Is Democracy a Creative Practice?

Bill Cleveland: 00:00:00

From the center for the Study of Art and Community. This is Change the story, Change the world. My name is Bill Cleveland. Hey there. These next two episodes are going to be a little different.

The subject is democracy at work. The question is democracy a creative practice? The answer, yes, of course. And these shows are about why and how to do this.

We're going to mine some of our past episodes with guests who have toiled in the fertile fields of art and democracy and shared in our conversations what I think are some particularly powerful insights and stories. So onward,

Part One: My Rant

right, the much anticipated,: 2024

China, Russia, nukes, the Middle east, immigration, inequality. Whoa. It's been growing in importance every minute since the early morning of November 6th.

Of course, it's not a new list, but like I said, right now, the way forward seems very tenuous. Now, near the top of this list is an ongoing, rapidly deteriorating situation that many see as an existential threat.

Now, some of you are probably thinking, okay, he's referring to climate change here, but I have to say I think that the fate of the earth has more to do with our ability to share ideas and cooperate than it does climate science. So that's not what this little rant is about.

What I'm talking about is a fairly audacious, fairly new idea about how humans can work together and get things done. And it's an idea that, as we all know, Americans in particular have been obsessed with over the past year.

The idea, of course, is democracy, which exists as a framework of laws, institutions, beliefs, and behaviors that only works if what we regularly refer to as the people buy into it. Now, I don't think I'm going out on a limb here by saying that right now that buy in seems to be question.

Leni Sloan: 00:02:42

And some of you might be thinking.

Bill Cleveland: 00:02:43

Yeah, look what happened on November 5 as evidence. But I don't think that's so.

I think the reason that American democracy is so fragile, so threatened by the ascension of a two bit, wannabe despot, is that most of us don't have a clue about what democracy really is.

And I think the reason for this is that there are so few opportunities to actually participate in the give and take struggle that defines a living, breathing democracy in our everyday lives.

Here's a question. If a little kid, son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, nephew asked, you say, what's this democracy thing? How would you describe it? You know, how it works, why it's such a big deal like going to school or going to work.

"You see, Mary, we go to school because there are things we need to learn in order to function and thrive in the world, and we go to work to be productive and feed and clothe and shelter ourselves."

These are fairly simplistic rationales for the kinds of things kids sometimes question, often because they can be daunting or require hard work and struggle.

So what would you say, what personal, easy to understand story would you share with a kid that would explain democracy as another one of those essential truths in life?

I may be wrong, but I think for some Americans that would be a hard question to answer, partly because so few of us have a chance to do it, to actually practice democracy so that story would just rise up.

Those of you who regularly listen to this podcast have heard me and others describe art making as a practice. So what's a practice? Put simply, a practice is a thing you have to work at to learn.

And then once you learn it, you have to keep practicing to get better or maintain your expertise. And as most of us know, this isn't always easy. What I'm saying is that democracy is a practice that involves learning and hard work.

And yeah, even if you're good at it, it isn't always easy.

But if you think democracy is just voting or participating in a telephone poll, there's no way you can know what it takes to to do it well, what you gain when you do, and most importantly, how essential it is to the advancement of this flawed but promising experiment called America.

So this is a long winded way of my saying, yeah, I'm worried about the state of American democracy. And, even though less than 50% of eligible voters cast their ballots in all national elections held over the past 100 years, I don't think the existential question facing the Republic is whether people are voting.

That's vitally important, of course, but the threshold issue is that an increasingly huge percentage of Americans regard our elections as winner take all warfare and perceive a big chunk of our citizenry who have opposing views as the enemy, whose mere presence is so much of a threat that some of those folks are just fine with making it harder for those others to just cast their vote.

But I have to say, even if the mechanics of what we call democracy were unencumbered, if Americans do not see themselves as citizen co creators of what's next, then both the idea and the Reason for our democracy is subverted. We the people then become a hollow headline, a gilded frame with nothing inside.

