The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Activated Citizenship: The Transformative Power of Citizens’ Assemblies 1st Edition by Marjan H. Ehsassi

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

Activated Citizenship: The Transformative Power of Citizens' Assemblies 1st Edition by Marjan H. Ehsassi Amazon.com/Activated-Citizenship-Transformative-Citizens-Assemblies/dp/1032798564 Berggruen.org To counter pervasive levels of citizen disengagement from political institutions, this book examines democratic innovations that meaningfully engage with citizens to address some of the deficits of Western representative democracies. Citizens’ assemblies provide one such innovation, offering opportunities for more consistent participation between elections, more meaningful input in government decision making, and more impactful platforms for participation. This cutting-edge book introduces a new definition for an Activated Citizen, along with a methodology to measure civic and political engagement. Relying on a mixed-methods approach and field research conducted in Paris, Brussels, Ottawa, and Petaluma (California), as well as participant observations, over 180 surveys, 61 in-depth interviews and storytelling, the book provides case studies and in-depth analysis of hotbutton topics including climate change, unhoused populations, democratic expression, assisted suicide and euthanasia. Each chapter weaves quantitative results with rich qualitative testimonies from participants, government representatives, and observers. Based on empirical evidence, the book explores the ways in which government-led citizens’ assemblies can promote a more Activated Citizen. To fully realize the transformative potential of deliberative platforms, a final chapter offers a blueprint for impact, outlining concrete measures along with recommendations for the design and implementation of future government-initiated deliberative platforms. Activated Citizenship urges the deliberative community to be more discerning and intentional to more positively impact participants’ knowledge, sense of community, enthusiasm, political engagement, as well as their sense of meaningful voice. It will be required reading for all students and scholars interested in political participation and democratic innovation.About the author Marjan H. Ehsassi is the Executive Director of FIDE NA (the Federation for Innovation in Democracy - North America). She is also a Future of Democracy Fellow (non-resident) at the Berggruen Institute and a Senior Innovations Fellow at the Institute for Democratic Engagement and Accountability (IDEA at OSU). A former litigator, she is a skilled advocate, a strategic policy advisor and a movement builder. Marjan received her Doctorate in International Affairs (DIA) from SAIS at Johns Hopkins University with a concentration on democratic innovations, citizen engagement and deliberation. A comparativist of citizens’ assemblies, she has been deeply involved in the research, design, and implementation of several CAs in France, Belgium, Canada and the US. She served as one of four guarantors of the French Citizens’ Convention on the End of Life (2022-23) and on the Oversight Committee of the G1000 We Need to Talk Citizens’ Panel (2023).

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Folks, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. When the Iron Lady sings to that mix official, welcome to the the show, but pretty much everybody has been on this darn show that is anybody and is smart.

We only let the smart people on. I'm not sure how they let me on, but maybe it's because my name is on it and I bought the mic. So we have an amazing young lady on the show today. We're going to be talking to her about her hot new book. And this is kind of topical because I think we're 10 days out from the election or nine to nine or 10 days out from the 2024 presidential election. So if you're watching this on YouTube five to 10 years from now, please don't put a comment

saying the election is going on now. Go to goodreach.com, Fortress Griswold, linkedin.com, Fortress Griswold. Griswold is one of the TikToks and all those crazy places on the internet. She is the author of the new book that came out, I believe, in August of 2024, Activated Citizenship, the Transformative Power of Citizens Assembly. And today we're going to be talking with her today about some of her insights in the book. Marjan Asasi is on the show with us today. Did I get that right?

You did. You did. I could. I want to make sure. A lot of energy and the brain goes, woo-hoo, at the beginning of the show. So we're going to be talking about her and her new book and everything that goes into it. She's the executive director of the Federation for Innovation in Democracy in North America. She is also a future democracy fellow non-resident at the let me make sure I get this name right.

Burr Gruen Institute. Do I get that right too? Perfect. I'm smacking them. I'm just hitting them just right out of the park here on a Monday morning. We're trying to get this show rolling down the road here. You know, you lose a lot of stuff over the weekend. You're like, what do I do again?

She is a skilled advocate, strategic policy advisor, and movement builder. She's a fierce believer in the integrity of voice. She promotes citizen-centric democratic processes that are inclusive, hold government accountable, build civic muscle, and impactful. She is a lawyer who's worked to enhance space for civil society in some of the most complex environments, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea. She completed her doctorate in international affairs at John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies with a concentration

on democratic innovations, deliberative democracy, and citizens assembly. And hopefully we'll still have that democracy next year. Welcome to the show. How are you? Thank you, Chris. It's great to be in conversation with you. It's good to have you. It's good to know there's people out there keeping the old Constitution alive or have an interest in it, I guess. Give me your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Not too many dot coms. I mean, you can find us on our web page for Feed-In North America.

