To Establish Justice, To Insure Domestic Tranquility

We estimate that the cost of beginning to replicate such a comprehensive and interdependent policy to scale is on the order of $50B to $60B per year.¹ This is a considerably lower funding level than the Violence Commission's proposed $20B per year in 1968, which today would be valued at $87B per year.

Table 1 is a cost summary of our main proposals. We believe that some of these costs can be borne by the private sector -- especially when it comes to jobs and training. However, given the failures of the private sector in supply-side economics, the Job Training Partnership Act and Enterprise Zones, we believe that it is inevitable that the public sector take the lead.

We recommend that, while the federal government should raise funds -- it should then re-target most of them to local government and especially to the private, non-profit, indigenous inner-city organizations that are responsible for so much of what works, based on the scientific evaluations presented here. Since the Violence Commission, we have learned a great deal about how to enhance the capacities of such organizations and how to replicate them. It is past time for a national commitment to steady, systematic replication. We consider this policy to be a kind of grassroots federalism.

How do we propose to finance such reform? Not through new taxes, though, as we have suggested, there is plenty of public opinion to suggest that Americans are willing to pay more taxes for school and job reform that works. Rather, at the federal level, we propose looking at the annual $1.8T budget. We propose minor percentage changes in some budget line items. This can generate the $50B to $60B needed to begin replicating what works to scale.

Our first priority is on reducing by a fraction affirmative action for the rich and corporate welfare. The taxpayers of America spend somewhere between $100 and $200 billion per year on tax breaks and subsidies to the rich and to corporations. Table 2 has illustrations. For example, in the 1980s, tens of billions of dollars of tax breaks were given out to the rich and to corporations, by way of liberalized depreciation and capital gains allowances. At the same time, we spend tens upon tens of billions of dollars per year on subsidies to corporations. These are federal grants. We subsidize the nuclear power industry, the aviation industry, the media, big oil and gas, the mining industry, the timber industry, and agri-business. America subsidizes agri-business to the tune of over $18 billion per year.²

Well paid lobbyists will argue that the rich need affirmative action and corporate welfare to assure a robust economy. Yet this claim is disputed by the econometric forecasts made by Richard McGahey, who prepared them while at the Center for Community Change. The Center has proposed 1 million new public service jobs, just as we have. McGahey analyzed the impact on the economy of these 1 million jobs if their total cost were financed by reducing corporate welfare by an equal amount. Using FAIRMODEL, a widely regarded econometric model based on 131 equations that is continually updated and re-estimated, McGahey compared the current econometric forecast produced by the model 5 years into the future to an alternative forecast with the public service job program financed by the corporate welfare cuts. Compared to the current forecast, the forecast with the proposed change "has a higher level of real and nominal economic growth, stable private sector employment, and a lower national unemployment rate. Real wage increases and inflation are virtually the same in the 2 scenarios."³

In other words, a shift in some resources from corporate subsidies to public service jobs does not hurt the economy. It can help the economy.

In addition to reducing corporate welfare, we should redirect some money now being spent on the military to our more serious domestic needs. Current federal plans call for military spending to be as much in the millennium, in real terms, as it was in 1975, in the midst of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union still existed and was heavily armed. Many well-qualified experts support military cuts, including William W. Kaufman, a defense analyst for several U.S. Defense Department secretaries. Kaufman concludes in a study for the Brookings Institution that the United States could reduce the defense budget to less that $200B per year over the next 10 years without undermining its global security commitments or its position in arms control negotiations. The Center for Defense Information, founded by retired admirals and generals, has proposed a reduction in military personnel from 1.4 million to 1 million and an annual Pentagon budget of $200B.⁴ One retired 3 star admiral, Jack Shannon, heads the military advisory committee of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities. In the New York Times, Admiral Shannon has concluded:⁵

The Table 1 budget also should be financed by reducing programs that don't work particularly well -- like the war on drugs, prison building, boot camps, and JTPA for high-risk youth, and by allocating a fraction of any future budget surpluses.

If, then, we really know a great deal about what doesn't work, if we know a great deal about what does work, if we have learned a lot about how to replicate what works, and if, at least in a technical budget sense, we can identify budget line items that can finance what works to scale, what is the problem?

The problem is lack of political will and lack of action by our leaders. For example, at the federal level, too much legislation has sought to expand funding for what doesn't work (like tax breaks for the rich and prison building for the poor) and to reduce funding for what does work (like preschool and safe havens). Nor has any federal legislative strategy been proposed to replicate what works to a scale equal to the dimensions of the problem.