So, given this, I believe strongly that the way forward needs to push beyond the helpful instructions contained in the opening pages of the voter pamphlet. In a recent paper, my colleague Harry Boyd, who you'll hear from later, refers to democracy as deliberative public work.

I would concur, but would add that it's particularly hard public work because, as I said before, the tremendous gap between the story we've been telling ourselves about our participatory democracy and our actual experience leaves us sorely unprepared for the Resistance and Reclamation project that we're about to undertake. So, yes, democracy is a practice that we haven't been practicing.

And to get better at it, I think we need to treat it as a creative practice that actually involves as much hands as it does hearts. Wow, that probably requires some explanation.

So by this I mean that if we humans no longer know one another through the shared struggle of what was once necessary for our survival, left to our own devices, the extremes of intellect, our heads and our passions, our hearts can wreak havoc among us strangers. So let's practice maybe by just sharing something simple, not our positions or our grievances, but what we know best, which is our stories.

There's a saying shared by many cultures that speak to this. "It's harder to hurt you if I know your story" Now, history is not chapter headings or headlines. Neither is it the concise and maybe even well written paragraphs that follow. Our histories are our lived experiences and the stories that rise up. It's the visceral all hands making and doing together that gives birth to the stories that truly bind us. And we all know some of those stories.

Hey, you know, after Joe helped me fix my roof, we stopped arguing about that fence. And after, you know, breaking bread and telling lies about our high school days, we were no longer strangers.

As many of you know, I'm a story guy. And so for this episode, we're going to dip back into our rich and varied archives of stories to explore the question, how is democracy a creative practice? And if it is, how does it work?

Not surprisingly, this is the subject that has come up in a lot of our conversations, sometimes directly with folks like Pam Korza and Barbara Schaeffer Bacon, who have run an organization appropriately named Animating Democracy. Or Harry Boyd, who's organizing work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

And multiple decades of scholarship have focused on the complicated story of democracy and citizenship.

And sometimes through the work of Creative practitioners like Carlton Turner, Lenny Sloan, and Scott Rankin, all of whom have devoted their lives to listening and learning and making collective good trouble with their communities. So here we go, Part two. Lenny Sloan, Can Art Help Reclaim our Democracy?

Now, in our conversations, Lenny and I talked about how democracy can be a powerful crucible for change that sometimes allows seemingly inconsequential efforts to have monumental impact and the hard work that entails.

Leni Sloan: 00:10:57

So, Lenny, it's interesting. Our next show is going to be with our mutual friends Pam Korza and Barbara Schaefer Bacon. And they're talking all about how you.

Bill Cleveland: 00:11:08

Use the arts to create a safe.

Place to engage other humans who see the world differently. How do you do that?

Because if we can't figure out how to do that again, we're just going to turn into a lot of little bubbles of contained imaginings about who we are and what's okay. And that's what their work in animating democracy is all about.

Leni Sloan: 00:11:32

ith was born in Gettysburg in: 1815

For four census that she was listed as octoroon, meaning 1/8. She really could have passed for white. And some people say she should have.

She is there in: 1838

We know that the courthouse was kind of like the theater in Gettysburg. So we can assume, although we cannot prove, that Lydia and certainly her parents were sitting in the courthouse watching this young Thaddeus Stevens.

job with thaddeus Stevens in: 1844

And she becomes his constant companion through the rest of his life, which includes him constructing the 13th, 14th Amendments and 15th Amendments and leaving the blueprint for the 19th Amendment.

Bill Cleveland: 00:13:26

th Amendment passed in: 1865

all people born in the US in: 1868

Fifty years later, the ratification of the 19th Amendment finally gave women the franchise.

Leni Sloan: 00:14:06

But during that course, he degenerates he can't write, he can't hold an ink pen. So she is literally writing for him the 13th amendment and 14th amendment.