We have our web page. We also are on LinkedIn. And I have my author page, which is The Fifth Freedom. So give us the overview of your book, Activated Citizenship. Thank you. So I, you know, Chris, I spent, so I'm a lawyer, as you said, and I came to the United States from Canada to practice law in New York City. And I moved to Washington, and I turned to international development. And so I worked at the World Bank. I worked at the National Democratic Institute,

the American Bar Association, a number of different international organizations working to really strengthen democratic institutions in other parts of the world. And my mother-in-law always used to say to me, who's American, what are you doing going around the world? There are so many problems in this country that you can try and address. And I didn't really resonate for a while because I think as an immigrant, you just come in and, you know, my value add was more international than I thought it was. And then 2015, 16, things changed for me. And I think the fact that I raised two kids in this country, we're based in Washington, D.C., and after the election, I really couldn't justify going around the world doing what I was doing around governance and democratic institutions. So I was really wanting to pivot and to focus on the U.S., but I wasn't sure what I needed to do.

And so I actually applied to Johns Hopkins here, SICE, the School of Advanced International Studies, and started my doctoral degree. I didn't know very much about citizens' assemblies, and my problem statement, the question for me, was really, why are citizens in Western democracies so disengaged from their political institutions? And are there platforms out there that, once you participate in them, make you want to engage with your political institutions more? So that's where my research started yeah we seem to have a lot of i mean americans really take their democracy for granted and they then there's a lot of the youth too that are seem to be turning against democracy a little bit i mean i don't know it's kind of interesting most in i think most people in their youth are kind of revolutionaries

as it were it seems like when they get some real estate and get some money and get a family going they kind of they kind of start liking their democracy a little bit better i guess but it's interesting how we just take it so for granted and yet we have people dying in the desert to try and cross here as immigrants you know doing that whole journey people willing to die to come to this country and we're just sitting around on our mcdonald's the big macs going yeah i'll get to that vote whenever i suppose so i think we need as much help as we can get what do you feel what do you think gives you a unique perspective on how citizens value our democracy and voting i think you have some personal experience in that sure i mean i'll just say you know the comments that you made before, I'll just point to what you just said, which is the way citizens value their democracy

and voting, I think what you just said is I think part of the problem with our democracy is that much of the way that we define our democracy has to do with our vote. I get so frustrated every morning, especially leading to our election in about eight days, when everybody's talking about your voice, your vote. I mean, voice and vote are one in this country. And that's how we define our democracy. Democracy is supposed to be a daily activity. We're supposed to be able to participate in our democracy, in our democratic culture on a daily basis. And that's not the case in the United States. And so for me, there really are three big issues that are

real problems. And then that is really sort of most of it is around the architecture of our democracy. It's kind of the way that we define our democracy turns our youth against democracy. And I don't know that they're against democracy, they're just against the way that they can engage with their democracy. One of them is that kind of that minimalistic definition, which is in between elections, it's really, really hard to hold our government accountable. There are very little ways, I mean, you can go to your town halls, and you can go to the community engagement that your mayor leads. But that's not really, you're not holding government accountable in those spaces, really. The second really big deficit, I think, is that the policies that we are asking our citizens to live by on a

day-to-day and abide by are not really demonstrating their preferences. So citizens are less and less seeing their preferences reflected in the policies and the laws that they're supposed to live by. And then the third piece, which is really important, I think, and we can talk about any one of these, is there's a real lack of diversity of voices at the table. And so it's always the usual suspects. I mean, and this is a problem also for our mayors and our congressmen, our senators, because they usually, when you talk to them about talking to their constituents, they're scared because it's usually the same people who are angry who show up. This is why I think Citizens' Assemblies, and I'm happy to talk about them,

are kind of provide platforms that are very different than the way that we can currently engage with. How would you define or give us an image of what the Citizens' Assembly looks like? Is it small groups in different areas? Is it an online community, you know, like Facebook sort of thing or groups on Facebook or maybe a private, you know, there's lots of private group setups you can do. They're interesting. What does it look like? Sure. So citizens assemblies are for the most part in person, though we do have them online as well, or they can complement each other. So we do hybrid models as well. But if I could just take a moment, there are basically four elements to a citizen's assembly. The very first one, which is really important, is that government mandates

it. So it's something that is driven by government. So we have government, whether it's at the, and I can give examples at the national level that I've been involved with, but also at the local level, where government says, I have a public problem. You know, whether it's climate, it's homelessness, it's housing affordability, it's end of life. And I want my public to come and provide real input. So that's number one. The second part of what makes a citizens assembly just completely different than any other citizen engagement is that we use sortition. We use democratic lottery, which means that we send letters or emails or phone calls to a very broad and random base of a city or a country. And we pull people that we usually don't hear from.

