Participants:
Ina Breuer (IB), Tim Hamilton (TH), Magda Iwanska (MI), Agnes Kende (AK), Anna Laido (AL), Elzbieta Matynia (EM), Karen Underhill (KU), Heshan de Silva-Weeramuni (HD), Malgorzata Gajda (MG), Mihal Vasecka (MV).
[Introduction by Elzbieta Matynia]:
Today we have with us Elaine Zimmerman, an old friend of the program and a professor at three previous Cracow "Democracy and Diversity" graduate summer institutes, where she has conducted full workshops on public policy. Elaine is the Executive Director of the Commission on Children for the State of Connecticut, handling policy issues related to family, children and women's services. She is also a national consultant utilized by states and national organizations to design both policy and strategy for children. She consults with governors, mayors, early childhood initiatives and businesses on media, parent involvement and service integration.
In other words, Elaine is a real practitioner of policy among us, and a person who not only works on the level of the state with policy makers and their policies, but also prior to that had designed one of the most successful anti-poverty programs for women in the state of California; so she also has great exposure to public policy advocacy, and to designing policy. I would like you to think of your session with her as an important step towards preparing you to be teachers of the strange subject called public policy -- and also possibly better observers or cleverer critics of different policies which are being formulated or voted on in your own countries.
Elaine Zimmerman: I know many of you already; but what would be helpful for me in leading the discussion today would be to have you go around and introduce yourselves, tell me where you're from, and what your interest is in Public Policy.
AK: My name is Agnes Kende, I come from Budapest, and I deal with ethnic minority identity in Hungary, especially that of gypsies.
EB: I'm Ina Breuer. I am interested in the whole process of public policy; but also because I work here at ECEP, I am interested in how we are affecting the processes of Eastern Europe. Is it working, what is the real product of what we're doing?
MG: I'm Malgorzata Gajda, I'm from Poland, and my field is cultural studies; but I am also interested in media watchdog organizations.
KU: I'm Karen Underhill, from Chicago, and I'm especially interested in how non-profit organizations and citizen action groups that are developing in Eastern Europe can work with the local government, influence the government, and help to shape policy.
EZ: Good question. Big question.
MV: My name is Mihal Vasecka [Slovakia]. I'm interested mainly in problems of the welfare state, and changes of social policy in our countries. My second field of interest is problems of national minorities, and since we met last time I have started to teach at Academia Istropolitana. I hope we will have a chance to discuss the curriculum which I created for my students.
AL: My name is Anna Laido [Estonia], I was in Cracow as well. My major is Public Administration, and it involves courses in public policy. My interest is also NGOs' role in policy shaping, but I've never really taken courses in the relationship between public policy and media specifically, so I'd like to know more about that.
EM: My name is Elzbieta Matynia. What interests me in the whole cluster of issues gathered under the label 'public policy' is whether -- and how -- one can actually teach those things. How is it possible to make experts and policy-makers? And if we can think of policy as teachable, what is to be taught? Should one give just some general guidance and maybe some sample cases to look at? So many things are involved in the process of policy-making; and I'm interested in what it is necessary to know, in order to become someone who can design and criticize policy.
EZ: Yes, that's key.
HD: My name is Heshan de Silva-Weeramuni, and I'm interested in educational policy. As far as the media is related, my interests are very similar to Malgorzata's -- looking at the presentation of certain groups in society.
EZ: We know each other already, many of us. I'm going to talk about the media, but I'm going to talk about it in a larger context. As background reading for this topic, I recommend the latter section of the "Policy as Democracy" workbook. This is one of the best chapters on how to use the media [in a United States context], that was written by the Communications Consortium. [*Excerpts from this chapter of ECEP's "Policy as Democracy" are included as background reading material to this session].
I. What Is Public Policy?
Maybe those of you who already know me will indulge me for a couple of minutes to give an overview of public policy -- what it consists of; how we can think of it. Later we will move to a discussion of the role that media can play in public policy advocacy.
When people think of public policy, what do they think it is? If you were to quickly come up with one or two words, what does Public Policy mean?
If they have never heard the word policy before, some people think 'Police',.
EM: Regulation. Regulation whose principles come from the public concern. When I think public policy, I think of both the receiver and the addressee as the public. The policy concerns the public sphere, and the public as such, society -- but it is also generated by what individual people want.
EZ: In a democracy. So the public in a democracy actually mediates public policy, by articulating to elected leaders what it wants. And ultimately the results get translated into public policy. For example, you want a park, or summer camps for your children; you want transportation so people can get to their jobs -- these would end up being translated into public policy for transportation and recreation, and public policy for children's programs.
So the policy is ultimately what is agreed upon, and what can also be changed, based on what the public says it does or does not want.
TH: What I think of is Values, views and principles that are used to form law and regulations.
EZ: So, a larger public policy might be -- under President Kennedy in the United States, for example -- a commitment nationally to civil justice. That would be a public policy in its broadest sense: a statement of principle, a statement of value. It can be a statement that is coherent and national; or it can be a statement on a regional level. The southern states within the United States might join together to make their own regional policies with regard to race.
What else is public policy?
AL: Making power legitimate -- because the end aim of public policy is to change the laws.
EZ: Let us say policy is also Laws. The policy becomes code. And when something is a law, you can't undo it in a democracy without a debate, and without revising the law, which takes a legislative process. But it can be changed, ultimately. Laws include the Constitution, the Bill of Rights -- any country's Constitution, any country's Bill of Rights, and country's laws. What else is public policy?
One of the secrets that people don't talk about very much is that public policy is
MONEY. A policy initiative may be supported by everyone, debated upon, and passed into law -- but if no one puts any money into it, nothing will happen. Or, the public may support a certain policy only a little bit. But the people in office may think it is very important for the country, and they can put in a lot of dollars. In this way it becomes a policy priority regardless of its relative importance to the 'public'. So the budget is also public policy, not just the law.
