Eric Weltman

In the wake of November’s elections, a chorus of voices is calling on President Obama to return to a “post-partisan” vision for governing.  But here is what’s needed: an honest clash of values and interests, a debate revealing to Americans who really gets helped and who gets hurt by progressive and conservative policies.

The reaction reflects an aversion to conflict in politics that dates to our nation’s founders, who sharply criticized “factions” and went to great lengths to paper over differences among the original colonies, such as omitting the word “slavery” from the Constitution while still protecting the infernal practice.

Of course, the tension could not be contained and only 70 years later erupted into civil war.  Yet, on one of its bloodiest battlefields, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address defiantly declared Americans to be one people with the immortal phrase, “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Once again, we face a decisive moment, a brewing conflict that will define our nation and what it means to be an American.

To some degree, the question has already been decided by the tides of immigration. Demography is destiny in a democracy and by 2050 the United States will be majority nonwhite, according to Census projections.

But we live in an imperfect democracy, growing ever more so.  Our system is poisonously imbalanced by the skyrocketing concentration of wealth and the opening floodgates to corporate contributions to political campaigns.  A lopsided conflict is being waged with the interests of the rich organized, well-funded, and winning.

But you wouldn’t know it from the rhetoric of right-wing demagogues, such as Sarah Palin, calling for “real Americans” to “take this country back.”  The world is, indeed, a scary place with terrorism, war, and economic dislocation threatening our lives and livelihoods.  But the right-wing has defined the culprits as immigrants, Muslims, gays, and other marginalized groups.  In doing so, conservatives have enlisted many working and middle-class Americans in opposing their own interests.

Progressives need to fully enter this fray, and they need to do so with an ideology, one grounded in facts and values, telling a coherent, compelling story that explains our problems, describes solutions, and fosters solidarity among those sharing genuine interests.  Both progressives and conservatives are drawing from the same well of discontentment, confusion, and fear.  Progressives must direct these sentiments against those attacking programs and policies, from Social Security to public education, that help the vast majority of Americans, regardless of color, ethnicity, or other identity.

Progressives must also uphold rules of engagement that reflect and reinforce our nation’s greatest values.  These include respect for free speech and the rule of law.  Perhaps most importantly are a commitment to non-violence and respect for the humanity of others.  The right wing’s paranoid worldview, populated by enemies and “un-Americans,” undermines these fundamental principles, fraying the fabric of society and weakening democracy.

Finally, progressives must struggle with every resource they can command.  The most powerful are organizations – unions, political parties, community groups – that unite, engage, and mobilize.  However, the right wing is attacking these institutions, destroying the anti-poverty organization ACORN and assaulting public employee unions.  Insidiously, they are promoting non-partisan primaries which will weaken parties, empower wealthy self-financed candidates, and promote a homogenous political landscape that obscures conflict.

It’s time to loudly proclaim the right wing as advancing the interests of the few against the many, promoting second-class citizenship, and undermining the foundations of society.  Progressives can win the hearts and minds of the American people, but only if they fully engage in this necessary conflict.

By 2050, the United States will be majority non-white.  Latinos, Blacks, Asians, and other “minorities” will constitute approximately 54 percent of our population, according to Census projections.  We must decide what kind of society to create from this diverse mix: separate and unequal, or integrated and equal.

A recent University of Michigan study is a call to action for those seeking the latter.  Researchers found that college students today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts from the 1980s and 1990s.  Present-day students are less interested in the perspectives of friends and are less concerned for the unfortunate.

Empathy is the ability to recognize, appreciate, and respond to the feelings of other people.  It is a fundamental building block of a healthy society.  Empathy helps us understand our differences and our common ground.  It enables us to go beyond the superficial to identify shared interests and accomplish collective goals.  In an increasingly heterogeneous society, empathy is essential for cooperation and social cohesion, and the pursuit of our nation’s highest ideals, including fairness, justice, and equality.