So in my 17 years of citizen engagement work, there is no platform that brings together a more representative sampling of people. So that in itself is unreal. It's completely different. The third part is that they learn together. So unlike the polarization that we currently see where people are constantly fighting at each other and fighting with each other and debating and arguing, in a citizens assembly, one third of the process is around learning. So people come together before arguing and debating. They learn together. And all the research that we have suggests how their learning changes and their positions change.

So they learn more about the issue. They learn more about government. And that changes their position. And then they deliberate. So citizens' assemblies are deliberative platforms. And then they write proposals. They write proposals for government to then they deliberate. So citizens assemblies are deliberative platforms. And then they write proposals. They write proposals for government to then engage with. And they submit that final report of the proposals to government.

And that's the fourth piece, which is government accountability. So government, that same mandating body that I mentioned at the beginning, will meet with the citizens. And you asked the question about what the room feels like. It could be anywhere from about 40 people to about 100. I've been the largest citizens assembly that I was involved with in France was 185 people from all over France. Yeah. Wow. So it sounds like you've been using this model all over the world in different places, at least where democracy is probably current.

Do you think that if we set up enough of these, we can get people motivated to care? You know, I mean, that seems to be the biggest problem is getting people motivated to feel like they have a voice. It's interesting to me that I'm constantly, you know, people complain to me about the government. I'm like, do you vote? No. You know, I don't vote. You made a decision. Whether you make a know i don't vote you made a decision whether you make a choice or not you've made a choice and if you you get the government you deserve i'm a big

believer in that if you don't like your government look in the mirror and if you're not if you're not taking care of your democracy and your freedoms they disappear very quickly and it's interesting you know i think you mentioned the green room. You came here as a, as an immigrant or from another country. It's interesting how immigrants have just a love for our democracy and they realize the power and potential of it because they've lived someplace that was less. And yet here in America,

we're just like, yeah, whatever. No, that's a, it's a great point. I write in my book about, you know, it's funny when you get older you start really looking at the journey that you've taken and you start finding those like

why why am i why am i so interested in this and i think in the process of writing this book i really kind of realized that much of my interest in meaningful and consequential voice which in my book i call voice insecurity i I believe that people in, and I'm not comparing Iran, I grew up in Iran and I'm happy to talk about that a little bit. I lived in Iran between 10 and 18. And I think part of the reason

I'm such a strong advocate for people having actually a voice is because I've lived in countries where citizens don't have access to voice. And so it hurts my heart to see that this country is not really living up to its democratic ideals or values. And so I do think that you're right. I think those of us who've lived in more fragile, less developed democracies don't take our democracy for granted. Yeah. I mean, we, we, fortunately on our show, we have a lot of great historians and, and everything

that we, that we have on the show to talk to about all the different stuff that we do. And, you know, so we learn a lot, but you know, it's one of those things where you've got to, you've got to really value the, what you have. I mean, if, if you, once you lose democracy, I mean, you know, I watch Venezuela go from a thriving democracy and a very rich country in oil to, you know, over two different presidencies that, you know, we're socialists and they're like, oh yeah, it'll be better this way. And we'll let, you know, some guy and yada, yada, yada. I forget the first guys, but in fact, I forget the second guy. It's Monday today, isn't it? My brain is still waiting for the coffee to kick in.

But it's Venezuelans, two presidents that they had. I've watched their whole economy and everything just going to the toilet. And they just keep electing the worst people and thinking something's going to change. And people need to care. I mean, I was a Republican

before 9-11. I'm an atheist, so I wasn't really happy of the Dick Cheney presidency being run by Dick Cheney and no big contracts to Halliburton and some of the religious oppression. I think the last straw for me was when they banned using fetus material for research on science. But 9-11 was the big wake-up point. I woke up with 9-11 going, I thought the world loved this. We're really hated. What's going on? Why are we so hated in the world that this is happening?

So 9-11 was a real wake-up moment for me to go, hey, maybe I understand the world a bit better. Maybe I understand America a bit better. i understand america a bit better we understand this whole country that i'm profiting off of as an entrepreneur and and i think you know more people need to do that journey i think i agree with you i mean i think that's good for you for for having that moment and really taking it seriously i think what you say though i don't know that i entirely agree with the fact that I think that yes, people need to care. But I think government also needs to give them a reason

to care. It's also government's job and duty to inspire people. So that I think that, okay, if I vote, then it means something. If I go to that town hall, it's going to mean something. And I don't think we do that really well. And I think what we're seeing, unfortunately, is that a lot of people aren't necessarily running to things in the sense that they're running away from the current way things are and they want change. But they're not running to things. Yeah. No. I would agree with you.

