Liberally Speaking

Liberally Speaking: Why Liberalism is Right for America, Stephen J. Natoli, Branden Books, 2015 

           

     Two weeks ago, at the monthly meeting of the Visalia Democrats, I was privileged to hear Stephen Natoli speak about his new book.  Professor Natoli teaches at history at COS, so his comments were particularly meaningful for the liberals living in Tulare County’s rather conservative environment.           

     I found I had a great deal in common with him.  We were both raised Republican, inheriting that political stance from our parents, who inherited it from theirs.  Four years behind me, he took that stance with him to college like I did, where it began to unravel under the influence of Nixon’s Waterloo, Watergate, and the illegal war in Laos and Cambodia, the “foolishness of the Vietnam War.”  

   

     That war was more than foolish for me:  when my brother came home in a body bag, my entire way of thinking was destroyed.  It took years to re-assemble some comprehendible ideas about how the world worked.  Like Natoli, however, I found some grounding in stories from the Great Depression and the civil rights movement.

     What’s different in our stories, however, is that Stephen Natoli went on to learn about the actual history of liberalism in this country and to analyze its precepts and successes.  He presents these beautifully and succinctly in Liberally Speaking.  “What I have learned from studying history is that the liberal approach works.  It’s not only a theoretical ideal; the record shows its practicality.  Liberal ideas have been the ones that have made society more just, more prosperous and better for people to live in,” ends the introduction.  He spends the rest of the book documenting that claim.

           

     What caused Natoli to write the book is quite interesting.  Visiting a Barnes and Noble bookstore in southern California, he noticed there was a plethora of books on the conservative and ultra-conservative positions, but few if any on the liberal creed.  He thought how seldom he had heard fellow liberals claim their position, much less express and defend the principles behind it, and ascribed Barack Obama’s 2 elections to the Presidency to Obama’s ability to express them eloquently.  “It was the beliefs themselves that won those elections by galvanizing the people behind their visions for the future.  That belief system,” Natoli says quietly, “is called liberalism.”

           

     Natoli’s list of “what liberals believe” is helpful and clarifying.  There are 17 inter-related principles:  ethics as the bedrock, founded in truth, honesty and love for one another; equality of all people at all times; freedom to be, do, say and believe as we will, as well as freedom from preventable harm; community of others whose well-being we must consider as well as our own;  opportunity to pursue our dreams; meeting human needs with compassion, ingenuity and resolve; democracy as the foundation for a just political system; empathy for our fellows as the wellspring of the causes we champion; progress, or faith in the improvement of the human condition if we work for it in good will; science as a means to discover and employ fact and reason to better our world; justice under the law and as a framework for fairness in society; security of our persons, rights and dignity; practicality in the ways we pursue our goals and implement our policies; diversity of people celebrated within the unity of the human family; civil rights enshrined and protected; service as the means to realize these principles; and love as the source of all the good we do and are.

           

     Conservatives may find themselves agreeing with some of these principles.  What distinguishes liberals is the willingness, heroic at times, to hold all these principles together.  “The American people deserve to see that liberal values are American values, and to appreciate that much of what has made America free and prosperous is a result of great liberal leaders and great liberal ideas,” Natoli declares.

           

     You can read more about the book and Natoli’s endeavors to get us liberals to talk at www.braveqnuwhirled.blogspot.com, as well as order the book there.  The book is also available at the Book Garden in Exeter.  Stephen Natoli will be speaking in Lindsay on March 9^th at the third Cultural Arts Forum, along with his colleague in the COS History Dept., Stephen Tootle, a Republican.  That evening they will be talking (not yelling) about the differences between the two parties. The event is free and begins with refreshments at 6:30 pm in the Lindsay Gallery and Museum on Gale Hill Ave. adjacent to City Hall.

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Trudy Wischemann is a book-reading, rural-writing liberal who lives in Lindsay.  You can send her your political war stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Learning Curve

     Last week I wrote about the pending study session on goals, objectives and codes of conduct that the Lindsay City Council was preparing to undertake.  Despite my reservations, I attended that session and benefitted hugely, both personally and professionally.  Since I was the only member of the public or the press to attend, I’d like to tell you what I learned about leadership and our city council.

