so about a decade ago I was climbing a
mountain with a friend it’s actually
more like a hike not really up a
mountain but it was just kind of a path
near a mountain but we were walking
together and I wanted to ask my friends
a question my friend is a soldier a
commander he’s been to war I’m pretty
much the opposite I’m a law professor
I’ve commanded no one the only wars I’ve
ever had is with bureaucrats and bean
counters so he is basically the opposite
of me and I was interested in
understanding something about his
experience in particular the soldiers
who served with him so I said who are
they why are they there he said what do
you mean Larry I said well what are they
doing what’s their purpose and he said
well they won’t to serve something
bigger than themselves but not smaller
than this country they fight for he said
democracy and then he said something
which has stuck with me for this last
decade he said no one goes to war no one
goes to war for a political party and
immediately when he said that I had this
little quibble in the back of my head
maybe actually the Civil War was a war
over a party but I put that aside and I
wanted to focus on what was really
important about what he said the strange
and beautiful idea of civic service
above or beyond party that before we
were Republicans before we were
Democrats we were citizens first
now this is new for me I’ve spent the
last decade I’ve thought of myself as a
kind of soldier or citizen soldier for
democracy I’ve been fighting my Wars for
democracy so we can get things like
climate change legislation or healthcare
legislation or a new and sustainable
minimum wage these things which people
associate and rightly so with the
Democratic Party but what his statement
has made me think over the last decade
is that we need not citizen soldiers
fighting for a party we need citizen
soldiers fighting for a democracy that
is beyond party that is above party that
is focused on citizens first and as I
thought about what that could be what is
the way of understanding what’s wrong
with this democracy that could unite
people on the left and the right I came
to an uncomfortable idea the idea is
equality now it’s uncomfortable because
this idea is associated with all sorts
of complicated and controversial fights
fights I believe in but not everyone
necessarily together fights about racial
equality fights about sex equality
sexual orientation equality income
equality speech equality these weren’t
the qualities I was talking about it
wasn’t identity politics that I was
focused on unless it’s an identity
politics for citizens
it’s an equality that recognizes the
political equality that a democracy is
supposed to promise each of us that we
are supposed to be equal as citizens in
democracy which means our power as
citizens is to be the same and that idea
triggered me because right now we are
not anywhere close to equal as citizens
I mean here are the ways in which we are
not equal as citizens do we have an
equal access to vote
across the country the answer is no
across the country for both Democrats
and Republicans there are techniques to
suppress the votes of the party that’s
not in power last year according to
Charles Stewart an MIT 16 million people
suffered the inequality of access to
vote because of these techniques and if
this is all the people in America this
is 16 million of the voters who suffered
that inequality do we have an equal vote
for the president obviously no first
because of the electoral college which
allocates votes according to not
population but some weird formula the
framers came up with so for example
Wyoming has 2/3 electors and California
has 55 which means every single vote in
Wyoming is equal to 18 votes in
California that’s unequal but much more
important is a system that Maine
actually doesn’t follow the system of
winner-take-all where the election in a
state the electors in a state get
allocated according to who wins the
popular vote the popular vote winner
gets all of the electoral college vote
winners and what that means is that
presidential campaigns are focused on
what’s called battleground states in
2016 candidates spent ninety five
percent in these 14 states 95 percent of
their time and 99 percent of campaign
spending you’re thinking where were they
for the other five percent of the time
where they’re basically in California in
New York raising money from rich people
so they could afford their campaigns but
the rest of their campaigns were in the
battleground states which means that if
you weren’t in a battleground state and
you didn’t happen to vote the winner of
your state your vote just didn’t matter
which means that 52 million Americans
voted only to have their vote thrown
away by the process of the
winner-take-all in the electoral college
do we have an equal vote in Congress no
in the House of Representatives thing
called safe seat gerrymandering
dominates how our districts are drawn
out of 435 seats only 45 are competitive
which means that in the wrath
candidates running safe seats both
Democratic and Republican safe seats
which means that the only people those
candidates care about or fear are
challenges from their own party which
means if you happen to be a Republican
in a democratic safe seat or a Democrat
and a Republican safe seat your view
just does not matter so in Massachusetts
in the last election a million people
voted Republican
they got zero representatives in the
House of Representatives which means if
you add up the safe seat minority votes
the people who are minorities in these
safe seats 89 million Americans votes
just were not equal what about the
Senate right well this is the obvious
one this is the one where of course
every state gets two senators and I very
state is obviously not equal so again
Wyoming and it really does tilt to the
right if you look on the map it does
tilt to the right like that and
California leans far to the left but for
every vote in Wyoming it’s the
equivalent of 67 votes for Senate in
California which means if you add up the
unequal votes that this system produces
161 million Americans have an unequal
representation boat power in this system
or what about the equal power to vote
and of course in America power is money
the answer again here is obviously no