I believe that we should do what some countries have done enact a law that says basically everybody has to vote and i don't know what they do i guess they throw you in jail if you don't but i i think they need to do that where they need to force everyone to vote and that would be something that would really change it you would think that when you're conscripted with with you know you're having to register as young man for the draft and all that good stuff you know this this is a big issue and and at that point you should go wait i have to die i'm potentially up to die for my country what maybe i should care about what's going on but sadly that's not really works i mean when you're 20 you're 20 18 to 30s you're you're chasing money

you're chasing the men and women are chasing each other let's put it that way and you know it's hard to focus but you know one of the problems probably that we've had in our country too is is over the years a lot of republican legislatures have dialed back funding for schools and i watched that with my mother being a teacher for 20 30 years in ut. She would constantly call me. They've doubled our class sizes. They've cut our budget again. My mother was spending $250 a month to buy supplies for her elementary school children

and was never refunded for it. It's crazy. And, you know, we don't teach civic in school anymore. We don't teach why history is important. So these people have no idea. And now we're starting to have these generations of young people that are like, well, maybe communism is so bad or socialism. And you're just like, no, it's really bad.

You go just look at Venezuela. We mentioned Cuba in your bio. You know, Cuba right now can't, it doesn't have power. It can't keep power on for any length of time. And evidently the country is now going to fall into total collapse because without power it's you know you're going to go back to the old world so there's some examples of in the world you don't have to look far no for sure i mean i'm not sure though there is a lot of research out there that suggests

that making voting mandatory doesn't necessarily engage citizens after the vote. Because what it ends up doing in some countries, and I think Argentina is one of them, is people get really angry that they have to vote. And so that then they become even less engaged after their vote. I think that the research isn't necessarily suggesting, of course, you have higher turnout, naturally. But that doesn mean that it people are more satisfied with their democracy you asked me how how citizens assembly change or what the impact is and so the research that i have and if your audience is interested in picking up the book so i actually what i did as part of my research and the time i was doing that doctoral research i never thought the book would become a book or my research would become a book. But I created this definition of what I thought an engaged citizen should look like.

Like, what are those what are the attributes of an engaged citizen in a democracy? And I divided that into five variables, which I measure in the book. And one of them is is learning. So do platforms, these citizens assemblies platform that they're engaging with, do they actually increase learning? Because I do think one of, and you alluded to this with your mom and lack of civics training and just schools, I think government generally, local and national, has just kind of forgotten how important it is to promote and inform citizens. Like that is just not a goal anymore in a way that I... And I think it's some people's goals some party's goals to keep people in the dark and and to intentionally do that you know we just recently saw some rulings from

from courts fortunately that stood in the brink but you know we saw some activities like virginia where they were kicking people off the voter rolls georgia has had a few shenanigans they've been trying to pull fortunately Fortunately, the courts have stepped in and said, no, you're not going to do that. I believe in Georgia, they were trying to, you know, they've just been trying to figure out every way they can to turn that into a state where somehow they can try and manipulate the gears to win the electoral college. One thing you talk about in your book is this thing called voice insecurity. Give us a definition that you're using and what does that mean?

I mean, to me, voice insecurity is much like food insecurity. You know, we talk about food insecurity and it's become an accepted term that people don't have access to adequate resources of food. And I feel very similarly and very sadly, in this great country that we live in, people don't really have access to meaningful and consequential voice. And what do I mean by that? I mean that they are not engaged in platforms, in citizen engagement platforms, where their voice actually matters, where government listens to what they have to say. And so in the course of a citizens assembly, you're brought in to actually give government input on policy and government decision-making.

And time and time again, we have citizens all over the world who say, government's never actually engaged with me in this way. They've never asked for my voice. They asked me to show up at a town hall. They asked me to do a poll, but it doesn't really matter what I say. And so that sense that your voice means something, that your input matters, and that it's consequential because

the process that I was just mentioning to you in France, we were engaged in a citizen convention on the end of life. So should the law in France change to introduce assisted suicide and euthanasia. And of the 184 people that were part of that convention, 76% of them in the end wrote proposals that wanted government to change the legal framework. And that is now in front of the National Assembly. Now, I was just saying, so seeing the result of your work actually translate in real policy and legal change is really powerful and it completely changes your relationship with government and you feel empowered right yes yes because you're like you're like part of the system you know this this subscribes to something i i started doing recently so i mentioned that i flipped out of the Republican Party and I slowly became a Democrat.

