Introduction to a Public Citizen's Action Manual

excerpted from the book

The Ralph Nader Reader

(Originally appeared as an Introduction to A Public Citizen's Action Manual,
by Donald K. Ross, 1973)

In the early days of the Republic. the federal government did little beyond run the post office, collect tariffs, and provide for the common defense. And the state governments did even less. Instead, the symbol of American democracy was the New England town meeting. where citizens would gather by the village green to discuss and decide public affairs for their local government. Town meeting self-government should not be overidealized. There were the power elites and the poor in each little town. Yet it did. in an age far simpler than today's, operate on a premise that regular participation in government, beyond merely voting at election time, was an obligation of every citizen. The very format of the town meeting helped assure that that obligation would be fulfilled. The voters were the local legislature.

A pundit of I50 years ago might have reasonably predicted that citizen-oriented governmental formats would continue and that citizen efforts would expand as the nation's economic, Iegal, and technological structures expanded, as growth made people interdependent with one another and with institutions near and far. Such a logical development did not occur; in fact, something closer to the opposite happened. City political machines and city councils replaced the town meetings. Institutions of government and business became bigger and more distant from the people they were supposed to assist or to serve. The power of citizens was delegated to secretive legislatures and executive bureaucracies surrounded and dominated by well-organized special-interest groups that in turn learned that their best investment was the financing or buying of elections. Although increasingly shielded by institutional corruption, complexity, and secrecy from being regularly accountable to the public, government institutions fed the propaganda that elections were enough of a mandate and that such elections were adequately democratic. Especially during the past thirty years, corporations and other special interests have become only bigger and more astute in using governmental power and tax revenues to support their goals and subsidize their treasuries. This interlock between government and business has further complicated the task of citizen effort. For no longer can citizens start with the assumption that government is uncommitted to a special-interest group.

The people's loss of the power to govern themselves has deepened as the need for such self-government has risen. Certainly, the costs of citizen powerlessness are accelerating, if only because more people are being affected more ways by more events beyond their control. The American Revolution rang with the declaration that "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance." That is also true for "justice" and "peace"-and for "clean water" and "clean air" and "safe cars" and "healthy work places." But these good things, the blessings of liberty, will not come to pass until we cease viewing citizen involvement as just a privilege and begin defining our daily work to include citizenship toward public problems as an obligation.

This process starts with the individual's use of his or her time and energy Most people think they are good citizens if they obey the laws and vote at election time. First of all, this is not enough by its own measure because too many people and powerful groups do not obey the laws and almost half the people over eighteen do not vote. But by a broader measure, voting can never be enough simply because decisions affecting people are made by government between elections. It is what citizens do between elections that decides whether elections are to be meaningful exercises of debate and decision or whether they are to remain expensive contests between tweedledees and tweedledums. It is not difficult to describe J the citizenship gap. How many decisions in Washington, in the state capital, or in the city council involve even modest citizen participation? Why, at all levels of government, does the bureaucracy of executive branch agencies and departments decide matters without the legislature's knowledge or restraint?

The average worker spends about a quarter of his time on the job earning money to pay his taxes but spends virtually no time overseeing the spenders of those taxes. In the marketplace the same disparity between expenditure and involvement prevails. A consumer will spend thousands of hours driving a new automobile or eating food from a supermarket, but can find no way to spend any time to correct the overpricing, fraud, and hazards associated with these products. This is also the case with consumers taking out a loan or purchasing an insurance policy It is no wonder that in the marketplace or in the halls of government, those who are organized and knowledgeable obtain their way And those people who abdicate, delegate or vegetate are taken.

Look at the United States today Can anyone deny that this country has more problems than it deserves and more solutions than it uses? Its massive wealth, skills, and diversity should never have tolerated, much less endured, the problems and perils that seem to worsen despite a continuing aggregate economic growth. There seems to be less and less relationship between the country's total wealth and its willingness to solve the ills and injustices that beset it. The spirit of pioneering and problem-solving is weak. National, state, and local political leadership is vague at best, manipulative at worst. Facing the world, the United States stands as an uncertain I giant with uncertain purposes toward a world in great need of its help and encouragement.

The reversal of these trends requires different leadership, to be sure, but it also requires a new kind of citizenship-public citizenship, part-time-on-the-job, and full-time-that engages in more exercise and less delegation of citizen power The impulse to become a public citizen can spring from many sources-for example, a fundamental compassion for people and a sense of how inextricably interdependent a society we have. But in a practical, animating way, the spark is learning by doing, developing the techniques and strategies for citizen organization and action. If it can be shown that civic action can solve problems, then more people will shuck their indifference or resignation and want to join the effort.

How much work there is to do can be gauged by how little has been done. Every week, thousands of government agencies are making decisions which will affect the environment, utility rates, food prices and quality, land use taxes, transportation, health care, employment, job safety, rent, schools, crime, prisons, peace, civil liberties and rights, and many other conditions of social coexistence now and into the future. Surrounding these agencies are lobbyists and advocates for special economic interests, some of whom take jobs for a few years within these agencies to make themselves more useful to their private employers later. Using numerous combinations of the carrot and stick, these pressure groups more often than not get exactly what they want. On rare occasions, a few full-time public interest advocates are present at the scene of the action.

