It’s no surprise that I like reading about democracy, considering where I work.  It’s literally a hobby of mine to find a thread of ideas in the endless tapestry of the internet about participation, or government structures, or community-led reforms, and follow it as far as I can.  And recently I found a thread that might just pull me through the next few weeks and months.  

This particular thread began with The Cultural Contradictions of Neoliberalism: The Longing for an Alternative Order and the Future of Multiracial Democracy in an Age of Authoritarianism, by Shahrzad Shams, Deepak Bhargava, and Harry W. Hanbury.  This fascinating article in the genre of “how did we get here?” was published months before the election, a good reminder that a lot of thinkers didn’t have to know the election results to know where “here” is and strategize on what we might do about it.  The authors focus on neoliberalism not just as a set of policies, but as a cultural project that is pervasive but ultimately unsatisfying to most people. This is because of our “deep longing to meet needs not satisfied in neoliberal society, such as the need for community and belonging, for safety, for agency, for understanding, and for feeling good.”  

The authors identify several cultural “strategies” that have arisen as ways to cope with these unmet needs, but the one I seized on is the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.  The article argues that the MAGA movement is successful not because of Donald Trump’s policy positions, but because it fills unmet social and cultural human needs, like the needs for “a sense of belonging and agency, and a place to feel good with other like-minded individuals.”  Basically, it meets people’s need for community.  

Thinking of the MAGA movement as a “community” – often a sacred concept in our line of work – was a raw end of the thread I couldn’t let go.  Because I agree that people need more community – more feeling of belonging, more agency, more ways to connect with other people.  But from where I stand, though MAGA may feel good for the people who participate in it, it’s bad for democracy.  It is based on a “rhetoric of grievance, blame, and revenge,” which may speak to the in-group, but divides the US as a whole and provides the foundation for exclusionary, authoritarian policies.  MAGA is more than a community, and more than a conservative political movement – it clearly and explicitly advances an anti-democratic system of governance that takes care of insiders at the expense of outsiders. 

I know that there are so many communities out there – and lots of community-building work done by social justice organizations – based on participation and solidarity. While the people in these organizations have their own grievances, their demands for justice are inclusive and democratic; they fight to ensure that everyone gets a seat at the table.  Some of these, sometimes, add up to political movements that advance progressive causes.  But why don’t they go as far and as wide as MAGA has gone?  Why aren’t they a mass movement for democracy itself?  And what does this mean for those of us who are explicitly advocating for participatory democracy?  

Another article, The Real Engine of Change by Deepak Bhargava and Arianna Jiménez, helped me pull the thread further.  It argues that “the field of democracy advocates in the United States has been disproportionately white and middle-class, focused on top-down, technocratic reforms to political systems—many of which are promising, but lack a mass base connected to working-class people.”  While this description doesn’t encompass the whole field of democracy work, it does tug on the thread that got me started. What we need is not only reform to government systems on the one hand and an organized base of grassroots community groups on the other hand.  What we need is more connective tissue between these two efforts.  MAGA makes the connection between people’s feelings – their need for belonging – and an argument about how government should work, and this is an alchemy those of us committed to democracy must pursue.  

Call me biased, but this is exactly where participatory budgeting (PB) is designed to work its magic: as a link between community and government.  PB purposely engages existing community groups and brings people together to listen and understand each other’s needs, then connects those groups and people into government systems to decide how public money is spent as part of an equitable, community-led process.  Participatory budgeting forges a link between communities’ feelings about the issues that impact their lives and what a government that meets those needs equitably and effectively should look like.  As an adaptable tool for winning resources and power across a variety of issues, PB connects reformers inside government to on-the-ground organizers so they can find common ground and build a civic space that works for everyone.  

If you’ve heard one of my co-workers talk about the kind of PB we do, you’ll know that this is what we call “good PB” for short.  It means intentionally centering the people and organizations that are already working for social justice as we help them advocate for, win, and carry out PB processes. And it means holding governments accountable for shifting power.

I’m grateful to these thinkers and writers – and many others thinking and writing about what’s next – for starting this thread for me.  Picking it up again has been the most hopeful and sustaining thing I have found since the election. It has provided a meaningful path forward to true, participatory democracy, and I look forward to continuing to weave together the work of our diverse and powerful movement.