She is taking care of him well, she is literally carrying him into Congress by the time of the 15th Amendment because he's immobile and she has to get a wagon and four men to carry him to Washington.

d her in Birth of a Nation in: 1915

And his whole blackface scene is Thaddeus Stevens and his mixed race whore Scorsese. And those guys started to do a little better in Lincoln.

You remember that scene where Thaddeus comes home and he gets into bed and he hands Lydia the amendment. So I'm on a campaign to elevate Lydia Mother Smith. She was not just a housekeeper.

A, she took care of this man who wrote us the constructs of our civil liberties and civil rights. B, she amassed over $180,000 of property on her own while she was taking care of him. And she lived on for 38 years after him.

So she is a she and she is an embodiment of, yes, she had privilege because she was an octoroon and. And that's part of the story too. And yes, she was a mixed race child. And America doesn't know what to do with his mixed race children.

So we have an opportunity. They're building a new Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith Museum in Lancaster.

And we have the opportunity to empower them, to agitate with them, to lift her up beyond being a moon.

Bill Cleveland: 00:16:32

Yes, a partner, an equal partner in.

Leni Sloan: 00:16:35

The endeavor, but an equal partner in.

The development of democracy and a personification of both the struggle and we said the word perseverance. But the other is the unique power of learning from personal experience that transcends the moment.

I mean, there's this momentum of a culture right now which feels really scary, but there's another momentum that she and Thaddeus had that really transcended what was going on in the world around them.

I was at a very prominent private school in Upper New York and I asked my students was President's Day. So one girl says the first shopping day of the year after New Year's. So I said okay, let me try this way.

Get out a $1 bill and a $5 bill with Washington and Lincoln. And they said, we don't use money, we don't carry money. We have credit cards and we have our phone, you know, And I'm like, oh, my goodness.

So I'm trying to explain that these two days because of commoditization, were just put into one day. Didn't have nothing to do with Washington or Lincoln. But who cares? I'm only giving you one day off. I can't give you two days off.

I gave you Juneteenth, so you're going to need to lose money. I'm very concerned about cultural and multicultural literacy. So now I was talking about Frederick Douglass in Ireland. No.

No clue of who Frederick Douglass is. And I'm like, how did you get. How did you get here? And I said, Mr. Sloan, we went to elementary school doing gun drills.

We went to high school doing Covid. We don't know what you're talking about. We have Passfeld courses. We have no civics. We don't know we like you. We're not trying to juke you.

It's just that I have no idea what you are talking about. Oh, my God, the calendar.

We say we live in a democracy that many believe is America's bedrock and that it is being threatened. Okay. But if you ask most kids like that to define democracy, more often than not it will come down to elections and voting and not much more.

But of course, it's so much more than going to the polls and checking a few boxes.

Harry Boit from the center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota, who we talked to a while back in one of our episodes, describes democracy quite simply as the work of the people. Practice that is learned and maintained by just that, citizens working things out together.

But the problem is we don't grow up learning how to do that.

Most of our education is didactic, call and response, with very little collective listening and reflecting and problem solving, and almost no exploring the intrinsic connection between rights and responsibilities.

Speaking of learning and education, one of the aspirations I have for this podcast is that people who are new to this work are attracted to it or excited by it, get a little wisdom passed on. So let me ask you, you're sitting with folks who are really interested in democracy as a creative practice.

What would you tell them are critical elements?

Bill Cleveland: 00:20:28

Hmm.

Leni Sloan: 00:20:30

Listening. I would start with perfecting the art of deep listening because.

And I don't mean hearing, because we're fairly good at hearing, but we're not so good at listening. You hear other. You're a musician. When you listen, you hear new melodies, you hear motifs that you didn't even think about.

You know, you discover harmonies and relationships. And so listening, humility, things come through you, not from you. And you try to contain your ego that. That it was your idea.

My chosen culture is New Orleans. And the notion of gumbo is, you got the crabs, I got okra, somebody else has the root. We gonna make up something really good here.

