Local Empowerment

One cannot talk about community safety and security without bringing up the subject of politics. The fact of the matter is that our government is intimately involved in how we work and how we live at the local, state, and national levels. In some cases the government facilitates what we do, such as providing a court and justice system for those who do not respect the rights of others. Alternately, in some cases they are a hindrance to us in terms of obstructive laws and regulations. So necessarily part of the purpose of the Arm in Arm will be to address our relationship to government.

That being said, Arm in Arm is not meant to be a political organization per se. This country has a very healthy diversity of opinions in regards to how people feel that the government should generally interact with its citizens. There are plenty of organizations from MoveOn.org to the Campaign for Liberty for people to organize for the benefit of partisan political advocacy, and we do not wish to duplicate their efforts. If we made Arm in Arm a partisan political organization, then we would be severely limiting those people that might chose to join our organization to the detriment of our neighborhoods as a whole. We should be more involved with constructing bridges to our communities, not erecting barriers based on political ideologies. Our organization is open to liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and populists alike.

However, we should get involved with politics when the goals of our organization intersect with the laws and duties of our state and local governments. For example, should we determine that it is necessary to form a contingent local currency, we would need to interface with the local government to discuss, in the event of an emergency, allowing various taxes and fees to be paid in the local currency to facilitate commerce. Similarly we should co-ordinate a lot of emergency planning efforts with those already in place with our local officials so that no effort is wasted should an unfortunate need arise.

The common thread here is that there are many issues, particularly at the local level, that there is a broad nonpartisan consensus on. However, it is often very difficult to get this broad consensus heard over the influence of very well-funded special interest groups in a system where money is the lifeblood of politics and the state and federal governments control many of the purse strings down at the local area. By aggregating our numbers we can begin to exert significant influence on our elected officials on issues for which there is a broad consensus among our group. We can sponsor forums and debates where local politicians and candidates can address our members and hear our concerns. As politicians begin to understand our numbers and that most of us vote (hopefully), we ought to be able to get the ear of the these politicians.

One area where we can also play a great role in is ensuring that the election results are properly counted. The issue of an improper vote count has come to the attention of the nation with controversies such as the the presidential contests in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, as well as both presidential primaries in New Hampshire in 2008 (for more details see blackboxvoting.org). New voting machine technology, which has been proven to be vulnerable to electronic manipulation, is being used in jurisdictions all across this country. When a few well connected people can influence an election with the flip of a switch, every American should be concerned. Some have attributed the following quote to the communist dictator Joseph Stalin: "Those who cast the votes decide nothing.Those who count the votes decide everything." These sentiments underlie the importance of securing a proper ballot count, preferably by a verifiable hand count. Such an effort requires a large diffuse network of bipartisan poll watchers, which could in fact be provided by Arm in Arm once we gain critical mass. It is vital that election results are adjudicated in a fair and unbiased manner if the people really want their voice to be heard in governmental elections.

There is another very important tool that we have as a group to improve government's responsiveness to the people. In the state of Washington, for example, the people have the right to both initiatives and referendums. An initiative is citizen sponsored legislation which can be put up to a vote of the people on the general ballot if a certain number of citizens' signatures are collected (8% of the vote in the last gubanatorial election, or just over 240,000 signatures at present). A referendum is a citizen's vote on a piece of legislation before the legislature (which only requires half the signatures of an initiative). The problem with initiatives is that it takes a lot of time and work to get an individual petition on the ballot.

However, if we get organized appropriately and gain the critical mass I think this movement can garner, we can implement these petitions much more easily. Instead of going house to house or sitting at a public place trying to get signatures, it is much more efficient to hold petitions conventions, creating an economies of scale for grassroots politics. For example, say that there are 5, 10, 50, or 100 different issues that people feel strongly about and wish to propose an initiative or referendum. These could be issues appealing to liberals and/or conservatives, since all we are doing is trying to get these on the ballot to give people the choice to express their views on election day--Arm in Arm does not have to take an official position on any of these issues. All of these petitions could be brought together in meeting places at various parts of the state for people in our organization to come in at some point during the day and sign all the petitions (or all the petitions they agreed with, although there is something to be said for the idea of getting as many of these measures on the ballot as possible to improve citizens' choices). Petitions could also be serially circulated down from neighborhood to neighborhood. In this matter, a large number of signatures for many petitions can all be collected at the same time. Imagine the power to put our state and local governments back in the hands of the people if such a process could be streamlined!.The people's voice will once again be heard!

Finally, I believe it is important for people to understand what goes on in their government on a day to day basis. There are a myriad of hearings and reports on various issues, a small fraction of which actually stream down to the public via the mainstream media. With a large number of participants in our group, we could form a network of volunteers to attend various hearings, meetings, and/or judicial proceedings to keep members informed on what is going on at the local level via the Arm in Arm forum. Whether a Democrat, Republican, or Independent, we all can benefit from knowing what our officials are up to and how they are running our government. If there is a broad consensus that a certain policy not be carried out, we can then mobilize feedback to our elected representatives. Even if there is not broad consensus, individual members themselves can make their voices heard to their representatives; everyone benefits from being informed.

I am convinced that much of the apathy in politics is a consequence of the fact that most people feel that their voice does not make a difference. After all, can anyone even tell much of a difference between the current crop of Democrats and Republicans--at least based on how they vote, not their rhetoric which is quite different. However, I believe if we can create enough of a crtical mass and awareness to get people convinced that they can make a difference, the political apathy will transmute into passion. If we can come together in large number to both get informed as to what their government is doing and sponsor initiatives to get changes on the ballot, the politicians will become much more responsive to our needs; and, I believe that is what we all truly want.