Get it on the table.

Get it on the table.
Remember the big to-do in July ‘08 over the New Yorker cover depicting Obama as a Muslim and his wife as terrorist? The editors said it was satire to challenge the lies trailing the candidate. They wanted to provoke public debate and show everyone how silly the accusations were. In the next breath, they said they couldn’t stifle artistic expression just because some people might misunderstand or take offense.

Well, which was it? Were they trying to change minds, or simply indulging the artist’s sublime artisticness? Take a look at the picture, and at the magazine it covered. I think it’s pretty clear. The New Yorker published the picture to get a giggle from their yuppie audience --who had few fears about Obama-- not to change any minds. The picture did not engage the people who might have misgivings, except indirectly to mock them. The magazine offered no framework for the general public to discuss the picture, and left it up to the usual heads talking to the usual audiences to spin the story in utterly predictable ways.

Had the editors actually done what they claimed, however --had they really tried to examine and challenge important lies-- the effort would have been well worth the risk. We cannot improve, extend or unravel each others’ stories unless we know what they are. So the first function of a safe setting is to let us say what's on our minds, including things we wouldn't normally admit; including, sometimes, things that are pretty ugly and hard to listen to. Once assured of the trust and critical support of political co-workers, out in the community I want to engage with folks of almost the whole range of ideology.

(I say almost, because some people’s ideology fits their privileges very well, and they’d have to be unusually perceptive to change it. For instance, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time trying to talk Halliburton out of hijacking the U.S. military as a private army to grab war contracts and Mideast oil fields. We can't wish away the enormous rewards for Halliburton managers, investors and their well-rewarded lickspittles at the top of our government.)

Challenging lies is not the only reason to tell and hear each other’s stories. We also need to know the details, because our political language can conceal as much as it reveals. Have you ever found yourself shoulder to shoulder in a demonstration with other folks who looked like you, chanting the same slogans with admirable enthusiasm, only to find later on that you all had very different ideas about how to proceed, or even what the goals were? “Racism,” “democracy,” “the working class,” etc., can mean all sorts of things, and thankfully we have no Authorized Version. To work together, though, we need to be very clear about what we want and how we think we can get it.

Clarity of aims and strategy is not the same as applying single-issue litmus tests. Of course I can work with gun owners on environmental issues, Christians to oppose the state lottery or discuss religion in public life, anti-abortionists to mobilize resources for women and families, white boys about honest government. We share powerful underlying interests with anyone who does not rely on stealing and killing for their daily bread, interests that could unite us against the criminal class.

At the same time, clarity does require that we not pretend to others (or ourselves) that we all agree or that the differences are trivial, if they are not. Bandaids don’t hold long over gaping holes.


Sharing ideas can be especially hard when we're not clear about our own stories. Lots of times we think and speak in fragments, slogans, catchy jingles from TV commercials. These may signify some posture or stance vis-a-vis the world, a default position when we have little information to work with, the unexamined “common sense” on an endless feedback loop. All the more reason to get these reactions out into the daylight, so we can see them for what they are. I think about it like a wound: you got to scrape away the dead stuff before you let it skin over.

I'm told that when one big agency was moving to a new office building, some staffers proposed a gender-neutral bathroom for transgender folks. The haste and passion with which most people dismissed this very modest suggestion revealed ideas about the world that even those who shouted them had no way to justify. One time in a labor union workshop some of the men claimed that women enter the trades just so they can file suit for sexual harassment (5/06). You may have encountered similarly repulsive responses in the course of your work. Often the circumstances don't allow such reactions to be effectively examined or challenged. We’re tempted to tell them to shut up, or maybe change the subject entirely.

Once in a while we might even hear about outright crimes. There’s a scene in Kinsey where the doctor is interviewing a pedophile for his sex behavior study. Kinsey’s assistant can’t take it and leaves, but the good doctor methodically plugs through his questionnaire. My friend asked, “What happened next? Did Kinsey report this guy to the police?” The movie doesn’t tell us, but the character it depicts probably would not do that, for fear of losing his safe role as detached, “objective” observer.

When I talk to folks, I seldom hear about anything so terrible that they have done, but lying is not so rare-- race and gender stereotypes, war propaganda, reflexive genuflections to our masters. The point of democratic education is to bust up the big lies so we can address the real world, but how do we challenge folks when at the same time we want to hear what they have to say? What, for instance, can I say when I’m handing out flyers on trade legislation and the fella who gives me a “Right on!” goes on to blame Mexicans for the local unemployment rate? I don’t know the formula, but I keep a couple things in mind.

It’s only when we’re called on to splice together the comfortable formulas that mark our daily lives that we see how much we lack, or what doesn’t fit. If I think others are actually going to pay attention to what I say, many times I’ll spot the gaps and wrinkles and selfishness in my story long before they do. I’ll hurry to cover up the embarrassing holes, or throw out a distractor to divert their attention (that’s where our listeners have to be particularly insightful and persistent). If I have access to good stories, I may even try to tell the truth. It all depends on engaging with my neighbors. Unless I know you’re listening carefully, I’ll stick to my reassuring but pathetically thin self-justifications.

