How To Be Heard and Make Change in a Local Democracy

I’ve been an advocate for participatory democracy, the idea that we all have a role to play in our democratic institutions that goes beyond just voting, for well over a decade. I really do believe that all of our perspectives and opinions matter, that institutions are strengthened by people showing up and contributing, and that as much as possible our systems should invite that kind of participation.

That said, not all kinds of participation are equal…and many do more harm than good. So here’s a quick guide on how to be heard and make change in a local democracy.

Your Voice Matters

You’d be surprised at how little I hear from residents about anything. That’s fine; I hope it means that everyone is more or less happy with the direction we’re taking, or confident enough in this council to make good decisions on your behalf that there isn’t much to say. It could just as easily be a sign that folks feel that nothing they say will make a difference though, and that’s a worst-case scenario for participatory democracy. We all need to feel like our input matters, or we won’t bother offering it, and our institutions will wither.

A while back I saw an American politician talking about how to be heard and make change in her state, and she started by saying what not to do: stop signing online petitions. I nearly cheered. I’ve signed a thousand Change.org petitions in my life, but I stopped at least five years ago – not because I stopped caring about the causes, but because I saw the impact they had on politicians. It’s not just that elected representatives aren’t impressed by a petition that garners thousands of two-click e-signatures from people who may or may not actually be in their riding or give any indication that they understand or have any connection to the issue. It’s worse than that. These petitions are so disrespected that, no matter how important the issue is it will be dismissed and ignored if it comes in the form of an e-petition. These things hurt your cause, no matter what the cause is.

That might not seem fair to you, and I would agree. Ideally, each issue should be judged on its merits rather than its packaging. But that’s not how human brains work: we’re always unconsciously looking for ways to cut through mountains of information, making judgments based on who said it, how trustworthy they are, and how they went about it. Petition sites harvest your information to solicit donations, many make no effort to fact-check the content of the petitions people write through them, a great many of these campaigns are organized by lobby groups that have no connection locally, and ultimately many of them are barking up the wrong tree, so politicians quickly learn to focus their attention elsewhere.

But I think the biggest reason elected representatives have trouble taking these online petitions seriously as a form of democratic engagement is because, of all of the thousands of people who sign them, few to none of those people have bothered to just contact their elected representative directly. It’s literally our job to hear your concerns from you and bring them to council or the legislature or parliament. Signing a petition to be presented there goes around us.

In this term of council I’ve been on both sides of this. A few local petitions have been brought to council, and while I appreciated that people took the effort to go door to door and engage their neighbours, getting everyone involved in local decision-making and raising awareness about the issue, I couldn’t help but think that a single phone call or email might have sufficed. But also, this council voted to hire a lobbyist firm to help us apply for provincial funding, talking to the government on our behalf and helping our staff with their grant application. I got a call from our MPP after that, and he was not pleased, and I get it: we were effectively going around him, rather than letting him work for us. It was a sign of our desperation for the funding, which we did not receive in that round; we did get the funding in the next round, working with our MPP as we should.

Many of the same points apply to showing up en masse to council meetings. I’d really love to see more people coming to council meetings, but usually that only happens when there is a controversial issue. Everyone is welcome to express their perspective through Citizens’ Comments and at public planning meetings, but if you have something to say I highly recommend an email or phone call with your representatives first; sometimes we get a long lineup at the microphone to address something that gets answered after the first person, and public meetings can turn into public venting sessions that could have been more productive over coffee.

I’m not saying that a petition or public statement is a bad thing entirely. There have been times when I’ve advised people to gather signatures and come out en masse to show support for something. But I’ll address a concern in the community whether there’s a thousand people feeling it or just you, and I can save you a ton of effort and time if you just let me know what you’re concerned about. My email address is easy to find, and I respond pretty quickly. Your voice matters, and I want to hear it. Ask me to go for a coffee, I promise I’ll buy. Maybe the outcome of our meeting will be a strategy to organize your community to make change; or maybe I’ll be able to address your concerns with information and commiseration, and save you the trouble. Either way, let’s get together first.

Being Heard Matters

When I do hear from people, as often as not our conversation is less about answering questions and more about wanting to be heard.