candidates for Congress and members of
Congress spend anywhere between 30 and
70% of their time raising money to get
back to Congress dialing for dollars for
the kids in there that’s a telephone
this device right here dialing for
dollars calling people across the
country raise the money they need to get
back to Congress but they’re not calling
the average American they’re calling the
tiniest fraction of the 1% and we’re
that a hundred thousand Americans give
even the maximum contribution to one
candidate as they do this they develop a
sixth sense a constant awareness about
how what they do might affect their
ability to
is money they become in the words of the
x-files shapeshifters as they constantly
adjust their views in light of what they
know will help them to raise money not
only issues one to ten but an issues 11
to 1000 Leslie Byrne a Democrat from
Virginia describes that when she went to
Congress she was told by a colleague
quote always lean to the green than to
clarify she went on you know he was not
an environmentalist this hundred
thousand Americans who are the large
funders of these campaigns they have the
power over the representatives who bend
their life to suck up to them meaning
the hundred ninety nine million of the
rest of us have unequal power in the
power to a select our Congress okay so
if you add all these things up and if
you’re a Harvard professor you know that
means add it all up I learned that from
my ten year old son but that’s what that
means add it all up add these four
things up what this means is that
citizens in America are not equal that
we were trained we were told we were
taught in school that this is the
picture of democracy in America we the
citizens driving the bus but here’s the
reality of democracy in America the
steering wheel has been removed from the
bus because of this inequality because
we are unequal those who have the
unequal power drive this bus now this is
a problem but it’s an invisible problem
this is invisible and actually this
would be a better picture of invisible
so imagine there’s a thing there that’s
invisible right this is an invisible
problem because unlike other fights for
equality and the history of American
civil rights movements this fight this
problem this inequality is basically
unseen in America today
it’s unseen because we don’t have it
pressed in our face think about the most
inspirational and tragic struggle for
equality in the history of America the
struggle of African Americans
to achieve both first freedom and then
equality as citizens in America for 400
years that struggle went on and the
thing about that struggle was that at no
moment in that struggle were African
Americans confused about whether the
system was treating them unequally they
got it at every moment they recognized
this system was not treating them
equally
but in that they had an advantage
because we especially people like me
white males we don’t see it we don’t
notice it
it doesn’t confront us hit us in the
face every day it’s the carbon monoxide
of democracy it’s odorless and tasteless
and invisible but deadly to a democracy
because what it does is destroy the
capacity of a democracy to respond to
what its people care about and the
consequence of this is that regardless
of your issue whether it’s on the left
or on the right whatever issue you might
care about whatever issue you want to
fight it for most you need to recognize
we will get nothing until we fix this
inequality first so how do you fix it
now this is the struggle I’ve had over
the last decade because as I’ve been
fighting I’ve been recognizing that
building the energy the movement for
such a fight is incredibly hard but as I
fought through this I’ve recognized the
way we fix it is to forget about what we
will get if we solve this inequality and
focus instead on what we can give and
give not to us but give to our kids
so I have a friend who married the love
of her life she’s a Mainer she moved out
west and they had two beautiful boys and
when the boys were approaching teenage
hood their father set them down and they
wanted to have a he wanted to have a
conversation with them the conversation
he wanted to have was a conversation
about what they should do when they are
approached by a police officer now my
friend was puzzled about this
conversation and she stopped him say
what what what are you doing and he said
no responsible father does not tell his
sons how they are to respond when they
are approached by a police officer you
see my friend is white and her husband
is black and their children are
mixed-race and what she was seeing in
the most emotionally jarring way she
could see was that though they were
wealthy though they were comfortable
though they had done everything they can
to protect their children
this they could not protect their
children from and she felt the
inequality and she had this emotion this
reaction and I saw it as she wept as she
told me this story and as I wept as I
listened to this story the emotion she
felt was two parts one the
outrageousness that’s still to this day
this is the reality that her children
would have to face that any child would
have to face not talking about the
police officers that’s a different issue
I’m talking about her and this emotion
in this recognition so that’s number one
the outrageousness and then number two
the commitment she had because of the
love of her children to do everything
she could to fight the inequality that
made this true if we
are ever to find a way to fight the
inequality that is our democracy we need
all of us to have that love for our
children too each of us must look into
the eyes of our children and recognize
that though we inherited a democracy
that the world could be proud of we are
passing to our children a broken and
corrupted and unequal democracy and
unless we step up and do something to
fight to get that democracy back then
all the problems that we see problems on
the left and problems on the right all
the problems that we see we pass on to
them unrepaired we have to step up not
for us
but for love for love of country and for
love of them because this democracy has
failed on our watch it has failed it’s
our responsibility to fix it thank you
very much
you
