One Way Forward
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''One Way Forward: The Outsider's Guide to Fixing the Republic'' is the seventh book by
Lawrence Lessig Lester Lawrence "Larry" Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvar ...
, a
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
law professor and activist concerned about the excessive influence of corporate money in politics. ''One Way Forward'' describes his discussions with activists in the
Tea Party A tea party is a social gathering event, typically held in the afternoon, featuring the consumption of tea and light refreshments. Social tea drinking rituals are observed in many cultures worldwide, both historically and in the present day. A ...
and
Occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, capitalism, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Financial ...
. He says the two groups have a lot in common, including a concern for the future of the US and a willingness to devote substantial amounts of time and possibly money to do what they think is likely to fix the worst of the problems. They also share a counterproductive tendency to label as "treasonous" anyone who suggests talking with the other side. Lessig says that together these different groups can fix the biggest problem facing the US today, namely the excessive influence of corporate money in politics, also called
crony capitalism Crony capitalism, sometimes also called simply cronyism, is a pejorative term used in political discourse to describe a situation in which businesses profit from a close relationship with state power, either through an anti-competitive regul ...
or
corporate welfare Corporate welfare refers to government financial assistance, Subsidy, subsidies, tax breaks, or other favorable policies provided to private businesses or specific industries, ostensibly to promote economic growth, job creation, or other public b ...
. However, all sides must first find ways to listen to the others to find their common ground. Lessig hopes this book will help catalyze a needed rapprochement between different groups, encouraging them to listen to the others and find their common grounds. If they can do that, they can produce much needed change in the political economy of the US and possibly the world. To facilitate this, Lessig writes, "After a short period, and assuming the book takes hold, I will license it freely, and based on the feedback (at oneway.lessig.org), draft version two. That second version will be licensed freely from the start, and will live on a wiki. That means that no single one of us will own it, but that all of us will be able to direct it."


Chapters


Chapter 1: Prologue

US politics are typically described as Right vs. Left / conservative vs. liberal. However, the "Inside" thwarts reforms for all "Outsiders".
MoveOn MoveOn (formerly known as MoveOn.org) is a progressivism in the United States, progressive public policy advocacy group and political action committee. Formed in 1998 around one of the first massively viral email petitions, MoveOn has since grown ...
began in 1998 as "a cross-partisan player and the only adult in the field" during the
Monica Lewinsky Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American activist. Lewinsky became internationally known in the late 1990s after U.S. President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an affair with her during her days as a White House intern ...
scandal. The movement grew from one or two people to thousands in a few days, surprising everyone, especially the Insiders. Hundreds of volunteers attended over 300 meetings with members of congress. In so doing, they challenged the conventional Insider wisdom that volunteers cannot be effective in political lobbying. Insiders were also surprised by Obama's performance in 2008 and more recently by the
Tea Party A tea party is a social gathering event, typically held in the afternoon, featuring the consumption of tea and light refreshments. Social tea drinking rituals are observed in many cultures worldwide, both historically and in the present day. A ...
, the international
Occupy movement The Occupy movement was an international populist Social movement, socio-political movement that expressed opposition to Social equality, social and economic inequality and to the perceived lack of real democracy around the world. It aimed primar ...
, and the SOPA / PROTECT IP Act protests.


Chapter 2: Passionate

The
Tea Party A tea party is a social gathering event, typically held in the afternoon, featuring the consumption of tea and light refreshments. Social tea drinking rituals are observed in many cultures worldwide, both historically and in the present day. A ...
, Occupy,
Move to Amend Move to Amend is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization that seeks to blunt corporate power by amending the United States Constitution to end corporate personhood and state that money is not speech. The group was created in response t ...
and similar groups have attracted many people who are very passionate in their concerns and willing to devote substantial amounts of time and money to try to fix what they see wrong.


Chapter 3: Polarized

Lessig spoke with activists with the Tea Party,
Occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, capitalism, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Financial ...
and others. He believes that together they have the energy and commitment needed create much needed change. However, their progress is currently prevented by a tendency to claim that talking with the "other" is treason.


