It's a would-be activist's dream come true: Someone with kindred
values monitors Congress and alerts
you to significant votes. Better
still, they draft a letter to your
congressional delegation and ask if you'd like it
faxed right away. Want to edit it? No problem! They'll do
it your way. Welcome to TrueMajority.
It's the new brainchild of ice cream
mogul Ben Cohen and Priorities, a
6-year-old nonprofit that has pressed to get
adequate funding for education, children's health care
and other social issues by reducing
obsolete, Cold War-oriented Pentagon
expenses. This could
be easily accomplished if the pork barrel were taken out
of military
spending, according to Priorities' advisory committee of
high-ranking, retired military
officers.
If that sounds great to you, you're not alone-and TrueMajority
is here to help voters tell Congress
to listen up. The project will attempt
to engage the 50 million "cultural
creatives" named by sociologist Paul H. Ray-
U.S. citizens who share, among other things, social,
ecological and political values that
the government is failing to address
adequately. "[These people] have no
idea how big a group they are ... and how
important they can be to
American life," writes Ray. Even higher levels of support
for values embedded in
TrueMajority's 10 principles are apparent in
independent surveys. For
instance, 75 percent of Americans are
willing to pay an additional $50 a
year to cut world hunger in half by 2015.
The problem, says Cohen, is that
hardly anyone has time to track what
Congress is doing in all those areas, so they wind up
attending to just one
or two issues. "You start off with a cohesive group of 50
million, but it gets fragmented. Then,
when it comes time to pressure
Congress, no one organization has
enough of a constituency to be effective. Instead
of being
guided by the values of the American people, the
government is being guided
by the values of
corporations-which are, essentially, to maximize
profits," he says.
Cohen's plan is "one-click activism," a free service that he
believes will help Congress act
according to Americans' deeper values.
The TrueMajority Website lets
individuals register for email alerts that arrive once
or twice
a month. Complementary to Working Assets' Act for Change
alerts, TrueMajority focuses
exclusively on national leadership and
easy action. By clicking on the URL in
the TrueMajority email, members open
three options: having a letter in
front of them faxed with their names to their
own congressional delegates or
revising the letter before TrueMajority
sends it. Or they can send
nothing.
Will Congress pay attention to form faxes? "I've spent a bunch
of time strolling around Congress and
talking to people there," says Cohen.
"Essentially they are saying the best thing people can do
is make their views
known to their legislators. We understood that emails are
disregarded by a lot of them,
and that's why we're generating
faxes."
He admits that a phone call to Congress might be more
effective-but then there's nothing to
stop a person who's sent the fax from
picking up the phone, as well.
"It's probably true that personal lobbying's the best thing you
could do," says cartoonist Ted Rall,
who recently signed up for
TrueMajority's email alerts. "Hell,
the best thing you could do is buy your own
congressman. Failing that, you
have to get people to be involved to the extent that
they're willing and able....
Isn't [a form letter] better than nothing?"
TrueMajority is still developing, says Cohen, and there's
plenty of room
for suggestions. Active in late
June, the Website enrolled 30,000 members in
its first five weeks.
Meanwhile Cohen and cohort hit the highways, parading
through cities with cleverly molded vehicles and
carnival games to raise
awareness of how the government spends tax dollars. The tab for
TrueMajority is
picked up by Priorities, an umbrella for the 10-member
military advisory
committee, some 500 CEOs and
corporate presidents in Business Leaders for
Sensible Priorities (BLSP), Religious Leaders for
Sensible Priorities
representing 40 denominations, and a new and growing
group of Entertainers for Sensible
Priorities. Additional funds come from foundations and
Cohen personally.
The seed of priorities was sown in BLSP when Ben and Jerry's was
still, well, Ben and Jerry's. Cohen
fervently believes that business is the most
powerful force in our society and therefore has a social
responsibility imperative,
although it's not required by corporate law.
