YOU'VE GOT TO CHANGE THE POLITICAL WIND

In The Shadow Of The Conventions, Addressing Issues Of Poverty, Inequality,
Campaign Reform And Drugs.

INTERVIEW WITH JIM WALLIS

Events called the Shadow Conventions 2000 will be held in Philadelphia and
Los Angeles at the same time as the major-party conventions this summer.
They are being staged by a coalition of activists concerned that the major
parties are not forcefully addressing issues such as income inequality and
the persistence of poverty, campaign finance reform and what the activists
see as the failure of the war on drugs.

The Editorial Board recently spoke with conveners of the Philadelphia
Shadow Convention, to be held on the University of Pennsylvania campus July
31 to Aug. 4. One of them is Jim Wallis of the interfaith group Call to
Renewal and editor of Sojourners magazine. Here are some excerpts:

Question. Tell us a little bit about what you are concerned about, what you
are planning to do and why.

Answer. A reporter asked me this morning, "In this time of prosperity, how
do we get people to care?" That is the fundamental moral question - is a
time of prosperity an occasion for ignoring those left behind? One of five
kids are still poor. Child poverty rates are unchanged. That is a national
issue, but it is not being treated that way.. . .

So, do we want to put this on the agenda? It's very connected to money in
politics. Why aren't the needs of my neighbors [in Washington, D.C.] on the
agenda? Well, they don't contribute [to the political parties], and by and
large they don't vote because they know they don't matter in the conversation.

And the drug policy question: Why are we focusing our drug war on the
people in my neighborhood instead of the real drug lords? . . . We are
trying to say that there is a reform impulse that you won't see in the parties.

My view is that the answers to poverty don't come from just the liberal
side or just the conservative side. There are things the conservatives say
that are necessary. I'm a conservative on the issues of family, marriage
and sexuality, and many other questions. But, folks also need a good job
and a living family wage.

Prosperity gives us an opportunity either to ignore those left behind or to
include them. So, what we are going to do with this prosperity is a moral
question that is not really going to be answered by left or right, liberal
or conservative.

Q. What role can faith-based organizations and volunteerism play in
addressing the opportunity gap?

A. I think American politics turns into false choices time and time again.
We are often told we have to make a choice between good jobs or good values
- - between rebuilding neighborhoods or rebuilding families, between fighting
cultural corrosion and violence on television or battling racism. Why are
these the choices that we have to make?

To say that faith-based organizations have a role, or that civil society
needs to be engaged, that's not a cop-out for government responsibility.
Listen: We are not going to clean up the mess of bad social policy by doing
what we do in the churches, or be a safety valve for a government not being
responsible.. . .

What is happening on the faith-based side is a new kind of politics that
really defies the old false choices. It is pro-family, pro-jobs, in support
of a living family income. It is battling racism and being concerned about
cultural corrosion and the television that our kids are getting, which
hurts poor kids a lot worse.

Q. Secular advocates often become suspicious of faith-based solutions
because they believe they will siphon funds away from their own programs.

A. There has been a kind of secular fundamentalism that is as rigid as
right-wing religious fundamentalism. The left has had an allergy to
spirituality for a long time, an allergy to any kind of faith-based
solution. People like me say: "Why don't you look at the whole history of
religious movements undergirding major movements for social change - not
just civil rights, but abolition, women's suffrage, child labor laws?"

That time of revivalism and social action is coming back. Why not use the
best in the civil society as well as the energy, the creativity, the
motivation and then the resources that the private sector can provide, and
the public sector ought to provide? Why not find some new configurations here?

During an election year, we are very susceptible to what I call "wet-finger
politician syndrome." They all lick their finger and put it in the air. And
people think that replacing one of those guys with another will change
things. It won't.. . . You've got to change the political wind.

Q. Beyond statistics and bromides about the very wealthiest Americans
having too much, what specific ideas, what particular policies do the
Shadow Convention conveners support for dealing with the fact that the
highest income people have received a disproportionate share of our boom in
the 80s and 90s?

A. How do you help the Burger King mom, who is working at the drive-through
window and watching her kids in the corner while she is working? She is
poorer than she was when she was on welfare. How do we work together toward
a living family income for her? It's a combination of things: earned income
tax credit expansion, better minimum wage, living wage and some targeted
subsidies.. . .

As for the question on the other end, the sort of ceiling question, it is a
good one. Most Americans are not even aware of some of the dramatic changes
that are affecting them. Thirty years ago, the ratio of CEO salaries to
those of average workers was 30 to 1 in this country. Now it's 794 to 1.
What do you do about that? I think there are some symbolic things. I think
CEO salaries shouldn't be tax-deductible by those corporations. Most don't
know that they are. That is something that is worth some conversations. . .

A student in my class at Harvard said that in Germany, if they had this
great gap between the top and the bottom, there would be a great deal of
shame. Shame controls some of this in similar societies. We apparently have
no shame in terms of how this gap grows and grows and grows. We have
celebrations.

So there are some cultural questions here. Everything isn't reducible to an
easy political answer. I want there to be more sense of responsibility.