Then I became a liberal. Then the far left woke craziness of the Democratic Party. I think maybe a moderate. Nowadays, I ascribe to being a moderate, a Democrat. And what's interesting about is taking that position has given me a different perspective of looking at both sides and trying to look at both sides in a way of, okay, what did they want? Because I'm really totally hatefully against the extremists of both parties. So just because I'm a Democrat doesn't mean I put up with the extremists. And so I've said, how can I look at both sides? And so

it's given me more perspective by putting myself as a moderate as to trying to figure out how to balance kind of the old Tip O'Neill world and the world that you're talking about where we can talk as citizens and go, how can we fix this? Where can we meet in the middle? This polarization that started with Newt Gingrich in Congress where it's all or nothing, F you, we're going to sabotage everything to make it worse for the next presidency so we can win again. You know, that's sort of the name calling, the vitriolness.

You know, that all started with Newt Gingrich. And being able to have those conversations really good. Now, right now in America, we have people doing what you're talking about, where citizens are getting together and doing stuff, but it's like project 2025. It's the heritage foundation, the federal society, you know, doing these things,

or it's probably billionaires or corporations that are doing this. And that's where the problem in America is, is we need to do it ourselves. Like you're suggesting not, Not the billionaires in the federal society. No, no. I mean, what completely, I mean, you're absolutely right. And you've put your finger on it. So what drives citizens assemblies ultimately is to create that, what we call rough consensus. So you want the citizens that you've brought together, who are learning together to actually start drafting proposals that represent that kind of the common ground. And it's not easy to get there,

but we always get there. And we always get there in such a civil manner. People aren't angry with each other. People understand that they're there to help government decisions. and they take that role so seriously. And so part of that is kind of, and it is so magical, Chris, to watch that collective emergence, the emergence of collective intelligence, and it inevitably happens. And then the other piece of that that's also important that I'd love to add to this conversation is that it's not just about reaching rough consensus from coming to agreement. It's also, there's a muscle that we've completely lost in this country. And that's this muscle of being able

to problem solve collectively. Like working together, coming together around really pesky public problems and trying to find solutions strengthens that other muscle as well, which is really important to live in aens that other muscle as well, which is really important to live in a democracy. And to your point, you know, I've also been very, it's been really hard as a Democrat, and I've always considered myself a progressive, to see that we have, again, lost

respect for process. It is all about outcomes. On both extremes, it's about the outcomes. It's not about taking the time to really respect and promote a democratic culture. Yeah. I mean, it seems to be something that's lost. I mean, we just kind of have a culture of greed right now, I think, really. But yeah, the citizens need to do this, not the heritage societies, Project 2025, putting stuff together and saying this is how government's going to work and and we need to hold we need to hold the politicians accountable you know one of the problems this country is is we allow them to lie to us they

know they can lie to us so they just bold face lie to us and it's like a really weird relationship dynamic that we're like yeah just go ahead and lie to us that's fine with us and then we know that you're lying and you're like what is all this bullshit then why don't we have a debate and all this stuff and so one of the other perceptions that changed me with moving to moderation or being a moderate democrat was i started having conversations with people and I started saying, okay, look, it, you kind of have to find people that you can have these political conversations with that aren't going to go full toxic, right? You gotta, you can't just go to any Trump rally and just find people walking around. So you got to find people that, you know,

have a, have a, have a thing thing where they they really want to learn something they want to grow and so i'll say okay we'll have a political conversation but here's the foundation the boundary we're gonna have this conversation as americans we're all americans the constitution is the most number one important thing here our democracy we're gonna have this conversation that we're all americans we're all in the same boat together like we used to be in the 80s when i grew up we all hated russia and instead of parties you know dancing with putin and so i say i say that and i say so as soon as we start yelling at each other as the gop and the republicans and the democrats and you know the butt heads the conversation needs

to go back to, we're Americans, how do we fix our democracy? How do we learn to agree on stuff? And that seems like a very, kind of what you're doing, on an expanded, much more detailed, better level of having these citizens communities trying to figure out how to,

how can we meet in the middle? How can we tip O'Neill this? How can we balance it out? That's part of it for sure, and you're absolutely right. The other part of it is really building community. Because especially when you read over and over again about this kind of problems of loneliness that we're having, this epidemic of loneliness across the country that's quite pervasive, and that people aren't feeling that their lives are meaningful and they

