HomeMy WebLinkAboutMemo - Mail Packet - 7/31/2018 - Information From Darin Atteberry Re: New York Times Article Dated July 19, 2018 The Localist RevolutionPage 1 of 4
The Localist Revolution
Sometimes, it pays off to sweat the small stuff.
By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist
July 19, 2018
I
CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times
We’ve tried liberalism and conservatism and now we’re trying populism.
Maybe the next era of public life will be defined by a resurgence of
localism.
Localism is the belief that power should be wielded as much as possible
at the neighborhood, city and state levels. Localism is thriving — as a
philosophy and a way of doing things — because the national
government is dysfunctional while many towns are reviving. Politicians
Jul 26, 2018
TO: Mayor & City Council
FROM: Darin Atteberry
FYI /sek
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in Washington are miserable, hurling ideological abstractions at one
another, but mayors and governors are fulfilled, producing tangible
results.
Localism is also thriving these days because many cities have more
coherent identities than the nation as a whole. It is thriving because
while national politics takes place through the filter of the media circus,
local politics by and large does not. It is thriving because we’re in an era
of low social trust. People really have faith only in the relationships right
around them, the change agents who are right on the ground.
Since it will probably be the coming wave, I thought it might be useful to
make a few notes on localism:
Localism is truly a revolution. It literally means flipping the power
structure. For the past several decades, money, talent and power have
flowed to the centers of national power. Politicians tried to ascend to
national office as they advanced their careers. Smart young people
flocked to national universities, and then to New York and D.C. The
federal government assumed greater and greater control of American
life.
But under localism, the crucial power center is at the tip of the shovel,
where the actual work is being done. Expertise is not in the think tanks
but among those who have local knowledge, those with a feel for how
things work in a specific place and an awareness of who gets stuff done.
Success is not measured by how big you can scale, but by how deeply you
can connect.
Under localism, national politicians are regarded like generals in Tolstoy
novels. They move pieces around the board, but the actual battle is
nothing like what they imagine. Wise young people leave the centers for
towns where they can make a visible difference.
Localism is not federal power wielded on a smaller scale. It’s a
different kind of power. The first difference is epistemological. The
federal policymaker asks, “What can we do about homelessness?” The
local person asks Fred or Mary what they need in order to have a home.
These different questions yield different results.
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The federal person sees things that can be reduced to data. The local
person sees things that can be reduced to data but also things that
cannot.
The second difference is relational. Federal power is impersonal,
uniform, abstract and rule-oriented. Local power is personalistic,
relational, affectionate, irregular and based on a shared history of
reciprocity and trust. A national system rewards rational intelligence. A
local system requires emotional intelligence, too.
Change happens differently. Federal change often means big shifts
quickly, such as when a big law is passed after a long debate, like
Obamacare or tax reform. Local change happens more gradually, more
iteratively. There’s a legacy system, like a public school, a grocery story
or an investment fund. Somebody breaks free from the system and
creates an innovative alternative, like a charter school, an organic farm
market or a crowdsource campaign. As Leo Linbeck of the Center for
Opportunity Urbanism describes, the new innovators “announce the
availability of the upgrade and then allow users to choose when to make
the switch.” There’s a conversation between the legacy system and the
innovator, as the former learns from and adapts to the alternative.
Change happens through the conversation between old and new.
There is a different division of labor for making change. As impact
investor Deborah Frieze put it in a 2015 TEDx talk, change is led by Walk
Outs. These are people who leave the legacy system and pioneer new
alternatives. Then there are Illuminators. These are people who analyze
and bring attention to the change that is now available.
I’d highlight two other social roles. Elders are the city mothers and
fathers who hold sway in the town because of their established positions.
The Elders support the Walk Outs, make room for them and reform old
systems. Then there are Network Entrepreneurs. They link the Walk
Outs, who tend to be lonely, overworked and short-staffed. They help the
Walk Outs build a support system and a way to exchange knowledge and
care.
Change in a localist world often looks like a renewal of old forms, which
were often more intimate and personalistic than the technocratic
structures of the past 50 years. Localism stands for the idea that there is
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no one set of solutions to diverse national problems. Instead, it brings
conservatives and liberals together around the thought that people are
happiest when their lives are enmeshed in caring face-to-face
relationships, building their communities together.
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David Brooks became an Op-Ed columnist in 2003. His column appears
every Tuesday and Friday. He is currently a commentator on “PBS
NewsHour,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and
is also a best-selling author.
A version of this article appears in print on July 19, 2018, on Page A27 of
the New York edition with the headline: The Localist Revolution