mountain with a friend it’s actually
more like a hike not really up a
mountain but it was just kind of a path
near a mountain but we were walking
together and I wanted to ask my friends
a question my friend is a soldier a
commander he’s been to war I’m pretty
much the opposite I’m a law professor
I’ve commanded no one the only wars I’ve
ever had is with bureaucrats and bean
counters so he is basically the opposite
of me and I was interested in
understanding something about his
experience in particular the soldiers
who served with him so I said who are
they why are they there he said what do
you mean Larry I said well what are they
doing what’s their purpose and he said
well they won’t to serve something
bigger than themselves but not smaller
than this country they fight for he said
democracy and then he said something
which has stuck with me for this last
decade he said no one goes to war no one
goes to war for a political party and
immediately when he said that I had this
little quibble in the back of my head
maybe actually the Civil War was a war
over a party but I put that aside and I
wanted to focus on what was really
important about what he said the strange
and beautiful idea of civic service
above or beyond party that before we
were Republicans before we were
Democrats we were citizens first
now this is new for me I’ve spent the
last decade I’ve thought of myself as a
kind of soldier or citizen soldier for
democracy I’ve been fighting my Wars for
democracy so we can get things like
climate change legislation or healthcare
legislation or a new and sustainable
minimum wage these things which people
associate and rightly so with the
Democratic Party but what his statement
has made me think over the last decade
is that we need not citizen soldiers
fighting for a party we need citizen
soldiers fighting for a democracy that
is beyond party that is above party that
is focused on citizens first and as I
thought about what that could be what is
the way of understanding what’s wrong
with this democracy that could unite
people on the left and the right I came
to an uncomfortable idea the idea is
equality now it’s uncomfortable because
this idea is associated with all sorts
of complicated and controversial fights
fights I believe in but not everyone
necessarily together fights about racial
equality fights about sex equality
sexual orientation equality income
equality speech equality these weren’t
the qualities I was talking about it
wasn’t identity politics that I was
focused on unless it’s an identity
politics for citizens
it’s an equality that recognizes the
political equality that a democracy is
supposed to promise each of us that we
are supposed to be equal as citizens in
democracy which means our power as
citizens is to be the same and that idea
triggered me because right now we are
not anywhere close to equal as citizens
I mean here are the ways in which we are
not equal as citizens do we have an
equal access to vote
across the country the answer is no
across the country for both Democrats
and Republicans there are techniques to
suppress the votes of the party that’s
not in power last year according to
Charles Stewart an MIT 16 million people
suffered the inequality of access to
vote because of these techniques and if
this is all the people in America this
is 16 million of the voters who suffered
that inequality do we have an equal vote
for the president obviously no first
because of the electoral college which
allocates votes according to not
population but some weird formula the
framers came up with so for example
Wyoming has 2/3 electors and California
has 55 which means every single vote in
Wyoming is equal to 18 votes in
California that’s unequal but much more
important is a system that Maine
actually doesn’t follow the system of
winner-take-all where the election in a
state the electors in a state get
allocated according to who wins the
popular vote the popular vote winner
gets all of the electoral college vote
winners and what that means is that
presidential campaigns are focused on
what’s called battleground states in
2016 candidates spent ninety five
percent in these 14 states 95 percent of
their time and 99 percent of campaign
spending you’re thinking where were they
for the other five percent of the time
where they’re basically in California in
New York raising money from rich people
so they could afford their campaigns but
the rest of their campaigns were in the
battleground states which means that if
you weren’t in a battleground state and
you didn’t happen to vote the winner of
your state your vote just didn’t matter
which means that 52 million Americans
voted only to have their vote thrown
away by the process of the
winner-take-all in the electoral college
do we have an equal vote in Congress no
in the House of Representatives thing
called safe seat gerrymandering
dominates how our districts are drawn
out of 435 seats only 45 are competitive
which means that in the wrath
candidates running safe seats both
Democratic and Republican safe seats
which means that the only people those
candidates care about or fear are
challenges from their own party which
means if you happen to be a Republican
in a democratic safe seat or a Democrat
and a Republican safe seat your view
just does not matter so in Massachusetts
in the last election a million people
voted Republican
they got zero representatives in the
House of Representatives which means if
you add up the safe seat minority votes
the people who are minorities in these
safe seats 89 million Americans votes
just were not equal what about the
Senate right well this is the obvious
one this is the one where of course
every state gets two senators and I very
state is obviously not equal so again
Wyoming and it really does tilt to the
right if you look on the map it does
tilt to the right like that and
California leans far to the left but for
every vote in Wyoming it’s the
equivalent of 67 votes for Senate in
California which means if you add up the
unequal votes that this system produces
161 million Americans have an unequal
representation boat power in this system
or what about the equal power to vote
and of course in America power is money
the answer again here is obviously no
candidates for Congress and members of
