Democracy Summer Week 5! And Psychological (Re)Constitutional #4
Watch Hannah Arendt and Melt ICE with a Rally in Dublin July 19
Hi all,
Compassion is at the root of our survival. It is not held singly by any one of us. We must make it together. Society is the sum of our love, and we are individually and collectively quite a “work-in-progress." Never give up on a better tomorrow.
— Ravi Chandra, M.D.
I watched the new American Masters documentary on Hannah Arendt last night, soon after the Big Ugly Monstrosity passed. It was chilling to hear Arendt speak of laws protecting safety and society changing overnight in Germany in the 1930s. I feel the same thing has happened to us, except now we have the slight advantage of memory of tragedy, to hopefully prevent a repetition.
Watch Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny on American Masters
EO 9066 changed the lives of over 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them American citizens, in 1942. This is happening again.
MacMillan D. ICE prepares detention blitz with historic $45 billion in funding, Washington Post, July 4, 2025
Much of the new allocation from Congress will go to private prison contractors tasked with doubling the nation’s capacity to lock up migrants…
“As of June, about one-third of ICE detainees have never been charged with a criminal offense, and ICE is now arresting people with no criminal charges at a higher rate than people charged with crimes, according to Austin Kocher, a research assistant professor at Syracuse University who studies immigration data.”
Please show up for migrants, the rule of law, due process, and a society which is the sum of our love, not the sum of cruelty and the subtraction of cortex. The GOP (Grandiosely Organized Psychopathy) is not who we are. They have strayed by “doubling and tripling down” on their position, instead of self reflection and connection when under distress. Is cruelty the point? Or do they just have a missing piece, that challenges us to create connection in their wake? Their defensiveness is an offensive “teacher,” no doubt - but I think we’ll have something to teach them too, and show each other.
The proof is in the pudding.
Let’s make our ICE-proof pudding on July 19, 2025. If you’re in the SFBA, come to a rally:
All Out Against ICE in Dublin, California
Start: Saturday, July 19, 2025•11:00 AM
Location: Don Biddle Park•Dublin Blvd & Columbus St, Dublin, CA 94568 US
RSVP online - and sign up for updates through Tsuru for Solidarity.
Democracy Summer Week 5
Continuing Danielle Allen’s fantastic course:
We the People: Civic Engagement in a Constitutional Democracy
This week only took about an hour, and covered the “levers of change” in our democracy - the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches. The objectives this week were to:
Understand what “levers of change” are available to changemakers in a constitutional democracy;
Decide if, when, and how to engage in civic and social action by learning the advantages and disadvantages of different levers of changes across contexts.
From 1807 forward, many have fought to permanently extend the right to vote to the poor, people of color, women, and young people, eventually resulting in constitutional amendments protecting the right to vote. While today, the United States has universal suffrage. In other words, every adult citizen is, at least in principle, eligible to vote.
As a civic actor, you are confronted with the same sets of questions as Prince Hall: are we pursuing voice, influence, or both? We covered Prince Hall last week:
I would add this observation. There are at least these three levels:
The concrete laws and policies that govern us.
The culture that envelops us.
Our own mind/hearts.
Now obviously these all interact. None of these is intrapsychic or personally held. Our mind/hearts can create and influence culture, and obviously culture impacts and influences us. None of us can read everything we need to know, but we can cultivate the spirit of connection, appreciation, and mutual support in times of distress. That actually makes up for whatever lacks in policy and culture, and in fact changes the culture as well.
Obviously tyranny is the beast that the founders fought against, and it is what faces us now. I think that this tyranny shows its impact in our individual and collective relationships. We can amplify fear and terror, or we can grow our capacity to relate to fear. This will produce a ripple effect, and eventually a wave and tsunami that will vanquish tyranny. Keep the faith. We got this.
Call this the Chandra/SF Love Dojo Corollary to Gramsci.
Continuing with the course:
Choosing one’s civic persona means being intentional about whether one is pursuing voice or influence in any given moment. Effective changemakers use both voice and influence at different times but they typically bring a great deal of intentionality to any effort to achieve influence.
Voice and influence are connected to loyalty - to either a group or a higher cause. I propose that the “cause” is a transformation of power, how we think about power and how power is manifest.
