One Way Forward: The Outsider's Guide to Fixing the Republic is the seventh book by Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and activist concerned about the excessive influence of corporate money in politics. One Way Forward describes his discussions with activists in the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. He says the two groups have a lot in common, including a concern for the future of the US and a willingness to devote substantial amounts of time and possibly money to do what they think is likely to fix the worst of the problems.
They also share a counterproductive tendency to label as "treasonous" anyone who suggests talking with the other side. Lessig says that together these different groups can fix the biggest problem facing the US today, namely the excessive influence of corporate money in politics, also called crony capitalism or corporate welfare. However, all sides must first find ways to listen to the others to find their common ground.
Lessig hopes this book will help catalyze a needed rapprochement between different groups, encouraging them to listen to the others and find their common grounds. If they can do that, they can produce much needed change in the political economy of the US and possibly the world.
To facilitate this, Lessig writes, "After a short period, and assuming the book takes hold, I will license it freely, and based on the feedback (at oneway.lessig.org), draft version two. That second version will be licensed freely from the start, and will live on a wiki. That means that no single one of us will own it, but that all of us will be able to direct it."
Chapters
Chapter 1: Prologue
US politics are typically described as Right vs. Left / conservative vs. liberal. However, the "Inside" thwarts reforms for all "Outsiders".
MoveOn began in 1998 as "a cross-partisan player and the only adult in the field" during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The movement grew from one or two people to thousands in a few days, surprising everyone, especially the Insiders. Hundreds of volunteers attended over 300 meetings with members of congress. In so doing, they challenged the conventional Insider wisdom that volunteers cannot be effective in political lobbying.
Insiders were also surprised by Obama's performance in 2008 and more recently by the Tea Party, the international Occupy movement, and the SOPA / PROTECT IP Act protests.
Chapter 2: Passionate
The Tea Party, Occupy, Move to Amend and similar groups have attracted many people who are very passionate in their concerns and willing to devote substantial amounts of time and money to try to fix what they see wrong.
Chapter 3: Polarized
Lessig spoke with activists with the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street and others. He believes that together they have the energy and commitment needed create much needed change. However, their progress is currently prevented by a tendency to claim that talking with the "other" is treason.
Chapter 4: Potential
People right, left, and center are concerned about crony capitalism. Before we can solve problems of concern to all, we must do the following:
Identify effective reform(s) we can agree upon
Leverage our common passion to support this
Without denying our differences.
Lessig described a teach-in he gave at Occupy K Street, where he implored the Occupiers to invite Tea Partiers to collaborate against crony capitalism. A man in the audience said he ran a site . He assured the audience that thousands of Tea Partiers would join them in a fight against crony capitalism. Then Dave Zirin, a sportswriter for The Nation, started tweeting and blogging that, "We should not be collaborating with the racists from the Tea Party."
Lessig insists that we can either (a) remain separate and ineffective or (b) squelch the inflammatory condemnations of the "others" and build a coalition to reduce crony capitalism and make the government "dependent on the people alone", as James Madison wrote in Federalist paper No. 52.
The difference today between Left and Right today is nowhere nearly as profound as slavery was.. If our forebears could fix that, we should be able to fix our current problems with crony capitalism.