09 Jul Is It Still Possible To Make A Difference? (Yes! But Only In A New Way)

In last week’s post, I wrote about how protest, voting, and donations aren’t going to create the change we so desperately need in our world, and especially here in the US. I promised in part two to describe what’s actually required for each of us to make our greatest possible contribution.

So, without further ado, let’s get into it.

The first thing required to make our greatest possible contribution is a willingness to imagine different realities and then invest in bringing them forward. We need to embrace what is, as always, but then pivot brashly toward what could be. For example, only ten years ago, almost nobody could fully envision and predict marriage equality. Marriage equality would never have come to pass unless the legal team that took the case to the supreme court truly believed they could win.

Conversely, before Roe v. Wade was recently overturned most of us couldn’t quite imagine that it would ever truly come to pass. The point here is that aspects of our current political reality often seem far more entrenched than they really are. We have to know this, in our bones, in order to work successfully for positive change.

Here are some powerful instances in which well-intentioned change agents don’t actually believe in the possibility of their own vision:

“There’s no way that the electoral college will ever be abolished.”

“There’s no way that crony capitalism and corporate control of the world economy could ever be replaced with a different system.”

“There’s no way that meaningful reparations for the descendants of enslaved people would ever break through the stranglehold of systemic racism.”

Once we overcome such damaging beliefs and begin to see the possibility of extraordinary change as not just possible but even imminent, then we’re ready for the key shift. We need to create strategies and tactics for change that are as bold and surprising as our visions themselves.

Let’s return to the electoral college as a great, instructive example. Are you aware of the campaign to neutralize the electoral college without having to reform or replace it? It’s called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It’s an agreement among several states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote. Fifteen states and Washington D.C. have enacted legislation to join the compact.

According to the compact, it will be put into effect when the states that join represent a majority of the votes in the Electoral College. Currently 74 more electoral votes are needed. Once the threshold has been passed, these states will begin awarding their electoral votes to the candidate that wins the national popular vote. At that point, the electoral college will no longer have the ability curtail majority rule.

Whether this compact ever reaches fruition isn’t why I’m focusing on it. Instead I want to highlight the fresh, brilliant, radically creative approach that it brings to a seemingly intractable obstacle.

This is what exactly what we need – vision plus ingenuity plus sustainable execution. We need to bring our collective whole-heartedness and spiritual resolve to the fight. We need to overturn systems of oppression with approaches that they’re too complacent to counter. With this approach we’ll win some and lose some, for sure, but the wins have the potential to be truly transformative.

Here’s another “crazy” thought to bring this approach to life. In the US, the vast amount of time and energy invested in governance is based on interpreting what our “framers” intended in the Constitution and its amendments. But the truth is, the framers were almost all rich white men who owned slaves and advocated the erasure of indigenous people. Even if none of that were true, the world has changed so drastically in the last two-hundred fifty years that no framers from so long ago could have the perspective necessary to confront our currents dilemmas.

So – what about creating a new constitution? Impossible, you say? Well…maybe not, if we envision it and then create new ways to advance the idea. Not to mention the fact that other countries have successfully done this over the past few decades.

I want to leave you with one more example of vision plus ingenuity plus sustainable execution. This is an idea of my own so I put it forth humbly, looking for all of you to co-create it along with me, reshaping it, adding to it, and hopefully strategizing it into being.

Remember the freedom riders from the sixties, courageous young people from all over the nation who rode deep into the south in order to support the struggle for civil rights? These young people had the time and freedom, at that point in their lives, to join the battle for justice on the front lines.

The freedom riders provided the inspiration for my idea, as I approached the thorny issue of “swing states,” and the fact that the fate of our way of life is often dictated by a very small minority of voters who live in those few states. What if the youth of today took their own freedom ride into those states, established residence, and registered to vote there prior to national elections?

Lot’s of us who don’t have the mobility to make such a journey could help finance the effort, and many homeowners with basements in those states could volunteer to house and feed the visitors. This idea, however wild or impossible it may seem, is also entirely legal and doesn’t require changing laws or getting approval from sclerotic bodies of power such as the US Senate. If sustainably undertaken and executed, we’d truly be exercising our power of citizens like never before.

How about you? What impossible, ingenious ideas out there have you already discovered, or perhaps even dreamed up on your own?

Only when we realize the enormity of our creative force, both individually and collectively, will we be able to vanquish the trance of impending doom.

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Note: Due to the political nature of this post and the previous one, I can’t boost them on Facebook. If inspired, please use the two links below in order to share them with your own communities.

Is It Still Possible To Make A Difference? Yes! But Bad News First

Is It Still Possible To Make A Difference? (Yes! But Only In A New Way)