But are not our leaders just carrying out the will of the people?

The answer is no. Over the last decade, considerable support has been expressed by the public for the policy and budget priorities in this update.

For example, national surveys conducted from 1988 to 1994 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago show that a substantial majority of Americans want to see more money spent on improving the nation's educational system and on reducing crime and drug addiction.⁶

In 1992, immediately after the Los Angeles riots, the New York Times and CBS News asked Americans in a nationwide poll: "Are we spending too much money, too little money, or about the right amount of money on the problems of the big cities, on improving the conditions of blacks, and on the poor?" Sixty percent of respondents said that too little was being spent on urban problems, 61 percent said that too little was being spent on improving the conditions of African Americans, and 64 percent said that too little was being spent on the problems of the poor. The pollsters also asked: "To reduce racial tension and prevent riots, would more jobs and job training help a lot, help a little, or not make any difference?" Seventy-eight percent of respondents said that more jobs and training would help a lot.⁷

In 1995, a national Harris poll for Business Week revealed that 72 percent of the respondents surveyed believed the federal government to have the responsibility for "a job for those willing to work." Seventy-five percent believed that the federal government should provide "child care for low income working mothers."⁸

Complementary findings come from a 1996 poll of voters sponsored by the Children's Partnership, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Coalition for America's Children, the National Association of Children's Hospitals, and the National Parent-Teacher Association. Seventy-six percent of the voters polled in that survey said that they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported increased funding for children's programs. Sixty-five percent favored proposals for children and families, even if this would mean slowing down deficit reduction. Sixty-four percent said that government should play a large role in solving problems facing children. Sixty-two percent said that they would oppose a balanced budget amendment if it required cuts in children's programs.⁹

In 1998, in the first national sampling of attitudes on surpluses after the federal fiscal year 1999 budget surplus was projected, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found that the largest group of respondents, 43 percent, called for using any extra money to invest in Social Security, Medicare and education. (Thirty percent backed paying down the debt, and 22 percent favored tax cuts.)¹⁰

In 1998, a referendum passed in California to add a 50 cent tax on cigarettes and to use the money for education and other investments in human capital. The referendum was successful in spite of $30M spent by the tobacco companies to try to defeat it.¹¹

In 1999, the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University identified segments of the voting public that can be targeted with success in campaigns to reduce young child poverty. For example, 1 of these voter groups consists of "natural givers" -- mostly women, baby boomers and persons who have higher income and education levels. Another voter target group that can be impacted, based on Columbia Center research, consists of "work ethic subscribers." They tend to be high school graduates with lower incomes. They have a strong moral imperative for reform, coupled with the belief that those who are helped should return the favor.¹²

What are the means through which this public opinion can better be mobilized to change the will and action of leaders in the legislative and executive branches of government?

There are no easy answers to this question. But we offer 2 points of departure. The first is campaign finance reform. The second is a communicating what works movement.

Without real political finance reform, only limited progress is possible. Today, the economic system in America runs the political system. We have a one dollar, one vote democracy -- not one person one vote. The stranglehold of big money on the American political system and the public agenda is illustrated by the following practices:¹³

• Lavish corporate subsidies to our 2 major political parties.

• The contribution of as much as $1M to national campaigns by individual foreign interests.

• The virtual elimination of competition by congressional incumbents whose huge campaign war chests have ensured them a re-election rate of over 90 percent.

• Corporate sponsorship of the carefully scripted, plastic, made-for-television national conventions of the 2 major parties.

• Ongoing mobilization of special-interest money by members of Congress and shakedowns of rich people by elected officials dialing for dollars.

• The purchase of legislative and regulatory "relief" by lobbyists who represent the interests that get the politicians elected and re-elected.

In many ways, clean money campaign reform, as pioneered in the state of Maine and as advocated at the national level by Public Campaign, is the reform that makes all the other reforms possible. The model provided by Maine recently gained momentum when a federal district court upheld its constitutionality.¹⁴

Strictly limiting campaign contributions and providing a system of public financing for congressional campaigns, like that available for presidential campaigns, will not guarantee replication of what works to scale. Nor will shorter campaigns, as in England, combined with equal amounts of publicly financed television time for all candidates. But such reform will help level the political playing field. It might allow campaigns to be based more on issues than on money -- and to better take into account the interests of the poor, working income people and middle income people.

