anmeldung

“Of the People, by the People and for the People”

Presentation by Lucina Kathmann

“The Art of Citizenship” Program, Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago

October 17, 2004

In the Gettysburg Address, in 1863 Abraham Lincoln expressed the hope that a “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Over a century later, we still share that hope. In the intervening years, there have been quite a few chapters of the history of trying to make that dream a reality. We have found out that it is not so easy.

For one thing, the dream itself has evolved. We are no longer satisfied with mere representation, we want a real participatory democracy. A couple of weeks ago I heard Samuel Ruiz talk about this dream. He is the retired bishop of San Cristóbal de las Casas, the one who ten years ago was the mediator between the Zapatista rebels and the Mexican government. He said that not only do we want everyone to vote, we want the governments to alternate sometimes as well, one party conceding to another, without coercion, fear or violence in the process at any time, neither in the voting nor in the changeover of governments. Furthermore, he said, we want to listen to the nation foremost, not to the political parties or the government. The nation, that is the people, come first, he said. They come first historically and they come first in importance.

He was talking about the situation in Mexico, which recently experienced the first real change of government in over 75 years, and where, in the indigenous areas, that change still hasn't happened, because many people are still afraid to vote that party [the PRI] out.

The dream of participatory democracy is evolving here in the United States too. You can trace it through US history, through the long, hard struggles to bring large unrepresented groups into the process, culminating in two constitutional amendments: the 15th, guaranteeing the vote for people of all races (which passed in 1870, though black people did not actually vote in number until after 1965), and the 19th, which guaranteed the vote for people of both sexes. But this was not enough. The disenfranchised must be recruited in numbers and made to stay. They must not only vote, they must actually do the work of government. They must stand for and win offices at every level of government. Voting is a part of this process, but it is not the end of it. It might not even be the most important step.

In Mexico the history of the struggle for the advancement of women started with labor rights, went on to the right to education and only then proceeded to the issue of political rights. In fact, women only got the right to vote in federal elections in 1952. The measure had been proposed several times before. One time in the 30s, under president Lázaro Cárdenas, the right to vote for women passed the senate and seemed almost certain to become law, to the point that some women's groups even sent letters of congratulation. But members of the house of representatives stalled by sending the bill back to local parliaments, where it was eventually defeated.

However since the 50s there have been several advances in the condition of women. The equality of women and men was elevated to the level of a constitutional amendment in 1975. This amendment also affirmed the right of all people to plan their families. Starting in 1993, there were additions to the federal election code mandating the increase of women candidates. As of 1996 it became illegal to propose a party slate with more than 70% of any one gender. More than half the Latin American countries have also passed such laws, also a good number of Asian and African countries.

As you would expect, in these countries a lot of new women are coming into public life. It might be early to assess the total effect of these laws, but there are many reports that:

1. The new representatives are authoritative on the conditions of life of their consituents, however:

2. They don't know and often don't like the atmosphere and procedures in the legislatures. Some even go home in disgust.

In the US Senate, there are presently 12 women senators out of 100, and there has never been even one woman president or vice president. It's not my intention to talk about the advancement of women in the United States, but this detail shows something I am trying to establish, that voting–which has now been tried for 74 years– is plainly not enough. Just as the 19th amendment did not automatically put women into public life, the electoral process, important though it is, is not going to insure democracy by itself.

Sometimes representatives of the US government talk as though elections will bring democracy, for example in Iraq or Afghanistan. They say they will oblige the country to hold fair elections, and then it will be off on the right foot. Well, this is simplistic and superstitious. Participatory democracy will not be created by fiat in Iraq. With 200 years of experience it did not even prevail in Florida in the last presidential election. Democracy is not just a quick characterization of a mechanism of choosing representatives, it is an ideal. We will not reach it, but we might be proud to work toward it.

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