Keywords [written on the board]:
PUBLIC POLICY =
- POLICE, REGULATION
- LAW
- VALUES, PRINCIPLES
- MONEY, BUDGET
II. The Art of Public Policy
One of the things that I love is that when you look at the meaning of the word 'policy', it doesn't at first tell you 'regulation', etc. The etymological root word of the word "policy" comes from the word "pele" -- and it means "city; police; acropolis"; but it also means "piano; planet; explain; open field". And I think these differing meanings are very true. Because on the one hand you need the police -- you need the city. You need the rules and form, but you also need the open field. The truth is that public policy is about vision and values. It's about everything that people want to have in their town or country; and the rules which people make to implement those wants.
To return to Elzbieta's question -- what is to be taught? I would first of all say that policy is an art form; so the question of how to teach it is all the more interesting. It would be no different than asking the question, how do you teach someone to play the piano? And, piano is one of the root meanings of policy. You teach them to understand the whole instrument, to look at the whole piano. They would have to understand the separate keys C, D, E, F, and they also have to learn how to read notes. If you were teaching public policy, then, you would want to teach the whole instrument -- the different kinds of public policy; you would want to teach people how to think about what a country needs in different areas. But you'd also want to teach people to understand a little bit about how money works in government; how to read budgets; how values get placed in law; and how to actually implement policy.
I started in public policy really from the outside, as an organizer, and over time got hired to work within the legislature. And the reason I got hired was because I know how to work as an organizer. It is teachable. But often in classes on public policy, people hand out little sheets like, "How a Bill Becomes a Law". And they're these flat little documents that say, "First it goes here, and then it goes here..." and these simply do not describe how it really works. Because policy is an art form. It would be like drawing a chart showing someone "How to Paint a Canvas." It can't be written out simply. You CAN write it out simply to help someone get the mathematical principle of it; but the truth is that public policy works like this:
A community has an idea. For example, they think that the river is polluted. And they are beginning to see that the river is creating illnesses in their children. First, they have to come together as a group and talk. They find out that a common need exists, which goes beyond one family. Second, they have to define the problem. Once the problem is defined, their next question is, who do you go to, to convey the problem?
Some people never come together. Some people come together but then don't know who to go to. But if you have gotten this far, you go to the person you've chosen, and you bring your problem. If the person is a good policy-maker, then even if you've come to the wrong place, they will then guide you. My office gets approximately 200 calls a day from the public on children's issues; and we guide people on where to take their policy concerns. Maybe two requests per day, we pick up and move ourselves. But, knowing where to go is important in trying to effect policy.
So, the concerned citizens go then to the Mayor, and they say "This river is hurting our children. They are getting very sick, and some of them are dying." If it is a good mayor, he or she would then go to the department in that State that looks into changing environmental law. Now, what happens next is tricky. This is where I think your comment is absolutely right, Tim, that public policy is about values. Public policy is really a verb, it's not flat like law. It's moving values, through a state or through a country; and debating values all the time. As you see, this is a complex process, which includes 1) assessing need, 2) determining the best policy to address the need (in the case of a river that's killing children, the best policy would have to involve some kind of environmental cleanup); and the trick now is 3) how you gather the political will to change the policy. Because, who do you imagine is going to be upset about that river?
TH: I would expect the people upstream at the factory.
EZ: Exactly. Classically in the area of environmental issues, employment issues are created as the obstacle. With every issue you can expect that some constituency group to get upset; because not everybody wants the same thing. And as it happens often health standards are in conflict with -- not employment, but the original employment practice, that wasn't thoughtful. But now people have jobs in that environment, and they're fearful to give that up.
Figuring out how to get the political will is key. Then, even if you get the political will, and you pass a law, how do you make sure it gets implemented? Because you could pass a law and say "we're going to change the river", but not put any money in it. Or you could pass a law and simply not have anybody do it. So the real secret that policy makers and educators know is that you have to be able to understand:
1- how you define a need,
2- how you translate the need into public policy language,
3- how you then find the person who can read your message or who makes law
4- how you figure our where the dollars could come from for that; and
5- how you implement that plan.
Every democracy has a structure that does that. In most structures, you have on one side the lawmakers, and on the other side the budget process These usually run in two very separate tracks at exactly the same time. So you need to become economically literate. You need to understand how to read budgets at all times.
EM: Do you think that because of that economic awareness, which you are saying people have to have, certain laws are jeopardized? That the passing of laws which would demand money becomes impossible because people are too realistic? They know that it's a fantastic idea, it's a great law, it would be great if it passed, but we won't do it because there is not money. I'm just asking whether we are not compromising ourselves to start with.
EZ: This is where we can remember the suggestion of having vision in the word 'policy'. Someone SHOULD be able to say, "We need the following law." If someone says we don't have any money for it, then the question is, is this the wrong time to be doing this? Or should we move the law and try to put the money in in a few years.
So, I have written laws for Connecticut -- in fact I wrote a law that passed two years ago -- that had no money in it, and this year I think I'm going to get $50 million approved to put into it.
EM: So in other words the law was passed earlier, and you were just looking for the opportunity to fund it.
EZ: Yes. And people said to me, "You're crazy, Zimmerman. Why are you wasting your time?" But I read what [Newt] Gingrich [new Republican Speaker of the House] was doing [to cut funding for social programs]; I saw the writing on the wall, and I knew I had to write a law that would put in all the standards for child development now, before he undid them. As the last line of the bill, I wrote in, "money will be allocated when money is available." I was called a 'nut' for doing this; but now we have a definition of child development that will not allow deregulation in our state. It passed, every vote, both houses of government.
In effect, it means that the new Gingrich laws cannot be used because we already passed that law within the state of Connecticut. The state law will trump the deregulation. And now we're going to put dollars in. This demonstrates that it is possible to make law and not have the dollars for it; but at a certain point you don't want to be the Shakespeare fool. You do need to be able to figure out how you mediate, what the balance is between vision, dollars and implementation.
A rule of thumb in the work that I do is that legislation should be 1) what is doable, 2) what doesn't cost very much, 3) what is full of values and 4) what the public will resonate with -- and we will always do a bill that we know will NOT pass, because we want to increase public awareness, We expect most difficult bills to take three years.
JUGGLING CONSTITUENCIES
AK: But there are also different interest groups, which is very important. How can you take this into account when you try to create or implement the law?
