that question. but
00:39:12
Speaker
Okay. Maybe you don't have an answer, but you have a theory i mean i based on, based on where we've been going for the last yeah nine years. Where do you see it? Do you see it continuing on the next 20 years? Do you see them being some changes? I mean, I think that if we address a few of the problems that I've kind of alluded to here is disengage people, feeling alienated.
00:39:41
Speaker
people becoming even more polarized. And with polarization, then you become more radical. I think that if we try and bring measures into our society at the local level, at the national level, that are meant to unify our communities, that are meant to bring people back into the fold.
00:40:00
Speaker
We should be able to disagree with each other in a civil manner. I mean, this is one of the things that I see in Citizens Assemblies is that despite the fact that people have differences, they come from different backgrounds, they hold opposing views, somehow they're able to be very civil with each other. Somehow they're able to work through those differences. So I think that we need governments, we need businesses to invest in community, we need to bring people back together, we need to except that it's going to be messy for a while, but we need to come together. I think that if we do those things, and if we do invite again, government here to me is very important. Instead of kind of turning their back on people, they should open themselves to people. They should allow people to come in. And I think that if we do those things, God, I hope that those can correct some of the mistakes and that we will be in better shape in the next place. Well, that's funny that you brought up hope.
00:40:59
Speaker
What gives you hope? What gives me hope is that in the end, we have really good leaders out there. I just hope that people wake up. I think what gives me hope is that we will have a new beginning in January and that this country can really, really turn around and and just to write by its people because I don't think we're really doing right by our people. So Dr. Martin, you've come up with variables to defy what an an engaged citizen would be or could be. Can you explain to my audience a little bit about that? Because this is all coming from your book.
00:41:38
Speaker
So are I'd be happy to.
Closing Remarks and Call to Action
00:41:40
Speaker
So i um you know as I was doing my research for my thesis, we have in political science, there are different definitions of what sort of political efficacy is and how people have confidence in their government or in their own kind of ability to ah impact change. And I just didn't feel like that was really satisfactory for me. So I created a definition of what an engaged citizen looks like, and I broke that definition into five different variables.
00:42:05
Speaker
And the five variables that I think are really important, the very first one is epistemic growth, and that means learning. So is the platform that you're participating in increasing your knowledge? Are you learning more about the issue? And also, are you learning more about government? So as i as a process that involves you in government decision making, are you learning more about the process of decision-making, of compromise, of trade-offs, and all of that. So that was the very first variable. The second variable was connectedness, and we talked about this a little bit, is that sense of, as a result of your participation, are you feeling more belonging with your community, whether your community is at the state level or it's in your city. And so this is why, you know, when we always talk about scaling in the United States is we love to talk about scaling. I actually think that these processes are beautiful because they're in person, because they're small, because they're slow. And because of that, people do foster these relationships and they leave a citizens assembly with a far more closer sort of sense of community. And so that was really important to me as well.
00:43:16
Speaker
The third factor, and everybody loves this one, is the effervescence variable. so I look to see whether people are more excited about their democracy, because it's important. You want your democracy, you want your day-to-day interactions with your government to be kind of fun and exciting, and you want to be enthusiastic about it. so That was my third variable.
00:43:35
Speaker
The first variable was political engagement. So are you more likely to talk about politics with your neighbor or your family members as a result of your participation? And then finally, no a little surprise, because I do talk about voice quite a bit in the book, is consequential voice. So as a result of your participation, do you actually leave this process feeling like your input was meaningful and your voice is consequential?
00:44:03
Speaker
Do you think... How can I ask this question? do you How do you reach those people, not the people that feel like their voices won't be heard? because We've talked about that. How do we reach those people that just think politics isn't important?
00:44:24
Speaker
How do we teach them? Well, politics is important because it affects your everyday life. When all the issues that they're talking about, they don't affect me. Well, you're right. On the on the major news networks, they don't. But locally, there are some things. that and In my area of Washington, DC, the city that I'm living in restricted a cable company from coming in digging up the ground and installing lines. So instead of having multiple options for our cable and internet, we were only allowed one choice. That one company had a monopoly. I hated that because I hate that company. I'm not gonna say who the companies what the company's name is, but I hated it. This was an in effect for almost 20 years. And it just changed recently over the last two years.