So be humble enough to know that you are but an equation in any idea. And the third thing I would say is review the wpa, the Work Progress act.

Because inside the construct of the Work Progress act, and for you and I, the Work Progress act was ceta, Artists in Service to Community. You know, and that work is progress, and progress requires work. It takes work and it takes diligence.

But the great thing about the Work Progress act was Artists in Service to Community. And that model. If you want to be a community artist or a community arts worker or community activist, there are some historical movements.

CEDA is one of those movements. Work Progress act is one of those movements.

Bill Cleveland: 00:22:29

Part 3. What is an animated democracy? I'm an optimist.

So despite my complaining here, I believe strongly in the creative antidote personified by the stories we share from this episode. In it, we'll learn all about the hearts organization referenced in our conversation with Lenny Sloan called Animating Democracy.

Our tour guides for this are Pam Korza and Barbara Schaefer Bacon, two legendary cultural leaders whose pioneering work at the University of Massachusetts Arts Extension Service not only helped spawn the local arts council movement in the Northeast, but also gave rise to an organization founded on the belief that a healthy local arts community and robust civic participation are both mutually supportive and intrinsically connected. So, Pam, for someone who's out there saying, look, I just vote, what's this all about?

Could you say a little more about the underlying thinking that has the creative process and community and democracy all in the same basket?

Pam Korza: 00:23:36

Well, I think the essence of Community Based arts, which there was a long history of, really was a foundation for thinking about the role of arts and culture in what we started out doing, which was stimulating public dialogue about issues in communities.

Bill Cleveland: 00:23:55

Okay, so you have seen it happen over and over again where artists involved in community situations made an impact that was uniquely valuable to the community. What the heck is that? What is going on?

If a bunch of people are having an argument about the broken septic system or abusive policing or the books in the library, what does an artist have to do with that? How does an artist animate a dialogue or a conversation that's useful or helpful or productive?

Pam Korza: 00:24:30

Well, I think there are a lot of pathways into that. Like community based practice is often about participation in the art itself.

So that process of getting people together, creating a play, making music, has an immediate effect of creating a common space where people engage in the creative process, but they get something else out of it.

And I think that when you look at what art is or what artists employ in their work, it's about story, it's about sometimes humor, it's about generating the kind of human side of what might be an issue that a community is facing. And so those things are the tools or the devices that artists bring into space.

That makes it a different kind of setting, a different kind of environment for people to engage with each other and then also go a step further into conversation, which in our context was really creating an intentional space through artists and art to get at those things that communities need to talk about.

Bill Cleveland: 00:25:47

So what are those things, Barbara?

Beyond the unique impetus for convening that the arts bring, are there ways that creative engagement can actually change the kinds of issues and stories that get shared? Yeah.

Barbara Schaffer Bacon: 00:26:05

In addition to participation and where conversation might go or how it might be affected by the interaction through art was actually who was engaged that we knew that community artists were often out reaching into communities that weren't often part of public conversations. They could create groups of younger people or people of color.

They could bring people together and get in and out in a different way and had skills for listening and letting people bring themselves and their stories or pieces of them together. We also had some iconic, I think, things going on.

So we used, and continue to use throughout the telling of animating democracy stories, the AIDS memorial quilt, vagina dialogue. Because those projects, you know, you have to put them in time.

Someone with who died of aids, the funeral parlor didn't want them, the cemetery didn't want them. Families didn't actually have public places to mourn or celebrate lives. And along comes the quilt project.

And so the first thing is they get to engage in a creative process. They're going to memorialize their loved one in this thing.

And the creative process of bringing those symbols together and making that quilt square is important. But then they end up on the National Mall, and on the National Mall, they become a platform for policy.

We see the AIDS crisis in the country as not being just a small group of problematic subcultures. It's now affecting families across the economic line, across religious lines. And the families see each other.

And it literally brought the issue to a broader place.

Aids Quilt Participants: 00:27:46

John Ferreira. Phil Harrington.

