Every Stone

I’m just now getting a breather after getting back from my pseudo summer vacation in New York. July 29 to August 13 I lived in the East Village in New York to take part in the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy’s Summer Institute, a public policy program for young progressives. It was the most grueling two weeks off I’ve ever taken. I suppose it was also the only two weeks off I’ve ever taken, but that doesn’t mean it was any less taxing.

So, DMI. I accepted the opportunity with low expectations. I’m jaded. Guilty. I was just scared of yet another disappointment, of another hollow experience with peers who haven’t thought their positions through and don’t have the skills — or the ability to admit they don’t have the skills — to advocate effectively.

But DMI didn’t disappoint. It exceeded my wildest expectations. The SI was a startingly comprehensive, coherent program that went beyond providing academic and political background to fostering the practice of critical thinking — something my generation lacks. The program was structured beautifully, the curriculum was intensive, and the exercises brought us closer to one another as well as closer to the end goal of understanding policy.

More and more I’ve come to appreciate the difficulty of structuring a retreat or conference that moves beyond the material it’s aiming to impart to consciously shape the way attendees relate to one another and work together. That’s especially important in situations like this one, where the sharing of information and the creation of relationships between scholars was as vital a contribution to our respective experiences as the coursework. Early on we shared “lifemaps.” Improbably enough, we all took it seriously, and the exercise allowed us to share and bond quickly. Jockeying and competition died right then — a welcome change from the typical Type-A gathering.

Most mornings we read the New York Times with DMI’s Executive Director. Comments were required, and when an unlucky speaker’s remarks weren’t up to snuff, she’d face a barrage of questions. (Four men, 10 women: it was usually a she.) Our breakfast had a separate vocabulary. Analyzing an contextualizing an article was “unpacking.” An off-topic answer would be rebuffed with, “Let me repeat the question.” (A little tough, but oh-so constructive.) We were constantly prompted to reduce a piece to its thesis and its implicit value statements, usually with “what is the core question?”

We quickly improved at getting to the core question, unpacking, and otherwise dissecting the news and various policy debates. Soon enough we held our own. The SI presented us with a deceptively simple topic: the maximum wage. After all, who’d ever seriously considered a maximum wage?

Our dearth of knowledge — and the lack of literature available — gave birth to some interesting — and, okay, some specious — arguments. Armed with the understanding that we weren’t expected to master the policy, we got creative. (Later we’d have even more fun, inappropriately enough, during a debate on how to revitalize Katrina-devastated areas — the conservative team proposed relaxing regulations on wages and hours for workers to expedite the recovery, and the liberal side waxed rhetorically outrageous regarding the constitutionality of the proposal.)

But back to our maximum wage debate — when we were assigned con, I was almost disappointed. Pro would have been more challenging — and potentially more fun — to argue. Who doesn’t want to initiate a radical system of redistribution that would both keep Reese Witherspoon from collecting her $20 mn paycheck and revitalize social spending?

Walking on the dark side for a week was entertaining, too. After all, we got to proselytize about “the fusion of democracy and capitalism” and talk about the spirit of entrepreneurship — there’s no French word for entrepreneurship, remember — and Ben Franklin’s principle of a self-made man. That’s no small consolation.

The greatest problem for us cons was structuring an argument against all of the possible variations on a maximum wage policy. Large sections of our opening were tied to specific understandings of the maximum wage — only a few or even none of which might be part of their argument. Variations on the maximum wage could include setting sector-specific caps, for example, or limiting earned but not total income. Most frightening to our side was the possibility of debating ratios, the most sane of the various incarnations of the maximum wage proposals. Ratios could mean basing the upper bound of a CEO’s salary on the lower bound of his employees’ salaries.

Lucky for us they stuck to total income. (Sorry, pros, if any of you are reading this.) It would kill the economy. Current brain drain and outsourcing would seem like a trickle compared to the rush of professionals and companies to other countries. Their central argument was that maximum wage was the best way to close the income gap. It’s not. So with these two choices on the pro team’s part, we had a great opening for the con.

We argued that the best way to rectify the income gap is to bring the bottom up, not the top down — and the best way to do that is with progressive tax reform that will bankroll greater social spending, maybe even the establishment of a living wage. We may or may not have structured our argument around accusing the pro team repeatedly of undermining core American values and principles, ruining the economy, and trampling the constitution. Tony Snow taught us something after all.

After our opener and during our first period to discuss and structure a rebuttal, there was a quick burst of laughter from the pro table — the rhetoric we decided on, they claimed, made it appear we were going to “cry for capitalism.”

For our closer a scholar who does communications work professionally, Reem, took on the business of reinforcing our arguments and talking points with enviable gusto and ease. Watching her was an education in itself, and when she took me aside later and told me to please speak up and use my hands, it was a welcome intervention. It was the first of many serious conversations about communication we had over the two weeks, and one that took admirable confidence and empathy on her part to initiate.

We discussed our hatred of the word “bitch” and the verbal tics that society instills in women — especially all the various forms of hedging, when a speaker, usually a woman, uses “I think” or “I guess” or even “seems” or “appears” and undermines a point that is in no way uncertain or unfounded. She shared a spoken word monologue by Taylor Mali on the devolution of language that I really enjoyed — it’s here. As she so ably phrased it in her email, Mali “urges us to speak with conviction.”

It was that conversation and a hundred others like it with other Scholars that made these two weeks amazing.