If we can, eventually, be successful with real campaign finance reform, then perhaps more people can be elected to Congress with backgrounds as community activists, teachers, nonprofit community development corporation directors, community-based bankers, youth development advocates, practitioners of prevention and treatment, public education reformers, persons who advocate for the elimination of racial biases in our sentencing system, and individuals who fight to reduce the prison-industrial complex.

To increase the chances for success, established progressive foundations and new foundations created from information technology fortunes need to better finance the work of nonprofit organizations fighting for campaign finance reform -- like Public Campaign.

To change the will and action of our leaders and, if necessary, to bypass them through grassroots action and referendums, we need reinvigorated advocacy by national and local nonprofit organizations. The goal of the advocacy should be to better inform the public that we already know what works, and what doesn't -- so that our local and national policy can be to replicate what works to scale and stop doing what doesn't work.

We must organize to elect candidates who will pursue what works. But we also must create and finance a permanent national movement that communicates what works -- so that organizers in any locality can draw on it at any time. The what works message should be directed to national, state and local legislative and executive branch decision makers as well as to private sector decision makers.

A communicating what works movement can learn from the success of those who have advocated so effectively over recent decades for tax breaks for the rich, prison building for the poor and disinvestment from the inner city. Such advocacy has been well funded. For example, from 1992 to 1994, the richest conservative foundations in America made over $220M in communications and media grants to conservative think tanks.¹⁵

The largest such tank in America has used its money to help develop a large staff of analysts and fellows. Many position papers, articles and books are produced. When such material is completed and approved, it is networked via a sophisticated communications office to every appropriate Member of Congress and every appropriate Congressional staff member. It is networked to newspaper editorial page editors, op-ed editors and columnists across the country, as well as to talk radio and talk television. The think tank has a television studio on its premises. There, its associates can practice their own seven-second sound bites.¹⁶

As Columbia University Professor Herbert Gans has written, such well-financed think tanks have been successful in promoting into public dialogue unsubstantiated concepts that nonetheless have influenced policy decisions controlled by legislators. An example is the term "superpredator," which was given to young African-American men in a book associated with one such think tank. Promoting racial stereotypes and fear of violence, that false notion has been linked to "3 strikes and you’re out" type sentencing policy, racially biased drug sentencing, and the resulting prison building that profits a white male-controlled prison-industrial complex.¹⁷

Because of the considerable influx of money for media advocacy from conservative foundations in the 1980s and 1990s, there has been a proliferation of articulate conservative electronic media voices over the 2 decades that has not been matched by sufficient numbers of articulate media presenters advocating what works.

The media often reinforce what doesn't work and insufficiently cover what does work.

In the 30 years since the Violence Commission, much has changed in the media system. Back in 1969, there were 3 main networks -- NBC, ABC, CBS -- and none of them had other major media holdings. Today there are 7 main networks (including the quasi-non-commercial PBS) plus another 50 or so commercially viable cable channels. The original 3 networks all have been sold at least once. Excluding PBS, all of the main networks now are owned by massive transnational media conglomerates. The U.S. media system is dominated by 8 firms: Time Warner, Viacom (owner of CBS), General Electric (owner of NBC), Disney (owner of ABC), News Corporation, Sony, Seagram, and AT&T/Liberty Media. These 8 firms own all of the major Hollywood film studios, most of the television production studios, all or part of each of the 50 most lucrative cable television channels, a majority of the U.S. cable television systems, most of the major television stations in the 15 largest U.S. markets, and 4 of the 5 firms that sell nearly 90 percent of the music in the United States. They have large holdings in radio broadcasting, book publishing, magazine publishing, amusement parks and Internet websites.¹⁸

When we add to these 8 firms another 15 or so companies, we have a total of 2 dozen firms responsible for nearly the preponderance of our media system. In a nation of more than 260 million people, that is a very small number. And it is shrinking rapidly. In 1969, for example, about 100 or 150 companies were responsible for the same amount of media as these 2 dozen companies own today. This is enormous market power in a few hands. It gives these media giants tremendous leverage over audiences.¹⁹

There is unremitting pressure for profits. Most Americans prefer to get their news on local television. To maximize ratings and profits, local managers often will follow a policy of, "if it bleeds, it leads." Crime and violence on the 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 10 p.m., 11 p.m. local television news are thought to be the best way to maximize ratings, profits from commercials, and the television manager's job security. ²⁰ For example, a recent study of television reporting in Philadelphia found that almost one-third of the stories on the local news were on crime and three-quarters of the crime stories were featured during the first segment of the news shows, before the first commercial.²¹ Similarly, a recent study of local news broadcasts on 26 stations in California found that violence was the single most frequent story featured. More than half of the stories on youth involved violence, and more than two-thirds of the stories on violence involved youth (even though Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics show that juveniles represent less than 20% of the arrests for violence.)²² As the California study illustrates, lead stories often target young minority males, who are demonized as offenders. "Welfare mothers" can be portrayed as inadequate parents.

