Microdemocracy Blog

We could all use a magic wand just about right now.

Over the past few months, as we were working in Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and several New England states in our Voter Engagement Strategy for Election Day and Beyond, we heard poignant and powerful stories from participants around the country. Even as they considered voting for the first time in their lives, they were also facing a series of immediate and very pressing questions.

Do they pay for their children's medication or food for the family? How do they pay for their child's school supplies or new shoes to fit growing feet? Can they find transportation to look for a job? Can they afford the transportation? Are there jobs to find? Are there jobs that will pay a living wage? How long will they be able to afford the rent? How can they delay paying bills they already have before going further into debt?

These questions just don't go away, even as the adult learners we met are trying to fill in gaps in their education. In the morning, they're working on fractions; in the evenings, they are back grappling with the hard questions. And, it's all taking place on a step below the level where the sub-prime mortgage/foreclosure disaster is happening.

None of us have a magic wand. None of us can snap our fingers and make these problems go away. And none of us can give enough money to any one cause to make these problems disappear. Apparently, even a spare 700 billion can't immediately turn the economy around.

Making the Right Investment
The deliberations about the national and international economic crisis swing back and forth between grasping for emergency fixes and planning for sustainable solutions. We face a similar challenge when thinking about the problems facing people whose basic needs are not being met, who have to choose between food and medication for their children. We must find ways to help right away. But, we also need to think about how do we invest in them for the long term, even right now when the short-term problems are so severe.

Reasons for Hope
The people we met this fall give us hope for what can be done. They are not shrinking from the problems at hand, problems that are, truth be told, quite daunting. They are seizing the opportunity offered by one specific kind of public investment; by participating in adult literacy, English as a Second Language and adult education classes. Their fiercely dedicated teachers - who invest day in and day out in their students - greatly appreciated the opportunity to teach our strategy to their students. One teacher told us "you could see the light bulb turning on" when the students learned RQP's thinking and advocacy skills. Elden, a young man in Evansville, Indiana captured what he learned from the Right Question Project workshop and offered some direction for our future work when he said: They should be teaching this already in school. Long before kids drop out, because you can use this everywhere to help yourself.

As many of us sit around the Thanksgiving table, with our own concerns and challenges in mind, and as we are keenly aware of people who have fewer resources and more troubles, let's carve out space to keep Elden in mind. There are a lot of people like him, all over the country, who are ready to take advantage of existing opportunities and create new ones. We want to keep investing in them, to be of help immediately and make it easier for them to help themselves in the long run.

For the past month, the nation has sharply focused on a decision about who will lead the country for the next four years.

In that same time, in our voter engagement initiative, we’ve been working with people who, every week, come face to face with decisions in the public sector that have enormous consequences for them.  Our job has been to figure out how make it easier for them to make their own connections between decisions they see in front of them, and the decisions that elected officials make.

We recently did a workshop with a group of women in a support group not far from our office who have faced crises such as homelessness and domestic violence.  They have many pressing, immediate needs and concerns; an upcoming date in court, a meeting at the housing authority, an appointment at the community health center, and a meeting with a child’s teacher.  A lot of challenges and not much patience. One of the women was irritated by our workshop. What could a workshop connected to the election possibly offer them?

But as the workshop went on, she started learning new skills for asking her own questions. She began to look at a range of decisions that affect her, and realized that there’s a whole lot of questions that she needs to be asking: This can really help me with all the housing problems I got.

Another participant, when reflecting on what she had learned, asserted clearly that she didn’t want others to always make decisions for me.

By the end, she and other women in the group had very strong feelings that they need to have a say in decisions that affect them on a “micro” level where they try to secure housing, health care or education for their kids. More than that, they also named new connections they now see, especially about the need to have a say in the election as well, a big decision that affects them in so many ways.
 

When I was a welfare recipient, I always felt like the caseworker on the other side of the desk had a lot of power to affect my life. There were all sorts of decisions made right there, on the spot, that might mean my benefits could be cut off or maybe I wouldn’t be able to get into a job training program that offered me something more than a dead-end job.

Going to the welfare office, to my kids’ schools, or to the emergency room was always a reminder that somebody on the other side of the desk had the power to say yes or no, to open doors or close them, to tell me I qualify or I don’t.

And, somehow it always had something to do with papers and forms I filled out, and lots of times I heard I didn’t fill them out the right way, or I didn’t file them on time. And, then there were the times I was told I just don’t qualify and I didn’t know why.

I remembered those feelings of coming face to face with someone who seemed to have a lot of power over me in our current voter engagement work with adults enrolled in adult literacy, GED and adult diploma programs in many states around the country (link to webpage). It turns out a lot of people who have never voted before have a perspective that’s relevant to recent Supreme Court decisions and current political discussions about why lots of low-income people do not vote.

We teach a strategy that helps people learn to focus on key decisions  and ask their own questions.  Those are two powerful skills, but not ones that lots of people have a chance to learn how to use. But, when they start focusing on decisions that affect them and start asking their own questions, they identify problems and concerns that can teach us a lot about the challenges they face. Listen to questions that have been asked in workshops near the Mexican border in Arizona and near the Canadian border in New Hampshire.

Here’s the scenario they consider: Imagine it’s the day before the election in November. What questions do you have about actually voting?

Their questions, in their own words and spelling, include: Can any-one vote? How many chances do we have? What do you need to vote? Will there be security? Do you have I.D.? what kind of I.D? Were are the locate, and if we have some help for information? Can I bring my children with me? What if I can’t get off work? If I’m working in that time, how am I going to vote? Do I have to regester in order to vote? Can we vote here in the classroom? What is the day of the election?

Then, towards the end, these questions came up: What if I don’t know what to do? What if I make a mistake? Will I get punished if I do it wrong?

Voting, it turns, can feel like one more encounter with some public system; and if you’ve suffered the consequences of not knowing how other systems work, or not knowing quite how to fill out the form, or not doing it on time, then, you might feel it’s better to just stay away from the voting booth.

These feelings and fears are major obstacles to voting. They don’t get much attention. Can something be done about them?

We need to invest in people who have not voted before; offer them not only information about voting procedures, but also give them a chance to learn how to ask their own questions.

We’ve seen in community after community, Latino, White, African-American, rural and urban, that asking questions can help people figure things out for themselves, reach their own conclusions about why voting is important, and identify the information they want to get. By asking their own questions, they feel more prepared to vote and that helps them overcome their fears of one more encounter with a public system.

And, altogether, they wind up feeling a much greater sense of urgency about the need to vote and have a say in the election.

Jean, a participant in a job training program in New Hampshire, participated in a Right Question Project workshop and said: I see now that if I don’t vote, other people will just keep on making decisions for me.