On the first Saturday of each month, the citizen advocacy organization called RESULTS holds their monthly national webinar. I attended this month’s meeting and heard the webinar’s guest speaker, Sam Daley-Harris talk about his new book Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy. Sam Daley-Harris founded RESULTS over 50 years ago and led the organization for many years before handing executive director duties to his successor. While Sam is no longer involved in the day-to-day activities of RESULTS, he remains committed to getting citizens more involved in the political process.
His book is about what he learned while creating and leading RESULTS, and he shared with us RESULTS volunteers a version of the talks he’s giving to publicize the book. He talked about what keeps people disengaged from advocacy: feelings of fear, cynicism, being overwhelmed, and hopeless. He talked about how he first got involved in advocacy by going to one of 11 meetings in 1977 to launch the Hunger Project. He went into the meeting feeling there was no solution to global hunger, but he learned the problem wasn’t humanity didn’t know how to grow enough food to feed everyone; the problem was humanity didn’t have the political will to feed everyone. Sam talked about learning what political will meant, and through his and the experiences of others over the last 50 years, he learned how to transform common people like himself and other volunteers into powerful advocates for those dying of hunger, poverty, and preventable disease.
How powerful? I often call RESULTS a stealth organization, because unless you’re a member of the U.S. Congress or work on their staff, you almost certainly haven’t heard of RESULTS. But, if you are a member of Congress or have worked as a Congressional staffer on issues of domestic or international education, health, disease, or food security, you have very likely heard of RESULTS or even met with RESULTS volunteers. Through those meetings and other efforts, RESULTS volunteers literally shift billions of federal taxpayer dollars into domestic and international programs that are helping people lift themselves out of poverty.
When I think of humanity’s biggest problems, none of them require new technological achievements. Those achievements would help, but they wouldn’t resolve those problems. The only thing that would is political will. So what is political will? I turned to OneLook for a dictionary definition and was surprised to see a term I’ve used for decades doesn’t have a dictionary definition. A Google search brought me to this definition: “the extent of committed support among key decision makers for a particular policy solution to a particular problem” in an article from Vox.
In my experience, political will is ideally expressed when constituents share how political problems are affecting them to their government representatives. When those shares are part of a conversation that includes solutions and calls for the representative to support those solutions that’s when political will is being expressed. That’s very different from other kinds of advocacy, such as protesting in the street or directly helping those in need by representing them in a courtroom. Those kinds of advocacy are needed, but they don’t have the same kind of return on investment that political advocacy does.
One definition of politics includes “competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership.” That means unless you’re a hermit or a solitary castaway on an island, it’s impossible to not be engaged in politics. All of us are involved in one way or another in the competition for power. If we’re not exerting our power, someone else is exerting their power over us. What happens when people feel so overwhelmed, cynical, and hopeless that they don’t get actively involved in politics and advocacy, and instead withdraw from the competition? Think about the biggest problems facing humanity. Think about the biggest problems you yourself are facing. That’s what happens. Even when you’re not engaged with policy makers, others are and the result is what you see around you.
Sam loves to share inspirational quotations. When people talk about feeling overwhelmed, cynical, and hopeless, he loves to share a quotation from Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, “We’re not passengers on Spaceship Earth. We’re the crew.”
I’ve been a crewman on ships, and I’ve been a passenger. I also know about feeling overwhelmed, cynical, and hopeless. I’m a recovering addict. Being an addict means feeling powerless over one or more addictions. Pretty much from birth, I felt afraid, insecure, incompetent, and impotent about changing things in my life. Despite my outward successes, it’s taken decades of life experiences and years of recovery work to bring me where I am now. Each day my journey of recovery requires me to decide to whether to be a crewman actively engaged in making my life better, or a passenger simply going along with the flow.
I’m lucky I was introduced to RESULTS and Sam in 1990 as a college student. I’ve witnessed some of the things Sam talks about in his book. I’m one of many volunteers who has experienced what Sam calls transformational advocacy. He says, “Transformational advocacy creates supported opportunities for volunteers to push through preconceived ideas of what they can achieve. Hearing other people talk about their breakthroughs helps us imagine what is possible.“
Supported opportunities means receiving support from other volunteers while I step out of my comfort zone to do things I’ve never done before. Things like learning how to write a letter to the editor, ask a politician in a town hall meeting to support something, set up a face-to-face meeting with a politician and participate–even lead– the meeting with other volunteer advocates. Hearing what everyday people like me have done to experience their breakthroughs, helps me believe I can do the same thing and get a similar result. It creates hope and belief that by working with others, I can help change the world.
I was receiving and giving transformational advocacy support long before I learned that 12-step addiction groups have a similar concept. My volunteer work in transformational advocacy involved listening to others talk about political problems and solutions and about how to share that information with policymakers and program-funders–especially members of Congress and their staffs–in Washington, DC and with others in my community. Advocates sharing what has and hasn’t worked in past lobbying efforts and planning their next steps is a lot like addicts sharing their experience, strength, and hope of recovery to other addicts. In 12-step groups, addicts learn they need the support of others and they need to support others to overcome their addictions. In transformational advocacy, advocates learn they need the support of others and they need to support others to increase their personal and collective political power and to bring about the changes they are advocating for.
Like addiction recovery, transformational advocacy requires work–much more than simply adding your name to a form letter or joining a protest for an afternoon. Maybe that’s one reason nearly all non-profit organizations are reluctant to ask their volunteers to engage in direct lobbying. They’re afraid they’ll lose volunteers. It’s a fear that’s perpetuating the problems we face.
Sam talked about being a young man and trying to identify what his purpose in life was. I asked myself that same question. Here are my answers.
- being serene (state of being calm, peaceful and untroubled)
- being happy
- being confident I have enough money to live comfortably until I die
- helping people improve their lives
- helping the world’s children have equal opportunities to thrive
I realized there’s a conflict within those purposes. Being serene means staying in my comfort zone. Helping others improve their lives and helping the world’s children have equal opportunities to thrive means getting out of my comfort zone. Being confident I have enough money to live comfortably until I die means working in a position that’s not my passion.
I also realized those purposes are not mutually exclusive. I can stay in my comfort zone for a while, get out of that zone for a while, and get back into it. A part of me can even exist in both zones: I can be a little serene and a lot scared, vice-versa, or somewhere in between. I’m the captain of my ship, I can pick how rough of seas I want to sail in.
I’ll finish with another one of Sam’s favorite quotations: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead
That quotation is what keeps me involved, albeit often reluctantly, in advocacy. Addiction recovery has taught me that in order to grow, I must change and change requires thinking, talking, and acting differently than what I did before. Do you want to experience transformational advocacy? Are you ready to take the first small steps to get yourself out of compliance with the status quo to make the changes with others that you want to see in the world? If yes, and you’re interested in ending poverty, check out RESULTS. If you’re interested in reducing climate change, check out Citizens Climate Lobby. If you’re interested in something else, let’s talk. I may have some ideas for you.
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