The Michigan study joins a growing body of research that has found Americans growing more individualistic and isolated.  Other studies have documented intensifying narcissism among college students since the late 1980s.  Our society is becoming more disconnected and lonely, Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz, Harvard psychiatrists concluded in their book “The Lonely American.”

A number of factors may contribute to this trend.  The rising use of electronic social media, such as Facebook, along with email and other digital communication fosters shallow contact lacking the emotional texture of face-to-face interactions.  Longer commutes, more time watching television, and isolated suburban living reduces social connectivity, as Robert Putnam described in his book “Bowling Alone.”  And following 9-11, the Bush administration’s “us versus them” dynamic fostered an atmosphere of distrust and hostility towards “others.”

Yet the need for understanding, compassion, and solidarity – for empathy – has never been greater.  Barack Obama’s election lent some credence to the notion that we live in a “post-racial” society.  But huge disparities in opportunity persist for poor people, immigrants, and people of color, with injustices perpetuating poverty and other social ills.  Black men are 6.5 times more likely to be in prison than white men.  Income inequality is at an all-time high.  Fifty-six years after the Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional, schools are becoming more separate and unequal.

Today, California, Hawaii, Texas, and New Mexico are already majority non-white, with millions of immigrants changing the face of our nation.  This diversity provides conservatives with a tool and opportunity to construct their vision of society – one that is separate and unequal – by tapping into anger and frustration to pit Americans against each other.

There are alternatives that harmonize with our nation’s values.  The empathy decline is a social phenomenon with social solutions: policies producing awareness, understanding, and solidarity among all people – and doing so by fostering meaningful interactions, nurturing connections, and creating an environment of mutual trust, respect, and need.  Chief among these are housing and education policies to promote integration.

Martin Luther King’s assault on segregation was rooted in awareness that separation produces ignorance and stereotypes.  Unfortunately, our communities are growing more divided along racial and class lines.  A major contributor to the problem, notes Georgetown law professor Sheryll Cashin, is the parochialism of local governments and their power to exclude poor people and people of color.  Municipalities can use zoning and other regulations to restrict affordable housing, while school districts achieve segregation as effectively as Jim Crow.

Policies to foster residential integration include effective enforcement of fair housing and lending laws and providing more housing vouchers to low-income families that break up concentrated poverty and enable greater mobility.  The use of inclusionary zoning should be broadened, requiring new developments to contain low- and moderate-income units.  In education, we should create additional magnet schools for students across district lines and increase programs allowing urban students to attend suburban schools.  And, perhaps most significantly, urban and suburban municipalities and school districts should be merged, breaking down barriers to sharing resources, broadening access to opportunity, and helping students navigate our changing nation.

In 2008, Barack Obama, then candidate for president, marked Martin Luther King Day with a speech decrying our nation’s “empathy deficit.”  He described our “inability to recognize ourselves in one another” and called upon Americans to see that, in King’s words, “we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.”  Indeed, whether that destiny is one of shared, sustained prosperity may depend on our ability and willingness to understand, identify with, and care for each other.

“Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” is how Thomas Hobbes described life in the absence of society. His conclusion, 350 years ago, that society is necessary to maintain civilized relations between people reverberated in March, when Tea Partiers attacked a disabled man during a health care reform protest. With anti-social forces tearing at our connective fabric, it is essential to understand the value of society and to defend it.

Society is a network of institutions and relationships, from churches to public schools. It encompasses physical infrastructure, financial mechanisms, and social norms and behavior, as well as the legal system that supplies essential security and stability. Members of a well-functioning society are bound together by respect, trust, and need.

Society enables us to pool resources, share risks, and create opportunity. It provides safety to its members, an environment for social relations, and the non-violent resolution of differences. In doing so, society allows us to accomplish things we couldn’t as individuals, families, or communities.

Our culture celebrates the ideal of cowboys and others who supposedly “go it alone.” The reality is no one goes it alone. Successful ideas, businesses and people are the products of society, nurtured, protected, and sustained by its rules and resources. As the investor Warren Buffett has acknowledged, “I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I’ve earned.”

