For all the kvetching people make of it, politics is still America's most engaging spectator sport. And we all engage whether we mean to or not. If you complain about the price of gas at the pump, you've made a political statement. If you are denied a federally subsidized student loan, that's a political act. Complain about the price of groceries, snowplows ignoring your street, waiting until old age to get served at your local DMV, that's politics too.
Most of the mundane events that affect all of us are linked in some measure to what we call "politics." Even if a local sports team relocates to another state, or a team comes from another state to yours, it's politics.
Politics in a democracy should ensure the fair distribution of public resources to each person or household. Public servants placed in their positions, either directly or indirectly, by the people they serve, determine what this distribution should be that reflects the community's values and to meet the community's needs. And if the theory gets played out to its logical end, each member of the community has an equal claim as any other member to all the public resources. And where two valid claims by two equally strong members of the community are made on those resources, it is an upper or lower case "p" politician who decides, again ensuring that the decision reflects community values and needs.
The above rendition is a sort of Schoolhouse Rock version of politics. And like the "How a bill becomes a law," it's pure fantasy. We know, at least intuitively, that this is not how decisions are made. As Samuel Huntington once pointed out, most of our distress about politics is born out of the conflict between the ideal and the real. We know how things should be, but each day we confront the world as it is. And while we'd love to live on our little fantasy democratic island, we have to grapple with how things work in the world in which we exist.
So let's use Harold Lasswell's definition of politics: Who gets What, When, How. It probably won't make you feel any better but at least it has the charm of being more realistic. The more you play with this definition you come to see that it at least implies that we're not all equal (the Who), that some resources are more valuable than others (the What), that often the distribution of public resources is timed to achieve a desired political outcome (the When) and that there are ways to distribute or safeguard public resources to achieve maximum benefit (the How). You probably won't like his "Why" answer so suffice it to say that it involves political "elites."
Put more simply, too often the distribution of public resources is a Zero Sum Game - I win, you lose; you win, I lose. There are few Win/Win outcomes. But on the flip side, there are rarely any Lose/Lose outcomes if only because valuable public resources must be distributed to someone for maximum political benefit. In the competition for public goods and services, too often some players are obscured in the process only to be revealed at the end. Or never revealed.
Or to use my late father-in-law's description of politics, "it's a dirty business."
Who makes these decisions about who wins what, when, and how? According to Lasswell, elites - both elected and appointed. And as John Hart Ely wrote, Lasswell's elites are those with the same world views. They tend to have achieved the same levels of education, have the same levels of economic attainment, and live in the same or similar communities. They are members of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, all speaking the same language that reflects a shared reality. Think of it as a club that is controlled by a few of its members, and the rest of the participants should appreciate how lucky they are to be in the club at all.
Nearly thirty years ago, William Greider wrote a book entitled Who Will Tell The People? You may be wondering what we needed to be told. After over 300 pages, Greider delivers the answer: who will tell the people that in the political process, that grand democratic political bazaar in which we all think we can and do participate, that when all is said and done, the people don't count.
And it's into this arena that the scrappy insurgents from RICLAPP entered, hopes high, purpose clear, and failure all but certain.
I recount in great detail our participation in the Rhode Island political process. That process included official political actors/office holders, and "political" actors who hold no office. And also "political" actors who hold appointed offices. And yes, I name names, but I kept the receipts as they say.
You could well ask that knowing what we knew about the Rhode Island political process over the span of decades, why we would want to participate in this "dirty business?" The answer is simple: we had to. In Chapters 6 & 7, I recount the difficulties we had, and some of the reasons for those difficulties, in raising money. It was in that context that I decided, and the board approved, that we needed to make this effort.
Let me state something here that I stated in the book: we did not seek this funding just to survive as an organization but to continue to serve traditionally underserved clients. RICLAPP did provide a necessary service to low-income, indigent clients. That we had to finally close left a service gap in distressed communities, a gap that remains as of this writing. For the providers of our services, we all moved on, some to continue careers in law, others moving out of state, and at least one of us writing a book. We're fine, it's those we served, many on an ongoing basis, who lost in this political process.
Those who could act knew that the problems of underserved civil parties was real, and thought that not only was our service vital but that we did good work. All our community partners vouched for our services. Our clients "liked" us. So if people knew about this existing ongoing problem of unavailable legal services to indigent parties, why didn't they act? Now that's a good question, the "what" is always easier than the "why."
I'd like to definitively answer the "why" and I do offer an analysis in my book. But the brief answer is that there is no commitment to provide legal services to the poor. In the Preface to Volume 1, I republish a Mindsetter piece that I wrote in GoLocalProv, about six months after RICLAPP closed, asking where Rhode Island's Access To Justice Commission was. Three years after that article was published I ask again, where's the Access To Justice Commission?
In Volume 1, Chapter 2, I provide an overview of the efficacy of such Commissions in other states. In fact, Rhode Island is one of the few states without an Access To Justice Commission.
And it's not that state officials don't realize that there's a problem, as evidenced by the District Court "Safe Harbor" program that will hopefully mediate a settlement between landlords and tenants and thus avoid evictions. Overseen by the District Courts, this program hopes to resolve 1000-2000 rental disputes with volunteer lawyers being enticed to sign up by the promise of six CLE credits. The program, dedicating $7 million out of the Covid relief money, ends in December.
This is similar to a program operated in Orange County, Florida, where the county government dedicated $20 million dollars to resolve at least 4000 landlord/tenant disputes. And the program is operated through the County bar association.
Is this a fair comparison? Who knows, but fair or unfair, both programs will conclude within a few months with life returning to the status quo ante. And so it goes....
And please don't forget, every penny of proceeds from the sale of both volumes will be directed toward legal services programs struggling like ours did.
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