00:45:17
Speaker
That was something that city council had to do, had to fix. And there were people complaining, why do we only have this one cable company? And I was telling them, well, if you're paid attention to local politics and press the city council, we can get that changed. Some people got it, some people still don't get it. So how can we reach those people that just feel like, well, you know, it doesn't affect me.
00:45:43
Speaker
ah That's that's it's hard. I don't think we ever will reach everyone. I think there are some people and we need to accept this. There is always going to be a percentage of people in society that just don't care and they don't want to be. And that's okay, right? I think that's okay. I think what's not okay is the people who don't care and they are apathetic because they don't think it matters.
00:46:04
Speaker
And so the way to reach them is I think two two different ways. One is with every citizen's assembly that I've been involved in, there is always a small, not a large percentage, but there's a small percentage of people who come and they say, wow, I have never been invited to do anything like this. They receive the letter and the letter is an official letter from whatever the government body is.
00:46:27
Speaker
And they've never been asked to provide input. And they will say, I have not voted in 12 years. I've never voted. And I'm here because I'm curious. You know, they're skeptical. I love those people because as a result of the process, they're the ones that really get become believers in their democracy.
00:46:43
Speaker
So that's one way. And then there's a spillover. So the more we engage with these skeptics and the more we're able to get them involved, the more they're going to go and become ambassadors in their communities and their neighborhoods and tell other people, hey, like you can do something about that line.
00:47:00
Speaker
Don't sit at home. I went, I worked in the Citizens' Assembly. Look, the policy's changing. Look, this is happening. So the more impact they see and they experience, the more they're going to tell other people. And I think as a result, involve other people. So I think it's not a it's not an overnight fix. I think it's something that we need to invest in. I think it's something we need to work hard at. But i I'm hopeful that if we do the right things and we take the right measures, that over time, the people who are not involved because they just don't think it matters will become involved. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the author of activated citizenship, the transport of power of citizen assemblies,
00:47:43
Speaker
You have given me hope, Dr. Marjan, about democracy. I feel good after this interview. I might even turn on the news on Tuesday and Wednesday and pay attention to the light. I'm voting. I'm just taking Wednesday off because I don't want to have to deal with what's going on, especially in the area that we're living in. But I want to thank you so much for not only coming on the show and giving us such great insight to not only what democracy should be,
00:48:12
Speaker
and some ways in which then we can get to what it should be. that's That's not, as I misspoke earlier, a utopian democracy, but just a real democracy. I want to thank you so much for coming on the show and and speaking to me and my audience. Thank you so much. This was really lovely. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
00:48:34
Speaker
I did too, I appreciate it. Once again, I want to thank Dr. Manjan for just a really informative interview. I know what you guys are going to say. Bruce, you always say this. This is really an important interview, a good interview, and something that people out there can learn from. oh Citizen assemblies, that sounds dope to me because y'all know I got a lot to say about government and politics. And and I really believe Citizenship assemblies will get people engaged that normally, that would that do feel like they are being heard. that They do feel like politics and the issues don't affect them. They will open them up and and involve them in the process of even starting with just your local government. They feel like your voice is heard. They feel like you're a part of your country, your city, your state.
00:49:31
Speaker
I dig it. I really, really do. And it's so, so, so important to be engaged in your government and the politics that affects our lives. They make decisions that affects our lives. Shouldn't we have more than just a say when we're voting. Shouldn't we have a say all the time of what policy is being written? Maybe even take part in writing that policy? read a moment Dr. Majan makes very valid
00:50:28
Speaker
just democracy. That's all it is. It's just democracy. And I dig it. I dig it a lot. I hope you guys learned something because I sure as hell did.
00:50:52
Speaker
That was a hell of a show. Thank you for rocking with us here on Unsolicited Perspective with Bruce Anthony. Now before you go, don't forget to follow, subscribe, like, above of comment, and share our podcast wherever you're listening or watching it to it. Pass it along to your friends. If you enjoy it, that means the people that you rock will will enjoy it also. So share the wealth, share the knowledge, share the noise.
00:51:15
Speaker
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