How to Imagine a Better Future for Democracy | adrienne maree brown and Baratunde Thurston | TED

Baratunde Thurston: I want to start with this word, citizen.

And we've both been doing work

around tapping into the power of the people,

the power within people.

And context for me is that I've been co-creator and producer

and partial voice of this media movement called How to Citizen,

where we take citizen to be a verb.

It's something you do.

And there are four basic principles behind it.

To citizen is to show up

and assume you have a role to play.

To citizen is to understand power and be literate in it,

as Eric Liu would say.

To citizen is to commit to the collective self,

not just the individual self

and thus we can still be selfish.

We just have to expand the self circle.

And finally to citizen is to invest in relationships,

with yourself,

with others and with the planet around us,

because there's no separation among all those things.

And for us and for me,

this was born in part out of a lack of invitation

to do more on the part of the people,

give me your money, vote for me.

And kind of stop there.

How do you think about this word, citizen,

what it means or what it can mean?

adrienne maree brown: First of all, I really like four pillars.

I mean, I really like when there's, like, a clear lineup.

I'm not going to give you that.

(Laughter)

I love it.

BT: That's why we have different people on the stage.

AMB: That's why I love it.

So for me, I think of the word fractal.

You know, a few years ago, I got deep into emergent science,

complexity sciences.

Because I wanted to understand

how does everything in the world actually work

and everything works through changing.

I just wanted to understand everything.

And I was like, change is constant, change is inevitable.

And so it means every species that survives on Earth

gets in right relationship with change.

And then inside of that,

it's about being a fractal of something larger than yourself.

So fractal is the fact that things go to the very smallest scale

and up to the largest scale,

and you can see the repetition,

you can see the selfsame structure, broccoli, ferns, dandelions,

you know, looking at a delta and looking at our lungs, right?

You can see that these patterns repeat.

So to me, citizen is being a fractal of belonging to this species, right?

And I don't think of it as nation.

I think of myself as a post-nationalist

because we have these larger concerns than just what's within a border.

But so far humans have said within each border,

now we're going to try to operate a certain way.

So for me, I'm like, how am I a fractal of belonging?

How do I belong to the land, to myself, to community?

How am I a fractal of justice inside of my community,

or a fractal of the future

that I really want to see come into being, right?

And so that's how I live my life.

Every day, I'm like,

maybe we don't live in the world that I envision,

the world that feels just to me yet,

but I can be a fractal of that world now.

That's to me what a citizen is.

BT: Be a fractal.

The idea of change is a really important one,

and I think that change is inevitable.

And accelerating.

And so we are living in this confluence of many changes at once.

The climate is changing, the economics are changing,

the technology that allows us to relate or not is changing pretty constantly.

So we've got to find something else to hold on to amidst that change.

I propose each other

as an answer to what we could rely on

when everything else seems to be undergoing change.

There's a series of questions

that we could be asking ourselves in this time

about what are other ways we can process,

talk about, think about citizening,

as a verb.

What are some of the questions you're carrying?

AMB: Well, I mean, we've got some problems.

And I think one of the biggest ones for me

is how frequently we see people wanting one thing

and the government doing something else.

And this is in places that are supposed to be democratic, evolved,

with representational governments, right?

And it's not new, right?

It seems to be like a very old problem.

And we've seen this cycle happen over and over again.

So, you know, we can say it's the climate change.

I call it a climate catastrophe.

I'm like, we're past the time when we need to pay attention.

Changes are now turning into something catastrophic.

We're in a period of war,

we're in a period of genocide, we're in a period of harmful pain,

we're in a period where apartheid still happens, slavery still happens.

And these are things that --

I've never met any people who are like,

"That's what I want.

I want my government to go out and destroy the climate, harm people."

That's not what I want.

But people are like, "I do want you to keep me safe,

and I do want to have a place to be."

How can we get there?

So the big question I have is, if what we are doing is not working,

how do we together change to something else?

And how do we do it in a way that connects us?

Because our problems are global.