Chapter 4: Potential

People right, left, and center are concerned about
crony capitalism Crony capitalism, sometimes also called simply cronyism, is a pejorative term used in political discourse to describe a situation in which businesses profit from a close relationship with state power, either through an anti-competitive regul ...
. Before we can solve problems of concern to all, we must do the following: # Identify effective reform(s) we can agree upon # Leverage our common passion to support this # Without denying our differences. Lessig described a teach-in he gave at Occupy K Street, where he implored the Occupiers to invite Tea Partiers to collaborate against crony capitalism. A man in the audience said he ran a site . He assured the audience that thousands of Tea Partiers would join them in a fight against crony capitalism. Then
Dave Zirin Dave Zirin (; born 1974), is an American political sportswriter. He is the sports editor for ''The Nation'', a weekly progressive magazine dedicated to politics and culture, and writes a blog named ''Edge of Sports: the weekly sports column by ...
, a sportswriter for
The Nation ''The Nation'' is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper ...
, started tweeting and blogging that, "We should not be collaborating with the racists from the Tea Party." Lessig insists that we can either (a) remain separate and ineffective or (b) squelch the inflammatory condemnations of the "others" and build a coalition to reduce crony capitalism and make the government "dependent on the people alone", as James Madison wrote in Federalist paper No. 52. The difference today between Left and Right today is nowhere nearly as profound as slavery was.. If our forebears could fix that, we should be able to fix our current problems with crony capitalism.


Chapter 5: Problem

In
Republic, Lost ''Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It'' is the sixth book by Harvard law professor and free culture movement, free culture activist Lawrence Lessig. In a departure from the topics of his previous books, ''Republic, L ...
, Lessig documented why he thinks that crony capitalism is the gateway problem in the sense that we must fix that problem before we can fix any of the other major problems facing the nation today. The analysis in this book is summarized in the accompanying diagram: Current law in the US include many provisions that expire after a few years. This provides an essentially infinite supply of opportunities for calling lobbyists and major corporate contributors to "extort" (Lessig's term) money from them to extend their special provisions. Most incumbent politicians (at least at the federal level in the US) know that they need huge amounts of money primarily to buy television advertising and research on how to sell their candidacy to the public – and virtually the only way for most of them to get that money is to spend between 30 and 70 percent of their time on the phone asking for it. This diagram suggests a candidate for the gateway problem not discussed by Lessig: The reliance of the public on the major
media conglomerate A media conglomerate, media company, media group, or media institution is a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises, such as music, television, radio, publishing, motion pictures, video games, amusement parks, or ...
s. This aspect of the problem has been discussed by media scholar
Robert W. McChesney Robert Waterman McChesney (; December 22, 1952 – March 25, 2025) was an American professor notable in the history and political economy of communications, and the role media play in democratic and capitalist societies. He was the Gutgsell En ...
in his books on '' The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century'', and ''Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy''. His proposed solution includes public funding of substantive investigative journalism, which could be implemented in a way consistent with Lessig's proposed "Grant and Franklin" project for public funding of political campaigns controlled by individual taxpayers; see The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again. McChesney noted that the media consolidation in the US during the 1990s was accompanied by the near elimination of investigative journalism, especially from mainstream commercial broadcasting. A number of investigative journalism organizations have arisen to try to fill this gap, some of which are part of the Investigative News Network
/span>.
OpenSecrets OpenSecrets is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that tracks and publishes data on campaign finance and lobbying, including a revolving door database which documents the individuals who have worked in both the public sector an ...
has a database that can be mined for information tying money to specific actions (or inactions) by the US congress. More research in this area could potentially increase public awareness of the problem. Research on this problem has been done by liberals like
Ralph Nader Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is an American lawyer and political activist involved in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. He is a Perennial candidate, perennial presidential candidate. His 1965 book '' ...
,
Public Citizen Public Citizen is an American non-profit, Progressivism in the United States, progressive consumer rights advocacy group, and think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1971 by the American activist and lawyer Ralph Nader. Lobbying e ...
, and
Common Cause Common Cause is a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., with chapters in 35 states. It was founded in 1970 by John W. Gardner, a Republican, who was the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the administration of President Lyndon ...
and conservatives like the
Cato Institute The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch ...
.