EZ: Public policy feels to me a little bit like taking a pet dog, and letting it loose in the forest. One, you don't know if the dog will ever get out of the forest. Two, if the dog gets out of the forest, what will it look like? Will it be missing a leg? Will it have lost an eye? Will it have a tail? The interscripts in the legislative process will be the bears and the wolves -- each of them is going to have a different desire. How all of these desires ultimately get mediated will become the actual bill. The dilemma is always, when you negotiate, do you negotiate so much that you compromise the core values that are important in public policy? This is always a debate.
A few years ago a bill that we had designed for childcare in the state of Connecticut was, in the course of debate by different interest groups, transformed into the vehicle for something completely different -- a very bad, essentially very conservative bill. This happens.
As Elzbieta was asking before, what's the role of the public in all of this? The public can undo all of it. And in fact, sometimes what happens is you have someone who won an election, and they want very much to do something, but the public isn't ready for it; and the elected official knows that if they actually do what's right they'll get kicked out of office, because the public isn't ready.
EM: Gays in the military.
EZ: Yes, for example. So then the question is figuring out how far you go as an elected official beyond where your constituency is. And it can work both ways. I mean, the constituency can be absolutely right. So, the public plays a key role.
For all of these reasons, policy is an art form. It is always so funny to look at public policy described on one of these flat pieces of paper -- "How a Bill Becomes a Law?" What happened to the unexpected opponent, and the right wing, and the dollars? The process is so much more alive than that -- and to be involved in it 1) you need to have a sense of humor; 2) you have to have critical thinking to always stay at the top of the vision of what matters; 3) you have to be a 'people-person' -- that is to say, you have to know how to negotiate, how to bring in the different constituents.
How you mediate between public interest, the elected leaders' interests, and the dollars, becomes a skill. But it is no more challenging than being an artist, or being a physicist. It's knowing how to juggle the different pieces of your medium. People get in a lot of trouble in public policy when they don't pay attention to dollars, leadership, the public interest.
III. ADVOCACY
Now, I want to talk a little bit about the advocacy part of policy, which is connected to the role of NGOs. Anyone who wants to be a policy advocate is one who speaks up, who helps others to get what they want, or challenges a government system when it is not working; or helps a government system do X, Y or Z. Whatever it is that you decide needs to happen.
Advocacy assumes that people have rights and that rights are enforceable. It also works best when it's focused on something specific. Just having the goal of 'freedom' is too broad. Advocacy must address a specific issue, such as: "It will be illegal to make people do jobs they don't want to do." Figuring out how to focus the value, or the goal statement, is an important part of advocacy. Advocacy is chiefly concerned with rights or benefits to which someone is entitled; and policy advocacy in particular is concerned with ensuring that institutions work the way they should. I will give you an example.
People in our state tried to de-regulate, or take the quality out of, childcare; to make it not as good. And they lost it, it didn't work. But then they got sneaky, and tried to accomplish the same goal in an indirect way, through regulations, which the public never sees. These are all the little cumbersome guidelines about how you will implement the law; and the advocates of deregulation snuck all the changes into regulations. Here is where non-profit 'advocacy' groups became important -- because non-profits were the ones watching: they got hold of the regulations, knew how to read them, and they saw what was happening. They created a public ruckus, and the deregulation got killed.
This is an example of how the public is the 'watchdog' to how government works. And the government also needs to rely on the public to find out what its needs are. Those are the key components of advocacy.
IV. COMPONENTS OF PUBLIC POLICY
The dilemma is that certain things are necessary to make public policy work. As we've discussed, one key piece is the role of media, and of NGOs. Now I want to give you a Recipe for Public Policy. You need to have some combination of the following elements. You don't need to have all of them, but you at least have to have a majority of them to have public policy work.
-CONTEXTUAL FACTORS
-social, economic, demographic, political, ideological factors
-PRINCIPLES / IDEAS / VALUES
-CONSTITUENCY
-ART / METAPHOR
-ACTORS & INSTITUTIONS
-RESOURCES, MONEY
-RESEARCH
-MEDIA
...which together shape the overall context of decision-making at any given time.
A. CONTEXT
Context is just a simple way of talking about your social-economic backdrop. For example, you wouldn't come up with a major policy agenda that costs a lot of money, at a time when a country is in a recession. It just wouldn't make any sense in the context.
KU: But don't some governments take the approach that a recession is a time to spur the economy precisely through government spending, or issuing government bonds?
EZ: Yes. So that could work. But if, for example, there were a recession in your country, and people were unemployed, it is probably the wrong time come up with a transportation policy agenda -- because they will not be making roads and trains then. So CONTEXT matters -- reading context. I gave the example earlier of the childcare standards bill that we worked on two years ago. We saw the national context, and were responding to it -- even if there were no dollars connected to it yet. So, context matters. Factors that make up context are also social issues, economic issues, and population factors.
B. CONSTITUENCY
Constituency activities include direct and indirect pressure. This would include the work of NGOs, or what we did in California in 1982, which I will describe further. This is pressure exerted by both organized and unorganized constituencies, outside the structure of government. Constituent activities include direct and indirect pressure by both organized and unorganized groups. Now, it tends to be the case that most constituencies are somehow organized; they either have an NGO equivalent, or a church leader, or a neighborhood leader, something brings them together; that's what makes them a joint constituency. It's rare that people who do not know each other would come together over a policy unless you had some kind of leader who had the gift of brining the whole cluster of people together who didn't know each other on an issue.
Outside constituencies can stop or transform public policy for better or, in a democracy, for worse. You may not agree with who comes to stop something. We had an education bill in the state that I'm from -- done, crafted, debated three years ago; and it was killed by the right wing. None of us predicted it -- we were stunned. But we hadn't organized well enough, and we were not prepared, and they undid it right toward the end of a legislative session. There was no time to change it back; and we lost it. So, outside groups for better or for worse, can come and have an influence.