So how do we get into a sense of global community

that is answering those problems?

BT: Do you have an answer?

AMB: You know I do.

(Laughter)

I think that we are in this really magical moment of organizing

and social media.

You know, social media has a lot of drawbacks.

But I think one of the things that we're seeing in this moment

is it has the great benefit of allowing us to be in direct communication,

and this, thus direct emotional responsibility

for so much more than we ever had to be before.

But that also shows us that we're in patterns

that are larger than my town,

my school, my community.

I'm like, oh, I'm in a global pattern.

I'm not the only person who feels oppressed inside my nation.

I'm in a pattern of people who feel that way.

If we all connect,

what can we practice that we're learning from other places, right?

And for me, I really look,

I remember this, as things were arising in Ferguson

and being like, oh,

how do we handle what's happening in Ferguson?

How do we handle the need for Black life to matter?

And I remember turning and looking at Palestinians

and them sending us wisdom

and being like, oh, we're facing some similar struggles,

and we're not the only ones.

There's people all over the world who are facing these struggles.

Right now, the climate crisis is impacting anyone who lives near the water already.

So there’s communities that are already figuring out, how do we move?

We're not going to be the first to figure that out.

I come from a politic that we're never the first ones

to try to face the problem.

We're never the first, and we will not be the last.

Our job is to move it along.

And there's a humility.

This is not the answer that anyone wants,

but there's a deep humility of being able to say, "We don't know."

And I think that as Americans,

we almost never say that.

Our internal empire is always so strong

that we're like, we know what to do,

and we're going to tell everyone else what to do.

I'm like, what if we don't?

What if we are failing at democracy

and we can't export that to anyone else?

What if we have to learn about it from others?

BT: I am holding space for what you just shared, thank you.

And ...

On this question, the fractal comes back a lot.

And I think this gap between what a government does

and what people want

in so many ways, being so large, is also this loop of an opportunity

where sometimes what needs to change is us

in order for the systems that we produce to change.

But we also need the systems to change so that we can change.

AMB: And it's a crisis, it's urgent.

BT: So it’s this Möbius strip of like, parallel changes required.

AMB: That's right.

BT: And it's not just demanding you be different

and live by these values.

It's expecting myself to do the same.

To be and embody these values.

AMB: That's right.

BT: And I think on the citizen front,

I'm thinking a lot about what it means to be satisfied

in the experience of citizening.

Like, how do we want to feel?

I know how I don't want to feel.

AMB: I’m very familiar with that.

BT: I don’t want to feel frustrated,

and angry and unheard and tense.

I want my shoulders to drop.

I want to feel heard.

I want to feel belonging.

I want to feel like other people see me

and that I'm not afraid to see them.

I don't want to feel afraid at all.

I want to feel trust.

And so if we can articulate that and give voice to that,

not just who do you want to be elected or what policy do you want to shift,

but what's the experience of being together

that you want to be a part of?

And then design from that.

AMB: That's a good idea.

(Laughter)

I like that, I love that.

This satisfaction piece to me too,

I think we've gone through so many cycles of being dissatisfied,

and not being able to create the changes we wanted

so that it becomes normal, right?

It becomes like, oh, that's just what it is to be.

That's just what it is.

I'm like, that's what it has been.

And that's because we're living inside the imagination of people

who did not benefit in any way from us changing things, right?

So to me,

part of the satisfaction is also saying I get to imagine

and you get to imagine and you get to imagine,

and disabled people get to imagine,

Indigenous people get to imagine,

you, especially.

Nice hats, everybody.

And whoever's watching this, also, you get to imagine, like, imagine.

It would be so satisfying to me to say,

I imagine a world in which the children that I love are safe,

and I can make that happen.

Oh, that's so simple.

But it's so what I want.

BT: There's an expansion possible here.

And, you know, the practice of citizening

and belonging and mutual care for each other,

I think our muscles have atrophied a bit, but it's never too late.

AMB: I'm like, wait, practices?

I wrote that down.

(Laughter)

BT: How do we continue to practice?

