In the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yesterday I finished watching “The Wire” season three. One of the sub-plots of the season is about a City Councilmember named Carcetti who sees the failings of the political and law enforcement efforts to address the issues facing Baltimore and decides to run for Mayor. Since this show avoids hero-making like the plague, we also get to see Carcetti’s faults as well as his ideals. Eventually, he hires a consultant who helps guide him in handling city business in ways that advance his chances to win a Mayoral race. But the lure of having the power to change things becomes compromised by what he feels (or is told) he needs to do in order to get there. Hence begins his corruption.
It got me to thinking about all the blogwars on the progressive side that have been ignited by those on one side who want to be “practical” in order to win elections and those on the other side who refuse to give up principals in order to win. The old saying about “the end justifies the means” has plagued us in every realm of life from war as a means to peace, greed as a means to sufficiency, and corruption as a means to power.
But then, I wonder on a basic level, if we can ever incorporate truly pure means to reach our ends. Isn’t it almost always necessary to compromise in order to meet our goals? As an example, I wrote here a couple of weeks ago about having to raise money in order to support the work I am committed to doing in this community. That means occassionally making compromises in what I say (or more likely don’t say) to those who are prospective donors and, perhaps also turning a blind eye to their complicity in creating the kind of conditions we are working so hard to mitigate. Does this mean that I am beginning to engage in the “destructive means” to which MLK is referring?
I’m only using this specific situation as an example of the larger question and to show how this issue crops up in any attempt to try to bring people together to accomplish a goal. I do believe that what MLK said is true and that a compromise in means is certainly a slipperty-slope to corruption. And yet I also don’t think its possible to accomplish anything if we continue to hold to the purity of what we have defined as our values/ideals. So I’m asking where and how we draw the lines to avoid the slope. Or how we maintain our values while having to compromise to ever actually get anything done?
In asking these questions, I’m not saying we should join the Democratic Party bandwagon and embrace a “win at all costs” kind of mentality. And, as I write this, I keep feeling myself in the middle of polarities that I’m not comfortable with on either side. I wonder if some of the talk about “purity trolls” comes from this very tension. I think alot of the progressive blog diaspora came from personality clashes. But where it happened due to political differences, its seems to lead to ever smaller groups of like-minded people gathering to maintain their principles.
This leads me to think of a speech I found thanks to dove by Bernice Johnson Reagon titled Coalition Politics: Turning the Century. In the speech, Reagon makes the distinction between the “home” we develop for ourselves with like-minded people to be nurtured and sustained, and the coalitions we must build to save ourselves. Here’s a quote:
Coalition work is not done in your home. Coalition work has to be done in the streets. And it is some of the most dangerous work you can do. And you shouldn’t look for comfort. Some people will come to a coalition and they rate the success of the coalition on whether or not they feel good when they get there. They’re not looking for a coalition; they’re looking for a home!….You don’t get fed a lot in a coalition. In a coalition you have to give, and it is different from your home. You can’t stay there all the time. You go to the coalition for a few hours and then you go back and take your bottle wherever it is, and then you go back and coalesce some more.
And to underscore the importance of coalition work:
It must become necessary for all of us to feel that this is our world…And watch that “our” – make it as big as you can – it ain’t got nothing to do with that barred room (home). The “our” must include everybody you have to include in order for you to survive. You must be sure that you understand that you ain’t gonna be able to have an “our” that doesn’t include Bernice Johnson Reagon, cause I don’t plan to go nowhere! That’s why you have to have coalitions. Cause I ain’t gonna let you live unless you let me live. Now there’s danger in that, but there’s also the possibility that we can both live – if you can stand it.
Maybe one of the ways we can maintain our principles as we seek out coalitions to get things done is to make sure that we have a “home” to come back to. But one of the things Reagon leaves out of her description of “home” is that in addition to feeding us, it needs to be a place that grounds us…a place where we are challenged when we start sliding too far down that slippery slope of letting the ends justify the means – headed for corruption.
It comes down to your moral compass and your sense of personal integrity. And the collective harness of thousands of moral compassses working together for the betterment of humanity.
That was the power of the civil rights movement. The souls and collective values of the black churches joined together to lift their community out of bondage. And those souls joined with the souls of Jewish communities, Unitarian Universalists, Methodists and other liberal denominations to proclaim for universal freedom and salvation.
I always urge activists to find a place of refuge. A church home, a yoga practice, daily meditation. A peaceful place to take walks or to just sit, a restful library that inspires and outlifts. Something that takes you out of the hurly burly and nastiness of politics and organizing and that connects you to something greater and larger than yourself.
Politics is a dirty business. Politicians will always disappoint you. And compromise will always be unsatisfying to those that set out to accomplish something without compromise. Sometimes a bill will be so compromised that it is no longer worth passing at all (like, I would argue, the immigration bill, or NCLB). But Teddy Kennedy would disagree. He would disagree, not because he is some kind of faux liberal, but because he is all about getting things done. And, for him, a flawed bill may be better than letting some important issue languish unaddressed.
People can disagree on individual bills, or even whole political strategies. And different people have different roles. Advocates are not in the business of compromise. But they shouldn’t hold their representatives to that standard. I can yell and scream for congress to do this or that, but if they can’t do it, they can’t do it.
And they don’t tell us the truth either. They might tell us they aren’t addressing our issue when they really are. But the most effective way to accomplish our wishlist might be to tell us it’s off the table. We’ll pout and moan and complain, but six months later we might get what we wanted all along.
Regardless, power corrupts. That is why we must have a cycling of politicians. Nor term-limits, but competitive elections and a party that has primaries to clear out the dead wood.
Yesterday I got a real life look at how the corrupting influences begin to pile up. I’m working with a young woman who is running for City Council here in St. Paul, Pakou Hang. She’s one of those who is taking on a long-time incumbent who has a (D) after his name (have to in this town to get elected), but who was Norm Coleman’s best friend on the City Council when he was Mayor and basically does the bidding of the local Chamber of Commerce.
She said that she is getting heavy pressure from national groups that could provide the funding she needs to abandon the “grassroots” strategies of her campaign. And she also found out that AFSME members are calling her neighbors telling them that she is a Republican!! Luckily she’s a strong woman with great integrity and has the experience of having worked for Paul Wellstone is his last campaign. So ultimately, she’ll figure out how to maintain her principles and get the job done. But a person without her strength might be well on their way by now.
Without publicly financed elections, purity or not almost doesn’t matter. When officeholders/candidates continually go back to the corporate trough to “feed”, their true masters will continue to be entities other than their constituents.