don't have community. The way that citizens assemblies, and that's why you asked about online versus in person, I'm much more in favor of having these in person because I see the way that you really kind of promote belonging and the way that people do start feeling this sense of, wow, like I came in and Chris and I were completely in disagreement over this issue. But I see that we're also there's so many points of common between us. And we want what's best for our society, we want what's best for our children. And that really creates community. And it's been really beautiful to see how people stay in touch with each other afterwards. We've actually built these alum

networks for people to continue being together, seeing together. And these are people from different neighborhoods, from different parts of the country. And that's very, very powerful. The other one of the variables that I didn't talk about is enthusiasm. So one of the variables in the book that I kind of use in the case studies that I have is the, I call it the effervescent variable, which kind of gauges to what extent people are excited about their democracy. Because that's another thing that we forget about, we don't talk about. But it's important to kind of feel motivated and to feel positive and optimistic about the democracy that you're engaging in. Oh, yeah. I mean, you definitely want to have that going on because

it's everything, really, when it comes down to it. What haven't we talked about that you do or some of the work that you do or what's in your book, et cetera? What haven't we touched on that we should flesh out? I would say a couple of things. I mean, the first one is I'd love to say a little word about trust. I'm usually, you know, I know trust is really important to a healthy democracy, but I would like, and I would encourage us to think a little bit more as we think about the democracy of tomorrow and next year and the next decade. I think that, you know, defining the health of our democracy through a lens, which is often the case, right? We see all these evaluations that are around how much confidence do people have in their political institutions or their leaders.

I think what's beautiful about citizens assemblies is that when they're designed well and implemented well, people not only their trust in their government is increased, but their trust in themselves is. And I think that we often miss that. To be able to feel that I, as a citizen of the United States, can actually have an impact on my democracy and that sense of empowerment that comes with it, I think is really underestimated. And I think that we need to focus more on that.

We need to focus more on the fact that government, you know, the people are not a risk to be managed, but they're really a resource. And I think that's something that we should talk about more. And I would just say, you know, we, if anyone's interested, the organization that we have launched since, since the beginning of this year, as you mentioned, is called FIDE, the Federation for Innovation and Democracy in North America. And I just got back from Phoenix where we had our second capacity building school. So we're working with mayors, with city managers across the United States, practitioners to teach them how to do citizens assemblies

around the United States. And it definitely is something that interest is growing and it's great to see that we're kind of building on this momentum in the United States. Awesome, Sos. That's what we want. Let's build some stuff. You know, if you don't get involved with your government, you know,

you right now have almost an oligarchy making decisions for everything. And you need to have a vibrant dealio there. You can't just leave it to somebody else the people you know i hear people say people with all the money have all the make all the rules the people you know citizens united and different rulings like this if you have if you have billionaires run everything or there's you know i've had some conspiracy people they're like oh you know there's a bunch of families that run things and stuff that are rich. That's the more reason the way you need to get involved in what's going on in your group is, you know, you need to care because these things matter.

And if you don't run your government, somebody else will. You may not like the outcome of who the people are that will help run your government. That's another reason you really get involved, I think. No, definitely, yes. Though I will say that I don't want to abdicate government of its responsibilities. I think, yes, it's true that we put this responsibility on citizens to get more involved, but I think that all the data shows that people are feeling more and more, since I think the mid-1960s that decisions that government is making are really in the interest of big lobby groups and business interests.

And it's very hard as a citizen to feel that the work that you're doing is actually going to yield any change or any difference. I do think that government and local government, especially state government, I think they're responsible to really be more innovative. I often say that we're marinating in democratic inertia. And I think that we need our leaders also in government to be more brave, to be more courageous, to have more of a vision in ways that they can kind of bring these processes to the United States. I mean, we are truly a laggard.

I've worked in Europe now and with Canada for years, and we're not doing this. And other countries are far ahead of us in their vision for how they should be engaging with their citizens on a day-to-day basis. Isn't that amazing, man? We don't get it. It's just freaking crazy. You know, this is very insightful. I think we need more of this.

We need more people to care. I think, I'm hoping that we have in a historic election, and not for the reasons we think we will, that we definitely want to preserve democracy. And I think someone's made it very clear that they're not interested in that. And we've had a number of fascist historians and authoritarian historians on the show. The one thing man can learn from his history, I always say, is man never learns from his history. Thereby, we go round and round. And that's the problem. We keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again because we don't invoke change. But I'm a big believer that you get the government you deserve. If you don't

like your government, go check your mirror. If you're not showing up to vote you are voting you you mentioned in in what you just said you know things about how government really doesn't seem to do much reach out or support these sort of assemblies or events and you know one of the things that both parties are guilty of is they really just try and get out the vote for the most part of you know people who are registered democrat democratic registered republican they really focus on that and i hear i've heard a lot of political pundits and political scientists and stuff say you know one of the big problems is we don't do enough reach out to the middle we don't do enough reach out to undecided voters i mean they they try to i think with advertising different things but you know on a local basis they really just try and get out the vote for the local democrat and the local republican and there's not enough

