Thriving too

Big Society: Time for Outrage?

I am not sure how I missed this story - I have found it so interesting and I thought it worth blogging about in case other's might have missed it too?  

Stephane Hessell released a 3 page pamphlet in France last October entitled “Indignez-Vous!” which has sold over 1.5 million copies.  The number of sales on this slim volume – sold for €3 - is pretty remarkable.

Hessell is 94.  He lived through the WWII, was active in the French Resistance, survived concentration camps, was involved in drafting the Declaration of Human Rights, spend much of his life as a diplomat and an active agent of positive change.  His experience and his life are significant factors in the spread of this recent work… but its timing has also contributed perhaps to how his message has been received.

So what is his message? I have read and reread it over the last couple of weeks – an English version here – wanting to blog about it, but thinking how important it is to drawn honestly on his text.  ‘Time for Outrage’ is a call to action on both political and social justice issues. Hessell draws our attention to a number of negative issues currently alive and well in society, examples include the widening gap between rich and poor, the powers of the press (ironically given the recent press scandals), the treatment of immigrants and more controversial issues concerning Israel and Palestine.

Here are some of the interpretations.. and further questions I have made from Hassell’s piece:

-       He asks for people not to ignore things that are happening subtly through the effects of social norms etc – such as showing a lack of respect to immigrants. The insidious permeation of behaviours, which add up to a terrible negative culture.  

-       He asks us to wake up to how the powers have been at work very quietly to dominate decision-making …. As well as waking up to our own contributions to the situation through passivity and via our smaller contributions.

-       He asks us to get active… but to work through peaceful means.  In fact his closing statement is ‘To create is to resist; to resist is to create.”

I recently read the book Willful Blindness by Margaret Heffernan and reading Hessell’s essay resonated with some of the things that Heffernan talks about.  In Willful Blindness Heffernan catalogues all the ways that we are blind to the bigger truths, sometimes in our personal lives, but also in work or public related ways.  One example is how the subprime mortgage crisis occurred not because of an individual ‘someone’ doing something hugely stupid (although Alan Greenspan ....) … but because literally 100s of people, at hundreds of organisations, across all levels, turned a blind eye to what they saw directly in front of them.  Individual employees were approving multiple mortgages on the same property on the same day.  It is a fascinating book with dozens of examples of how the mind works to make us ‘not know’ things that we sort of really do know but don’t want to confront even with ourselves. 

In another example Heffernan describes a firm in the US that kept a mine open for years with full knowledge that the high levels of asbestos in the dust was killing not only the workers in the mine – but the whole town.  When this knowledge was revealed publically the town did not want to know either – despite people actually dying around them at ridiculously young ages.  Most shocking in that story was the small fact that the head teacher at the town’s school did not reveal the fact for 5 years that the school’s running track was build on foundations of waste from the mine.  For 5 years after knowing the risks to health the students still performed athletics on contaminated dust!

What must things be like for Hessel – to live through one of the most shocking instances of crimes against humanity – to win – to make all sorts of huge and fundamental strides towards creating a better world – such as writing the Declaration of Human Rights … only to see some of those gains slip quietly away due to inattention or passivity or lack of knowledge or insight? It does feel as though Hessell is shouting …in frustation.

The questions that Hassel asks are ones that many have been asking for a long time:

-       How do we make obvious things that are often so slow or so invisible that we don’t see them until the full impact has been gathered. 

-       How do we take responsibility for our individual behaviours – knowing that they contribute powerfully to the collective that shapes our social culture.

-       How do we ‘create to resist’?  What does that look like?  Is the call that Hessell makes here a call to encourage citizens to pro-actively shape the world they want to live in – a ‘call to action’ rather than a ‘call to arms’ which its title initially suggests?

Hessel's work is controversial in many ways - there are many who are trying to dismiss it or criticise it - there were certainly many points that I noted seemed in need of further investigation.... but I can also see that there are many reasons why this commentary has drawn so many people in France to buy it, why it is so timely... and why Hessel's voice within this text has made it's appeal so strong.

I see many points of comparison with Big Society, a concept I still wholeheartedly support. Isn’t Big Society after all, at its most fundamental, a call  ... or an idea, to help people get more involved in shaping society – rather than simply acting as consumers or critiquing society from afar?

Imagine 1.5 million copies sold of a leaflet talking about Big Society? Can't see that happening somehow....