   

     I think it would be fair to say that the only real goal we worked on that day was learning to work together.  Finding the blockages to that goal became the unstated objective of the meeting.  Barry Sommers, the educational psychologist who facilitated it, had his work cut out for him, but he’d come with a very full and useful toolbox and years of practice working with governmental bodies, particularly school districts.  His eleven years working with Lindsay Unified (not to mention 27 years in Pixley) had him well prepared for that day.

     Dr. Sommers’ stated goal at the meeting’s beginning was to see if we could find pathways to becoming “an effective, cohesive council.”  Some of us bristled appropriately, because the word “cohesive” (again, shall we check the dictionary?) can be used to refer to an urge for uniformity that is common in small towns but undesirable in democratic governance. 

     Fortunately, Sommers understood that distinction and provided a definition of the primary job of a city council:  to decide which services will be provided and how to pay for them.  “Cohesiveness” then became a common commitment to respecting the process by which those decisions are made, not thinking alike.  “If everybody is thinking alike, somebody’s not thinking,” Sommers told us, quoting Gen. George Patton, that great military strategist whose decisions helped us win WWII.

           

     One of the blocks to cohesiveness is unmanaged, destructive conflict.  Sommer carefully unfolded differences between constructive conflict and its black sheep brother.  He defined conflict itself as “when at least one person is being blocked or perceives that someone is blocking them from getting what they want.”  Constructive conflict helps clarify issues, increases involvement, makes communication authentic, releases pent-up emotions, helps build group cohesiveness, and perhaps most important, solves problems.  Destructive conflict, on the other hand, diverts energy from real work, destroys morale, deepens differences between us, and produces violence.

   

     The “codes of conduct” we were intended to develop that day were actually the rules of engagement for managing conflict.  We worked for well over an hour to develop a working agreement on these rules of engagement, and the discussions we had about our differences on those rules helped clarify where some of the blockages have been in finding solutions.  The Council may find it more difficult to stick to those rules than they thought, but at least they provide a base line for progress.

     “Trust,” of course, is the most important element for moving from destructive to constructive conflict.  For the purpose of developing trust, Sommers had the council members tell each other their personal stories in two-minute sound bites, a tremendously effective technique for lowering guards.  We did not delve into the reasons for mistrust on this council, which are real, valid, and high-pitched on both sides; that discussion was tabled for another time.

     For me, however, the discussion of the role of trust was clarifying and encouraging in terms of what must be said in this column.  My purpose in writing it is much the same as some of the Council members’ purpose for serving:  helping Lindsay become a community where all residents can have a sense of belonging and a desire for participation. Where all residents can find themselves at home in this place.  Toward that end, we are all higher on the learning curve this week than we were the week before.  Thank you, Barry Sommers, for that.

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Trudy Wischemann is a homebody who writes.  You can send her your goals and objectives for Lindsay c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

On Privacy

    
    At last Tuesday’s meeting, the Lindsay City Council agreed to hire a consultant to direct a public workshop on defining the Council’s goals, objectives, and code of conduct.  I’m told the fee for this work is $1,000, which will come from the public’s coffer.  The time chosen was 10 a.m. Tuesday morning the 19^th, following the long weekend celebrating Martin Luther King Day.
    
    Councilman Mecum questioned the move on several counts, but perhaps the most important was the day and time chosen.  It gave little opportunity for real advance notice to the public, and the morning hour prevents most people who work from attending.  Although he was told the consultant was available only during normal business hours (which is hard for me to believe, frankly, unless this consultant does not normally work with governmental and NGO groups,) Councilwoman Pam Kimball also noted that the hour would allow for more privacy in their deliberations.
    
     It seems to me that a better use for a consultant’s fee would be a workshop on governmental transparency and the techniques available to increase public participation in this city’s affairs.  Despite years of writing on Lindsay’s crying need for improvement in this area, I see no recognition of that need from either Pam Kimball or Danny Salinas. Instead, from them we get only obscurement.  They like to keep their cards close to their chests.
    
     Perhaps a little trip to the dictionary will help.  Let’s look up “privacy” and see what it says:
            “1.  the quality or condition of being private; withdrawal from public view or company; seclusion.  