NGOs
This brings up the issue of NGOs. I think that the role of NGOs particularly in emerging democratic countries is paramount; because they will be the watchdogs. They can be looking at things like budget, regulations, and at moving agendas that are not yet being raised, because it simply hasn't been time yet. It is their role to be the outside group saying it's time NOW; we're expecting this piece to be addressed NOW; it's too late if we wait. NGOs can also be involved in the detailed implementation of policies within society; and NGOs have the tremendous capacity to begin to effect public discourse and media information on what's happening; to influence how things are being debated.
I'll give you an example of a constituency and a context. I was working for a CBO (community-based organization) in California, in 1982. The context was that for the first time in the United States since women got the right to vote, women were voting in larger numbers than men, and they were voting more progressively. It was called the 'gender gap', because it was showing that there was a gap between men and women in voting patterns. Women were voting, and in the late 70's-early 80's women began to show much more sensitivity to peace, to community accord, to health and safety, than men. They were literally showing a desire for working together rather than competitive-type policies; and they were against the war. Politicians began suddenly to be aware that they needed the women's vote to win elections.
It began in the 70s, but it really took hold around '80, '82. In California, at that time, it became clear that poor women weren't voting, and poor women weren't voting because they didn't feel they could have any influence on something as powerful as government. After all, they were poor, they didn't have skills, many of them didn't have education. They felt removed from the government, they didn't trust the government. So I with some others, including a woman in New York City named Bella Abzug, began to take the gamble to see whether or not we could link women's poverty to the gender gap. We decided to link poor women and their concerns to the voting block, to see if we could do two things: vote bad leaders out, and move a women's economic agenda in the United States. So we all came together and we designed a real campaign that didn't have a candidate. The candidate was poor women. And we decided to campaign.
The strategy was to target poor families who were not connected to public policy, and we targeted people who actually were respected within their community or neighborhood. In some instances it was an organization, in other instances we would just call the mayor or head pastor of an area, and ask "Who does everybody love in that neighborhood?" When we got the same name three times we called that person. Then we would call the woman and say the pastor had given their name, which made it safe. I would say, I understand you're very active in your church; would you be willing to have a meeting at your church (or community center) of women from your whole neighborhood? Will you bring together 30 mothers, we will provide a small amount of money so you don't have to spend any, to pay for the childcare for the children so the mothers can come; and I will come if you let me stay there the night before so we can go over everything and plan this together. I'll come talk to them, and we'll register to vote, and we'll talk about what policy changes they need; and I'll take it to the legislature. "Yes." Not one person said no.
We traveled the whole state of California for a year -- a very large state, the size of many countries. I would sleep at the apartment wherever we were. I intentionally wanted to brush my teeth and be with that person as a human being, not as someone fancy and far away.
This was an organizing drive for one full year, and by the end of it, 250 women were selected by vote among themselves to be delegates at the state capitol in Sacramento, California, and the first women's economic agenda in the United States was written.
I said to Willy Brown, who was in the legislature then -- now he's the Mayor of San Francisco -- "Can I have the grounds for that day, bring in keynote speakers, have the media there, and can we have a major event at the State Capitol that day?" And he said "Yes." That's because he cared about the women's vote. I raised the money for every one of those women from everyone of those meetings to go to the Capitol for a major meeting.
What happened for that experience, which was in 1982, a long time ago, is that national foundations became very interested in the organizing. In the United States most non-profits are funded by some state dollars, some federal dollars, and some foundation dollars. An important piece in NGOs is that non-profits need to have some money. So how you get foundations interested is an important issue. The reason that they were interested is because of CONTEXT. I worked for an agency then which was an NGO called the Women's Economic Agenda Project in Oakland, California. We were behind the initial campaign, but then the dollars started coming in from foundations, so the foundations became our 'institutions' component. We knew we had to invite someone interesting who would make some press, so we invited Shirley Chisolm, an African-American civil rights leader who lives in New York, to come keynote at this event at the state capitol.
We had the New York Times there, the major newspapers came so the MEDIA component was present, and we had designed a poster which isn't as useful now, but in 1982 it was. It said: "Two out of Three adults in poverty are female. What if we all were to go to the polls?" It was big poster, not terrific, just white letters on a black poster, with a white trim. And do you know that that poster made it to the front page of over 27 national newspapers? Again because of the context; it was historic because the women's vote was turning in 1982. That's when the gender gap began. So our campaign involved projecting a trend, linking it to an Agenda, organizing, doing the research, bringing in the media -- and we got half of that agenda through.
That's a very sophisticated organizing effort. But any variation on that can work. Let's take another example.
C. ART & METAPHOR: MEDIA MOMENTS
Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King understood that there needed to be a civil rights movement, he understood that there needed to be a change in national laws because blacks were not equal in our country. He was told by all the key people in the South to wait; because the country wasn't ready. He decided not to wait; he didn't trust this.
He had a meeting with Rosa Parks, and they had a plan. Rosa Parks was an African-American woman in the state of Alabama, organizing with Martin Luther King out of a church in Montgomery. Standardly, in the Southern United States at that time, blacks always had to sit at the back of the bus. They decided that Rosa was going to refuse to go to the back of the bus, and she was going to say, "I am too tired." She was going to stay in the front of the bus.
That event became a planned media event that would become known all over the United States -- and that began the key and deepest mobilization effort. People were already organized, but that moved the mobilization to begin the civil rights movement. In our schema the movement itself is the constituency; the context was that Martin Luther King and many others felt that people were ready. Other people -- who were his allies -were saying, "Don't do it yet." They just thought the timing wasn't right yet. But he thought the timing was right, so he went for it.
Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus. The media got this. Blacks all over the United States got more organized. They got organized in the South overnight, and the civil rights movement started; and then laws started changing.
EM: I want to make a comment. It's very interesting. I didn't know that the whole thing with Rosa Parks was somewhat prepared. But I want to bring up a similar event, which actually gave an impetus to Solidarity. This was the moment in 1980, after the strike had started already in Gdansk shipyard, at which Lech Walesa was brought to the shipyard by the strike organizers. He had already been fired for his political activity; he was not working at the shipyard; but he was informed that a strike was going on and that he should come: a lot of people saw him as an energetic leader. This moment, which is somewhat similar to Rosa Parks event, happened when Walesa jumped over the famous fence, into the Gdansk shipyard. Media were already there, it was documented. But in fact the whole thing started there. I don't think it was prepared to this extent. But it was clear that this act would give the momentum. He was called; he wasn't able to get through because he didn't have an id card to the shipyard anymore, but he made this now-famous leap. Now everyone refers to this jump -- just as to the Rosa Parks story -- as the symbolic impetus. Symbols sometimes can grasp the message better than several pages in writing.