Chapter 6: Plan

Lessig asks citizens to engage congress, the president and the constitution. He suggests that citizens ask legislators to support publicly funded elections, to limit and make transparent independent political expenditures, and to reaffirm that "unalienable rights" belong to natural persons only. He suggests that citizens further attempt to elect a presidential candidate that will lead the charge for change. To this end, he supports . He also suggests calling a constitutional convention for the limited purpose of drafting an amendment to dramatically reduce the corrupting influence of money in politics (see ). He further suggests we need to engage people who are different. If you support the
Occupy movement The Occupy movement was an international populist Social movement, socio-political movement that expressed opposition to Social equality, social and economic inequality and to the perceived lack of real democracy around the world. It aimed primar ...
, try listening to some Tea Party Patriots, and vice versa. If you're a Republican, how well do you understand the Democrats, and vice versa? The goal is NOT to convert the other but rather to find common ground by first listening ''respectfully''.


Conclusion

The 2008 global economic crisis hit Iceland much harder than the US. The Icelandic government proposed a bail out of their major banks, which was rejected by 98% of voters. "So the citizens of Iceland launched the most ambitious crowdsourced-sovereignty project in modern history." The impact of the proposed "crowdsourced constitution" is still uncertain, but the Icelandic economy seems to be recovering fairly well from the " 2008–2012 Icelandic financial crisis". Lessig insists that if the citizens of Iceland can stand up to their government like this, people in the US can do so also.


Afterward and acknowledgments

A poll conducted immediately after the Citizens United decision of the US Supreme Court found that 80 percent of those polled opposed the decision. Justice Stevens in his dissent from this decision wrote that, "While American democracy is imperfect, few outside ... this court thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics." After a short period of time, Lessig plans to make a version of "One Way Forward" on a wiki at . At that point, the document will be available for the public to edit similar to how Wikipedia is managed. One thing that anyone can do is take
The Anti-Corruption Pledge


Appendix

Lessig provides proposed language for a constitutional amendment. His language explicitly authorizes public funding of political campaigns and public but content neutral regulation of money spent on political speech. Apart from this book, Lessig supports the
Rootstrikers Rootstrikers is a Nonpartisanism, nonpartisan grassroots activist organization run by Demand Progress and created by Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig and political activist Joe Trippi (a United States Democratic Party, Democratic politi ...
organization, which tries to bring together people of differing political persuasions hoping to find common ground. Other proposals have been made for constitutional amendments to overturn Citizens United. The
League of Women Voters The League of Women Voters (LWV) is a nonpartisan American nonprofit political organization. Founded in 1920, its ongoing major activities include Voter registration, registering voters, providing voter information, boosting voter turnout and adv ...
's web site provides a brief comparison of key features of different constitutional amendments proposed as of mid-2012. As of November 12, 2012, this analysis compared 14 different joint resolutions introduced so far in the
U.S. House The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of th ...
or
Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
. Beyond this,
Move to Amend Move to Amend is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization that seeks to blunt corporate power by amending the United States Constitution to end corporate personhood and state that money is not speech. The group was created in response t ...
has offered their own language saying in essence that (1) a corporation is not a person and (2) money is not speech. The Move to Amend web site includes their comparison of similar amendments proposed by members of the
U.S. House The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of th ...
and
Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
.
Public Citizen Public Citizen is an American non-profit, Progressivism in the United States, progressive consumer rights advocacy group, and think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1971 by the American activist and lawyer Ralph Nader. Lobbying e ...
and
Common Cause Common Cause is a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., with chapters in 35 states. It was founded in 1970 by John W. Gardner, a Republican, who was the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the administration of President Lyndon ...
also support amending the constitution to overturn the Citizens United decision. Lessig's proposal presented in this Appendix seems to be the only prominent proposed amendment at the moment considering public funding for political campaigns.


Notes


References

{{Lawrence Lessig 2012 non-fiction books Books by Lawrence Lessig