of that outreach to those people that are kind of feeling disaffected i guess which is the best reason to you know utilize some some of the things you're talking about that have worked. Yeah, I mean, the sortition-based work that we do, the Democratic Lottery, really, really allows you to bring people in to reach out to people whose voices we don't hear from. But I think you're right. I mean, I think that's one of the frustrating parts about our democracy and what I said at the beginning, which is the way we define it in such a minimalistic way around elections, is that, you know, even me sitting in Washington, and I know who I want in the White House and who I don't want in the White House in January. But I also worry that once the election is done, and once

the party wins, that they're not really going to care about being more innovative, you know, and regardless of who wins, and I know who I would like to have in the White House, I hope that at that point, we are able to actually show some vision and really sort of think seriously about creating a democratic culture that, to your point, is more inclusive and reaches more voices and is also more responsive so that government decision-making and policy reform really includes a diversity of voices. Yeah, there needs to be more male voices in the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party seems to have done something where they've really focused on women, and they've lost the outreach to young men and men in general.

Sometimes it's hard for me to keep in the Democratic Party, but I have no place to go. I mean, what am I going to do? Fascism? I don't know. But, you know, we recently had an author on who wrote a book several months ago. I'm not sure when the book was written, actually, from memory. But he wrote a book detailing how the Democratic Party needs to do more outreach to men and men and men's rights and men's support and men in general. I mean, you can do both. You can support women and men at men's rights and men's support and men in general i mean you can do both you can support women and men at the same time their their legacies and lives are tied together really men and women and without one everything kind of collapses without without one of the other

i should say but he wrote this great book about how men have been alienated by the Democratic Party's focus on women. And, you know, there's been in the Biden administration, there's been, you know, all these committees for women and supporting women. There's been nothing for men. In fact, in some of the outreach they've gotten, it's just been like, why don't you just take that down the road? Now, unfortunately, in the polls we're seeing and, you know you know editor's note here take your poll and and you know it's kind of like gambling at this point really in the red that wheel but a lot of the polls were showing you know there's a lot of women turning out to vote for vice president harris in record numbers and it looks like we might have a blowout election maybe i don't know it's kind of

weird because you know pennsy Pennsylvania can still throw everything. So it doesn't matter. But a lot of women are out in serious numbers. And you're seeing women in the polls and surveys are really supporting Vice President Harris. But a lot of men are frustrated. And they're alienated by the Democratic Party. And so they're overvoting for Donald Trump. And you can see that in the numbers.'s crazy it's it runs these lines if i could if i could just respond to that i that i don't think that the democratic party has tried to alienate men

i don't think i think their message of course as it should be is very much focused about reproductive rights i mean these are really very serious issues for our democracy. And so I think, in my view, it's a bit short-sighted for men to feel alienated. I think women's issues are men's issues as well. And so the fact that maybe some portions of society feel alienated or not attended to or tended to, I think is a bit short-sighted. I'm going to push back on you on that because what he detailed in his book, a lot of the different groups, associations, and policy administration stuff that went on the Biden

administration. And so there's so many different things that they did to support women, to help women, and everything else. And there's zero for supporting men or doing anything for men's rights or advocating for men's stuff. So if you could show me something, the democratic party has done, I'm in it.

That's not my area of search, but I'll just back on you because as an immigrant woman, who's, who's kind of lived in the, in the United States and has been married to a white American who, you know, is generation after generation American. I think that it's okay to try and lift women. I think women, and has been married to a white American who is generation after generation American.

I think that it's okay to try and lift women. I think women need to lift. It is. I'm not saying this is one of the problems of the conversations. People think one must rise. It must be a scarcity syndrome. And that's why we're here, actually, is because people think of scarcity. So they think women must rise, so men must go down. And that's not the way it works.

And so, like I said, you know, he detailed in his book pretty heavily. And I've witnessed it watching the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, I mean, there's nothing wrong with supporting reproductive rights and abortion, you know, abortion rights and stuff and supporting women. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm all for it but when you're just like hey fuck you to the opposite sex of of a party of voters that a bank of voters that you really need to probably win this election i mean this election when you look at the men and women dynamic between genders if if if the democratic party loses it was because they alienated men. And a lot of their stuff and their design does alienate men.