At sunrise this morning, they began their tribute to people who died of aids, the task of reading out their names, often more than their friends could cope with. Jose Sals.

News Announcer: 00:28:02

From all over the country, the families and friends of the victims had gathered to watch the unveiling of a huge quilt the size of a football field. Each panel bore the name of an AIDS victim.

Often groups had made the panels trying to catch something of the spirit of their lost friends in the design. When it was done and laid out in front of the Capitol building, the quilt was, as it were, lying at the feet of the American Congress.

The government here is much criticized by the gay community for not doing enough to educate people about aids. Congressman Jerry Studs was among those taking part. This

Congressman Gerry Sudds: 00:28:36

administration absolutely refuses to engage in. Serious, widespread national public education. That, in my judgment, using words very. Deliberately, very calmly, is criminally negligent.

Barbara Schaffer Bacon: 00:28:48

Vagina Monologues, same thing.

Eve Ensler: 00:28:54

I started to realize that the play could be a tool for breaking taboos, for getting dialogue going. We then created this idea of V Day, Vagina Day, Victory Day, Valentine's Day.

We were thinking we'd do one performance in New York City to raise money for local groups working to stop domestic violence.

That event ended up to be the most extraordinary evening where 2,500 people came and all these fabulous actors, from Glenn Close to Susan Sarandon to Lily Tomlin to Rosie Perez.

Rosie Perez: 00:29:27

My vagina is angry. It is. It's pissed off. My vagina is furious, and it needs to talk.

Bill Cleveland: 00:29:43

That was Vagina Monologue's playwright Eve Ensler, with a little tidbit from Rosie Perez.

Barbara Schaffer Bacon: 00:29:50

Domestic violence finally is talked about in public spaces. It changes. It really changes the national conversation, not just at a small or a local level.

Bill Cleveland: 00:30:01

So you just described two really powerful examples of ways in which the public making and sharing of a story is really an invitation. Hey, let's have a conversation. It's not just that little story. It's our story, and it's expanding.

So the original audience isn't just those people over there, because it's not just them. It's a public event. It's a public, cultural event that's happening on the nation's front lawn.

And actually, that image of the AIDS quilt on the National Mall. Anybody that's ever seen that photograph?

Barbara Schaffer Bacon: 00:30:41

I mean, right, with the Washington Monument behind it? Yeah, totally. Laramie project is another huge example. It's one of the most produced plays in the country still.

Bill Cleveland: 00:30:53

So Just to give people who aren't familiar with this story, a young gay University of Montana student named Matthew Shepard was assaulted and horribly tortured and murdered in Laramie, Wyoming.

And the story of this hate crime in the media became iconic in a way that was unfortunately simplistic and how it played to stereotypes and distortions in all directions for both the victim and the community.

That is, until a playwright named Moises Kaufman and members of Tectonic Theater created a verbatim theater piece, which means that people's actual words are used in the script. Based on hundreds of interviews with town members and others involved, here's Kaufman talking about his approach.

Moises Kaufman: 00:31:43

The way that the media portrayed the town was as a town of rednecks and hillbillies and cowboys. And so, of course, you know, this could happen there, it couldn't happen anywhere else.

And to me, that's a very incorrect portrayal of Laramie, because the thing that makes Laramie so stunningly interesting is not how different it is from the rest of the country, but how similar. When the news reports do a piece of Laramie, the camera becomes the curator.

But as actors and as theater people, the body of the actor, the spirit of the actor, that is the recording device and that is the playback device. And so how do we use theater to advance a kind of humanistic conversation?

Bill Cleveland: 00:32:29

Part 4 Carlton can cultural democracy redefine citizenship?

The three stories shared by Barbara and Pam are examples of how arts animated democracy can help change the way people think and behave in relation to complex issues on the national stage. It should be noted, though, that their.

