Jackson Free Press

Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Prize-winner from Kenya, planted seven trees in 1977 in honor of seven women environmentalists. Jailed and reviled for her own environmental activism, Maathai's seven trees became 40 million over the course of two decades, planted by village women in her honor. When she received the call about the Nobel Prize, her first reaction was: "I didn't know anyone was listening." Maathai's story demonstrates power. Her actions generated far-reaching results, even when they were mostly invisible to her.

Closer to home, in the 1970s, pollution in Chattanooga, Tenn., was so bad that drivers switched on their headlights during the day. Frustrated by the city's do-nothing leadership, a band of 50 citizens took action, inviting fellow citizens to "visioning" sessions. They came up with 35 goals and then got to work. Twenty years later, in addition to winning international awards, the city was a tourism destination, with clean air and water. They lowered crime while increasing jobs and low-income housing. That's power.

In her book "Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity and Courage in a World Gone Mad," (Small Planet Media, 2008, $14.95) Frances Moore Lappé provides numerous examples of communities where citizen activists produce tangible results. But more than just inspiring stories, Lappé provides guidelines to help us all produce results.

"Why can't we have a nation—why can't we have a world we're proud of?" Lappé asks in her introduction. "Why can't we stop wringing our hands over poverty, hunger, species decimation, genocide, and death from curable disease that we know is all needless?"

"Good questions," I said to myself. The answer, Lappé says, is that there is no reason. "In the span of my own lifetime, both historical evidence and breakthroughs in knowledge have wiped out all our excuses," she writes. "We know that we know how to end this needless suffering, and we have all the resources to do it. From sociology and anthropology to economics, from education and ecology to systems analysis—the evidence is in. We know what works."

Lappé is right. The world produces more food than its citizens can eat—we pay farmers not to grow food—yet hunger persists. Wealth, concentrated in a few companies and individuals, exists at the expense of most, leaving hundreds of millions in poverty. Am I hallucinating that corporations have more rights than individuals, who have become ever more cynical and hopeless? The world today is more interconnected and interdependent than ever, yet we find ourselves buying into wedge issues that can only exist when we believe there is a "them" that exists at the expense of "us"—immigration, gay marriage, war.

I want to know why 50 million Americans can't afford a doctor, and why our minimum wage is a damn far sight from a living wage, leaving millions of Americans in poverty. It's infuriating when the majority of us have a strong opinion, and the leaders supposedly working for us ignore us. I see the earning gap between haves and have-nots expanding. I'm waking up to our spoon-fed diet of fear, which we've been consuming for so long that we're giving up our constitutional rights in the interest of "security," even while we cower in our SUVs and gated communities.

"Thin democracy" is the term Lappé uses to describe our political system, which amounts to an elected government plus a market economy. The only citizen "jobs" in the system are voting, working and, yes, Mr. Bush, shopping. A single rule drives the so-called "free" market: highest return to existing wealth, which concentrates wealth and power to the point where it subverts the political process. To wit: There are more than 60 lobbyists for every one member of Congress.

In contrast, Lappé advocates restoration of a "living democracy," which more accurately describes the system designed by the founding fathers. Grounded in values such as inclusion, fairness and mutual accountability, a living democracy is a dynamic culture shaped by the people it serves, who also frame society's standards. Fair markets widely disperse wealth to the point where it cannot influence public decision-making, yet they provide living wages to workers. Citizens have public lives in numerous roles, their actions shaping their communities and the nation, and they enjoy the rewards of involvement and connecting with others.

Lappé believes we can restore living democracy through specific actions, such as reframing our view of power, and by using a specific set of relational skills: active listening, creative conflict, negotiation, mediation and mentoring. Living Democracy is a learned skill, she writes, and activism is integral to our freedom. Lappé means for us to grab our bootstraps and pull—hard.

"Power means simply our capacity to act," Lappé writes, and powerlessness is a result of a world where there isn't enough for everyone—not enough food, not enough resources, not enough. This premise of "lack" keeps us stuck, since what we resist, persists.

"Plenty" is much closer to the truth. We produce enough food for everyone on the planet; our government spends enough money on wars to provide college educations and health care for every American; there is more than enough energy in wind, sun and water to provide electricity to every citizen on earth.

For those of us willing to roll up our sleeves to create our own future, Lappé provides one method to get it done. For those who would rather wait for someone else to solve things, I advocate worry.

Ronni Mott is the operations manager for the Jackson Free Press.