We Can Dream Bigger

“One of the crazy things about my life is that it’s full of people who want things to be better, but not different. And I don’t know how to do that.” - Mayor Melvin Carter of St. Paul, Minnesota 

I heard that quote on a political comedy podcast I listen to sometimes (Lovett or Leave It for anyone who has followed me for any length of time or listened to me talk for more than five minutes) and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. 

Mayor Carter said this while talking about two of our society’s great foibles - public safety and infrastructure - in what was actually a rather hopeful conversation about programs and potential projects that they were implementing in St. Paul. In the interview he explained a broader vision for public safety, one where we try to mitigate the circumstances that lead to bad things happening, rather than devoting the entire system to punishing people afterwards. There was also a broader vision for infrastructure, one where we focus on community spaces and community services instead of cutting highways through communities to get wealthy people where they are going faster. And perhaps a simpler, but no less bold vision for addressing poverty: 

Jon Lovett: “I’m also glad that you’re making this argument that it’s something we’re finding everywhere - cash payments work. People use it to help themselves and help their families and build better lives.” 

Mayor Carter: “We’re sixty years into a war on poverty and we just thought of giving people money. 

There’s an exceptional defense of guaranteed income in this interview that I’m not going to get into just now, though there is rigorous academic research to be found at the Center for Guaranteed Income Research and more information about pilot programs to be found at Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. But what struck me more than even the specifics of the various plans or the reasons they work, is just how imaginative they were, how willing they were for things to be different so that they could be better. 

I spend a lot of time raging against the right - their hatred and bigotry, their lack of compassion or empathy, their craven willingness to gut democracy and the planet for their own enrichment. But today I want to talk about the rest of us. 

We suffer from a dearth of imagination. 

Last week Joe Manchin, the cranky baby trapped in the body of an elderly coal baron that is our Senator from West Virginia, scuttled plans for addressing climate change in the Democrats’ proposed budget reconciliation, and the taxes that were supposed to pay for it. This, after scuttling the child tax credit payments, paid family leave, child care funding, affordable housing, funding for free community college, and investment in home healthcare aids. What we’re left with is allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. 

Of course that would be fantastic if it passed. It would help a lot of people who can’t currently afford the medication they need to live. If that legislation passes we should take it and run, jubilantly down the street. 

But my how the mighty have fallen. 

There are plenty of people who think that President Biden and Senator Schumer’s propositions were much too bold and much too far to the left for most Americans. There are others for whom Manchin’s betrayal of the planet and our economy are the worst infractions and still others for whom Senator Schumer’s inability to negotiate is the biggest sticking point. And of course Republicans weren’t interested in voting for any of it 

But for me, it’s this: we want things to be better, but we don’t want them to be different. 

In California, Gavin Newsome is directing California to start manufacturing its own insulin as an end run around drug companies keeping prices artificially high. In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu is offering free bus routes in select Black, brown and low-income neighborhoods. What if we did that in New York? What if we made the subway free? What if we made sure there were two teachers in every classroom, so they could use the bathroom, eat lunch, and educate kids? We could refit schools with better ventilation and better kitchens. We could offer free meals to students and their families no matter their income backgrounds. We could turn these meals into community celebrations. We could nationalize the Dollywood Imagination Library. We could build parks with rain covers and heaters where people could hang out without spending money. Cash payments, a minimum wage that people can actually live on, free public transportation. There are a million more ideas that I haven’t found or remembered, a million more that no one has thought of yet. 

But we have to be willing to do it. We have to remember and act on the essential human dignity that we claim to believe in. We have to stop assuming an “us” who are responsible and hardworking and a “they” who are taking advantage of the system and therefore of us. We have to remember that there is nothing a person can do that makes them undeserving of food, clean clothes, and a safe place to sleep. We have to remember, in the words of Mayor Carter, that there is no them, no us - “there’s just one big ole we.”

And we have to be willing to try. 

Not every plan we try is going to work. And not every plan that works is going to work by the time the next election comes around. Transforming public safety through transforming education and food security and public housing and access to health care could reasonably take decades if not a generation. But treating people as people with inherent dignity who deserve a chance to build a life is worth it, in and of itself. 

Rather than a specific action this week, I just have a request. When you’re thinking about who to vote for, or what to call Congress about, or what organizations and programs to support, you'll let yourself imagine a better, brighter, bolder future - for yourself, for our communities, and for our planet. We have what we need to take care of each other. Let’s fight for it. 

Oh and listen to the interview with Mayor Carter which starts around 22 minutes in. It’s fantastic and so is he. Let’s get some more politicians with imagination, shall we?