How Citizens (Not Politicians) Are Building the Future | Jon Alexander | TED

00:04Let's get the obvious out of the way first, shall we? Yes, I'm British. (Laughter) And yes, I'm here talking to Americans about democracy on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from Britain. (Laughter) I'm very tempted to chuck my talk out of the window and break into King George from "Hamilton."

00:29"You'll be back." (Laughter) But I'm not here to call you back. I'm here to call all of us forward, because I've spent the last ten years gathering stories from around the world of the future of democracy for my book "Citizens" and for the podcast I co-host, "How to Save Democracy."

00:49And what I've found are a couple of things. The first is that there is a bold, bright, beautiful future of democracy just wanting to take hold. It's emerging everywhere in institutions that are open and participatory, and in politicians who are desperate to put the power of citizens ahead of their own power.

01:08But what I want to focus on today is not so much that destination, as the journey to get there. Because what I've seen all over the world is that it's actually not institutions that are changing for us. It's not politicians who are leading us there.

01:23It's the people. It's citizens coming together and building the future, creating the space for the politics to move into. Because the line I want to leave you with at the end of all of this, democracy is not something we have. It's something we have to build.

01:42Now, my favorite story of this new democracy comes from Melbourne in Australia, and it starts at the end of 2020. In the context of COVID lockdowns and black summer bush fires raging across Victoria and clogging the city with smoke, Melburnians were confined to quarters for weeks on end.

02:01In that context, a few citizens started to gather online. They were motivated by the understanding that the existing power structures just weren't capable of responding to these challenges. And if they didn't want this to be the pattern of the summers for the rest of their lives, they were going to have to lean in and do something about it.

02:20Soon, those few citizens were joined by a few more, and then tens and eventually hundreds of people were attending these calls. They invited authors and experts from around the world to inform them, as they tried to create a vision for the future of the city that they wanted to hold.

02:37They got to this point where they were saying, we believe we can create a resilient, regenerative, beautiful city in a way that can be a template for others to follow. They birthed an organization called Regen Melbourne to act as a catalyst for citizen activity, and they aligned their work around three earthshot goals.

02:57The first was to make the River Birrarung swimmable for its entire course. The second to localize the city's food system so that every one of its neighborhoods would be a nourished neighborhood. And the third was to foster a sense of community on every one of the city's 300,000 streets, partly because if these situations were to repeat themselves, then that's what would be needed, but more because -- joy.

03:24Five years on, there's been amazing progress and in fascinating ways. Citizens are jumping into the Birrarung ever closer to the sea at river festivals. The river has status as a living entity. And rights. But most interestingly of all, on that goal, the City Council has come in behind and adopted the goal with the citizens.

03:49And now institutional resources are starting to flow. They've created the space for the politics to move into. There's been similar progress on the other goals, and now there are even conversations about even more ambitious projects that they could take on.

04:03There's talk of creating a standing citizens assembly as part of the city's governance structure. Randomly selected citizens, a representative sample of them, to debate and discuss the key issues facing the city as a complement to the existing elected systems.

04:18There are sister organizations springing up all over Australia. The momentum is building hugely and it all started with a few citizens coming together online, not staring into crisis but building out of it. Now look, there are so many stories I want to tell you.

04:36I want another hour. (Laughter) I want to tell you about Taiwan's crowdsourced COVID response that was rooted in a set of digital tools that a citizen movement came together and built. I want to tell you about Ireland, where there's a citizens assembly as part of the national governance structure that has helped them resolve some of the most polarizing issues of our time in a way that brought the nation together, and that the first iteration of that assembly citizens built it.

05:06I want to tell you about things that are happening all over the world and all over America as well, in Lexington, Kentucky, and Fort Collins, Colorado, and I don't have time. But what I can tell you is that there is something big going on. And I think the best way to understand it is through the lens of what I call stories of self and society.

05:29And this is a framework I want to offer you as a way of understanding the moment in time we're living in. Back in the days of the old country, we lived in what I call the subject story, as in subjects of the king. The right thing to do was keep your head down, do as you're told, get what you're given, on the basis that the God-given few knew best, and they would lead us to the best outcomes for society as a whole.

05:51You'll be back, remember? (Laughter) Coming out of the two world wars, America gave us the consumer story. The right thing to do now was to pursue self-interest on the basis that self-interest would add up to the collective interest, that that's how the best society would result.

06:07With that came a kind of democracy, a democracy where we could express our choice every few years, choose between a fixed set of options as to who to give our power to on the basis of self-interest. And it seemed to work. It was a liberating shift from what came before.

06:23But now we can't solve the challenges of our time from within that logic, you can't solve loneliness and mental ill-health from within a logic of self-interest. You can't solve pervasive inequality from within a logic of self-interest. And we can't solve ecological crises from within a logic of self-interest.

06:41As that story collapses, my way of understanding what is going on right now is that the subjects story is back in the uncertainty, with strong men leaders offering false certainties into that chaos. But there is another option. To step forward into what I call the citizen story.

06:57The logic here isn't keep your head down, do as you're told, nor is it pursue self-interest. It's get involved. Contribute your ideas and energy and resources. Come together with others and build it on the basis that all of us are smarter than any of us.

07:11And that's how the best society will result. And then there is Altadena, California. I get one more story. (Laughter) On January 25, the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena. Whole neighborhoods were destroyed. This historically significant Black and brown community burned to the ground.

07:33In that context, what happened was that the citizens of Altadena came together. Even though they had nothing, they came together to decide what to do with what little they had. Neighbors helping neighbors, giving and getting given. They created Dena Heals, a mutual-aid marketplace and wellness center that has since helped over 7,000 people from 1,500 families.

07:58And what I know from what I've seen around the world, is that this is what happens when crisis hits everywhere. Dena Heals is just a particularly beautiful example of what is a deeply human response to crisis. To let the barriers that have kept us apart burn rather than our relationships.

08:17We come together in that moment. And Dena Heals isn't charity. It isn't even kindness. It's actually democracy. People coming together to build what they need. This is what we will do in times of crisis. But it would be so much easier if we start building now.

08:39So here's what I want to leave you with. The first three words of the US Constitution really tell the whole story, written just a little way from here. We the people. Because democracy isn't something that is done for us by institutions or by politicians, it's something we do, something we have to build.

09:00In this moment in time, we all have agency. And it starts very simply, on a Monday morning when you get back to your places where you live and love, go for a walk, think about what you care about. Think about who else cares about it too. Think about how you might gather and what you might build.

09:19The future isn't going to be made tidy for us. We're going to live through dark and dangerous times. And it won't be delivered for us as consumers. But it doesn’t have to be done to us as subjects, either, if we come together and build as citizens.

09:37So let's build. Thank you. (Applause)