Organization, Animating Democracy has been a really strong believer in the exponential power of hyperlocal cultural initiatives. And I share that belief.

ho joined us in the spring of: 2022

Now, Carleton will be the first to remind you that the insights he shares about community creativity and meaningful change in small places rise up from intensely collective efforts.

Our conversation centered on how these kinds of intimate, culturally based relationships demand deep respect for and accountability to the people who will ultimately bear the consequences of. The success or failure of the world work.

So, Carlton, you mentioned alternate roots that you went on to lead for nine years or so.

And during that time, roots evolved from serving artists who were working for equity and social change to working really directly with communities and artists to advance community issues on the ground. Could you talk about how that evolution happened and what informed it.

Carlton Turner: 00:34:10

Yeah. I would extend that idea to say, not just the advancement of communities, but the advancement of civilization.

When I think about culture, I don't think about performance. I think about civilization.

I think about what does it mean for a people, a society, what is their way of life, and what are the values that define that and ground that way of life, and how those values identify what our culture will be remembered for. We look back on cultures that are long gone or cultures that existed in a time before, and we remember the aspects of that culture that were.

That have been the most influential, the ones that have been the biggest in their presentation. We think about them in ways that are defining.

And when we think about our culture, I think one of the things that the future will say about our culture, the one that we presently live in, is how commodified it is that everything is for sale, everything is a commodity. And so I think in that practice is where we find art. The idea of art comes from this commodification of culture. Art is just.

Art is one, a natural byproduct of a strong cultural community. It's culture is going to produce art. It can't do it. It can't exist any other way. It's like water and heat are going to make steam.

That's just when you have culture, art is going to be produced. But the way that we think about art is as a product. It is. And the culture is the thing that stands in the way between the art and the commerce.

And so I think the people that have influenced me, the people that I've been grounded my work in, saw culture as the. Really as the development of a culture that is rich, as a redefining of what wealth is.

And for me, that's been really the broadest stroke of the mission that we've painted here with the Mississippi center for Cultural Production is that we're trying to work with our community to redefine wealth, like redefine what it means to have wealth. What is the wealth that we have?

And how can we begin to then reassociate the outer world, get that outer world in alignment with the way that we think about what's valuable and what's precious to us. And I think that's where I come from in this work.

Bill Cleveland: 00:36:37

If you don't mind, I'd like to quote you on something that relates to this idea of redefining culture. This comes from a talk you made at the Culture Shift conference in St.

Louis in: 2016

And then you talked about a much older way of thinking about artists, which was the role of the culture bearer. Could you elaborate on that?

Carlton Turner: 00:37:17

Yeah.

So, first, I want to give acknowledgement to Lori Poirier, who's the president of First People Fund and my sister and one of the biggest influences on my work of the last decade.

I'm a proud board member of First People's Fund and proud collaborator with Lori on a number of projects, most notably the Intercultural Leadership Institute.

But she taught me the word culture bearers, and it's a word that, when you hear it in the field today, I attribute that to Lori in the work of First People's Fund because she has normalized the idea of culture bearers as being held alongside what we traditionally think of as artists. But there's a difference in those two identities. But they should be. Both should be regarded and supported. And I think that work is due to Lori.

And what I learned in my time with First Peoples Fund is this idea of collective spirit.

And it's an idea that they take into all of their work as an organization, as representative of tribal nations, representatives of sovereign people, and recognizing the role that the culture bearer plays in the advancement of a culture, the advancement of a community. To me, the culture bearer's role is to make sure that culture is transferred from generation to generation.

That culture will always change, and change is inevitable.

But the holding of that position is a way to remember and honor the sacred, honor the beginnings, honor the traditions, without moving into a place of nostalgia, but in a place of deep connection. Nostalgia is, oh, I remember that. That was so wonderful. And then that's a fleeting emotion.

But this idea of accountability to your ancestors and to a path that they have set forth board with you in mind, like they. This is envisioned for you. This. We created these things because we knew that you would need them.

Because what you're going to experience is going to be, is a continuation of the experience that we have been having as humans on this planet.

