Participatory Democracy: Movements, Campaigns, and Democratic Living

Abstract

These are paradoxical times for the ideal of participatory democracy in America, the land that gave the world Jefferson as its intellectual midwife, Whitman as its poetic spur, and Dewey as the visionary seer of its future global scope and culture-transforming depth. In the months and weeks just before September 11, 2001, the majority of the American people, whom Alexis de Tocqueville had described a century and a half earlier as always meeting and organizing for democratic social betterment in all its myriad forms, had slumped into apathy, [End Page 60] perhaps even mild despair about civic participation's efficacy, combined with a too-busy preoccupation with their own narrow interests. Half of America's citizens did not even exercise their right and duty to vote in the 2000 presidential elections, finding neither presidential candidate inspiring and believing that their individual votes made little difference, until the dramatic events of the Florida electoral recount put Miami and Tallahassee on the worldwide list of place names. Many citizens' sudden spurt of interest in the power of the vote during those days was quashed again, however, when the Supreme Court of the United States decided the outcome of Bush v. Gore by a single-vote majority and the Electoral College subsequently declared Bush the winner, in spite of the fact that Gore had won a majority of the popular vote. The American economy slowed during this same period, and most American citizens slumped back into their previous apathy and preoccupation, now tinged with anxiety about their own economic survival, so that there was very little outcry against the new Bush administration's immediate attacks on the greatest achievements of America's participatory democratic movements in the previous century, including civil rights and liberties, environmental protection legislation, occupational health and safety regulations, and affirmative programs to equalize opportunities for women and members of racial and ethnic groups who have been burdened with legal limitations and social exclusions of various kinds throughout our nation's history.