 

the subversive interim

Two things I read while on the train to localgovcamp in Birmingham, prompted me to write this blog and take a book I read a couple of months ago off the shelf. First was this tweet by Richard from www.guerrillagardening.org who wrote: “I see there’s no crime of ‘subversion’ in the UK J Preparing for my speech at RIBA on subversion in public space”

The second was an invitation to a meeting under the title: Pecha Kulcha Night Rotterdam: Space in the Interim.

Many of our cities are filled with vacant building sites and buildings, some of which stand empty and undeveloped for years, while construction projects are being delayed or even abandoned completely. Standard approaches to urban development, which still often concentrate on the envisaged end results, need to be radically re-examined. We must reflect on what can be achieved en route, rather than focusing solely on the lure of distant promises. This perspective repositions the interim as a phase with scope for experimentation and the creation of new values.

The two things fit nicely with my recent posts on interim-space or the in between (I know I still have to make up for my promise of writing a blog on inter-persons). Where I see the different examples I talk about as interesting, positive, social experiments, you could also see them as subversive practices. Once you start looking at them in this way, it brings back the political and social dimensions Richard (and I) have mostly refrained from inserting into this conversation. But actually picking this dimension up, might be helpful to explore what’s going on when we start occupying public space. Helpful, because it can help us better understand the anxiety (a quick aside: for an interesting discussion on anxiety, see the latest RSA animate by Renate Salecl on choice) and difficulties people run into when they occupy start working on and in these interim spaces.

Reading both thing closely after another, I immediately saw a link and made me remember a book I reviewed a while ago, titled ‘Subversive Citizens. Power, agency and resistance in public services’ edited by  Marian Barnes and David Prior. I won’t put the review up here (don’t know if I’m actually allowed, hmm, not very subversive myself), but will draw from bits I wrote there. However I urge people who are into this to read this book.

In this book they develop the concept of subversion as an analytic category to analyze: “transformations in the institutional structure and organizational practices of public services and the creation of new spaces of engagement where public officials, professionals and citizens come together to develop and implement public policies (p. 10)”. Using such different conceptual frameworks as the notion of governmentality, social movements, neighborhood policy, assemblages and citizenship, the different authors try to spell out both what subversion is (‘alternative expressions of agency (4)’, that ‘obstruct, deflect or subvert desired policy outcomes (8)’ thus exposing the’ ambiguities, contradictions and tensions that exist within public policy’ (200) and ‘bringing into view – rendering visible and uncomfortable – the network of assumptions that sustains and supports the existing field of distinctions, regulations and practices’ (76))the different forms subversive strategies take (collective resistance, exit strategies, ignoring or bending the rules, declining to take the expected or allocated roles, acts of disruption, sabotage, and non-compliance and the , renegotiation of identities, rules of conduct and roles within forums and other arenas) and the potential sources of subversion in the field of public policy (contingency and situated judgment; internal negotiations and competing interpretation of policies goals and aims; new assemblages of power, resources, ideas, interest and agents). Given these dimensions of subversion it would be interesting to see what this would make visible with regard to the practice of occupying public space, occupying the interim and what the reactions, etc tell us about the network of assumptions in which we live.

Given that this particular angle only just occurred to me, I have not yet used this particular angle to think about what it can help us reveal when trying to understand these interim space. This is going to be one of those summer projects, which will have to wait for autumn to actually materialize. But just as I promise with regard to my blog on inter-persons, I will come back to the notion of subversion in relation to the interim.

One final element which I don’t want to keep from you. As most authors in the book, I intend to use the concept of ‘subversion’ as an analytical concept with which to analyze the political, social, hell maybe even the economical dimension of taking up public space/interim space by residents and see how it challenges or makes visible this network of assumptions under which we live. However, ‘subversion’ is not the prerogative of citizens only, as John Flint reminds us. The concept of subversion is also used in policy documents to create the grounds for specific policies. Being deemed subversive then gives the government a reason to intervene. ‘Subversion in this sense represents a process whereby an individual or population is viewed as challenging, reinterpreting, realigning or redirecting the perceived ‘original’ purpose of social policy or the ‘traditional’ settlement between citizens and the state (Flint, 2009, 83). He then goes on to point out how four kinds of citizens are being treated in this manner by the UK government: antisocial’s, the workless, immigrants and Muslims. Just something to keep in mind!

ps: after I finished this post on the airport, I read this post by David Barrie titled Tahrir, cities and a new enterprise of public place, which links up nicely with the more political and social discussion the notion of subversion helps us see.

