Creating A Healthy Democracy For Everyone
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Episode #14: “Creating A Healthy Democracy For Everyone”
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How can we include everyone in political decisions? Duncan welcomes Healthy Democracy to the show to discuss democratic lotteries that empower citizens in the political process. In this episode, you can how they’re making sure your voice matters.
Discover how profound it is to be genuinely included in your democracy, where you can help policymakers form legislation and have an impact in your local community.
Learn how a healthier democracy that represents everyone’s voice is scientifically proven to increase trust in government. Voter apathy could be a thing of the past with these developments. Listen now to discover these awesome tools and how you can join in.
Highlights in this episode:
Discover how organizations like Healthy Democracy choose a representative sample of the population.
Healthy Democracy’s Alex explains how they ensure elected officials listen to the panelists.
Learn how we can overcome political apathy and level up our democracy.
Linn describes how our current governmental systems are patronizing from the perspective of the 99%.
Uncover what a deliberative conversation looks like.
Understand why Healthy Democracy doesn’t aim for consensus.
Learn about the barriers to including these awesome tools in our world.
Linn explains how we can build the movement and change the game.
Linn: “I feel like democracy probably dies with disillusionment and disinterest. As Alex said, we think of government as this entity right now where.
At least, I really hope that at some point in the future, we can think of government as just a tool. Yes, there are people who do work for government for pay, but we all basically are government. Government is just a thing that we all use to do stuff with each other. Rather than a thing that does stuff to us or for us either positively or negatively.
It is, right now, a very patronizing sort of relationship from the perspective of the 99% of folks who are living their lives. And that's not a recipe for our ongoing ability to make decisions with each other, which is the core of what we're talking about here. So yeah, I feel like that's the real meeting here. We have to get many more people and people who look like all the rest of us involved in all the stuff of governance.
All the stuff that we, everyday folks think, is impossible to do right now. We think like, “Oh, that's too complicated. That's too contentious. Oh no, that needs to be negotiated between X and Y parties. Oh no, that needs to be left to the technical experts.”
BS. We can all be involved in that stuff.
Yes. There's a really important role for technical experts in particular, but there is an interpretation of expertise that always needs to happen for decisions to get made. And the question is not whether that interpretation is happening. It's who is doing that interpreting. Unless we are all involved at some point in our lives.
There's no reason why we should be surprised at folks’ growing disillusionment, and that is more true of our sort of younger generations than older generations. It is a progressively worsening problem. There's no time like the present to solve it with big ideas.”
About this week’s guest:
Healthy Democracy is a US-based nonpartisan nonprofit that works to elevate everyday people in public decision-making processes.
It uses democratic lotteries to empower new voices and guarantee representation across our many diversities. The organization designs deliberative processes that prove a more collaborative politics is possible. Healthy Democracy partners with governments, nonprofits, and other organizations to bring together Lottery-Selected Panels that tackle our most difficult policy issues.
Linn and Alex co-lead program development and process design at Healthy Democracy. They co-coordinate HD's complex public processes and consult on deliberative democracy projects in the US and abroad.
Kacey joined Healthy Democracy in June 2021 and manages various outreach and communication projects. She builds and maintains relationships with HD’s outside partners and leads educational programs about the work they do.
Connect with Healthy Democracy:
Email: info@healthydemocracy.org
Go to the info-packed episode page for resources from this episode.
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