AMB: OK, I have one main thought I'll come to, OK?

BT: I like the countdown.

AMB: So I think it's all wrapped up in this ball of care and repair.

I think really what it is, is care and repair.

If we are in a practice where, when things go awry,

we know we can repair them,

and we think about repair and we have mediation

and we have facilitators who are like,

"Oh, my job is to bring some repair into the circumstance."

I think that then means we can believe it when people say they care

and offer care to us.

So, you know, I think we're living on an open wound right now.

You know, I'm critical of the United States

because we were founded through a genocidal colonial act,

and we never actually repaired it.

And then we kept building on top of it with more harm.

I'm here because of harmful acts,

and we kept building and building on top of it, and we never repaired.

And so without that repair

now, it's normal to live in an extremely violent,

extremely unjust world

because that's what we created, that's what was founded, right?

So I think we need deep repair.

And then I can believe,

Oh, this place actually cares about my existence.

And then care is built into our society.

Healthcare, educational care,

like, care for how people live and die,

care for how people feel.

I'm like, I don't want to feel

like you're just manipulating me with acts of care.

I want to feel like you really see me from birth to death

as something that belongs to you, and you belong to me.

And if things go awry, I will repair them.

And I can care for you.

And you can believe me, because I show you in my actions,

not just in my speeches every four years,

but in everyday actions, you see my care.

BT: So you're practicing care.

AMB: You're practicing care, and I'm a facilitator.

So to me, it's like facilitation is the way you care for a group.

I would rather elect facilitators-in-chief.

I would rather have facilitators running every town.

I'm like, I'm tired of pontification.

I want people who care and who know how to hold people with care.

BT: I really feel that.

And I think there's a mathematical obviousness to the fact

that our problems are too big for one leader to solve.

AMB: Say it.

BT: We need all of our talents, all of our experiences,

all of our failures to be brought to bear

on our problems and our opportunities.

We need a facilitation, a facilitator,

a way to bring all this together and coordinate it

so that we can unlock this greater strength

that we have only together.

And the other path is predictably unsatisfactory.

AMB: We're never going to get there.

BT: But it's alluring.

AMB: I think orgasmic yes, right?

BT: Orgasmic yes!

AMB: Orgasmic yes,

I'm like, a democratic place should be an orgasmic yes.

Where you're like, I can go out and say what I want

and we can co-create that.

I think, that's what the intention was once.

I think that's what it needs to be now.

I love the idea that we get to create it through our practices now.

BT: I want to close this on the practice of imagination

and some of the acknowledgment you have brought up.

And one of the ways I categorize where we are

is holding two truths at the same time.

Democracy is dying.

It is in crisis.

The version we've inherited, some of it needs to die.

It was not designed for all of us.

It is not fit for the current circumstance as implemented.

We can acknowledge that end

and we need to have ceremony around that.

And we can acknowledge the new democracies that are being born,

the new practices,

the citizens assemblies, the new polling methodologies,

the direct democracies, the deliberative democracies,

the community-operated gardens

that are giving us ways to see each other,

care for each other and practice citizening together.

And so we have to have a funeral and a baby shower.

AMB: That's right.

BT: At the same time.

AMB: I really love this.

And the only thing I would add to it, right,

because I keep thinking about how there's not one way

and I think as humans,

we're supposed to let go of the idea that there's one way.

I think we need to have many funerals and many babies born, right?

So there's a lot to grieve,

and only you know which part of the grief you're carrying,

but everyone's got a part of it.

And if you all get to lay it in the ground

and then we all show up for each other,

I'm going to show up for yours, you show up for mine,

and then we all get to doula the next world into being.

I mean, it's a really great job.

I don't know if you've ever been at a birth,

but can you imagine birthing a world we wanted to live in

and that wanted us there?

Let's go, let's do that.

BT: Let's go and then tell that story so we can live that story.

AMB: Let's do it. I'm in.

BT: I'm in with you.

BT: Adrienne.

AMB: Baratunde.

BT: Thank you.

(Applause)