 

For the love of public space: guerrilla gardening and public responsibilities

A couple of weeks ago I attended a public lecture by Richard Reynolds from www.guerillagardening.org He gave a lecture about the history and public significance of guerilla gardening. I really enjoyed his lectured and it even inspired me to start my own, very small, guerrilla garden just in front of my garden.

But besides bringing me into action, I also have been thinking about two things Richard told during his lecture. First was his story about a particular patch they had done in London. It was a piece of land in the middle of a traffic junction marked by concrete and some wild bushes. Together with other guerrilla gardeners they had turned it into a beautiful piece of land with lavender and later tulips. It looked really stunning on the pictures he showed us. But the story he told was even more stunning, or maybe we should say tragic. For one day he had a conversation with a newly elected, young and engaged borough councilor about public space, its maintenance and the role of government. Richard argued that a lot of public spaces were badly attended to by the municipality. At this point he was interrupted and the man said, ‘But Richard we also have patches of land we take care of very well’, and he referred to the patch beautified by Richard and his fellow gardeners. The man was momentarily shocked and a bit embarrassed, but the conversation went on in a very friendly manner.

What interest me in this story, is the fact that he took notice of it, knew about it officially, and did not take any action against it. For here are some people who are ‘illegally’ taking care of a piece of public space. It’s the word illegally which is intriguing here. For what has happened over the last 100 years is that we have made our authorities solely responsible for our public spaces. We as a public expect the government to take care of our public spaces (‘that’s what we pay taxes for’) and public officials think it is a task for professionals to develop and take care of public space (‘it requires a certain expertise’). We have decided that the development and maintenance of public space is a task for government. We made public space into a professional responsibility which in turn has made taking care of public spaces voluntarily something to be ridiculed, felt anxious about, reacted to with disbelief, protested, stopped, even given fines over. We have created a situation for ourselves in which both we as citizens and as public officials seem to believe it is natural for others to take care of our public spaces. Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost the language to talk about the fact that some people take care of public space themselves in a positive manner or ordinary manner.

I recently had a discussion about this with an alderwomen in my borough in Rotterdam. We talked about a particular example just around the corner from where I live. Here some residents have made a sandbox around an old tree. First, because they were fed up with the dog poo that was there day in day out, but secondly they had two small children. So partly dealing with a public problem, partly out of personal interest, they – together with some neighbors – built this sandbox. After a year it is very well used by many children and lots of parents meet there, talk with each other etc.  It has taken a piece of pavement – which is public space – and by erecting a structure there changed its meaning, value, but also partly who is (or feels) responsible for it. Where first is was a place people passed through, they now meet each other, have a chat, and the children play with each other.

When I told this to the alderwomen, she told me she knew about the place, but not officially. For if she would know about it officially, she would have to take a stance. Either condoning it (like the man in the first example) – with the chance of it somehow causing trouble and than having to deal with the fall out – or take some action. Taking action, she said would involve either 1) make a contract with the residents about maintenance and responsibility/liability, or 2) have it demolished and possibly fine them,  because residents cannot take over public space in that way or 3) have it demolished but,  given its social potential, create a policy in which all residents could apply for such a sandbox in front of their house, thus taking over responsibility (and subsequently sucking all the energy and live out of this particular practice).

So here we have a great example of residents taking care of, and even enhancing the quality of public space without any intervention (moneywise or from a community workers or such) and the only possibilities the city has is not knowing or taking over (part of) responsibility. Is this something we really want? Shouldn’t government be able to somehow know of these things, celebrate them or use them to inspire other, without taking over responsibilities? I guess it is time we have a good discussion (maybe not in words, but through actions) about where the boundaries of the responsibilities of the state are when it comes to taking care of public space.

Of course, there are lots of arguments to be made against people taking over parts of public space. But the strict ‘no’ we now have as a standard reaction seems counterintuitive and counterproductive to me.  I guess what I argue for is that we start questioning this ‘natural’ feeling we seem to share that government is there to take care of public space. It is time we rethink and redraw these boundaries; that we again try to develop a positive, ordinary language in which to talk about people taking care of public space themselves (public space as something which is not public or private, but rather common?).

