Two Things We Can Do to Strengthen Democracy Today

A few insights to set the mood:

"The only recognizable feature of hope is action."
Grace Paley, short story writer.

"What if the mightiest word is love?"
Elizabeth Alexander, a poet who once taught at the University of Chicago, where she met a community organizer who became a law school lecturer who would become President; Alexander would read this line at his inauguration.

I'm a big fan of reclaiming our mood these days. The news seems designed to take our feelings hostage, often depressing or overwhelming us into paralysis or what's the point-ism – precisely what the powerful want.

Since our mood has a way of setting the agenda for our actions, anytime we do something to reset our mood, it's a tiny act of rebellion, one way we refuse to be conquered. We are reclaiming our ability to do something for our democracy besides worry about it.

To that end, here are a few overlooked ways we can make democracy more muscular:

The Local Election Super Champ
Many towns have off-year local elections on everything from school and police department budgets, council member or mayoral races, special elections for water district or the state legislature, stuff that has all kinds of fingerprints on our daily lives (the full scoop on why local elections are Where. It's. At. can be found here).

And the kicker is that a tiny, non-representative slice of the population votes in these elections. Folks 65 and older are much more likely to turnout than 18-24 year olds. And folks earning $100,000-$150,000 per year are much more likely to turnout than those earning $20,000 per year.

We can do better.

Three steps we can take right now:

1. Get the date of your next local election. On your town's website, go to the City/Town Clerk's section, they administer elections. If nothing's posted online, give'em a call.
   
   
2. Dig into what's on the ballot. This shouldn't take too long; I'll nose through local papers or candidates' social media to get an understanding of what we're voting on or where candidates are on issues I care about.
   
   
3. Tell people about it. I have a distribution list of everyone I know in my town and when early voting starts, I send out an email with info on when/where to vote plus my voting recommendations. I did this for a school budget two years ago and it helped double the number of people who voted.

Build the World You Want to Live In
For years, there's a question I've asked myself most mornings: What am I doing today to build the world I want to live in?

I don't always remember to ask this. Or if I do remember, plenty of times, I don't do the thing I intend to. But I like that this inquiry puts power squarely in my hands. And exercising our pockets of power is especially important these days.

My reliable answer to this question is, I'll be kinder than is expected. Or put more enjoyably, I'll be unexpectedly kind. "Do your little bit of good where you are," encouraged Desmond Tutu, "it's those little bits of good strung together that overwhelm the world."

In the supermarket parking lot, I'll offer to push someone's grocery cart from their car back to the cart coral.

I'll send an email, text, or best of all, snail mail, thanking someone for something that happened some time ago, but still gladdens my heart to think of it.

I'll call out to a stranger in their yard that I love their lilacs, house color, new back deck. I especially like doing this when I've seen that person busting their tail on the very thing I'm complimenting.

I have a friend who's the first to start a standing ovation. Come spring, I get notes from gardeners - some of whom I've met only once - asking if I want their surplus coneflowers or bergamot. After trash pickup, I'll see a neighbor plucking up the twisty-ties, English muffin bags, bits of paper that got blown out of bins.

I want to live in a world where people show up like that. Each kindness is an exhalation that - added all up - create the lungs of connectedness, that we're on the same team, even that we belong to each other.

As George Saunders put it, "Time is short and whatever love you have had better get spent, pronto."

Your answer to, What am I doing today to build the world I want to live in? could be entirely different. That's fabulous. A healthy garden needs a wide spread of different plants.

And if this all feels meager in the face of so much destruction, I'd offer up what Ursula Le Guin wrote in The Dispossessed: An Ambitious Utopia, "You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere."

Each day lays out a set of opportunities to prove that fear and rage aren't nearly as courageous or tenacious or mighty as love. And if we take even just one of those opportunities, our democracy will be a little better for our effort.