“This system was not designed for you”

Anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said,

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

If I hear that quote one more time, I am going to scream.

Does anyone really believe that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens was behind OHSU’s expansion to South Waterfront, including the $57 million tram? Only if you count the elite landowners, developers, and company executives who benefit most from it. I served on the Portland Planning Commission during approval of the OHSU and North Macadam plans, and I saw LARGE groups of thoughtful, committed citizens stomped on by corporate interests and the City officials whose election campaigns they funded.

It takes a lot of time and effort to get things done as a citizen volunteer. Not so, for the real power brokers. If you read the reports required under Sam Adams’s lobbyist registration ordinance, you’ll see labor-intensive documentation from the League of Women Voters, reporting every minute spent listening in committees or encouraging members to lobby about issues. You won’t see the thirty second phone calls from big campaign contributors, telling City Council members what the donor wants in the next Council vote.

Just before I left on vacation, I spoke at Portland State University to a group of young women attending the NEW Leadership Oregon conference. “NEW Leadership” stands for National Education for Women’s Leadership. The program is a six-day residential course led by PSU Professor Melody Rose. Tawna Sanchez, Family Services Director for the Native American Youth & Family Center non-profit organization, was another panelist. She said something that moved me profoundly, in fact I found myself recalling it over and over during our trip. She had been talking about the need for culturally-appropriate social services and education for Native Americans, for instance the new Native American High School commencing this fall. “This society we live in today was not designed for us”, she said.

And after the slightest of pauses, as if the thought just then occurred to her, she looked out at the sea of bright young female faces, beautiful with alert eyes and skin tones of diverse colors, perhaps only one or two indigenous people.

“This system was not designed for you, either”, Tawna Sanchez said.

Think about it. Our society, our government, our physical layout of cities and farms, was not set up to help women, young people, poor people, blue-collar workers, people of color, succeed. It was established with the needs, success, and reproduction of affluent white males in mind.

And in my opinion, our country, our state, and our city, remain structured that way. Look at the Presidential candidate debates – one black person, one woman, all the rest white men in designer suits. Read the business section of the newspaper, and the names of developers making millions using taxpayers’ money to change urban renewal areas into the Portland of tomorrow. Loyola University Chicago’s study released last November showed that of the 1000 largest US firms, 1.7% had a woman Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Only ten Fortune 500 companies are run by women. There are ten African-American CEOs on the top 1000 companies on Fortune’s list. For corporate governance, only 1.7 percent of board members are Hispanic people.

There have been six women on the Portland City Council in our entire history.

These numbers are no accident. And they should be shocking, even though most of us have heard them before. This system was not set up for us. If you’re reading this blog, most likely it was not set up for you. I don’t for a minute imagine that the movers and shakers of Portland, the powers behind the decision makers, spend their time reading what “just a nurse” Amanda Fritz is writing about.

And in elections, even volunteer community groups bestowing endorsements count not only a candidate’s record on their issues, but also past favors, and which candidate is considered likely to win. My own union, the Oregon Nurses Association, gave $25,000 to Karen Minnis’ campaign last election. Not because the Political Action Committee endorsed her policies on taxes, gay rights, or health care for all, but because she had supported nurse-friendly legislation in the past and was considered likely to be in a position to push through more if she continued as Speaker. I understood the rationale, playing the game under the current system, but what a waste of money. Neither Ted Wheeler nor I won the endorsement of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters in the primary election last May. Both of us have long records of creating positive changes for the environment in legislative work, volunteering, and fundraising. Yet neither of us won even a co-endorsement, for our decades of solid activism on behalf of the environment. OLCV endorsed the incumbents, apparently on the unspoken policy of sticking with the In-Crowd which has had the power to implement their agenda. In politics, who you know matters more than what you know.

It’s not fair that people who aren’t In with the In-Crowd have less chance to shape policy for our city, our state, and our country. It’s not fair that independence and volunteer activism count less in elections than political connections. It’s not fair that community groups have to bet on the winner, rather than following their hearts and philosophies.

Here in Portland, we have one chance to change the power structure in elections. That chance is Public Campaign Financing. Taking huge private donations from wealthy individuals and corporations out of city elections can make a significant difference in the power structure of Portland. Public Campaign Financing, coupled with volunteer activism, can change the system to set it up more for people like you and me. One without the other isn’t enough, but both together can break the lock on power of the affluent insiders who currently hold it.

I was the only non-incumbent candidate to qualify and use public money for my campaign for Portland City Council last year. The system was nearly destroyed by another woman, who not only cheated taxpayers but also attacked the very heart and soul of the ideal behind the new program. I believe that if my campaign had not shown it is possible to use the program honorably, it might have been shot down by now. Instead, major revisions will make it less open to fraud. But I’m very concerned that with the Boyles fiasco and no success story, Portlanders may stop seeing the principle the new program was designed for.

The principle of designing a society for people like you and me.

If there is an open seat for Portland City Council before the vote on Public Campaign Financing in 2010, and an affluent white male or career politician uses Public Campaign Financing to win it, then I believe the new system will not have passed its trial run. It’s great that Erik Sten used it and won last time – that reduces the influence and appearance of bias towards previous campaign contributors. But Public Campaign Financing IS designed to help people like you and me win election to the Portland City Council. We need at least one person on the Council who thinks with the perspective of a hardworking citizen in a regular job out in the community, active in a diverse neighborhood, volunteering time and talents for the common good. A citizen who has lived their life in a skin that isn’t that of the dominant white male culture.

I haven’t decided yet if I will be that candidate, even if there’s an open seat. I discovered in my campaign last time that the universe of politics in Portland is badly broken, and I’m not sure I can fix it unless more citizens make helping to fix it their top priority. But I believe with all my heart that Public Campaign Financing is the key to changing our political structure. To set up a system for people like you and me, for Tawna Sanchez of the Native American Youth & Family Center, and for the bright-eyed leaders of tomorrow.

A system where a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens really can change the world.