Language has within it the resources for change, yet some rearrangement of elements will be necessary and new connections need to be established. New sense has to be made of something; it has to be new, yet still has to be intelligible. If we lack the new, we are forever trapped in tradition; if tradition is entirely absent, the new will be unintelligible. (Aletta Norval, Aversive Democracy)

PS: I started out saying there where two things about Richard Reynolds lecture which stuck with me. The other being that he does not see guerrilla gardening as something political, but as fun. That for him was a prime driver for why people get involved. I will go into this in a latter post.

 

Pendrecht University: a foolish gesture from a jester

Having met Tessy during a recent trip of hers to the Netherlands I organized (which she has blog about here and here, she has given me the opportunity to ‘ think out loud’ on this site. I am trained as a philosopher, am in the final stages of finishing my Phd studying practices of citizen participation, and am now an independent researcher and organizer of ‘positive urban connections’. In my blog posts I will combine these worlds in theoretical musings on some of the interesting practices I have visited during my research or meet in my day to day work. Having been trained in writing academic papers, writing blogs is a new experience for me.  But they say you only learn by doing, so here we go … 

‘The jester brings vitality and wit to make us laugh. Yet the comic mood of the jester’s clowning only sets in sharper relief something else we know. The jester has a serious side and allow us – if we will but look and listen – to laugh at ourselves, to see ourselves as others see us, to take that crucial step in developing the focus of inquiry whereby we expose ourselves to ourselves (Torgerson, 1992, 233)

The South of Rotterdam, home to 200.000 people has recently been described as one big deprived area with problems of ´undutch proportions´ given its scale and longevity. Not the place one normally associates with important innovations in democratic governance. Or than again maybe it is. Whereas the well to do have only scarcely to do with government, it is in these difficult areas that residents have a lot to do with government. And so it is here that they experience firsthand the fact that our governance system developed in the 19^th century, is largely inadequate to deal with 21^st century challenges. It is here therefore that the need for democratic innovation might by biggest. And from needs grow experiments.

I have been involved in a research project (together with Henk Wagenaar) over the last couple of years searching these kinds of experiments and innovations in democratic governance. One of the most interesting practices I encountered during this research project was the Pendrecht University. Pendrecht is one of those deprived areas in the south of Rotterdam mentioned earlier. When former minister Vogelaar drafted a list of the worst 40 neighborhoods in the Netherlands who would be eligible for extra financial support, Pendrecht came in second (for a more positive depiction of Pendrecht by one of its residents Mario Bosch).

 

In these testing circumstances, and born out of a joke and a tragedy, residents created the Pendrecht University, based on one basic rule: residents are the professors of the university and the professionals and public officials working in the neighborhood are its students. Before exploring the implications of this basic rule through Torgerson’s notion of the jester quoted at the beginning, a bit more on how a joke and a tragedy together can lead to democratic innovation.

Because the story of the Pendrecht University starts from a reaction to a big tragedy. After the shooting of a small boy while throwing snowballs, the neighborhood received a lot of bad press and became a national symbol for all what was wrong in our most deprived areas. Born out of frustration with this, residents organized a memorial service and a joined inter-faith Christmas party. It became obvious to residents that there was a lot of positive energy available in the area, if only they created the right opportunities to let it come to the (visible) surface. Exactly such an opportunity was created out of a joke.

 

At that time some students from a Dutch university where doing field studies in the neighborhood concerning safety. On one day they had to take exams at the University and do interviews with residents during a ‘pancake party’ organized in a particular street. Given the physical distance between the two locations, this seemed impossible. It turned out to be the start of something beautiful. For one of the most active residents, Bien Hofman, approached one of the primary schools in the area to see if they had a spare room in which the students could take their exam. They had, and after securing permission for the students to actually take their exam of campus , the director of the school jokingly said to the residents: ‘now we have our own university, the Pendrecht University’. This joke stuck inside the head of Bien and together with other residents and the community worker developed a plan for the Pendrecht University.

The Pendrecht University became a platform for many activities in the neighborhood, giving residents the opportunity to take the lead in what the discussion in the neighborhood should be about. Organizing meetings, theater plays, a search for the soul of Pendrecht, and even hosting the Pendrecht Olympics, are just some of the examples of what has transpired over the years under the banner of the Pendrecht University. And in all of these, in one way or the other, they try to give form to this basic rule which turns citizens into professors and professionals into students.

