When Professor Danielle Allen was an undergraduate, she participated in an archeological dig in Athens, Greece. There in the Agora, she uncovered a pot shard with a name written on it “Father of Pericles.”
This was evidence of an ostracism, a practice in that early democracy by which people voted, on pot shards, to exile members of their community. Athenians had ostracized the father of Pericles, a politician, in 484 BC; Allen’s pot shard was one citizen’s vote for his exile.
Allen told this story to a packed room and online at the Bloomberg Center for Cities last week. Her work focuses on questions of democracy and civic power, and she was gathered with Mayor Barbara Lee of Oakland, California, Mayor Haris Doukas of Athens, Greece, and Mayor Lily Wu of Wichita, Kansas, for a conversation on building democracy at the local level.
The mayors were on campus for the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative’s capstone convening, which featured several days of events and conversations with Harvard faculty and students. Allen explained that while ostracism was a practice of ancient democracy, the current-day mayors were coming up with their own “democratic innovations” in their cities.
Open assemblies
Allen asked Doukas if Athenians felt they have a special role when it comes to democracy. He returned to her pot-shard anecdote.
“If you go back to ancient times, Pericles was saying that if you do not participate in public affairs, then you are useless,” he said. “Participation is key for democracy and is key for trust. But participation is not the case now in Athens. There is very low participation, for instance, when voting for mayors—around 30% and less. And people in general don’t participate in decision making in local issues.”
As part of his work to change that, Doukas has started hosting open neighborhood assemblies around important local issues—“informal bodies for consultation” where people come together and discuss issues that matter to them, such as climate and youth issues.
“We have every decision uploaded [and] we always have livestreaming in our sessions. So everybody can come, can participate, can see,” Doukas explained. “Everything discussed is transparent, and if you have something to say, you can say it publicly.”
Doukas used this open assembly model to gather feedback and information for his plan to make Athens a “15-minute city” in which basic amenities can be found within a 15-minute walk.
“We invite[d] people openly in squares to discuss how they can transform their neighborhood in order [for it] to be a 15-minute neighborhood,” he explained. “We have thousands of people participating and very good results, small projects, win-win projects that can make a difference.”
He hopes these sessions can help Athenians trust their government.
“Trust is very difficult, of course, in such a polarized world,” he explains. “We are working hard to discuss every issue with such bodies.”
Visible care
In Oakland, Mayor Lee is working to rebuild trust, too.
“I was sworn in less than a year ago, May 20th last year,” she said. “We had a recall of the prior mayor. People had no hope in terms of their city. They felt disengaged and they didn’t believe that government could or would work for them, especially.”
Oakland’s residents have also faced significant gentrification and displacement.
“We’re a city that’s under resourced with childhood poverty, wage gap, wealth gap, you name it. And so that’s the context. And yet, we’ve been a city that has been identified for two years now as the best food city in the country,” she said. “Part of what I’ve had to do is re-try to help reset the image of Oakland for residents….and my background is psychiatric social work, so I understand the mental health and the cloud that had been over the city. And so we’ve lifted that cloud.”
She began by focusing on a very basic and visible improvement to her city: cleaning up trash and illegal dumping.
“Everything is connected to human dignity and people living in decent, safe, clean neighborhoods,” she explained. “People have already said, ‘we feel better, we see changes.’”
Lee has been working to engage residents in these neighborhood cleanups—and in the work of government itself.
“We have pastors, the faith community, young people, systems-impacted people, people who have been incarcerated, working with me now on city activities, and so that keeps people engaged with city government, and they're beginning to say, ‘oh yeah, I'm part of this also, and I can make a difference,’” she explained.
“Everything is connected to human dignity and people living in decent, safe, clean neighborhoods.”
This process is rooted in Lee’s long history of activism.
“I was a community worker with the Black Panther Party—you know, ‘power to the people’—and so, for me, that’s what this is all about, being mayor.”
And she took care to build a team that represented her constituents.
“My staff reflects the city. We have bilingual staff, we have staff members who are young, middle-aged, we have staff members who have never worked in city government, who are engaged with the community—and having a staff that can reflect every aspect of Oakland is really key in terms of participatory democracy,” she said.
“It requires compromise”
Mayor Lily Wu of Wichita, Kansas, also works to get to know her constituents in person.
“Last year, I made over 1,100 public engagements. And it’s about showing up, listening, and then taking that feedback to work with individuals on the council, because we make policy decisions.”
By now, she knows her community well—“those are my neighbors, and they know me by my first name”—but she recognizes they won’t always agree with her.
“You’re never going to satisfy 100% of your residents. When I vote no for something, the yeses will be mad. When I vote yes for something, the nos will be mad,” she explains.
But she finds people are more likely to accept compromise when they can see the process up close, such as at a city council meeting.
“When you compromise in public, not behind closed doors, you can see that it is messy—you’re making sausage from the bench, as one of my council members likes to talk about. Because this is work that requires resident input, council member input, city staff expert input, and then you create what's hopefully the best decision with the given information,” she explains.
She also pointed out that she’s accountable to all her residents, not just the ones who are most engaged.
“So for me, making sure that residents understand that we appreciate their feedback, we want them to be engaged,” she said. But at the same time, she said, the loudest voices at a city council meeting aren’t the only ones that matter. “As mayors, when we're sitting on that bench, it seems like a lot of heat is coming to the council meeting, but it might not represent the whole of the community. And we have to balance that.”
Trust as a resource
Allen saw a common thread across the mayors’ remarks: “Everything we’re talking about here depends on trust and is about creating trust. So that trust is a kind of positive resource fueling good work for your city governments.”
She asked Wu, Lee, and Doukas to close with lessons they had to share from across their work building trust and relationships with their constituents.
“When people see results, they trust the individuals who are in office,” Wu said.
“Listening is key. Listening for what they really care about, and listening for what others care about, and finding where that point of intersect,” Lee explained.
Doukas brought it back to Pericles. “Pericles was saying,” he explained, “that if you have a positive idea for your city, stand up and say it in front of everyone. Then you will be glorified. Otherwise, if you don’t have a positive idea, you must be silent.”
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Photography by Mary Schwalm and Martha Stewart
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