Today, American society is battered by an array of forces. Connections between people have diminished as more time commuting in cars, watching television, and other secluded activities has reduced involvement in civic groups and sports leagues. The growing gap between rich and poor is socially corrosive, with income inequality at an all-time high.

Right-wing politicians have weakened our social institutions, trading public good for private gain. Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister, declared, “There is no such thing as society,” as she broke her nation’s unions and sold off its railway system. Likewise, in the United States, union decline – fostered by conservative policies – contributes to the waning of the middle class and the increasing wealth gap.

And then there is the poisonous politics of the Tea Partiers. Most alarming is the demonization of their opponents. Whether the target is Obama or immigrants, the “other” is an enemy, the disagreement is a battle between good and evil, and there is no compromise.

The potential consequences of this “with us or against us” mentality are disastrous: the erosion of respect’s most fundamental component – recognizing the humanity of others. The extremes of this are genocide, such as the Holocaust and the murder of an estimated 800,000 Rwandans, fueled by one tribe labeling members of another “cockroaches.” Even in less violent forms, it damages the ability to find common ground, identify shared interests, and resolve conflicts.

The rising number of “independent” voters is another symptom of weakening social solidarity. Lacking a coherent political identity or perspective, these voters can be appealed to by personality, won over by attitude, attracted by anger and finger-pointing. The inability to recognize and act upon collective interests can evolve into fear and misguided blame of our own neighbors. Authoritarian government thrives on social atomization, social scientist Francis Fukuyama has observed.

How do we combat this fracturing of society? As historian Tony Judt argues, the most important task may be reminding people of the essential role that government has played in keeping our society from collapsing. At the beginning of the Great Depression, Germany’s government, undermined by anti-social and authoritarian movements, was unable to accomplish things and lost credibility, leading to the Nazi’s rise to power.

In the United States, in stark contrast, the government successfully put people to work, met social needs, built public infrastructure, and sustained faith in our shared purpose and identity. The New Deal strengthened our social solidarity and our democracy.

Our government has just prevented another depression. But we, as a society, still have to prevent climate change, reform immigration policy, and achieve much more. The sooner we recognize our common interests, needs, and humanity, the better off we will be.

New York City Charter Commission

Testimony of Eric Weltman

April 20, 2010

My name is Eric Weltman, and I’m testifying as a Brooklyn resident and concerned citizen.

I would like to briefly discuss several key principles and specific topics.  However, my most fundamental message is this: Please don’t rush the charter review.  Please don’t forgo a fair and deliberative process in order to place amendments on the ballot this fall.  Our city’s charter is too important – and democracy is too essential – for a hurried process.

Government is both a means and an end.  The ends are, of course, fairly obvious: the provision of essential services, law enforcement, and so forth.  But the means are important, too: Government can and should be a mechanism for engaging and empowering people, for strengthening communities, and for sustaining faith in our system.

There are some principles relating to government that I believe we all share, including: public participation, representation, transparency, efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness.

But since power is necessary to fulfill these principles, I believe we need principles for power itself, and I propose at least two: Power should be accountable and it should be distributed – meaning that it should be shared, not concentrated and not removed, checked and balanced.

With that in mind, I would like to touch upon three specific topics:

First, government organization: I believe that we should maintain the position of Public Advocate, as well as maintain and strengthen the authority of the Borough Presidents and the Community Boards.  These bodies serve as important advocates for our communities, as vehicles for both reflecting and responding to neighborhood concerns.

Second, non-partisan elections: This is a terrible idea.  Political parties play a vital role in engaging and informing people, in holding elected officials accountable, and energizing our elections.  Non-partisan elections would weaken our civic capacity while empowering those with the money to buy their own campaign machinery.

Third, land use policy: The charter should contain provisions that promote responsible development and ensure that polluting facilities are fairly sited around the city.  Greens jobs, clean energy, and sustainable development are necessary for both protecting public health and helping prevent climate change.

Thank you for your consideration.