EZ: What's so wonderful about this is we see that the story about Rosa Parks is not a case of manipulation. Rosa Parks was a black woman who was totally oppressed, exhausted, and always sitting in the back of the bus. She knew someday she wanted to say, "I'm not going to do it anymore", and together they decided on the day she was going to do that. It wasn't planned as a manipulation to confuse the public. It was the day Rosa got to do what she had always dreamt of doing. This will not work if it is a manipulation. The same with Lech Walesa -- when he jumped over the fence, it became a metaphor for joining, also for leaving something, for refusing to follow form; for hope, for a reach.
Another thing that is a key variable in your menu of successful public policy is ART. Because you must have art or metaphor in some way or other at the right point. Public policy as such is too confusing. So at some point you'll be at a meeting, and the question will be, "Well how are we going to talk about this?" Because the issue is both so serious and so complicated. How do we talk about the river hurting our children? The truth is that most people are so exhausted or so busy, or so cynical, that they're not going to listen to something for very long. So how do you figure out the picture, the metaphor, or the language that will reach them?
I made that poster in California that said "2 out of 3 adults in poverty are female. What if we all go to the polls?" I had no idea it was going to spread across the country like fire. But it was because the country was ready, the same way that image happened of Walesa jumping over the shipyard fence. It's capturing the metaphor of the moment.
D. PRINCIPLES
NO Public policy will ultimately work if it doesn't have values and principles behind it. It will be understood as false, conniving and for somebody's personal aim, and it will ultimately fail in a democracy. Maybe not right away, but it will get caught. It does not last.
E. MEDIA & ADVOCACY
Let me give you some other examples of the function of media, both internally and externally.
In the United States, at one point there was an interest in having food provided by the state for children who were poor. The idea was that if a child were starving and malnourished, the child would have a legal right to food. What finally cinched that was ONE photograph on television of a starving child, and that changed the votes in Congress. One photograph.
There are also media examples, that can happen outside of government -- like the example I gave of the poster linking the vote and the increase in the number of women voting to changes in public policy. This poster, I neglected to tell you, was put up at every voter registration table in California. Politicians got scared to death by this -- realized they'd better do this [address our policy concerns], quickly. As a result of the attention, other states began to pick it up, and then Bella Abzug [a noted women's rights leader], and it became national very quickly.
Media can have an influence. Now media doesn't have to be a photograph or a poster. It can be a public talk show where an issue is debated, so the public hears the issues. The article which you are receiving as background material, written by the Communications Consortium, teaches you about different kinds of media in the United States, and how to access them.
In the United States the public listens to the radio more than anything else, and to get something on the radio is much less expensive than to get something on television. If you have a limited amount of time or resources, targeting the radio in the US is a wise option -- actually wiser than trying to get something in the newspaper, because people listen to the radio more than they read the newspaper.
TV, on the other hand, depending on the time slot, can have incredible impact. Of course it's very expensive in our country to get things on TV. Unless you're on a public service channel, the time must be bought, as advertising. If you got into a talk show, on the other hand, you'll find you don't have to pay a quarter. What talk shows do, particularly those that are on public television in this country -- is to help the public understand what the issue is about. So if you can figure out how to take the issue you're concerned about and get yourself on a talkshow in your own country, terrific.
PRESENTATION AND PREPARATION
It is important to figure out how to PRESENT, when you understand that thousands of people may be listening. You could work very hard to get onto a talk show, but never have thought through, "How am I going to talk about this issue? How am I going to explain why we need to change the river even if people are going to lose jobs?" And those are very hard questions. So, you finally get your moment on the media, and if you don't practice how to present, you can lose the whole opportunity. It is very important to understand that at the moment you are with the media, how you package something really becomes an art. Not manipulation, but a challenge of poetry, really. It's a challenge of how to use the fewest words to convey the complexity, the hope and the depth of what it is you're talking about, in a way that will keep others listening.
I've learned this the hard way. I've had people speak who were a disaster -- people who were more concerned about themselves and what they looked like, because they were going on TV; or people who talked too much about their organization, instead of about the issue at hand. That is a problem too.
I will describe a funny experience we had with the media. There is a man Charles Osgood, who does a series of little stories on the radio called the Charles Osgood File, carried by stations all over the US. He's a lovely storyteller, very smart. When he captures a story that he thinks is interesting, the Osgood File sends people out, they observe what you're doing, and they interview far too many people. Ultimately after hours and hours of Charles Osgood's staff following you around, they end up producing a 2-minute piece on the radio. Charles Osgood followed a piece of our work around for a total of over 7 days; and the piece ended up being two minutes. But you know what? We're getting calls in response to that piece from all over the country. The crew drove us crazy for 7 days -- but it ended up being right.
In that case we were lucky, because the media, or the Osgood people, were actually interested in what we were doing. It was their own goal to turn our work into a 2-minute piece. Usually what happens is you have to figure out how to translate your own opportunity, because finally you're on a talk show. That is a hard thing; but it's very exciting.
People also think that the media is only interested in negative stories. Maybe sometimes that's true. But if you pay attention to media opportunity, over time you can actually begin to POSITION stories. You can position stories in the newspaper, you can position stories in talk shows. I would say that nowadays it I unwise in any organization not to have one person who is getting paid for part of their time (or volunteering for part of their time) to just handle media.
CULTIVATING CONTACTS WITH THE MEDIA
Let us take an example. You have an NGO, an organization for the environment, and you've raised money from international funds to support five staff people. That's all you have; you're the only environmental organization in your whole country and there's a lot to do, the organization is still building itself. I would still argue that someone of those people needs to be spending at least 10 hours of their time doing just media. Media means positioning the issues on talk shows and in the newspapers.
This is what you would do. You start observing the media. You read the papers, you listen to radio shows, you watch television. You begin to put yourself on assignment like an anthropologist. How do policy issues get discussed on this station? In this newspaper?