            2.  secrecy [told in strict privacy]

            3.  one’s private life or personal affairs [an invasion of one’s privacy].” 

           

     Since the first definition refers to the word “private,” let’s check there, too:  “belonging to oneself, not to the state.”  By number, the additional definitions expand on that:

            “1.  of, belonging to, or concerning a particular person or group; not common or general [private property, a private joke];

            2.  not open to, intended for, or controlled by the public [a private school];

            3.  for an individual person [a private room in a hospital];

            4.  not holding public office [a private citizen];

            5.  away from public view; secluded [a private dining room];

            6.  not publicly or generally known; secret; confidential;

            7.  carried out or done on an individual basis [a private medical practice];

            8.  engaged in work independent of institutions, organizations, agencies, etc. [private detective, private tutor].”  The dictionary had an additional entry on “private” relating to body parts, but I’ll leave that to the privacy of your imagination. 

           

     My dictionary’s old (it does not have an entry for “obscurement,” for instance, a brand new word I just made up,) but I think these definitions serve us quite well here in our small towns and rural countryside, where the word “postmodern” has very few users (thank God.) 

           

     Reading through these definitions, I think almost anyone could see that Mrs. Kimball’s hope for privacy in this public meeting would not have met with approval from Daniel Webster.  Nor would it have from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King Jr., and a host of other national leaders with democracy on their minds. 

           

     It’s time for the private citizens of this town to stand up and tell our so-called public leaders that we are tired of their private meetings, their anti-public attitudes and exclusionary tactics.  The President of the United States is not the only person we will be electing in November.  Think about your selection criteria for three Lindsay city councilmembers to be elected this fall, then start paying attention to who cares about them. 

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Trudy Wischemann is a Populist agrarian advocate who writes.  You can send her your thoughts on promoting public participation c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Moving Forward

    Last Wednesday I was working on my first column of the New Year, full of the kind of hope and optimism that comes from being rested, when I got a call from Lindsay’s mayor, Ramona Padilla.  “Have you seen the paper?” she asked.  Her voice urgent, she read the headline of the story of the year.  “City searches for lost leadership,” she said, noting a photo of former city manager/police chief Rich Wilkinson sat right below it.

    

     To have the year’s news of Lindsay characterized in this way, after 12 months of struggle to make progress in teaching the albatross to fly – the albatross around Lindsay’s neck left by years of leadership still lost in Townsend’s pink cloud – was almost devastating to me, if not to her.  If you want to know what the insiders are thinking (and feeling,) just read one of Sheyenne Romero’s articles.  Her carefully reconstructed versions of Lindsay’s history match theirs to a T. 

     I could spend my 500 words deconstructing that version, or I can tell you in a couple of sentences why that “loss” is really good news.  Wilkinson was a bully, a different kind of bully than Townsend was – less savvy, more abrasive – but a bully nonetheless.  The keepers of the citadel put him there like a gun to replace a diplomat.  It cost us a lot, both financially and socially, to have him there and it cost us a lot to let him move on, but his departure was an improvement in community quality.  It brought hope for the future. 

    
     The “conflict” between the city council and staff that Ms. Romero reports with such dismay was actually a long-overdue and hard-won change:  the council actually began doing their job overseeing the staff on behalf of the public.  I see it as a tremendously healthy sign of democracy returning to this small town. “Returning” might be a hopelessly romantic word to use, since small towns are known for their propensity to serve only the handful of small fish whose self-esteem is magnified by the size of the pond.  But this romantic believes that at some tiny moment in Lindsay’s history, democracy did have a day.  And more important, this advocate for the four freedoms believes we can have it again. 

    It will take people working together to figure out how we make the democratic process accessible to people who’ve never seen it in action (English speakers included.)  It will take people who want that, which means replacing some of this city’s “leadership” that still remains with people who can see the beauty of inclusiveness.  It will take people who give more than lip service to the need for governmental transparency.  And it will take hope. 

     I take hope from Lindsay’s real story of 2015.  It was the story of the year, largely unreported by this or any other paper.  And I believe we can move forward to a more democratic society, with a more transparent and responsible government and an engaged citizenry becoming members of this place for the first time in their lives.  It is not too much to hope for.  Happy 2016. 

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes.  You can send her your signs of forward movement c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.