I once interviewed a candidate for a junior professorship who explained her ability to churn out research as, \u201cI can drill a one inch hole to the center of the earth faster than anyone.\u201d How utterly unlike my style and technique, I thought. I wander and explore. I graze and synthesize. That\u2019s happening now.<\/p>\n
Several weeks ago, I started to write a piece\u2014maybe an op-ed\u2014about California politics. This initial intent may be morphing into something larger, longer, maybe more academic.<\/p>\n
The national press, in particular, has styled California as the home of resistance to all things Trump. It is. At last count Atty. General Javier Bacerra has sued the Trump Administration 27 times, and the state is employing high powered legal talent to push back against the President and U.S. Atty. General Jeff Sessions. And the state has a lot to push back with. As Gov. Jerry Brown jibed to Sessions, \u201cwe\u2019re going to be in court a lot longer than you are going to be in office.\u201d<\/p>\n
But as the pitchman on television says, \u201cwait; there\u2019s more.\u201d California will resist long and hard, and on many fronts, but focusing only on resistance misses the point. I believe California is creating a counter-narrative: a vastly different idea about what our nation should be and how it should be governed.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s relatively straightforward to demonstrate the state\u2019s alternative path in policy direction: in education, the environment, immigration, incarceration, and the right to vote, for example. California\u2019s policies in these areas\u2014including differences with the previous Democratic administration\u2014were in place before Trump was president or even a candidate.<\/p>\n
More difficult\u2014and the reason that this project has become an exploration rather than a one inch hole to the center of the earth\u2014is describing how the structures of political power and participation have changed, and why California may be breaking a path for the country.<\/p>\n
The answer I\u2019m exploring lies at the crossroads of doing and dreaming. There has always been a California Dream. It\u2019s been a different dream over time, but there has always been something special about the state: a saga, a story we tell ourselves and others that is ultimately connected to how we govern ourselves. In a recent interview, Brown admonished readers to be loyal to the \u201cidea\u201d of California.<\/p>\n
Iterations of that idea have driven the state. Historian Victor Silverman notes that, \u201cCalifornia was not discovered; it was invented.\u201d If we drill down, we will find that the current political struggles with the Trump administration are just regressive fights, and the interesting edge of politics are the struggles within the state about how to move forward. It is not whether people should have a guarantee of health care, for example, but whether the state should embrace a single payer plan, and if so how. It is not about whether Dreamers should stay, but how to best create a comprehensive approach to immigration reform and what a state can do when the national government has so dramatically failed to create workable immigration policy.<\/p>\n
In its recent public policy directions, California extends the three historic interlocking themes that Silverman describes that I believe put the state on the leading edge of America:
\n\u2022 How people interact with the environment: the climate, land, water, creatures.
\n\u2022 How conflicts between people with vastly different power resources are resolved.
\n\u2022 How dreams are met and disappointments dealt with.<\/p>\n
In future posts, I will write more about this work in process, and I\u2019ll ask your comments and advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I once interviewed a candidate for a junior professorship who explained her ability to churn out research as, \u201cI can drill a one inch hole to the center of the earth faster than anyone.\u201d How utterly unlike my style and technique, I thought. I wander and explore. I graze and synthesize. That\u2019s happening now. Several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,199,198],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1361"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1363,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions\/1363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}