And so that accountability comes in that if the work that we're doing as organizations, as cultural workers, as activists, however you identify yourself, but if you're fitting in this framework of what we think about when we say organizations like Alternate Routes and organizations like yours and Mississippi center for Cultural Productions and others, then if the work isn't grounded in the community, then it's self aggrandizing. It's not grounded in purpose other than ego.

And for me, that accountability measure comes into play when the community calls you out and checks you to say, hey, now, you say that you're doing this on behalf of us. So where's my place in it? How do I fit?

How do my ideas fit into this idea that you're bringing, or this idea that you're cultivating, or this space that you're creating? Where do I fit inside of that?

And if there's no place for a community member, then whatever the thing that you've designed or you've created needs to be adjusted or abandoned.

Bill Cleveland: 00:40:29

I couldn't agree more.

You know, my own experience working with people in communities and institutions has taught me that one way or another, the questions you just shared are almost always going to be in the room and whether or not they're given their due, they will be lurking until they're addressed.

And I think those questions are just a healthy reaction of a community asking after its own self interest and as you say, insisting on accountability from their partners. So I've always said that art making is a process of inquiry and that most creative journeys start with questions like that.

I think these questions serve as a kind of North Star and that being accountable to yourself and your partners, if you have them for the answers, is part of what steers the work. Part

5 Harry Boyd what is a Democratic Imagination?

Along with Carlton Turner, another North Star for me in the Art and Democracy journey has been activist, organizer, educator and author Harry Boyd.

Now, I don't usually rattle off the biographies of our guests, but because so much of Harry's history and adventures figure prominently in our conversation, I think some of his background is warranted here. So here are a few highlights.

Harry is a co founder with Murray Strom of the Public Work Academy and is a Senior Scholar of Public Work Philosophy at Augsburg University.

He also founded a much acclaimed international youth civic education initiative called Public Achievement and established the center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota. Harry's most recent book is Awakening Democracy Through Public work.

In the: 1960

ion took place in the fall of: 2021

I'm going to begin with a simple question how do you describe your work in the world?

Harry Boyte: 00:42:50

Well, I would say we're promoting in practice and theory the idea that democracy is the work of the people, not formal institutions, although they have a role, government in elections. But democracy is the work of the people. And so I learned that in the civil rights movement.

I work for Martin Luther King's organization and the citizenship schools of sclc. That was basically the philosophy of the movement. It wasn't named that way, but it was vernacular understanding.

Nobody thought democracy was mainly elections. So, you know, my work has been really trying to theorize and develop and build on the lessons I learned in the movement.

Bill Cleveland: 00:43:25

I think a consistent through line for your work has been that being a citizen is being an active participant in the democratic process. Not just with the structures of policymaking and voting, et cetera, but a hands on involvement in democracy as a practice and a way of thinking.

In one of your papers, you quote Judge William Hastie. He said there's no more powerful idea than the thought that America is a commonwealth built through the labors of us all.

Is that the gist of your thinking on this?

Harry Boyte: 00:44:04

Yeah, you know, along with the idea that democracy is a journey, we never get there, a work in progress. But yeah, that's basically. And so in that sense, democracy is not a western invention or created by the Greeks.

Every society in the world has traditions of self organizing work and also connected deliberation and conversation that are the roots of democracy. So you know, in the settler case it was barn raising and quilting bees and building bridges and commons and meeting halls and so forth.

But every culture has those self organizing collective labor traditions.

Bill Cleveland: 00:44:47

I mean, one could argue that actually the human species wouldn't be if in fact we were not able to adapt and evolve in such a way that our cooperation for the common wheel allowed us to survive, let alone thrive.

Harry Boyte: 00:45:03

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that is the. That is the talent and the capacity and especially.

And this goes to your work, you know, understood not only in practical but also in narrative terms, the stories of building the commons that really mark the cooperative dimensions of human experience.