Not only is violence perceived by station managers to hold viewer interest, but it also is cheap to produce. As former NBC News president Lawrence Grossman has observed, "the crime scene, marked off in yellow police tape, doesn't move; no matter when the reporter arrives there's always a picture to shoot, preferably live. No need to spend off-camera time digging, researching, or even thinking. Just get to the crime scene, get the wind blowing through your hair, and the rest will take care of itself.²³

George Gerbner, Bell Atlantic Professor of Telecommunications at Temple University, has observed that the result of the present violent and negative news programming can be the "mean world syndrome." That is, too often, the average, tax paying citizen concludes that the world is pretty mean and gloomy. In such a mean world, there are few policy answers -- except, of course, negative solutions, like prison building (which enhances the white prison-industrial complex and so helps make the rich richer and the poor poorer).²⁴ The mean world syndrome helps explain why, after the South Central Los Angeles riots in 1992, a majority in the New York Times/CBS poll (above) said the major obstacle to doing more was "lack of knowledge."

What to do to reverse the mean world syndrome? Patricia McGinnis, President of the Council for Excellence in Government, funded by the Ford Foundation, talks about the need for "spreading the word about what works most effectively in government."²⁵ To spread the word, we recommend a national communicating what works campaign. It should be led by national and local nonprofit organizations -- groups that are carrying out, replicating and advocating for the urban, education, employment, economic and criminal justice reforms set forth in this update.

As part of a communicating what works campaign, we recommend conventional as well as alternative media strategies.

Conventional Media Strategies. One model is the kind of Television School run by the Eisenhower Foundation and other groups for the executive directors of national and especially local nonprofit inner-city nonprofit organizations. Each Eisenhower Foundation Television School begins with strategic communications planning. A television camera then is brought in, operated by a wise, African-American cameraman off duty from NBC. Each nonprofit participant must first sit in front of the camera and, in a minute or 2, present the mission of his or her organization. Each then must undertake a friendly interview with a reporter. Next, each must undertake a hostile interview -- and finally be part of a press conference in which the trainers act as unpleasant reporters.

Each round of such training is videotaped, replayed and critiqued in front of all the other participants. It is hard and stressful work. But, not surprisingly, nonprofit organization personnel respond well and learn quickly. Few have thought of communications as part of their mission.

We need to greatly expand such training. If a thousand nonprofit organizations could receive Television School and strategic communications training and retraining each year and if communications directors could be hired back home for clusters of local nonprofit groups, there could be significant impact nationally. More media savvy nonprofit groups could be heard. They could put market pressure on local television stations that do not incorporate segments on what works and that continue "leads/bleeds" programming. They could teach private sector leaders what works and help elect public officials who campaign for what works.

There are local television stations that have made the changes recommend here, like KVUE in Austin, Texas.²⁶ These models need to be communicated, shared and replicated more widely around the nation.

Public service announcements on what works can be part of a conventional media strategy. However, since the Violence Commission we have seen little scientific evidence that public service announcements by many national nonprofit organizations have had much of an impact. Instead, we propose funding and evaluating of local nonprofit organizations -- to tailor local what works messages that are delivered by local youth. To employ the previously demonized as the message senders conveys a powerful message in and of itself. Here the model is the youth media enterprise of the Dorchester Youth Collaborative in Boston, which already has been evaluated as successful, as part of a more comprehensive strategy. The Collaborative's positive youth messages have been seen and heard locally in Boston and distributed nationally through Blockbuster Video. A limited distribution, Hollywood-financed, socially-relevant motion picture has been made.²⁷

We recommend that nonviolent commercial advertisements for teenagers be included in a conventional media strategy. On television today, commercials are the primary vehicles for celebrating success, while news programs predominately are filled with images of failure.²⁸ Accordingly, we propose that corporate commercials be integrated with messages on what works. This can be a win-win strategy. Corporations can sell their product at the same time that basic what works messages are generated.

Alternative Communication Strategies. Yet we are realistic about the limitations of mainstream television, radio and newspaper media in communicating what works. That is why we recommend alternative venues -- including, for example, in-person town meetings, electronic pamphleteering and interlinked community web sites.