The effect of this reversal of roles can most easily be seen when we look at the kind of public meetings – on topics such as safety in the neighborhood, the role of the media, the redevelopment of the housing stock, and the economical development of the main square – they have organized. The Pendrecht University, by putting citizens first, gives the floor to the residents first, who thereby set the stage for the meeting. It offers a script which allows residents to play a much more active role in talking about their neighbourhood, giving room to personal stories, anecdotes, emotions and actual dialogue. Through reversing roles, on reflection, what you see happening in the Pendrecht University, is a challenge of all kinds ‘standard operating procedures’ ingrained in the way we think of and design our public meetings. It challenges what counts as important knowledge, and thus who is an expert. By putting resident – literarily and figuratively – up front their knowledge takes center stage. Instead of abstract figures, generative concepts, or technical plans, local knowledge gains an important position.

 

And this brings us back to the jester  whit whom I started this post, For as Torgerson states, the fool, Torgerson’s latter name for the jester, ‘obliquely bears witness to unwelcome insights that test the limits of what may properly and safely be said. When employed in the administrative sphere, carnivalesque language and logic generate unconventional perspectives that promise to enhance creative problem solving in the face of complexity' (Torgerson, 2003, 128). And this brings out the challenging element of this ‘foolish gesture’. By turning things around, reversing what is top and what is bottom, they not only reveal new possibilities, but also lay bare the limitations of more traditional tried and true solutions. The carnivalesque idiom, Torgerson argues, ‘might provoke unwelcome insights that could expose established power as irrational rationality, thus placing on display an emperor without clothes' (Torgerson, 2003, p. 128). But rather than showing that the emperor is wearing no cloths, as Torgerson states, I would say that the Pendrecht University shows us that the emperor is out of fashion and in need of a new wardrobe. Not in the form of haute couture in the sense of democratic theory, but in the form of practical things one can wear on a daily basis.

(in 2010, the Pendrecht University won the Voluntary Prize of Rotterdam)

• Torgerson, D. (1992), Priest and Jester in the Policy Sciences: Developing the Focus of Inquiry, Policy Sciences, Vol. 25, pp. 225-235
•     Torgerson, D. (2003) Democracy through policy discourse, in Hajer, M.A. and Wagenaar, H., Deliberative Policy Analysis. Understanding Governance in the Network Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Big Society: Pragmatism, Collaboration and Cuts

Big Society might be a radical political game-changer. 

We have looked at our political parties for many years now and wondered where we going to find the differentiators.  The core has become about managing and decision making around complex national systems: financial, educational etc.,

There is still a belief that politics is about ideology, and there is not doubt at all that decisions have a hue that reflects deep-seated ‘world views’.  But in our effort to create distinctions we polarise and oversimplify.

The truth is that in the world today all governments have to be progressive in their thinking, strategies and implementation.  All governments have to base their decisions on research, data, expert advice and citizen needs and opinions. Governments can choose which of these they listen to or integrate into their strategies and decisions but we all recognise that the middle ground is where the larger parties, Conservative, Liberal and Labour, all currently sit. 

The world has lost its appetite for extreme positions and views.  Rather than admiring people with strong political views we increasingly understand and acknowledge that people ‘captured by ideology’ are often blinkered, biased, poor at both listening and understanding.  In recent weeks I have seen a lot of evidence of ‘confirmation bias’, a pattern of thinking, a mindset, which collects information that agrees and confirms with your original opinion.  It also interprets information in a biased way to support an opinion. In effect two people reading the same information might extract different evidence and meanings. It is a dangerous thing... and not something that we would desire of our country's leaders frankly. There are some significant signs that we are, and probably should be, moving away from real (or even contrived) ideology in politics and more towards what citizens expect:  intelligence, competence, honesty and whole-system thinking. Big Society is an example of whole-system thinking.

What many people seem to want most from government is the practical delivery of the type of society they would like to live in and to be represented honestly and benignly. Most people would like to live comfortably, but would like everyone to live comfortably. Most people would like to be well educated, but would like everyone to have the opportunity to be educated and live fulfilled lives. Social justice and genuine care for all individual people is a concern for all citizens (with varying degrees of awareness) and should certainly be a big priority of any governments and all political parties. Ordinary citizens don't want to be forced to make political choices that see them benefit and others suffer or be neglected - they want government to devise smart strategies on their behalf.