Congress spend anywhere between 30 and
70% of their time raising money to get
back to Congress dialing for dollars for
the kids in there that’s a telephone
this device right here dialing for
dollars calling people across the
country raise the money they need to get
back to Congress but they’re not calling
the average American they’re calling the
tiniest fraction of the 1% and we’re
that a hundred thousand Americans give
even the maximum contribution to one
candidate as they do this they develop a
sixth sense a constant awareness about
how what they do might affect their
ability to
is money they become in the words of the
x-files shapeshifters as they constantly
adjust their views in light of what they
know will help them to raise money not
only issues one to ten but an issues 11
to 1000 Leslie Byrne a Democrat from
Virginia describes that when she went to
Congress she was told by a colleague
quote always lean to the green than to
clarify she went on you know he was not
an environmentalist this hundred
thousand Americans who are the large
funders of these campaigns they have the
power over the representatives who bend
their life to suck up to them meaning
the hundred ninety nine million of the
rest of us have unequal power in the
power to a select our Congress okay so
if you add all these things up and if
you’re a Harvard professor you know that
means add it all up I learned that from
my ten year old son but that’s what that
means add it all up add these four
things up what this means is that
citizens in America are not equal that
we were trained we were told we were
taught in school that this is the
picture of democracy in America we the
citizens driving the bus but here’s the
reality of democracy in America the
steering wheel has been removed from the
bus because of this inequality because
we are unequal those who have the
unequal power drive this bus now this is
a problem but it’s an invisible problem
this is invisible and actually this
would be a better picture of invisible
so imagine there’s a thing there that’s
invisible right this is an invisible
problem because unlike other fights for
equality and the history of American
civil rights movements this fight this
problem this inequality is basically
unseen in America today
it’s unseen because we don’t have it
pressed in our face think about the most
inspirational and tragic struggle for
equality in the history of America the
struggle of African Americans
to achieve both first freedom and then
equality as citizens in America for 400
years that struggle went on and the
thing about that struggle was that at no
moment in that struggle were African
Americans confused about whether the
system was treating them unequally they
got it at every moment they recognized
this system was not treating them
equally
but in that they had an advantage
because we especially people like me
white males we don’t see it we don’t
notice it
it doesn’t confront us hit us in the
face every day it’s the carbon monoxide
of democracy it’s odorless and tasteless
and invisible but deadly to a democracy
because what it does is destroy the
capacity of a democracy to respond to
what its people care about and the
consequence of this is that regardless
of your issue whether it’s on the left
or on the right whatever issue you might
care about whatever issue you want to
fight it for most you need to recognize
we will get nothing until we fix this
inequality first so how do you fix it
now this is the struggle I’ve had over
the last decade because as I’ve been
fighting I’ve been recognizing that
building the energy the movement for
such a fight is incredibly hard but as I
fought through this I’ve recognized the
way we fix it is to forget about what we
will get if we solve this inequality and
focus instead on what we can give and
give not to us but give to our kids
so I have a friend who married the love
of her life she’s a Mainer she moved out
west and they had two beautiful boys and
when the boys were approaching teenage
hood their father set them down and they
wanted to have a he wanted to have a
conversation with them the conversation
he wanted to have was a conversation
about what they should do when they are
approached by a police officer now my
friend was puzzled about this
conversation and she stopped him say
what what what are you doing and he said
no responsible father does not tell his
sons how they are to respond when they
are approached by a police officer you
see my friend is white and her husband
is black and their children are
mixed-race and what she was seeing in
the most emotionally jarring way she
could see was that though they were
wealthy though they were comfortable
though they had done everything they can
to protect their children
this they could not protect their
children from and she felt the
inequality and she had this emotion this
reaction and I saw it as she wept as she
told me this story and as I wept as I
listened to this story the emotion she
felt was two parts one the
outrageousness that’s still to this day
this is the reality that her children
would have to face that any child would
have to face not talking about the
police officers that’s a different issue
I’m talking about her and this emotion
in this recognition so that’s number one
the outrageousness and then number two
the commitment she had because of the
love of her children to do everything
she could to fight the inequality that
made this true if we
are ever to find a way to fight the
inequality that is our democracy we need
all of us to have that love for our
children too each of us must look into
the eyes of our children and recognize
that though we inherited a democracy
that the world could be proud of we are
passing to our children a broken and
corrupted and unequal democracy and
unless we step up and do something to
fight to get that democracy back then
all the problems that we see problems on
the left and problems on the right all
the problems that we see we pass on to
them unrepaired we have to step up not
for us
but for love for love of country and for
love of them because this democracy has
failed on our watch it has failed it’s
our responsibility to fix it thank you
very much
you
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