Chandra R. Which of Six Power Types Will You Embody and Support? | Psychology Today, September 15, 2022
Voice becomes influence when it interacts with formal institutions of power. Constitutions set up ways to change the laws and also set up ways to change the constitutional rules themselves, even while staying true to a community’s core commitments. The core values and commitment of a government laid out in constitutions are typically harder to change than standard laws. We call these different ways of bringing change “levers of change.” In most constitutional democracies, there are three core levers of change:
you can change the rules directly by amending the Constitution
you can reinterpret the rules of the Constitution and the rights it guarantees in the court system
you can bring change by voting for new decision-makers or on referenda.
Ordinary people, working together, can “pull” each lever to achieve change at all levels of government – though each lever is suited for different goals and purposes. In the coming sections, we will look at three levers in American government – amendments, the courts, and voting – their advantages and disadvantages, and how they’ve been used by changemakers throughout history.
Painfully, the Equal Rights Amendment languishes without official “archiving” though it has passed the very high bar to become a Constitutional Amendment.
Also painfully, the SCOTUS has interpreted the Constitution against the well-being of the nation. This divided decision is just one example.
Espinoza v.Montana Department of Revenue:
“The application of the Montana Constitution’s “no-aid” provision to a state program providing tuition assistance to parents who send their children to private schools discriminated against religious schools and the families whose children attend or hope to attend them in violation of the Free Exercise Clause. Chief Justice John Roberts authored the opinion on behalf of the 5-4 majority.”
Citizens United is another, and last week’s 6-3 decision limiting a lower court’s ability to issue nationwide injunctions on birthright citizenship is another.
Well, that pretty much punks the Judicial branch and Legislative process, and we have seen what is happening with the Executive branch.
We’re left with voting, culture, and the culture of voting and engagement - concretely, the way we engage with each other. As Gandhi said, we have to be the change we hope to see in the world.
I’ve heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change, and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more. The point of protest is to raise public awareness, to put a spotlight on injustice, and to make the powers that be uncomfortable; in fact, throughout American history, it’s often only been in response to protests and civil disobedience that the political system has even paid attention to marginalized communities. But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices — and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands… So the bottom line is this: if we want to bring about real change, then the choice isn’t between protest and politics. We have to do both. We have to mobilize to raise awareness, and we have to organize and cast our ballots to make sure that we elect candidates who will act on reform.
Barack Obama, "How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change" Medium June 1, 2020
People must be activists and raise their voices, but also elect leaders who will listen and respond in responsible ways. Dissatisfactions exist, but only through this call and response do we develop rational and compassionate ways of dealing with suffering, but also grow the culture to understand itself. Democracy should be a self-reflective activity or nothing at all.
Voting is our ultimate form of non-violent cultural change. Peaceful protest activates our agency as well. Peaceful protest is also peaceful affirmation of identity and relatedness.
Allen went on to discuss the idea of compulsory voting as they have in Australia and other countries. This boosts voter turnout by about 6% but also seems to boost sloganeering rather than education.
Finally, she offered these resources:
Handout on Plyler v Doe, a 1982 Supreme Court case, which overturned a 1975 Texas law that made it legal to withold funding for the education of undocumented children.
Timeline of voting rights in the United States produced by the Democratic Knowledge Project
Long ago, I read Joseph Conrad’s Secret Agent. I concluded that love is the most secret agent of all. I’m not speaking of romantic love, but of the kind of friendship, solidarity, and compassion that gets us through hard times.
Hannah Arendt felt betrayed by friends and the community of intellectuals she idolized, particularly Martin Heidegger, whom she fell in love with as his student (!!!) … but who became a very active Nazi. To my great surprise, she ended up rekindling that love much later in her life, after all the horrors.
Sheesh, Hannah. I guess a hard life needs some solace, and I hope she found it. Me? I’m not personally promising love to Nazi’s in the aftermath of this ish. As a friend said to me, “love your enemies - sure. But first get his boot off my neck.”
Evil is banal — but we truly need a love supreme and sublime. Can we get to that?
Find your joy this weekend!
Warmly,
Ravi