Progressive Values Stories: Jim Dean on Responsibility and Participation

Written by: Edwin Rutsch on May 30, 2008 1:14 PM EDT

This is supposed to be a participatory democracy and if we're not in there participating then the people that will manipulate and exploit the system will step in there.  George Takei

In this second part of my interview with Jim Dean, Chair of Democracy for America, Jim talks about the Progressive Values of responsibility and participation. Progressives are now standing up to participate in and take responsibility over the political process.   Democracy for America helps in supporting these Progressive Values of Responsibility and Participation. 

Progressive Values Stories: Jim Dean on Responsibility and Participation

 I’m Jim Dean.  I’m the chair of Democracy for America. I think that for myself and for our community, the concept of progressive means the concept of citizens being in charge of the government, of reform in government.  And when we can talk about the values of fiscal responsibility, of getting out of Iraq, of health care for every single American. 

Those are important, but the real driver of this in our view is citizens taking control.  And also responsibility over the political process to make this happen.  And we believe that that is the way that these challenges can be resolved.

 It is again citizens being in charge of the government.  I think that the reason that we are being challenged right now on these issues is because the culture of incumbency is what runs our government, and we need a culture of activism to run our government.

It’s not whether somebody’s been an incumbent or not, it’s the mindset that they have going along and getting along, expressing all of the constituency interaction as being part of their interaction with lobbyists instead of with the voters.

And one of the things that so great about the Democratic Primary is that a lot of the special interests and even the Beltway pundits are not in charge of it.  The voters are in charge of it.  And that really expresses my feeling about progressive more than anything else.

Right here in California, a number of folks in our community have taken it upon themselves to not just work on campaigns, to not just register voters, but to take a position of responsibility in their local parties.

That is very difficult to do when you have a job, when you have people you are trying to take care of, when it’s the important thing that makes the world go round in democracies.

So we’re taking not only decisions of responsibility in the party and doing all of those things and being in charge of all of these things that heretofore was always done by long-term party insiders. 

You’re taking the party back to the voters and doing that across the country.  But they’re also running for office, which is very important.  They are getting involved in leadership positions and advocacy.

In previous generations, the activists threw stones from the outside.  And if the issue worked, or even it didn’t work, it would disappear for awhile.  And now what we’re seeing is less of that.

More than anything else, it’s to be there to saying I’m taking responsibility for this, because democracy is part of my life, and I need to spend two or three hours a week doing something.

The general story is that politics is too important to leave to the professionals.  Some of our best friends are professionals in politics.  But really again, we need a culture of citizen activism to drive our politics.

There are stories galore in our community.  I mean, DFA – if nothing else – is about helping and supporting people to take leadership positions in politics, whether it’s running for school board, or it’s getting on a town committee, or whether it’s running for higher office.

There are stories galore here in California – I can tell you right now – I just ran into a gentleman from San Diego – Charlie Ames is his name – he’s a member of our community, but more than anything else, he’s on our rules committee of the California Democratic Party. 

He’s has to learn a lot, he’s had to deal with a lot of stuff that he probably didn’t know too much about when he first got in there, but he’s able to effect change because of his presence there, and his beliefs that the voters are driving the process. There are hundreds of stories like that. 

Edwin:  What about you personally, in your life – is it from your family?  How did you personally develop your sense of responsibility?

ANSWER:  Actually, it didn’t start well.  I was asked to go phone bank for Lindsay when I was 14 with my other older brother, Charlie.  And he gave me a list of people who were from the outer boroughs of Manhattan – who hadn’t seen a snow plow all winter.  And Charlie took the list of names from Manhattan that had been receiving all the city services under the Lindsay Administration.

So, I was calling all these people.  They weren’t happy to hear from me.  They weren’t particularly enamored with Mayor Lindsay because of the way he had handled some of the snow emergencies in New York that winter. 

So I learned a lot of new words that day.  I kind of went back and licked my wounds for about five years.  I got back into it afterwards working on some campaigns.  I worked very hard on Howard’s campaign for lieutenant governor in 1986.

I was in the private sector between then and 2006, but always I tried either to raise money or get involved.  Because it’s just very rewarding.  There are a lot of different stories that happened along the way, but really the success is being part of an effort to take over the political culture.

You have the election of the lieutenant governor Vermont as being part of that.

Edwin:  Getting involved in his campaign, you kind of took responsibility.

ANSWER:  Yeah, and it’s not easy to do that if you’ve got a different job, and you’ve got a family, and people you love and take care of.  We’re all pretty busy folks.  The fact that all these people are here at this convention really speaks to that more than anything else – citizens’ commitments to get involved. 

 These delegates are not party professionals.  For the most part, they are people who work other jobs, who have other lives that they have to deal with.  And we need to keep getting more and more of those folks involved.

From Wikipedia - Participatory Democracy
Participatory democracy is a process emphasizing the broad participation (decision making) of constituents in the direction and operation of political systems. While etymological roots imply that any democracy would rely on the participation of its citizens (the Greek demos and kratos combine to suggest that "the people rule"), traditional representative democracies tend to limit citizen participation to voting, leaving actual governance to politicians.

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