You know, they've supported the very toxic. You know, they recently, not recently, a couple years ago, they did a workaround around the law that basically said, you know, sexual harassment attorneys. And the lobby was the sexual harassment attorneys and the lobby was the sexual harassment attorneys that want to sue for sexual harassment for every little thing that those can't be done in in I forget what the the where they where they they don't go to a full-blown class-action lawsuit they have to be they have to be argued in I forget the point that you do but there's not enough money in it so they're playing that card you do, but there's not enough money in it. So they're playing that card. You know, there's a lot of things that the Democratic Party has done that doesn't bring

men into the fold. And like you said, you know, government needs to do the reach out. And they haven't done the reach out, obviously, because men are voting for Republicans. And if this election is lost by Kamala Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris, it will be because the Democratic Party didn't do enough reach out to men. They will push that vote over the line, just like they did in 2016. I mean, I came out and voted for Hillary in 2016. A lot of the people I see complaining online didn't even bother to vote for Hillary, or they didn't like Hillary and her emails, or they don't vote for other women because I don't,

they don't like other women. There's a lot of reasons they didn't show up in 2016. Half the reason we're here, Republican rights is because women didn't show up and vote for Hillary. Now they're showing up. But the, but the problem is, is like I say,

if she loses that election, it's because they didn't bring men into the fold. I mean, if I could just say, first of all, this is not my specialty. This is not my area. I'd like to read the book that you mentioned someone has done about sort of reviewing policies. But I mean, I'll just point two things. I think that I'd like to see the demographics of the men who are voting for Trump. I don't think it's a failure of the Biden administration.

I would say it's a failure of American society. I think this country, and we don't talk about it enough, is hugely sexist. So I think men generally have a predisposition to voting for men. I think if Kamala Harris was a 55, 60-year-old white man, we wouldn't be talking about all of this. I do think that we have a problem in this country. And part of it is driven by sexism. And I've lived here for 25 years, and I've lived in a lot of other countries. This country is very sexist. And the other part of that is also fear. I think the fact that a lot of young men may feel a sense of kind of fear or replacement by women who are strong, who are becoming more and more educated.

I'm not sure that we can really point the finger at the Biden administration for that. And so I, you know, again, this is not my area of research, but I'm not sure what you said is accurate, that if Kamala Harris loses this, it's because of the Biden administration's fault. I don't think that you can. I don't think I said that that i said it because men didn't vote for them but but not doing the outreach not doing outreach not having programs or supporting them in any way shape or form is is i think a big problem and it goes to your context of where government needs to make people want to come out and what we've been talking about getting people out to vote but we'll see i guess 21 year old son and all of his friends are voting for kamala harris and none of them feel like they've been brought into the fold

none of them feel excluded um i feel like they could do more all right give us your final thoughts as we go out pitch people to order up the book and and dot coms where people can find you on the interwebs yeah of course so thank you for having me. So please, if we have been able to pique your interest around Citizens Assemblies, please order the book, Activated Citizenship. You can order it on Amazon. You can also order it on Rutledge. I would love to hear your thoughts and do follow us at the Federation for Innovation in Democracy in North America. It's FIDE-NorthAmerica. We capacity building schools and you know we've set up this organization to really kind of help drive demand for citizens assemblies around the country both

at the local level at the state level and also at the national level so please be in touch I love the idea I mean I just want people to get more interested I want more people to win or to care about their democracy. I'm really tired of, you know, after abortion got overturned. And I mean, if you really understand, we've had a lot of great historians in the show. If you really understand how since Nixon, the Republican Party and Citizens United or citizens of the national policy, Betsy DeVos's organization has been trying to you know turn us into a theocracy and they're winning and people and they probably will win depending upon who wins on December 25th or November 5th it's Monday the book I'm referencing was called how Democrats

can win back men how understanding male voters their issues is vital for democracy victory by Mark W Sutton So I'll throw that out there. We did have Alan Lichtman on the show, the famous Alan Lichtman on the show last week. And of course he, if his keys are right, vice president Harris will win. So we have that going for us. I hope he's right. I like democracy. It's really cool. So thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Chris. Thanks so much. It's been fun talking to you. Thank you.

Folks, order up the book wherever fine books are sold. We need to care more about our government, damn it. And hopefully this is a historic election where so many people are going to turn out because they realize our democracy that's almost 250 years is a very fragile piece of paper, and we need to keep it alive. Their constitution is pretty cool. It's not the best. Nothing is perfect, folks, but you get the government you deserve.

The book is entitled Activated Citizenship, The Transformative Power of Citizens' Assembly. And thank you very much for tuning in, everyone. Go to goodreads.com for us. That's chrisfoss. LinkedIn.com for us. That's chrisfoss. chrisfoss1 on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the Internet.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.