What you'll find is that some newspapers stink -- and you don't want to waste your time with them. Others are really good. Your question then is, how would you get things in there? Then you should start noticing who the writers are. I notice for instance that Anna Majorski is always writing the best articles on infants. I call her: "You are terrific. Your articles are terrific. We do some of that. Can we have coffee sometime?" She will say yes. The reason she will say yes is because you have something she may need. And what you may have is information; stories. You go meet with her, you find out what she does, you share what you do; you hand her your address, your e-mail, and say, "If you want information on this, if you need data, we can give it to you."
Never, ever, ever promise a media person something you can't do -- because I'll tell you a rule of thumb. If you ever tell them that you will do something, and they call you and you can't, you're done for. You only tell them what you can do. But you can do plenty. If you're a new organization in the country, you can say, "We could probably reach people in neighborhoods to tell you stories on this issue." You don't have to be the Carnegie Foundation and have all the data, to make friends with someone in the media. They're just people; they're just like us. The truth is, most writers at newspapers are very poorly paid, they're exhausted, and they care about the same issues. So, when they have somebody who they can use, it's very valuable to them. If I work for the newspaper and I can call Elzbieta and say, "I have a story that's due tomorrow, and I need to talk to three 90-year-olds who were hurt by the real estate landlord on 72nd street", and she's the neighborhood organizer in that area, she can say, "No problem. I'll do what I can. I can't get you 3, I think that may be too high a reach, but I'll get you one. I'll call you back." Terrific.
So, first of all you want to observe, as an anthropologist; know how it works, and start having somebody in your organization get to know individual members of the press. Second, you want to be able to provide stories that are interesting. So, you've now met for lunch, they are familiar with you. When something particularly newsworthy comes up in your area, in your field, you call up and let them know they should take a look at it. When you start doing this and you do it well, what happens is you find yourself in the middle of competition -- because if in your country you have more than one newspaper, the newspapers get mad at you if you give the story to one paper over the other. So, you have to figure out over time how you balance your relationships.
With talk shows, similarly, the quality varies greatly. A lot depends on whether they are on public television or private. You'll see that in your different countries you're going to start having television that's paid for by advertisers, and other stations where that is not the case. Do you have that situation yet? Who is paying for your television now?
EM: In different countries it's different, but in most countries you have so-called 'state television', which is not the same as public television here; and then you have some commercial channels.
EZ: Which of your countries have talk shows on TV?
AK: We have (Hungary).
EZ: And who pays for them?
AK: For one, the state, and then different foundations, or large commercial interests. Large telecommunications companies and the like.
EZ: If a foundation funds a talk show, they may be very interested in the work of your organization. You may call the foundation and say, "We have a story. We have some very eloquent people who would be terrific on your program for x reasons -- how do we arrange to be on the talk show?" This is possible. If it's Pepsi-Cola, you can't call them -- because they're only going to put on the program what they think will lead people to buy Pepsi-Cola. Begin to notice these differences. You want to always pay attention to how things are funded; because some dollars can actually get you somewhere, and some dollars can't.
AL: (Estonia) We don't really have talk shows like here, on television. On the radio, yes there are some; those are paid for by various private companies.
KU: Does Estonia have a private TV station yet?
AL: It has a public television station, and 4 or 5 private channels by now.
EM: Can you remind us how big is the population of Estonia? I'm just wondering who's paying for it!
AL: Two million people. But these are not broadcasting 24-hours a day. Let's say 3 full-time private channels; which means they receive no government money.
MV: (Slovakia) There are talk shows every day, practically, on public as well as on commercial TV in Slovakia; and there is no case I remember in which a talk show was supported by a foundation. Companies, but no foundations; absolutely.
EZ: Pay attention to who the company is. Watch the talk shows, and then see at the end, who was sponsoring it. There are nonetheless private corporations who would be interested in a show on X, Y or Z. Maybe once a year or so I have an opportunity to design a TV show that is national or on the state level, and sometimes these are corporate-sponsored. Again, it is a matter of beginning to pay attention. Start noticing like an anthropologist, what do we have, on the newspaper, on the TV; and who is paying for this? How might I reach any of these people?
Next, say you've watched a show and it was terrific. Why it was in fact all about rivers and pollution and children. You write the sponsor: "That was brilliant. Thank you. Tell me more about it. Can I get more information?" Do not be shy. In a democratic process you must participate. And participation means defining what the needs are, defining what the policies should be, voting; holding elective officials accountable after they've won, AND noticing how the discourse happens. You must observe that. And when something is wonderful, you want to meet the person responsible for it. I have read articles where I just go home and write the author immediately. And you want to know something shocking? They respond.
EM: It seems to me it may not be necessarily the custom in the part of the world that most of us are from. Officials are not terribly accessible. They don't want to be accessible, or they don't yet know that it matters to have that kind of accessibility.
EZ: I understand. Maybe what I am describing is 10 years from now. And it may be different between elected officials and the person who's on a talk show. But begin to pay attention to what the ACCESS is. Is it possible to reach this person? Just notice how it works.
USING THE OP-ED PAGES
In the United States, if you opened up the New York Times, and go to the "Opinion-Editorial Page" (Op-Ed's), on the left hand side are the editorials that are written by the head of the newspaper, and those are the value statements of the Editor for that day. Usually related to something that has happened either in the state or the country.
The opinions by the head of the paper (the staff, or editorial board) will always be on the left side of the page spread. On the right side are "Letters to the Editor". This is in every newspaper in the United States. See what the structure is in the newspapers in your countries. I don't know how it works in every country, so I want to give you the concept and then you translate it for your country. "Letters to the Editor" -- these are sometimes 3 paragraphs, sometimes 1 sometimes 5. But Elzbieta's the Editor, and I write her and say, "There was a column in the newspaper last week, and it referenced this, and I think this. And so on." A letter to the editor has to somehow reference something that was in the newspaper. I write that in, and it gets published. Because in a democracy, if you write a good piece as a letter to the editor, 30 to 50 percent of the time you're going to get published. You do not have to even know the Editor, have contact, have had that lunch, or paid any attention to dollars; but if you write that letter to the editor and it's well written, you're smart and you have key points, it's going to get in.