Greatly outnumbered and equipped with only the justice and knowledge of their cause, these full-time citizens have achieved remarkable successes in the courts and before regulatory agencies and legislatures. The national citizens' struggles against the Supersonic Transport (SST), cyclamates, and the laxness of the Atomic Energy Commission neglect of adequate safety standards in nuclear power plants can be paralleled by hundreds of smaller victories at the state and local levels by an aroused citizenry. These Americans have learned that practice makes perfect and the more experience they accumulate, the more effective they become.

Given what a few citizens have done, it is a source of optimism to ask what many, many more like them could do in the future. A look at the past can make future projections of citizen impact more credible. Imagine that twenty-five years ago, citizens concerned about the future quality of life in America-say one out of ten adults-had gotten together to do something about it. Our urban centers would not be choked with cars, or laced with concrete belts that strangle the polluted cities in ever-increasing slums, corruption, crime, noise, and public waste. Our rivers, lakes, and oceans would still be producing untainted fish and would be safe for swimming. Drinking water would not be increasingly imperiled by pollution. The air would not be as filled with vile and violent contaminants, and the land not ravaged by insensitive corporate and government forces wasting our resources faster than they are replenished. Consumers would not be exploited by shoddy goods and services, deceptive practices, and price-fixing that (according to Senator Philip Hart's studies) take at least 25 percent of every consumer dollar.

Thousands of American workers would not be dying or sickened each year because of the toxic chemicals, gases, and dust that pervade so many factories, foundries, and mines. Equal opportunity in education and employment and adequate medical care would have avoided the misery that cruelly affects many Americans. Nor would hunger and poverty have been belatedly "discovered in the sixties to be affecting some thirty million Americans, Factory and office workers would not be federally taxed 20 percent of their wages while countless men of great wealth are assessed 4 percent or less and many corporations with enormous incomes pay nothing or next to nothing. Small businessmen and homeowners could not be squeezed by powerful corporations whose predatory practices, underpayment of property taxes, and other abuses serve to further concentrate their powers and plunders.

Our Congress and state legislatures would not have continued to be underequipped and indentured to pressure groups instead of monitoring the executive branches and responding to the real needs of all the people. The power and expenditures of the military establishment and their civilian superiors would have been scrutinized, and perhaps curtailed, many painful, costly years ago Above all, our political system would have reverberated with higher quality and dedication as the momentum of expert citizen movements increased.

A small number of citizens throughout our country's history have kept the flame of citizenship burning brightly to the benefit of millions of their less engaged neighbors. These true patriots have known that democracy comes hard and goes easy To make democracy work, it takes work citizen work. Many practical lessons can be learned from their experiences. Today, citizen groups are flowering all over the country, but they need to be better organized, better funded, and staffed with skilled, dedicated, full-time people. New citizen organizations such as Action for Children's Television in Boston (to stop television exploitation of children), Consumer Action Now in New York and Citizen's Action Program in Chicago (getting large industries to stop underpaying their property taxes), and GASP in Pittsburgh (fighting air pollution) are showing what can be done with minimum funds and maximum civic spirit. Courageous public citizens, such as education advocate Julius Hobson in Washington, D.C., are the true unsung heroes of American democracy They have weathered community pressure to fight for a more just society in cities, towns, and villages around the country.

Many more citizens work to correct small abuses or deficiencies in the community once or twice and then retire to their former state of inaction. Such withdrawal does little to encourage others to engage in similar activities and does nothing to push initial drives beyond symptoms and treadmills to more fundamental reform that lasts. Easy disillusionment, the inability to rebound from difficulties, and lack of stamina must be candidly assessed and overcome through modest amounts of self-discipline. This is done in athletics and games all the time; it should also become the practice in the citizenship arena.

Citizen effort is everybody's business and everybody can engage in such effort. Who, for example, is better equipped to fight for women's rights or conduct consumer surveys than women, all too many of whom may be wasting much of their time daily watching soap operas, gossiping on the telephone, or "keeping in their place"? Who is better situated to further the job safety laws than workers exposed to occupational hazards and capable of organizing themselves or invigorating their unions to humanize the workplace? Who could be better motivated to reform the motor clubs than the disenfranchised members of these clubs-the millions of motorists? Who should be more inclined to expose the gross underpayment of property taxes by large companies than homeowners, small businessmen, and taxpayers generally? These are not wholly rhetorical questions. There are people who have indeed done all these things with some success. Had they been joined by some of the 99 percent of their neighbors, co-workers, or co-members who were inactive, truly enduring progress would have taken place. Sometimes one or two individuals are enough; over two million Chevrolets were recalled for defects because of one inspector in a GM plant speaking out; cyclamates were taken off the market because of two outspoken scientists in the Food and Drug Administration. For the most part, however, there is need for organization around public issues particularly when the hurdles are high and the facts are not yet available to the public.

Citizenship is not an endeavor reserved only for the most talented; anybody can do it and everybody should do it.

The exercise by citizens of their rights and responsibilities is what makes a working democracy ever sensitive to the just needs of its people. Such citizen effort is a learning process which can be increasingly advanced with practice. For increasing numbers of Americans, citizenship should become a full-time career role, supported by other citizens, to work on major institutions of government and business for a better society. It is this fundamental role of the public citizen in a democracy that must attract more adherents and supporters from across America.

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