Why Big Society Thinking could be such a game changer politically is that it is:

-  Intrinsically practical - it recognises the practical reality of the times we live in and the drivers for change e.g. economy, environment etc

- Intrinsically common ground politically and calls for building bridges rather than walls between sectors and factions.

- Honest and intelligent about how real social improvement will happen i.e. collaboratively. It has to be co-created, there is no other way the ideals it captures could be achieved.

- Building on existing work and social trends, rather than working against current forces i.e. it creates stretch, support and extension rather than the very disruptive u-turns we often see with a change in government.

- Assuming and supporting a very positive view of human capacity.  Whether it knows it or not it builds on and supports the deep evolutionary social drivers for collectivism and generosity, rather than stimulating and re-inforcing the self-interested aspects of human behaviour, both of which exist. At its most ambitious Big Society is looking to create the conditions in which cooperation and care thrive. (In notable contrast to the social competitiveness stimulated by Thatcherism)

There is very little political leverage here, and a lot of potential for cross-party collaboration.

Solving practical problems in clever ways

Social problems do not always get solved by ‘intervention’,  Many problems are systemic and socially created, i.e. they are caused by the behaviours of all of us.  Collectively we create the cultural climate, and these social norms have both primary and secondary effects, some positive, but frequently unintentionally negative also.  For example, the very emotive topic of lonely elderly people reflects, if we are to be totally honest, a lack of care not by the state, but a lack of care from people living around them. It also reflects a cultural reserve which has made it harder for us to make our neighbour’s welfare, at least in part, our responsibility, through shyness and/or embarrassment. It requires a certain social confidence and sensitivity to enquire, intervene and help another person without patronising, infantilising or reducing the self-perception of their capacities.

What Big Society Thinking opens up to us are new collaborative pathways, new spaces, where the state can facilitate bridging the divides in society.  As I mentioned in an earlier blog this is exactly how Michael Coughlin, Chief Executive of Reading Council, views it when he talks of 2/3 of council staff facilitating rather than delivering.

For example the Have a Go Heroes  project led by Dominic Campbell, Carrie Bishop and Lauren Ivory at FuturGov.   The project is taking a community approach to the care of the retired people by facilitating the conversations that will help people to help one another, developing a culture change at community level and creating infrastructure, methods and tools to make it effective and easy. 

The complexity and challenging nature of this type of work should not be underestimated!  It would be much simpler in any given community to pay a person to visit retired people and ask them what they needed. But having a community, a local network, where everyone looks out for each other, where care is a natural part of day-to-day life, is not only cheaper it is in fact better.

Have a Go Heroes started before the new government came into power, and there are many other imaginative initiatives moving towards this way of thinking and working. As they quote on their website the Cass Business school estimate that a community based approach to caring for people could save the NHS up to £100 million a year.

From this perspective it is very unfortunate that the recession has created the need to make such big cuts before this community-based approach has fully developed and become widespread because if it was more highly developed then we could be talking more about intelligent savings and less about cuts.

I personally believe that Big Society Thinking is a Good Thing.  The more Big Society in practice finds a way of moving towards a cross-party, ideology-free space, the more chance it will have of succeeding.  If it remains a Conservative platform, as it is currently perceived to be, or worse, is revealed to be a benign cover for privatisation of services or the hard right... the less chance there will be of it succeeding. Which would be very disappointing indeed!

Lessig Wants to Change Congress

Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, is a leading thinker on technology and Internet policy. He is the founder of Creative Commons and author of “Code,” “The Future of Ideas,” and “Free Culture.” Now Lessig has joined forces with Joe Trippi and created Change Congress - a campaign to change the way Congress is financed to reduce to influence of special interest groups.

Change Congress states:

"Right now, special interests have more influence over our political system than regular folks because of our broken campaign finance laws. These special interests pump millions of dollars into congressional campaigns each cycle, and as a result, they block real change on issue after issue.
Here at Change Congress, we believe that politicians should work for the people, not special interests. But it’s not enough to push politicians to stay out of the system of corruption—we have to reform the system itself. That’s why we support a hybrid of small-dollar donations and public financing, to keep big money out of politics."