I’ve sat with residents for hours, going through concerns about taxes and service charges, traffic safety, bag tags, matters of procedure or transparency. If you have questions, I have answers – or I’ll get answers. That’s my job. But most of the time I figure out pretty quickly that the answers are not the important part of the conversation. Sometimes folks won’t even let me answer; they have more to say, often about parts of their lives that have nothing to do with municipal governance.

I want to stress that that’s fine. It isn’t a waste of my time, or yours, for us to process an issue in this way. Governance, even at the local level, often deals with values issues that are heavily laden with political and emotional baggage, and is often also so complex as to be arcane. Either way, it takes a lot of mental and emotional work to process and truly understand it.

The issues that have inspired the most feedback have in some ways been the simplest, and the concerns expressed have made the least sense in terms of pure logic, but people needed a chance to voice their frustration with things like bag tags and speed cameras. Often what comes up by the end of the conversation is that there are a great many other challenges layered under the surface, and a speeding ticket is just the tip of the iceberg. That’s okay. I’m here for that.

But I’m not on Facebook for that. Voicing frustration in local social media groups can feel satisfying, especially when you get a lot of likes and comments. But that’s just venting and ruminating, and studies have shown that that actually increases your frustration. I quit Facebook early in this term of council, because I found that I could not connect with anyone there in a way that actually helped. Directing people to correct information is useful, but responding to long threads of complaints doesn’t really help anyone. As a former keyboard warrior myself, I understand how satisfying it can feel to leave a strongly worded comment; but in hindsight, I also see that it made little difference to the world, and cost me my mental health. So I closed my account, and you can rest assured that I will not see your questions or comments there.

Please reach out to me, and I promise to hear you out in person, where we can process the frustration of the way things are together, fill in any gaps in knowledge or understanding, and wherever possible, come up with a better way of doing things.

Making Change

Finally, here are some helpful tips for making change:

• Remember that none of us knows everything. Very often, there are very good reasons for things being the way that they are, and I’m always happy to spend as much time as it takes to get everyone on the same page about the facts of the matter and the process that led to the current situation. But also, I don’t always know everything either: some of the worst systems were created by very smart people with very good intentions, but they missed something, turning their intended system into one that does the opposite of that intention. We don’t know what we don’t know, until we actually talk to someone who knows something we don’t.
• Use the system. Our political systems can be complex and confusing if you aren’t used to them, but that’s why you have elected representatives. In a short conversation I can help you know who to contact to get an item on the agenda (so can our clerks!), and going through the right channels is often the hardest part in starting change; after that, things often go quite smoothly. But if you try to work around or outside the system, often you can spin your wheels for a long time and get nowhere. But that said…
• Ask yourself what you can do for your community. One of the challenges governments of all levels face is a seemingly growing expectation that paying taxes is a transaction that pays for services, and that those services should meet all human needs. But while I am proud of the services that our staff provide to residents, governments work best at empowering others to do good work rather than being solely responsible for everything. If you see a need in the community, and it isn’t already part of a government program and can’t be met through a sustainable business model, there’s likely a grant that would support a local nonprofit or volunteer group who wanted to help meet that need. And if there isn’t, talk to us and maybe we’ll create one. It’s usually much faster and simpler for council to award funding to something in the community than it is for us to direct staff to create/administer a new program.
• Be patient. Governments move like molasses, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes just because we’re under-staffed. Remember that the next time we contemplate raising taxes: it might just be because we want to offer better service, which takes hiring good people, which takes money. But also, very often the delays come from elsewhere; we don’t operate in a vacuum, and I frequently find myself saying “yeah, we’re waiting too.”
• Think globally, but act locally. You can’t actually change the world, but you CAN change your own town. Good thing our town is the only part of the world we’re responsible for. Whatever your concern is, don’t burn yourself out trying to stimulate change at a national level. Start where you can make a difference, and then scale up.

That’s it. And I’m here to help with every one of those steps. I can help you understand an issue, guide you through a process of stimulating change, get funding for your project, process the frustrations of injustice and delay, and connect with other people who can help you along the way. And at the very least, I can take your perspectives into consideration and represent them at the council table. But only if I hear from you.

And yes, I do bring up comments from my blog at the council table.