Town meetings have the advantage of direct communication without the filter of the media. They engage the audience -- and can help attract more citizens to join a local coalition that advocates for what works. Local and state legislative and executive branch officials can be invited, as can candidates running for office. Local nonprofit advocacy organizations can propose more of what works, less of what doesn't -- and then ask officials to go on record with responses.

Religious services and accompanying social functions are forms of town meetings. There is vast potential, we believe, for the clergy to communicate what works and the immorality of what doesn't work (Chapter 4). A well informed clergy can make powerful use from the pulpit of the policy successes and failures documented in this update.

As a supplement to in-person meetings, "low tech" pamphleteering can be useful to deliver messages to people in the community -- and, perhaps, to involve youth as the pamphlet distributors. When Bill Moyers resigned from commercial network television, he stated that corporate control had destroyed broadcast journalism and that one recourse was to "return to the days of the pamphleteer."²⁹ Low tech advocacy venues are well known to grassroots inner-city community organizations. However, many local inner-city nonprofit groups have lost their street organizing skills over the 30 years since the Violence Commission. We need to revitalize advocacy and street organizing by local nonprofit groups.

And, we need to integrate "high tech" pamphleteering with town hall meetings on what works. "Any person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from a soapbox," Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has written in the first Supreme Court decision that dealt with the First Amendment and the Internet. Through the technologies of on-line publishing, "the same individual can become a pamphleteer," he concluded.³⁰

Nationally, nonprofit organizations need to construct much more sophisticated web sites than at present, The sites should summarize what works, and doesn't work, based on scientific evaluation. The sites should tailor much of their information to local, grassroots inner city nonprofit groups. The groups, and especially the inner city youth they serve, should be taught how to access what works information and how to use it for advocacy.

Locally, a new generation of advocacy-based, community web sites is needed. The community web sites should be run by inner-city nonprofit groups and involve youth. The sites should link up nonprofit advocacy organizations with citizens who can help to communicate what works to local public and private leaders. The outcomes of town meetings can be summarized on such community web sites. Plans for upcoming town meetings can be communicated. Each community web site can serve as an ongoing town meeting -- continuing to debate reform, discuss budget priorities, organize against "leads/bleeds" television stations and generate new, proactive communication strategies. We already have evidence that many people want to convene with their geographic neighbors, both online and in person, and community-based web sites linked to town meetings would do just that. Partial existing models include community web sites in locations as diverse as San Francisco, California; Blacksburg, Virginia; and London, England. For example, in London, Microsoft supplied computers, Internet access and a way for persons in specific communities to communicate with one another online.³¹ Much more is possible, we believe, and it could reduce the "digital divide" between the haves and the have nots -- as well as advocate for what works.

If such an Internet advocacy strategy is developed for inner cities, it might be linked to the new Internet service being offered by the AFL-CIO to union members. The service will seek to diminish the "digital divide" by providing workers with Internet access and by functioning as an organizing tool.³²

Like Internet-based community networking, local cable programs with call-ins can help publicize a local what works advocacy campaign, provide ongoing information and attract more citizens to support the advocacy.

As with campaign finance reform, funding for a communicating what works movement needs to come from established foundations. The Ford Foundation's Excellence in Government funding is an example of what needs to be done. Some of the initiatives funded by the Soros Open Society Institute and the W. T. Grant Foundation are other examples. Perhaps the new foundations being generated by information technology fortunes can play a role. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has heavilly financed computers in inner-city schools, and its recent commitment of $1B in scholarships for aspiring minority students in poor neighborhoods was the largest education grant in American history.³³ The AOL Foundation has a promising new grant initiative that seeks "innovative ideas for tapping the power of the online medium to empower disadvantaged populations and communities."³⁴ We call on the new information age foundations and more established progressive foundations to convene a national conference on communicating what works, media training and Internet advocacy.

It is projected that Hispanics will outnumber African-Americans by 2010. As part of communicating what works, we recommend that leading progressive and new information technology-generated foundations fund a national dialogue among Hispanic, African-American, Native-American and Asian-American nonprofit organizations to promote common solutions around what works. William Julius Wilson at Harvard's Kennedy School argues, wisely we believe, that a vision of interracial unity is more important now than ever.³⁵

In sum, through campaign finance reform and a communicating what works movement, we can increase the likelihood of a political system with more players who will appropriate enough funds to replicate what works. And we can create a better environment for the new political alliance and voting majority suggested in Chapter 8. Outside of the public sector, we can generate more action by grassroots nonprofit leaders.

Notes

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