Beyond Election Day: Faithful citizenship happens ‘brick by brick’ at local level, says Catholic policy expert

Ahead of the general election, OSV News spoke with Jason Adkins, executive director and general counsel of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, on the importance of local as well as presidential elections.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

OSV News: Why is it important for faithful to engage in the local, as well as the presidential, election process?

Jason Adkins: In any election like ours, we have a lot of different issues. There are ballot questions. There are state elections for state races, the state house or state senate. And some of the big questions are decided at that state level.

Yet many people don’t know who their state legislator or state senator are. And so it’s very important that people get to know their legislators, and get to know who they are, and be in relationship with them.

The first step in that process is to identify the candidates and make an informed choice about those local races, because not every fundamental question in American political life is decided by the president of the United States.

So we need to retrain ourselves to understand how lawmaking works, the importance of overlapping jurisdictions in a federal system, and recognize that those state officials especially make important decisions. Officials at the local level, cities, counties, school boards also make important decisions that affect the quality of life of the people they serve.

We need to be informed about who those people are, and make good choices and not ignore those races simply because we don’t like who’s running at the top of the ticket.

OSV News: What are some practical things people can do to stay more informed of and engaged locally — not just during elections, but throughout the whole process of governance?

Adkins: I would recommend, first of all, that if your state Catholic conference has an advocacy network, sign up for that. That breaks down the barriers to participation. It helps people know what to say, when to say, how to say it, and join their voice with the voice of their bishop on important matters of public policy concern.

I would also recommend that they sign up for the emails that their state legislators send out. Most state legislators send out emails probably on a biweekly or a monthly basis to let them know what’s going on at the state house, and what issues are on their radar and how they’re responding to those issues.

And certainly that’s the case for local officials too. City council persons will also have similar systems, as will county commissioners. The easiest way to stay informed is to sign up for their information.

Most elected officials have social media pages. That’s a great way to stay informed about what your elected officials are doing and saying. People are surprised that you can actually get in touch with your elected officials. And more often than not, they want to meet with you and hear what their constituents are thinking about things.

Voting is just one day of the year. The meat of faithful citizenship really happens on the other 364 days of the year. We don’t simply wash our hands of the process after we cast a ballot.

OSV News: What are some practical ways to counter the cynicism and even despair some people, including Catholics, may feel even at the local level over the electoral and governance processes?

Adkins: We were planted in a particular corner of the vineyard, and most of us have real agency in the place that we’re planted. We know the issues, we know the problems and we should know the people who are making those decisions.

I think we have to retrain ourselves to think that the primary locus of our political agency is not in Congress. It’s not at the presidential level or the international level. It’s in our corner of the vineyard where we’ve been planted.

Alexis de Tocqueville (a 19th-century political scientist and author of “Democracy in America”) viewed local politics as a school of democracy. That’s often where our higher officials start … working on a school board, a city council or as a county commissioner.

And when you practice the politics of encounter, you understand that most people get involved because they’ve been willing to make that sacrifice, to take that step forward and serve their communities.

I think that’s the big antidote — going to those places where we don’t often don’t get coverage in the news media, but where we’re really working together to solve important quality of life questions. I’d love to see Catholics be more engaged at the local levels. We can rebuild this community, this nation, from the ground up.

If we start local, if you build strong communities, it doesn’t matter as much what happens at the national level. That does matter, but if we had 50 million Catholics in this country working to build strong communities, using the parish as kind of a base camp and being involved at every level of politics, we could renew this nation from the ground up. So I think we really need to retrain our focus.

Obviously what happens at the presidential level — because of significant moral questions and the appointment of judges — has really attracted our attention. But if we want to make a difference, then we need to be in conversation and in relationship with our state officials, because that’s where the big questions like abortion and assisted suicide, parental choice and education are being decided. Building our communities from the ground up is going to require that we engage the local politics more intentionally.

OSV News: And that’s the Catholic principle of subsidiarity (which states that larger institutions should not overwhelm or interfere with smaller institutions, while still providing proportional assistance as needed) when you think of it, correct?

Adkins: Exactly. Subsidiarity and solidarity, the dignity of the human person, the common good — all these work together.

City council (may discuss) a lot of (simple) zoning variances, but also taxation issues, housing issues and questions like that. How do we build communities that make housing more affordable?

Everyone’s concerned about what’s going on in the schools. Well, who’s signing up to engage those school board electoral races? Who’s working to ensure our schools are places that are focused on skills and principles and not indoctrination?

A lot of those issues are decided at the county and civil at city level.

The amount of time that we spent … on social media could be better spent sitting in on a school board meeting, or a city council meeting, or writing a letter to the editor. There’s a million things you can do.

Along with a Holy Hour, why not a “citizenship hour” every week, where we focus on a way where we can actually identify those ways that we can make a difference?

And then, be patient and persevere. Understand that we’re not going to turn the ship around in one day. It takes a lot of people working brick by brick.

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