Notes from the Democracy-Building 2007 World Tour

Montenegro, the Balkans

In some ways two places and two groups could hardly be more different.

A week ago I was in Santa Fe, leading an advocacy training for a group that included, among many others: a young Pueblo tribal leader who told me about his nation’s efforts to keep from losing its language; Latino immigrant activists who have been part of the nationwide surge in the demand for immigrant rights; a young political reformer from the New Mexico chapter of Common Cause; and an environmental activist who helped stop a polluting coal plant. Outside the windows of the rooms where we met the scenery was southwest dry plains.

Today I am in the heart of the Balkans leading a similar training program in Montenegro, a country that only became an independent nation a year ago this month. Here the participants include: a woman who helps manage UN assistance to some of the 20,000 refugees who fled here during the Balkan wars; another woman bent on protecting the new country’s environment from the encroachment of Russian-owned energy companies; and a doctor who works on HIV/AIDS prevention in a country where the closet door on gays is shut tight. Outside the windows here is a rain-soaked European sky.

But as different and far away as they are from one another, these two gatherings are most striking in how they are the same – collections of good people working hard at the nuts and bolts of building democracy, the real kind.

“Democracy-building,” sadly, has become a dirty word of late in much of the word, a noble idea co-opted as one of the ever-changing justifications for the U.S. War in Iraq. That particular experiment in building democracy hasn’t gone well.

What do I see the same in these two groups, each forty strong?

First, all of them, from widely different cultures (including different cultures within the U.S.) have made that noble leap of faith that democracy is real and that it matters. Not everyone is willing to make that leap in the world. The excuses for not getting involved in public issues can be stacked high in any country – from ‘work keeps me too busy’ to ‘it won’t make a difference anyway.’ From protecting the environment to making government more honest, these folks are all giving it a shot.

Second, on continents separated by a wide ocean and more, they are all dealing with political systems that are deeply flawed, where power remains in the hands of those willing and able secure it with wealth and hidden dealings. They are trying to organize citizen power as a counterweight. Many times, but certainly not all, they are able to do just that.

Third, they want to get better at the “tricks of the trade”. That’s where I come in. I have been doing this work a long time and have learned a few of those tricks, enough to know that none work everywhere or every time. Nevertheless they have value. How do you speak about complicated issues publicly in a way that makes sense to your grandmother, or to a stranger on a bus? How do you get into the head of the authorities you are trying to influence? How do you organize citizen pressure and action in a way that is strategic and not misdirected?

People like learning these things. That’s good. But I also try to help them see something larger, something I have the good fortune to see by working with people like these, in the U.S., Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. I tell them this:

You are not just ‘advocates.’ You are something more than that. You are agents of democracy, part of a movement that can be found in every small corner of the world and that still believes in the basic principle that regular people have the right and the ability to help shape the public decisions that in turn shape their lives. And that is more than any one issue, any one cause, or any one country.

That is how I see it from New Mexico to Montenegro, and farther still.