OK, folks — here’s the deal. Your future is being planned without you.
This has probably been happening for a long time, unless you’re one of the handful of people I’ve seen regularly at open government meetings. Looking around the room at the end of a recent meeting, I noticed I was the only one there who didn’t have a direct role with the functions of that governing body.
Not only was I the only reporter there, but also the only observer of any kind. Perhaps you’ve read many columns and articles, over the course of your literacy career, encouraging more people to go to more meetings. Perhaps you even agree, but between family and work commitments, it makes it too tough to squeeze a whole weeknight devoted to putting scrutiny on government.
I’m speaking as a confessed hypocrite on this topic. Aside from a handful of city council and school board meetings, and a handwritten letter to a federal official from time to time, I’m no shining example of an everyday participant in the business of the republic. However, my role as a reporter has shown me, in a very short time, a few of the issues that hold us back as a society that are largely unrelated to government misdeeds.
Low participation levels lead not only to leaders getting carefree and complacent, but also to anger and disdain for officials when unpopular decisions are made. Ask any of your neighbors if they plan to vote in an upcoming election, and you’ll probably receive one of a few responses. Either the answer is yes, with perhaps a short explanation of its importance, or the answer is no because the votes don’t matter when elections are rigged, elections are only won by the rich, or because one vote doesn’t make much difference in a huge election.
These same responses would probably be used regularly in conversations about why more people don’t attend public meetings, with the family commitments added as an important factor.
I’m not suggesting any parents suddenly begin abandoning their children for hours on weeknights, or pull them out of meaningful activities to attend what might be boring meetings for them, and in a language of acronyms that probably wouldn’t sound familiar. I’m suggesting more people should attend more meetings, more of the time.
Occasionally, there have been hot-button issues that bring a one or two meeting spike in attendance. But, by and large, these issues are either resolved or fade into the background, and the crowds don’t remain consistent.
Government seems to operate differently around large groups of people. That’s not really a fault, in my mind; most of us would be more self-conscious and self-aware if addressing a packed auditorium than if sitting at home with family members.
Government needs our help to succeed. It’s not that we must choose between blindly following leaders and raging in opposition; it’s that we need to raise concerns that might not be on the minds of leaders, and to ask intelligent, articulate questions that aid in the decision-making process.
Leaders might have mostly themselves to blame for the high level of distrust the American people have for government. Sometimes we need to fix problems we didn’t create, and the fix to today’s vast and deep government is issues cannot be rooted in prejudicial contempt for leadership, loud and emotional condemning of wrongdoing and personal disrespect of anyone in public service.
We don’t need to say “pretty please, with sugar on top” for each request or demand, nor do we need to engage in more of the money-throwing or brown-nosing that has been around throughout human history. We need to politely and intelligently tell government what’s important.
Contact Jason W. Brooks at
641-792-3121 ext. 6532
or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com