Democracy Rising PA-statements-Widoff

=== Harrisburg needs ordinary citizens who value democracy. Together they can help restore integrity in state government.Harrisburg needs ordinary citizens who value democracy. Together they can help restore integrity in state government.===
By Mark P. Widoff
I came to Harrisburg in 1971 as a young lawyer full of idealism. Like
so many young Americans at the time, I was inspired during the JFK
years to serve my country, my state and my community in public
service.
I had already served in the Peace Corps and in Community Legal
Services in Philadelphia when I arrived in Harrisburg to serve in
state government. Although I left state government in 1979, I never
lost my interest in public service.
Unfortunately, the years since then have tested my faith and
idealism. The stench that has risen out of our ornate Capitol has
been far worse than the sausage that political scientists talk about
when they lecture about the legislative process.
The problem is age-old: the longer the "public servants" are in
Harrisburg, the more they confuse their own interest with the public
interest.
Our system was never designed to support career politicians. It was
designed to tap into the willingness of leaders to serve the public
for a limited time, and then return to their communities and their
careers outside of politics.
Our founders assumed that regular elections would periodically send
home those politicians who tarried too long in elected office. They
did not anticipate the "scientific" methods now available to
reapportion districts, manipulate public opinion polls, and overwhelm
political opponents with huge sums of money provided by special
interests.
So, the politicians, especially legislators, are so well entrenched
they believe they should stay in office as long as they wish - a
classic definition of an oligarchy, not a representative democracy.
But there is hope today in Harrisburg, thanks to a handful of heroes
who risked everything to fight the prevailing power structure. They
have endured ridicule. They have endured poverty. They have endured
the hatred and the threats of people with power and influence who
drafted legislation in secret and forced votes on this legislation in
the middle of the night.
Somehow their idealism and belief in democracy keep them going, and
they keep fighting the entrenched leadership in Pennsylvania state
government with their own style of leadership.
When the Star Chamber procedure of enacting laws in Harrisburg
resulted in a middle-of-the-night pay raise for state officials,
ordinary citizens finally rallied to vote into office the largest
number of freshmen legislators in anyone's memory and voted out a
sitting Supreme Court justice for the first time in history.
These heroes who never lost faith in the ideal of democracy need our
help right now. They cannot take the next step alone.
Now it's time for those who have been sitting on the sidelines to
join the fight to clean up our state government and make it the best
in America. Civic leaders at every level and leaders of business and
the professions need to join ordinary citizens and become a public
part of this battle to reestablish Pennsylvania as a place of
democratic idealism and hope.
The task we face today is much harder than repealing the pay raise.
We must rebuild the structure of state government to make it much
more difficult for a privileged oligarchy to spend other people's
money in consolidating its own power, wealth and prestige.
We have an unprecedented opportunity to reevaluate our state's
constitutional structure and the assumptions underlying it. This will
require some heavy lifting and some hard, concentrated attention to
provisions that need revision. Some need revision because they simply
no longer reflect the reality of modern government, and others
because our state's Supreme Court has repeatedly chosen to ignore
their plain meaning and intent, shamefully elevating the end as more
important than the means with the self-serving example that judges
need pay raises, so who cares how they get them!
How we elect our representatives, how we choose our judges, how we
clarify and strengthen the procedures for assuring integrity and
openness in the proceedings of our elected officials and our judges
all need study, reflection, debate and action.
If there are men and women who still believe in our democratic ideals
and refuse to concede to the cynics, now is the time to come forward.
Support the reformers. Demand a constitutional convention to reform
Pennsylvania state government and work to make it successful.
If not you, who will prevail in the never-ending battle to make our
democracy honest, real and vibrant? And who will be to blame for the
future abuses and outrages that will cost all of us so dearly, if we
do not join together to reestablish our core democratic values?
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* Mark P. Widoff was the first consumer advocate of Pennsylvania. He is
interim chair of Democracy Rising PA (www.democracyrisingpa.com).
==Links==
* Democracy Rising PA