"If the most powerful force in society
does not look out for the general
welfare, society will be destroyed," he and Jerry
Greenfield wrote in "Ben and Jerry's
Double Dip" (1997). Starting with a desire to build a
"community-based" business, Cohen and
Greenfield made their ice cream
company a model of social responsibility and tried to inspire
other businesses to follow suit. BLSP
evolved as an attempt by hundreds of
like-minded CEOs to persuade Congress
to shift spending priorities out of
the Cold War and into programs that nurture the overall health
of society.
When Unilever bought Ben and Jerry's in 2000 -- making such an
unmatchable offer that the board,
bound by law to maximize shareholder profits, had to
accept it-Cohen was stripped of his primary medium
for effecting positive change.
"I'm continuing to work for things that are passions for me in
terms of economic and social justice,
but I'm doing it without the aid of
that incredible asset and tool," he
says, the loss weighing in his voice. He
threw his legendary energies
into BLSP-stacking cookies on the polished
tables of Congress to illustrate how our
military spending towers over
that of all our allies and potential
enemies combined and dwarfs our spending
for social services-and into
the Ben and Jerry's Foundation and the Hot Fudge
Social Ventures fund, which
invests in businesses owned by women,
minorities and low-income people.
But change in congressional priorities, he realized, can come
only if prodded by an electoral base.
"Politicians essentially listen to two
things: money from the people
who give them campaign contributions and votes,"
says Cohen. Then came Sept. 11.
"There were a lot of people watching the news
and thinking, There's got
to be something greater than more guns, more
drilling, and more welfare for
corporations as a vision for our
nation's future."
Barbara Valocore, president of Lifebridge Foundation, which is
making a grant to TrueMajority,
agrees. "There's a large portion of
the population that feels strongly
about life-enhancing and values-based issues
but is not
getting its voice heard. If that voice of concern was
really organized, we could change
things rapidly for the better for all
people," she says. "It's
not necessary to have 24,000 people dying every day.
Poverty can be solved for a
fraction of the military budget."
And what would become of the military? It could get better-and
it desperately needs to, according to
Priorities' military advisory
committee, which includes former CIA
director and retired navy Admiral Stansfield
Turner and retired army Colonel David Hackworth, this
country's most decorated living combat
veteran.
Before Sept. 11, Congress appropriated about $350 billion
dollars for weaponry and forces that
are largely outmoded, says retired
navy Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, who
chairs the advisory committee; this year's
proposed budget simply tacked on an extra $45 billion for
the war on terrorism, bringing
military spending to more than $1
billion a day. "If you look at our
military structure today, it would be a miracle, an
absolute miracle, if it were to
be successful tracking down, in an urban,
third-world environment, these shadowy
figures that are out to get us," he
says. We are wasting money on army divisions and carrier
battle groups, according to Shanahan,
when what we will need in the future is better
intelligence and more special forces.
Of course, there's a lot of PAC money and votes embedded
in old-style military spending. "This
is where the military-industrial
complex has a chokehold on those
people who would like to see us reorganize our
military," says Shanahan.
Although jobs are at stake, he says money could be
redirected to new jobs in
sectors "that improve the quality of life for the average
American."
Cohen fumes at the subject of military spending. "Despite all
the talk about
reducing nuclear weapons, our
country is developing new nuclear weapons
and continues to spend about
$30 billion a year on our nuclear
arsenal. That's enough to blow up the
entire world ten times over. That didn't make any
sense before the terrorist
attacks, and it doesn't make any sense after
the terrorist attacks.
"What's really patriotic is struggling and fighting for the soul
and spirit
of America.... The majority of the
population wants to increase spending
for education. They want to take care
of people in poverty at home and
abroad. They want the U.S. to act in a
multilateral fashion, cooperating with
other countries in the world
instead of ... refusing to sign international
treaties," says Cohen. "These are things that are based
on the traditional
American values of compassion, equality, and social
justice." Lane Fisher is an associate
editor of Hope Magazine.
