Meaningful Democracy

Student dissent has been around for a long time. My first personal foray into demonstrating was as a teenager back in the 60s, when I joined Sarah Lawrence College students to protest outside a local barber shop in suburban Westchester County because the shop owner had refused to give an African-American citizen a simple hair cut. As a college student at the University of Hartford, I took part in countless SDS demonstrations and silent peace vigils against the Vietnam War. In May, 1970, just after my 22nd birthday, I joined students there in a strike after the Kent State massacre.

Last Thursday, I read about the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the Williamstown Middle School t-shirt case. In May, 2004, Zachary Guiles was suspended from Williamstown Middle School for wearing a T-shirt that called Bush “Chicken-Hawk-in-Chief” who was engaged in a “World Domination Tour.” The Vermont ACLU gives more background.

Here's what University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen said at a UT teach-in on war and civil liberties, November 1, 2001, and worth repeating in September, 2006, especially apropos the Guiles decision last week:

Tonight I want to talk about why free speech and democracy are in some sense more important than ever. In this sense, free speech is not a trivial matter. How we defend and use our free speech is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.

What is it about this political culture that leads people to see a different political analysis not as something to be argued with, but something to eliminate?

Again, we are left to ponder how the freedoms enjoyed in our version of democracy have produced a culture that is so hostile to intellectual engagement and democratic participation.

What does it mean to live in a society in which the president can declare an unlimited war against unspecified enemies, then begin to fight that war with extreme brutality and disregard for the lives of innocent civilians, and a significant segment of the population simply does not care? When I ask such questions, people often say, "You have a right to your opinion; I support your right to speak."

I think that indicates a fundamental moral, political, and intellectual crisis. Free speech has come to mean not a process of engagement, but a right to shout into the wind. People see no reason or obligation to engage. This tells me that we live in a political system that has democratic features but is not a meaningful democracy. I say that because I believe a meaningful democracy requires an active citizenry. That is why I titled this talk "Against Dissent." Finally, I'll explain what I mean by that.

In a meaningful democracy, citizens would be part of the process by which pubic policy is formulated. That is, citizens would discuss issues and problems, with access to the broadest range of information, leading to an exploration of the widest possible range of solutions and responses. The views of people would not only be relevant to the decisions politicians end up implementing, but would structure the choices politicians could make.

Instead, we live in a system in which many people think they are participating fully if they vote. Some will participate a bit further by working in the electoral process. Others will work at educating themselves about the policy options that politicians and other powerful people have laid out, so that they can better choose among those options. But very few people understand democracy to mean direct engagement in the process by which policy options are formulated.

That is why, for example, so many Americans do not know what to think of the movement to resist corporate domination of the global economy. Those people, such as the folks in the streets of Seattle, were asserting their right to be involved in the formulation of policy options, and it seemed strange to many Americans.

If that is what democracy could be -- an active role for engaged citizens -- then we can see why the term dissent doesn't quite fit. If we all are part of the process of formulating policy options -- if we do not give up the right to be involved in that process -- then we begin with the idea that all policy options are open, and that the people will decide which option they want the government to pursue.

If that were the case, then I, and others who offer an antiwar perspective, wouldn't be dissenting from some already-agreed-upon position. We would be contributing a policy option to the discussion. That wouldn't be dissent; it would be participation in a conversation about which option or options might be most desirable.

Now, after the political process has concluded and a policy is chosen, then it makes sense to say that one dissents from that. But literally from September 12 on, my public speech has been labeled dissent. But it wasn't dissent. It was my contribution to the policy discussion. It was labeled dissent only because this culture assumes that the pronouncements of the president and other "important" people are the policy, and we the people then have a right to either agree with it or dissent from it.

I have a different view of democracy. The antiwar movement has a different view of democracy. The movement for a fair and just global economy has a different view of democracy. In that sense, these kinds of movements are not simply about changing policies; they are about changing the system. They attempt to turn a system that now is democratic in its formal structure into a meaningful democracy in practice.

They are, quite literally, movements engaged in -- to borrow a phrase from my colleague Rahul Mahajan -- the struggle for the soul of a nation.

Ironically, when we engage in that struggle these days we are called anti-American, unpatriotic, or traitors.

We may face the scorn of some of our fellow citizens, or risk the condemnation of our bosses. Some may lose their jobs. But compared to facing down the barrel of a gun or risking jail time, well, let's keep our hardships in perspective. Again, these freedoms we have won are not necessarily permanent; we have to work to hold them. But we do have them.

That means that more than ever, the question for us is whether we will use our voices, our energy -- perhaps before too long our bodies in civil disobedience -- to fight against illegitimate authority and for justice.

"I've sort of evolved in my criticisms of Bush," Zachary Guiles said. "It's more in terms of policies rather than his past decisions."

Guiles called the appeals court's ruling "just."

"It means that there is free speech for students," he said. "You don't leave your rights at the schoolhouse gates."

Indeed. It was not so much the boy's right to wear the t-shirt; the Williamstown school official could have had a discussion with Guiles - aren't we talking about critical thinking in schools? - but instead pulled a top-down power play, so typical of some teachers and administrators in schools.