‘There’s nothing I can do. I don’t really care. I’m just not into politics.’

How many times have you heard something like that from a friend, or perhaps even from yourself? Honestly, between schoolwork and friends, I have often felt completely powerless to budge the political process. Are we thus condemned to accept the status quo? Are we prepared to allocate a significant chunk of our time and money toward political activism, then? Not necessarily.

So how does one change the country? For starters, there is a chapter of Democracy Matters, which was just started this semester on campus. DM is a national, nonpartisan and nonprofit organization that advocates reducing corporate influence in the policy-making process by implementing fair election reforms across the country. What do I mean by ‘corporate influence?’

The Supreme Court recently ruled that corporate money in elections is a form of free speech and therefore cannot be restricted by campaign finance laws. When a political candidate runs for office, he or she needs millions of dollars to run any type of competitive campaign. To collect the needed funds, candidates usually accept massive contributions from major corporations and unions that later expect favors in return for their implicit sponsorship. These include tax breaks and maintaining the status quo when it comes to regulations that would benefit citizens instead of their bottom line. As a result, elected officials are held accountable to their campaign donors rather than to the constituencies that have elected them — a phenomenon inherently contradictory to a truly participatory form of government.

Don’t think for a second that DM is exclusively for students who are ‘into politics.’ The decisions enacted by policymakers depend on how elections are run and whether corporate money is governing them or not. So whether you’re a hardcore liberal or a fiscal conservative, DM’s mission is applicable to you. As long as elections are largely financed by corporations and unions, elected officials cannot be truly representative of ‘we the people.’

There is a viable public alternative to running campaigns aptly referred to as ‘Clean Elections.’ Anyone eligible to run for public office would be given public funds for campaigning if they prove themselves to be serious, legitimate candidates who are willing to comply with certain guidelines, as well as full disclosure of all of their donors. This would permit more candidates to run for office, diversifying the political process, as well as rely more heavily on small donations from citizens while banning direct corporate funding.

With an even playing field for entering a race, candidates would be assessed based on their ideas, not visibility in the media. Also, given that candidates would be supplied with funds to run a campaign, they’d have more time to communicate directly with voters, instead of pooling millions from various industries interested in affecting the policy-making process.

Clean elections would only cost each taxpayer less than $10 a year — much less than what we indirectly waste on today’s multimillion dollar campaigns — primarily financed by and thus beholden to special interest groups. Public financing has already been successfully implemented in seven states, including Arizona and Maine. Recently, New York state was just two votes away from implementing a public finance option.

Political humor often helps engage young people in politics. DM is thus taking the initiative to coordinate efforts for Syracuse University students to attend both Jon Stewart’s ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’ and Stephen Colbert’s ‘March to Keep Fear Alive’ rallies in Washington, D.C., along with organizations like STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition. Neither group is beholden to a political ideology other than the idea that the nation we are going to inherit needs true grassroots movements to ensure participatory democracy and human rights over corporate privilege.

Will you join us? Attend a general interest meeting for the rallies at 7:15 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium. Let’s rally to keep our democracy alive.

Christy Levin

Campus coordinator of Democracy Matters

 

Published on October 20, 2010 at 12:00 pm