EM: Letters are also a widely read part of the newspaper.
EZ: Yes. Now, on the right side of the page is what's called the "Op-Eds" (opinion editorials), there may be 2, or 3. Sometimes they're written by famous people. Henry Kissinger on the elections. And you can trust that when a famous person writes an Op-Ed, they'll grab it; because that enhances their newspaper. But -- the Opinion side of a newspaper has many articles written by Joe Neighbor as well. "I and I saw this father's march in Washington and I thought it was ridiculous. In my neighborhood we do this, this, and this..."
EM: But rare. That somebody that is completely unknown. It's probably difficult, no?
EZ: What is helpful in an Op-Ed is to find someone who is involved in the media. What I do when I write Op-Eds is I call someone I know at the newspaper and say, "I'm about to send in an editorial on children and AIDS. Would you please look at it, tell me if you think it's any good, and advise me on when you think I should submit it?" And they always will.
MV: (Slovakia) I'm a little bit skeptical about the impact of media on public policy. There are 11 daily newspapers in Slovakia, and I don't know how many regional, and all of them have such pages like Letters to the Editor. The impact on public policy or government is zero; completely zero.
EM: Because it's not a democratic country.
MV: The problem is, I don't consider Slovakia to be a totalitarian state, and it's not a democracy. So what is it?
EM: It's a non-democratic state yet.
MV: No, it's a formal democracy. The division of power is functioning. We begin in fact with this In spite of all problems. The problem is that we are talking about the impact of the PUBLIC on government and on parliament. And there is zero. The impact is only during elections, when the government movement is listening to all those losers of the transformation, people who lost all illusions, and they have no idea in fact about how to govern the country. So NGOs in Slovakia are really very developed. Our Czech colleagues are always saying that we have perfect NGOs --
EM: That's the field into which all dissidents went, and all opposition.
MV: Exactly. But there is no impact into government, into parliament, so -- people in NGOs, in fact, are anti-Meciar oriented. There are only a few NGOs which were indirectly established by government, and only these NGOs have access to state-owned, public television. And the government is trying to freeze this situation, which is neither democracy nor a totalitarian state. The balance of power is functioning. So this is what they really want.
EZ: So there is the public, and there is the vote. You're saying the media no, because the media is controlled?
MV: Public television is controlled. In fact I agree with your scheme, and I will use it definitely in Slovakia, but the problem is that in fact it's involving a long-term perspective maybe, 15 years. Maybe even that is optimistic.
HD: But at the same time, going back to the work of Talcott Parsons, the diagram that you put on the board -- with the judicial branch, the parliamentary branch and the government on one side and the NGO' standing completely outside of it, separated -- is very static. I think that what Elaine is pointing to, for example with letter-writing campaigns to free newspapers, can make changes in society either speed up or regress; and it's not as static as your presentation suggests. Yes, that's the situation now, but maybe in 15 years if the public or NGOs broach a different form of public education, maybe it's not a 15-year period.
MV: I completely agree, because in fact media and NGOs taught people what democracy is, but the problem is that they didn't teach that one third of people would repeatedly vote for the government.
EZ: So the public wants this.
MV: One third or one-half, yes.
EZ: And they're voting this way. And do they say to these people, "This is what we want. We want the following things."? Or do they not know how to do that yet?
MV: I think they have no idea.
EZ: Yes. This is where it's back to the skills of democracy. Because if you don't know how to say what it is you want, you cannot hold government accountable. It's totally flat -- it feels so distant from you, and not part of what you have a right to influence.
AK: Maybe in all of Eastern Europe, or in Hungary, which I know about, things don't work from the ground up like this. It seems to me that this system works from bottom that you can reach the people through these NGOs and organizations, they become involved and they want to work, and so on. But it doesn't work. First of all, because there's no money, all the Ministries, organizations and different interest groups fight to get the money for anything at all. It's not as you've shown that they say, "No, we have no money, maybe well have it in several years, so we can do it several years later" -- it's not like that. And secondly, these NGOs don't function because fundraising doesn't work. Some international foundations do give money for these NGOs -- which are already controlled by foreign interests, so we have to adopt this foreign system which doesn't work in Hungary; and the result again is that people cannot do these things from the bottom. 'Civil movements' or 'civil society' are very badly developed in Hungary.
EZ: So where is the pressure coming from? Is there any pressure coming up?
AK: There aren't such pressures. For example this dynamic of checks and balances which you have drawn on the board, it doesn't work. There's no control by the public or through the public institutions, do you understand? The dynamic of democracy within the country is not perfect.
MV: In fact while I'm listening to Aggie, I have to correct what I said; because in fact there is some progress in this sphere, "Public, NGO, Media" [indicating diagram on board, in which he has shown public, NGO and media as sharply separated from government]. The problem is that this line between power and public is very deep, very strong. These people in the public are still much more educated and much more prepared for how to implement democracy. It is only a question of time, in fact. The danger right now is only that line between these two parts. But people in the NGO/public sphere are still more and more prepared.
KU: If the media, letters and editorials are not influencing the already-elected government, are they at least serving to keep a lively debate of issues going within the population, so that should you change government, those ideas would have progressed? Does the media has free and open debate in that way?
MV: Yes, absolutely. But this type of debate has no impact into government. The arrogance of power is 100%.
EZ: So, it's very helpful to look at different countries, because here there's still the need for democracy, and there's still the need for holding people accountable for why they voted for them. That hasn't changed yet, so it's like a still pond. The water's not moving. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Do you think it will? If it's not going to move quickly, how do you help people understand without disillusioning them? How do you help people to become motivated?
How about in another country? Which tensions are working institutionally?
AL: (Estonia). In terms of the division of power, and NGOs?
EZ; I mean, how can the public influence policy? Is it possible?
AL: I can say a bit about Estonia. It is possible, and I think it's working, but there is along way to go.
EZ: Will you draw Estonia to show us the government structure, and the NGOs?
AL: Well, it wouldn't look very different [from the diagram drawn by Mihal Vasecka of Slovakia], but the NGOs would be somewhat closer.
