Are you really a citizen?
I have a friend whom I will affectionately refer to as Book Dragon, or BD for short because he loves hoarding books. A while ago, he came to me with something he has been struggling to think about: “what should someone do in the current political climate?” I decided to work with him and discuss something that could probably ease a few of his worries but exacerbate new ones. It was a matter of being a citizen.
You might look at being a citizen as just a matter of being born and living in a particular place. But that’s not what being a citizen is. As we political science nerds define it: it refers to someone who can enact political action in the current political system. When we look back at absolute monarchies, fiefdoms, and pure oligarchies, citizenship was reserved for either a sole individual or a set of individuals. Serfs and slaves could never be citizens, and one can make note that until the right to vote was given to black individuals and women they were never actually citizens. Debates can also be made about the nature of modern colonies and their ability, or inability, to affect mainland policy gives them a lesser degree of citizenship.
Why is this important? Because when we think about what is allowed to us in a democratic system as a way to write laws, elect officials, and whatever actions needed to create policy and organize social structures, I’d argue its rather limited. In the United States, we observe a few moments in which we exercise a right to vote. While this is designed to create terms limits and form a balance between governance and impeding power, it is normally the only we are taught of exerting power. “If you don’t like how x candidate or x party is doing things, go ahead and vote!”, you have probably seen thrown through social media, or someone yelling that at you at a family gathering. Heck, you probably have shared or yelled the phrase or a variation of it. But to create more direct changes in policy you need to do more than just vote.
Policy isn’t just a result of voting for officials, but community organization. Working with the town hall, getting to know your neighbors and cooperating with them against an issue in the area, protesting something that is going to be destructive to the environment upon construction, volunteering, all of these are examples of community organization. Even more so than voting, community organization forms the true backbone of democracy. When you organize and work together, you have united to make a political change, and while it might not change who your representative is, it’s the prelude to written policy.
While I can’t talk about mainland USA and its relationship to fostering communities into political entities, Puerto Rico does not have a culture of this kind of organization. We keep to ourselves and are so busy with work or other affairs that we forget to organize. We also do not teach community engagement in schools. And finally, our representatives are not easily accessible to call or mail about issues. It was only with the sheer destruction in the wake of Hurricane María that we have seen an upsurge in communities coming together to tackle the effects of the aftermath. It wasn’t just destruction, but Hurricane María was a grim reminder of how awful conditions can get in Puerto Rico.
Individuals getting together and fostering community issues are important. However, what happens where there is not a direct line to the government? Oftentimes, this kind of organization operates on the same logic as protests: gather enough people and make enough noise, and finally hope that someone will listen. When individuals try to fix something themselves in the community, regulations, laws, and mandates can put a halt to their efforts. The tales of Hurricane María include the government actively stopping independent professionals from working on things such as phone and power lines. While in normal circumstances you wouldn’t want Old Joe, Juanita y Pepo to mess with the power lines, in emergencies where it is a matter of life and death you will definitely take the offer for them to help out. Your handy neighbors might get an all-expenses trip to jail for their kindness.
This isn’t good democracy. Having limited venues for community-government engagement, the worshipping of voting, the demonization of civil disobedience, all are indicators that whatever we call this system doesn’t give us as much ‘citizenship’ as we would normally think. In fact, due to the impact of other entities such as corporations and the prevalence of lobbying, these entities have been considered to have qualities of citizens, in so much that they hold a large stake in policymaking. To what extent they are ‘citizens’ vs private individuals is debated, but it is troubling to see the repercussions of the power allowed to these entities.
It isn’t looking good for us. Even if we are called citizens, the degree of influence we have in policy seems meager at best. When I answered Book Dragon’s question it was something along the lines of: “Do what you can, and what you think is right.” It was a simple answer and it may seem like a cop-out. However, not everyone can mobilize a mass protest or be up to date with the latest issues in a community. The way our society is designed, it seemed to neglect these aspects, especially due to a good number of the founding fathers actively wanting to limit democracy.
We are due for a social change, or at least a reconceptualization of what it means to be a citizen. We need to quintuple our efforts and promote good governance and social responsibility whenever possible. This is in addition to the numerous threats we face every day. However, we can make strides for engagement. We can’t let systemic issues stop us from acting in political manners.
