It is a paradox of our age that for all the boundless ways we can now communicate, so many people yet feel unheard. Nowhere is this more true than in the very, very many words – written or spoken, emailed or posted, shouted or scrawled – at the level of local government. We have a representative democracy.
An elected official stands in for the entire body politic. As such, they must listen not only to those most energized, those with the time and resources to advocate. They must also seek out other voices. Serving on Charlottesville City Council, I found distinguishing signal from noise to be essential.
Our Council sought to listen well to all. This went for constituent requests, suggestions, demands, and commentary more broadly. Email, online comments, and in-person at meetings – nearly every item was read, weighed, and responded to as appropriate.
There are, of course, the “cranks” – residents who will hound mercilessly over something they deem of utter importance. No matter what you do, how hard you try … it will not satisfy. Since you “work for them,” they think their caustic “advocacy” is justified. It’s easy to simply dismiss. Yet, a crank can make a good point, something you might have otherwise missed.
There are also – especially in a university town – the activists. A common tactic is to appeal “to what the community clearly wants.” They justify this claim by how many emails they can generate or how tightly (and loudly) they can pack Council chambers. Yet, in my four years, only a handful of topics created sufficient interest that I could reasonably infer “how the community actually felt.” The most significant was a controversial city-wide “upzoning.”
Yet, even here, “the community” was clearly of two minds. I worry far, far more about the authoritarian right than the illiberal left. That said, the latter is a thing, and it is (in its favorite parlance) problematic. This is not “both-siderism.” It’s about the virtues required to negotiate a shared civic space. It’s about liberals being honest with ourselves. It’s recognizing that glib appeals to Dr. King aren’t sufficient to create his Beloved Community. On the contrary, Dr. King believed in the power of redemptive suffering. Yet some on the Left think suffering is for suckers.
My Council, based on how we voted, must be among the most progressive on the Eastern seaboard. We did bold things around zoning and housing affordability. We made generational investments in schools, public housing, transit, and infrastructure. We proactively sought to bring everyone in, to lift everyone up. And, when necessary, we raised taxes to do these things.
Yet, around certain topics – the unhoused, the carceral system, Gaza, ranked-choice voting, among others – there was no space to disagree with the loudest voices. If you didn’t affirm as expected, or dared to cross, you would pay. Pay in terms of acrimony, disruption of meetings, attacks online, and threats to run even more liberal people in a primary.
The dominant emotion on the left is not anger. It is anxiety. It was my hope I could build sufficient goodwill, even with the most left-leaning, that when I took an unpopular (with them) vote, after articulating my rationale, they might still trust me. That was not the case. I was only as good as the last time I agreed.
It is also true that many residents do not directly engage those with whom they disagree – except, of course, on social media. They instead expect leaders to be both buffer and punching bag. I recall discussing, with two residents, a controversy over monuments. Each held, passionately and intelligently, diametrically opposed views. They were next door neighbors. So much better to talk directly rather than have me as a remote mediator. This presupposes a neighborliness that is often missing.
Some people reckon that representative democracy isn’t democratic enough. Instead, we need citizen assemblies where people debate, reach consensus, and take action. Perhaps techno-utopians will devise a clever “hack” to automate all of this. I fear that would be disastrous.
Representative democracy – of the flesh-and-blood sort – remains the best compromise between “the consent of the governed” and the absolute need that bodies politic make decisions for the common good. At some point, a leader must choose.
Perhaps “politics,” in the ugly sense, is inevitable at a certain stage. Yet, at the local level, one may retain hope that “regular people” will step up to serve. That they will do so out of empathy and a desire to serve others. That they will listen well to their constituents and to their colleagues. Our system absolutely requires that.
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