Flathead or Phillips: How do we repair America?
Roxanne Gay and David Brooks discuss at the Committee of Seventy
At the plenary keynote address for the Committee of Seventy in July, Roxanne Gay, contributing opinion writer at the NYT and bestselling author, and David Brooks, writer for The Atlantic and bestselling author, took the floor in a panel about the current state of democracy in America.
Brooks pointed to the current gap between America’s ideals and actions the government is taking as “energizing Americans” to seek change. Brooks went so far as to declare that a “noble life” is one spent struggling for an ideal.
“We are reckoning with an incomplete democracy,” Gay opened, immediately pointing to the flaws in the system. Calling for us to undo the harmful actions, while still celebrating the advances and goodness of democracy, she named that “loving America is to critique her.”
Gay was realistic when she talked about the undoing of the current state of democracy. Fixing anything is going to “take a lot of pain, and the most vulnerable Americans are going to feel the brunt of that pain.”
Brooks and Gay represented two ways to have your voice heard to make change happen. Brooks was in favour of persuasion and imitation over fighting, “You change culture through admiration. Culture changes when a small group finds a better way to live, and the rest of us copy.”
Gay, was not for fighting, jokingly saying, “while I am a Libra… I would very much prefer that we don’t have to fight.” Yet, she pointed out that civility is a fantasy when it comes to protesting injustices, and sometimes fighting is required. “Incivility comes from people in power, not from people trying to resist that power.”
Gay clarified when pressed about violence, “Non-violence is not passive. It takes a lot to resist violence and passion in a non-violent way.”
Brooks, like most other panelists that day, told us that our neighborhood is the place to change. He advised us to come together with our community to work for a common project or invent a tradition, something that will “unify you as a community.”
Gay continued to preach the importance of your community, “You can’t complain about your community and not invest in it. You can’t do both.”
If you’re upset with something, don’t complain… vote! If you aren’t old enough to vote, talk to the people around you who are– making a small impact in your own community can have a drastic effect when each person then goes and talks to another.
“Democracy is the only form of government that celebrates each human being,” Brooks declared, so fight for your democratic right and freedom.
Comments