KU: What kind of NGOs are influential?
AL: Front page news. The Estonian Institute, and educational NGOs or foundations like the Foundation Union of Estonia, which coordinates the work of all foundations. They are influential. Right now it's a tricky situation because actually they were more influential during the previous government. Estonia is a very small community, I always come back to that. It means that personal contacts matter a lot; and the people making up the government, the parliament and the NGOs at a given time matters a lot. It hasn't moved from the personal level so far. In that sense it doesn't work that well. To the degree that the next government is going to be more NGO-friendly, it's going to work better.
EZ: So that would be your ACTORS AND INSTITUTIONS [indicates list of components] actually mattering. And do the NGOs hold the principles and values of the public?
AL: Certain groups do -- like of students.
KU: Just to get an idea, are the NGOs you are referring to places where people are doing research, and advising the government? What is it you have, academic, research NGOs?
AL: Academic. Advising is more on a personal level, but yes, it works. But there is a long way to go.
EZ: And how does media fit in?
AL: When compared to Slovakia, media is not controlled. Estonia doesn't have censorship anymore. I think the influence of media is changing rapidly, and it's growing. But there is a clear difference between certain newspapers which are for the coalition, and certain newspapers who are in opposition to the government; everyone knows this. And there is one big so-called neutral newspaper, a weekly called Estonian Express. It's a commercial paper, but you can be sure if you read that that it's neutral in terms of politics. But the other newspapers are more or less either regional or coalition-oriented or opposition oriented. It works. You can be sure that they are not censored.
EZ: Good, so you can do a debate on an issue. Any other countries?
MG: Actually, I've never looked at the important NGOs in Poland so I do not know much, but I do know that first of all there is no tradition of voluntary work, which I think is very important, because for so many years people were expecting to get things, and suddenly it turned out that they have to do things themselves. So, we do not have what Americans have, this huge tradition of voluntary association and voluntary work.
KU: I can't understand that statement about Poland, because Poland is where Solidarity happened.
MG: That's true. But it was a totally different situation, when there is a kind of danger --
MI: However, the social life did function on this level -- in fact there was nothing OTHER than voluntary work. For example people would provide service to the community for free. I would say that in these terms Poland is a scene of voluntary work, and people are capable of doing it. In the absence of social services or institutions established by government, there was this voluntary work present in Poland. This is how the services for homeless people were provided; and the Church played an enormous role for the last 40 years, as the provider of this kind of services. I think Malgosia is speaking in terms of a mentality. I had the sense that you meant more the mentality of people, though.
MG: I think it's different when you look at the activists and at the general public. When you look at the women's organizations, they are just mushrooming in Poland.
MI: And not only this. It was amazing how many political parties and other NGO were born after a legal basis was provided.
MG: But the question is to join these two sides. To join the organizations of those few people who are trying and starting, with the general pubic. where I think that the general mood is, "We can't". It's as if there is not a strong belief that when you get together and write a letter, it will mean something. THIS should be changed; because these organizations exist now, but they need the public to believe they can have an influence.
EZ: It's very tricky because you don't want to say you will have an influence if you won't. On the other hand, beginning to push the water in a direction does create an influence. You know in the state that I'm in , 5 phone calls or five letters can change a vote on a public policy. It's a question of how people can get out of feeling cynical. Particularly, as you say, given what Solidarity did.
This is always the dilemma. It's hard enough to change a nation. But then if we don't hold the nation accountable to what we did, it goes back to that still pond again. Or, you do a policy in the United States, and then nobody holds the country accountable to implement it. So we think we had a victory but then nobody's watching, someone made the conscious or unconscious decision not to pay attention to it. So we always have to be looking and tapping, and I think that people get overwhelmed at the idea, if they think it has to be a full-time job. But the truth is, a phone call or a letter takes a half hour.
KU: With regard to Poland and voluntarism again -- I've often heard about a feeling during Communism of there being a dual life: on the one hand, the life that you led within your community and circle of friends, where you arranged and got things for each other, and took care of what the state was NOT taking care of, and really made the society function, when it was actually crumbling; and on the other hand the exterior, public life -- in the government-controlled sphere, in which individual people felt they did not have influence. Is it fair to say that an urgent question now is translating that will to help one's network of friends -- which is a very private experience -- into a will to work publicly in civic organizations, and associations? To put one's values and good works on the books in public, as organized community work or political work?
The recent nonviolent transformations seem to be examples that the ability and will exists, to organize and advocate on a grassroots level; and that there are lots of ideas about HOW to do it. I think perhaps more so even than here, because we haven't just recently fought a protracted non-violent war. So many people in Poland and in the region recently participated in these struggles, KNOW how to organize, and just need to fit this into a different structure, and redefine what they will be organizing for or against.
AL: What comes to my mind first is Americans voting for their president, or the percentage of people taking part in elections -- less than half of the eligible voters exercised their right. In Estonia so far in parliamentary elections the participation is like 80% or 90%. People are extremely interested in politics. You can go to a small village in south Estonia, and hear people sitting in their backyard talking just about politics. It's going to change, I mean there is a certain cynicism already. But politics is still a very hot topic; everybody's reading newspapers. In terms of organizing I'm not that sure. You were talking about the closed circle of friends. In fact, the first government and the first parliament were just that. Not everybody knows that this was a close circle of friends coming from the same university, basically the same student organization. Everybody knows each other. And it worked well. But the big question is, is it fair that the country has a government that is a close circle of friends? Perhaps it's good in one sense but there are certain limits to that. You have to go beyond that.
EZ: We've been talking about is how the public can influence policy in a certain direction; what the role is of media in that, of discourse; and of these other variables that we talked about. And perhaps in each country some of this isn't at all germane, or pieces of it are. It's helpful to look at things comparatively, not to think that one is better, but to see where you are, and what the next steps are. And to see historically how it's worked here. Also I want to recommend to you again the Communications Consortium article, just to give you an idea how the media works here; and how it is relevant to policy advocacy. I would encourage you to begin to watch how the media is or is not connected to policy.
EM: Thank you.
[end of transcript].
