Keeping the Political Body Healthy

I would submit that your friend is a liberal, not a progressive. A liberal prefers a particular point of view, a progressive strives to progress that view. I would say voting every 4 years does not count because there is so very rarely a progressive candidate to vote for.

I would say that your friend has every right to only want to be as active politically as he is, but the question isn't about him, it's about the country. Is he content with how things are going? If not, how should it change? Democracy depends on an active and informed citizenry. You are politically active if you keep yourself truly informed from a variety of (non-corporate) media (for a list of the 8 biggest media conglomerations go here http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart.php). You are politically active by contributing to media either formally or informally (writing letters, calling talk shows or politicians etc), you are politically active when you join a group and do actions. You are politically active by voting in EVERY election, not just every 4 years.

This is what democracy requires. If that doesn't matter to him, he should just claim it. 'It's just not that important' is what he's saying - let him know it.

I think this is a great platform for a discussion on citizens and their relationship to politics in our democracy.

Many citizens have a preconceived notion of what it is to be a citizen in a democracy. They believe that this means doing their "civic duty" to vote, pay taxes, and obey the law. This definition is limited and hardly accurate. When our country was conceived as a democracy, there was no checklist that determined what you had to do in order to say you had fulfilled your obligation as a citizen in the U.S. Our founding fathers had a different notion of politics. They believed that politics was something the citizen, not just the government and the elected officials, did.

"Politics as usual" is a relatively new term being used in circles of academics and practitioners who are thinking about the shared myths of political life in or society today. This term is meant to refer to politics as traditionally perceived by American citizens-the politics of parties, representatives, and other authorities-not something that they feel a part of, able to influence, or capable of understanding.

However, some people have begun to understand a new definition of politics-a self-designed one which begins with an alternative worldview of power dynamics. Politics can be something citizens do if it involves them coming together to make a decision on a public problem. Acting on it is also politics, but it is in the joint effort of convening a forum, naming an issue, framing the issue, weighing the trade-offs and coming to a decision that is a political act and which thus makes a citizen involved a political actor. They don't need to be an authority figure or a local rep, they just need to have the worldview that their interactions with their fellow citizens on commonly shared problems and coming to decisions about things they can do to solve hose problems empowers them with the ability to influence change.

The kind of political activism you are speaking of still ascribes to the traditional worldview of "politics as usual", that the only thing we can do is lobby congress, support certain political campaigns, write letters, etc. These are all good individual or collective actions that are political, but not empowering for the citizen. Believe me, traditional authority figures are the ones who will be most surprised when they learn that citizens finally have learned that they can actually make decisions and do things without the traditional government structures.

For instance, I knew a group of people who got together over a period of time to discuss issues affetcing their community who experienced something like this. None of them, at first, thought they could affect change in their comunity because their legislators wouldn't listen to them, the local reps and police thought it was only their duty, and did not think it was part of a citizens' duty to take action on issues that affected them, and this defined the political atmosphere of the community. Once they started to get together to tackle the issue of domestic violence, they saw that it was possible for them, citizens, to form their own organization that would act as a watch system for the community, patrolling streets, answering hotlines and promoting awareness of domestic violence in order to curb its occurrence. This action and this kind of talk was definitely political. When the local police found out that the citizens had organized to do something to change their situation because they did not believe they were listened to or protected by the police, they sat up and took notice, in a defensive way at first, but then in a way that made them understand the wants and needs of the community, their relationship to it, and began to participate in the forums and collaborate with the citizens on their future problems. This was what democracy was designed for. The people and their representatives/authorities/protectors to design together solutions to communal problems.

So anyway, I think you can start a meaningful conversation with your friend about the problem behind the problem-is it that he really doesn't have the time to get involved, or he is not sure that he can make a difference within the public space he sees available to him? Maybe if he saw public space in the structures I have laid out, under a different definition of politics and through a different worldview, his attitude may change. Maybe he will see a need for this kind of talk and action in your neighborhood and community. You never know.