The recent election underlined one more reason to emerge the dubious stories. I was taken aback (again! still! and just when I thought I’d achieved the right posture of cosmopolitan, devil-may-care cynicism) by how many people I know and like were still hemming and hawing to the last moment, claiming not to be able to make up their minds, but very likely gathering at the shrine of Halliburton. Their political talk was all about the personalities of the politicians (ain’t it amazin’ how far hungry people can stretch such thin gruel?). I asked a couple of these folks why they focussed on personalities, when the issues were so pressing. Because they didn’t know who to believe, they said. Each side had its own ax to grind, they understood, but they claimed to have no independent way to judge the polticians’ proposals. In part this confusion is the outcome of deliberate campaign strategy; their handlers teach the politicians to talk past each other, lest they concede ground to each other or, the horror, make their own positions clear enough to criticize. But it might also be a cover for political commitments these folks could not justify and did not want to admit.

Democratic educators, on the other hand, gain nothing by confusing our neighbors. If health insurance is a good thing, address the attacks on it. If international cooperation is a good thing, don’t let the saber-rattlers take up the whole bandwidth. Make them explain their slogans and how they would work in the real world. It's a tall order, but we’ll get better with practice.


• Some rules of engagement (well, more like guidelines, as the demon pirate says):

# Discussion takes time, but we’ve got to start the process somewhere. It may seem silly to think of flyering or petition-gathering or casual remarks in the supermarket check-out line as the start of a conversation, but that is often what I do hope for.

Christians have been very effective at encouraging a missionary mindset, a sense that it’s important to talk about religion everywhere. The main effect of this practice may be to strengthen their own beliefs (Frykholm 159). But what about a practice by which the rest of us regularly engage friends and neighbors and the guy in the next cubicle on the whole range of political issues? I saw in the news ICE just raided the poultry plant-- what do you think about that? The school board wants teachers to teach creationism in science class-- do you reckon that’s a good idea? How will the new Nissan distribution center affect the neighborhood?

Some people will be uncomfortable at first, to be asked to respond to such questions in such a context. But except for those who on principle avoid thinking about politics, most everyone will have an opinion, or several, even if they have a hard time organizing and expressing them.

I see these quick contacts as really an invitation for folks to learn more, to say this is important, to be open and responsive to the opportunities over time to engage with their neighbors and with democratic organizations. Hopeful conversations presume local resources for follow-up-- some organization to join, some ongoing news about related issues. Even without that, though, they are a way for us to look for learning opportunities everywhere, and practice the political talk we need.

For folks trained to suspect universities, governments, unions, and the old media, ad hoc conversations may be the best remaining way to engage them.


# Political workers have to be as careful as anyone else of stereotyping folks, and reading something into their responses that is not there, or is not the only element. At the very least, we know that different stories require different untanglings. I have an idea what a Confederate flag sticker on a vehicle means, but it may mean more than I imagine, and the only way to find out is to engage the person who slapped it on.


# The environment has to be doubly safe: first to allow us to express our thoughts, second to allow us to reflect on them and back off from the worst nonsense, without defensiveness. It’s a common behavior that once we commit ourselves to a public position, even something we may not have cared about much at first, we tend to freeze our stories, set them in concrete. When we talk with people from outside our own communities and organizations, we may also be reluctant to bring to the larger group our doubts, frustrations, and fears about our work because that would seem like airing dirty laundry in front of strangers; leaving the other folks with incomplete information and maybe wondering why we're not telling the whole story. We can establish contexts, however, where by taking each other seriously we also take seriously the larger project of addressing the issues and telling the truth. I think we can set the expectation that we will learn from each other and sharpen our stories in the process.

The circumstances of talk determine whether an emerging story gets frozen into a commitment or stays open and adaptive. When we feel like we are called upon to take a stand on an issue, we’re likely to defend our first position no matter what information we learn later-- even if we don’t really care much about the issue. (For this reason, I was reluctant to ask the learners in my GED class to write about, say, drug laws or labor unions, unless there was an illuminating context or information available beyond the vague slogans we hear every day.)

When we’re faced with a common problem, however, and asked to share our ideas so that we can come up with a solution, knowing each of us will start with a different take-- in these conditions we can learn to be honest without being defensive, and open to changing our own stories as we hear our neighbors'.


# We can distinguish problem-solving talk from power plays. There’s a difference between the need to confront, say, a know-it-all white boy at the head of a university department, or the Police Department, and our just as urgent need to engage our neighbors in a serious but non-judgmental way. We may have an occasional tactical need to express deference to the powerful, but we have no obligation to pay the slightest respect to murdering corporados at a public hearing, for instance, or to the solidarity rituals by which we ridicule and scapegoat the most vulnerable among us. The people who profit by lies must be held accountable.

The rest of us, battered by those sociopaths, need to help each other. When we are desperate to tell our personal stories, even very ugly ones, we need someone to listen and give feedback. That doesn’t mean that we don’t challenge the dishonesty or hatred we might hear; but that we do hear it, and understand it, and help each other talk through it.