Bill Cleveland: 00:45:24

You talk about the civic muscle and it's interesting because one of the. And I. You could think of it as a metaphor, I actually don't.

And I have another muscle that is preeminent in my own thinking and that's the imaginative muscle. Do you see those two connected? And in what way? If you do?

Harry Boyte: 00:45:44

Well, absolutely. So I like Apadurai's work here.

He's a cultural anthropologist from India who worked for shack dwellers who wrote a very important essay called the Capacity to Aspire, and it's in a collection called Culture in Public Action.

But apadurai argues that people's sense of their own agency in the world, not only individual but collective, has everything to do with how they imagine the possibilities. And the future is open to the extent that people develop the sense that they actually can have some shaping power over their environments.

So I would say that directly connects the idea of civic muscle, or civic agency is another term for it, of a more academic term, with the idea of imagination.

Bill Cleveland: 00:46:31

So the through line for this podcast is really especially in our contemporary moment, which is of what use are arts and culture in these turbulent times? And so a question to you.

Is there a story or are there stories that come to mind where you saw creative practice and the exercise of the civic muscle as mutually supportive and effective?

Harry Boyte: 00:46:59

Absolutely. So, I mean, again, my formative experience was in the freedom movement. And so several things happened in the movement that were about this.

One is the grassroots citizenship schools. SCLC had 900 citizenship schools coming out of Highlander first, but in 61 it shifted over to SCLC.

And the citizenship schools themselves were incubators for a democratic imagination and agency and a different story of America.

So people like Dorothy Cotton and Septima Clark and Ella Baker, who were really central architects of the citizenship schools, believed that you had to have an intellectual dimension as well as people's own self discovery and self directed learning. They had. Scandinavian folk schools were a very important influence.

So there was a vibrant intellectual conversation about the meaning of citizenship and democracy in the citizenship schools.

And of course, it wasn't only the transformative impact on that of people who were also learning that they could learn numeracy so you could know if the the plantation owner was screwing you. Literacy and numeracy were really resources for agency. And the citizenship schools, they were also ways to prepare people to register to vote.

But the cultural dimensions of the schools and the movement as a whole were full of poetry and history. The citizenship education curriculum had a section on black history as well as songs as well as nonviolence.

Bill Cleveland: 00:48:26

he SCLC's Bernice Robinson in: 1984

Bernice Robinson: 00:48:37

Any community.

We went in and operated citizenship classes.

If there was no particular community organization in that area, we would organize that first class into an organization so that they would have some ongoing influence in the community and an ongoing learning process. They'd say, well, if we don't have a leader in our community, and we say, well, what about you being a leader? Well, no, I'm not a leader.

They would say. But we say, you know the problem.

If you know the problem, you see the problem, you know what needs to be done to solve that problem, then you're the one that have to take the ball and run with it. It's like light coming into darkness. Once they learn how to read and write, they always voted after that.

Harry Boyte: 00:49:38

And that was a seed for a different story of democracy that actually changed the country for a time. It was a challenge to the kind of consumerist, individualist, you know, look out for number one culture of the 50s.

Bill Cleveland: 00:49:53

That story of the light of learning and agency coming into the darkness and literally illuminating the road to democracy is one that I think should be repeated over and over, particularly now and particularly for the bright eyed, budding citizenry in our schools. It's a simple and powerful inspiration. Yes, this thing we do called democracy is a privilege and a wonder.

And for me it's also been a privilege to revisit these inspiring stories. I hope you agree and join us for our next episode when we continue harvesting and sharing stories exploring democracy as a creative practice.

Change the Story, Change the World is a production of the center for the Study of Art and Community. Our theme and soundscape spring forth from the head, heart and hands of the maestro Judy Munson. Our text editing is by Andre Nebbe.

Our effects come from freesound.org and our inspiration comes from the ever present spirit of UKE235. So until next time, stay well, do good and spread the good word. And once again, please know that this episode has been 100% human.