From Dialogue to Division: When Radio Mattered

Lew Hill, founder of Pacifica Radio, was the son of an Oklahoma millionaire. Attending Stanford University, he studied Kierkegaard and Gandhi, became a conscientious objector, and conceived the idea for a pacifist-controlled radio station while working at a remote, church-funded Civilian Public Service camp in Coleville, California, one of many set up for those refusing to fight in World War II. KPFA, the first Pacifica station, went on the air in April 1949, initially reaching relatively few people in the San Francisco Bay Area on the FM dial.

These were the boomer years, a time of anticommunist fever, later renamed the McCarthy era after the unscrupulous Wisconsin Senator who claimed in 1950 that 205 Communists infested the State Department (and that was just his warm up act), a time when Hollywood screenwriters were jailed for refusing to discuss their political activities with red-hunting congressmen. In fact, during KPFA’s first months on the air, union leader Harry Bridges was imprisoned for lying about his ties with the Communist Party, and a dozen California Communist leaders were convicted for violating the Smith Act, which made it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government. 

But for Hill and other early Pacificans the purpose of the new station was dialogue not revolution, and the Pacifist ideology that had inspired its birth played a marginal role as it struggled to establish itself in Berkeley’s then relatively insular university community.

By this point, commercial broadcasting had been around for almost thirty years. Lee DeForest, the controversial “father of radio,” who spent millions in court trying to validate his patents, conducted the crucial tests on trains and boats, and finally began distributing news and opera in 1916 from an experimental radio station located in the High Bridge section of New York City. He later moved his transmitter to San Francisco and installed it in the wings of the California Theatre to broadcast orchestra performances, then took his fledgling station to Berkeley, where it lasted less than a year.

American Telephone & Telegraph was another early entrant, transmitting signals across the Potomac River for the US Navy, while the Marconi companies used a low-powered vacuum-tube transmitter to send audio from Aldine in New Jersey to David Sarnoff aboard the Bunker Hill off the coast of New York. Thirteen years later Sarnoff would become president of the Radio Corporation of America.

The early experimenting ended abruptly on April 6, 1917, when the United States entered World War I and all stations not needed for the war effort were shut down. It remained illegal for the general public to hear radio transmissions until the fighting ended. During this period, the industry was placed under government control and the Navy Department tried to convert it into a permanent public monopoly, quietly purchasing Federal Telegraph and Marconi stations. When the US Congress found out about that after the war, the Navy was ordered to return the stations to private owners. 

Government pressure also led to the sale of the British-managed Marconi stations to General Electric, already a big US electrical firm and poised to dominate international radio communications. It soon formed a new company for that precise purpose. GE’s patriotically named Radio Corporation of America, soon known worldwide as RCA, made its debut on July 2, 1921 with the broadcast of a heavyweight boxing championship, Jack Dempsey’s defeat of Georges Carpentier in Hoboken. Within a year, RCA was building a national consumer market fueled by advertising.

For a while most programming contained no commercials and many entertainers performed for free. But the next decade featured a battle for dominance by some of the largest companies in the United States that eventually turned radio into a vehicle for superficial comedy, big bands, and often unprincipled advertisers. In 1931, the father of radio publicly voiced his disgust, describing commercial broadcasting as a “national disgrace.” But DeForest was also conservative Republican and fervent anticommunist who called Franklin Roosevelt the “first fascist president,” lobbied Congress against “socialized medicine” and federally subsidized housing, and, in 1953, cancelled his subscription to The Nation magazine on the grounds that it was “lousy with treason.” In any case, the public flocking to radio didn’t much care what its cranky “father” thought.

By 1941, more than 13 million radios a year were being sold – that is, until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December and a World War II ban on non-essential electronic manufacturing drastically reduced production. After the war, of course, the industry grew like a teenager on steroids; Manufacturing exploded, automakers installed millions of sets, and the number of AM stations doubled to 2000 in less than three years. By 1949, radio’s advertising income reached $200 million, over 90 percent of all US households had receivers, and a poll reported that two thirds of the American people regarded the medium as their primary source of news.

From the start, the US government resisted proposals designed to require balance and accuracy on the air, even though prominent figures recognized the danger of monopoly and the power of propaganda. In 1922, no less than the president of GE warned Europe about the downside of radio, urging nations to stop hurling insults at each other "in furious language." Five years later, the League of Nations passed a resolution opposing "obviously inaccurate, highly exaggerated, or deliberately distorted" news, urging the press not to undermine international peace. By the early 30s, the International Federation of Journalists had established a tribunal to deal with broadcasting that promoted hate and violence. Still, the prevailing argument in the US was that only private-sector ownership could protect the so-called "free marketplace of ideas.”

Fundamentalist Christians took early advantage of the opening, jumping into broadcasting even before federal regulation could be developed. By 1925, more than 10 percent of all stations were licensed to religious organizations. Starting with radio evangelism, these media radicals subsequently perfected the use of each new technology to influence opinion, win elections, and hammer home their theology. One of the first was Aimee Semple McPherson, who pioneered the approach on a powerful Los Angeles' radio station. Broadcasting from her temple, McPherson styled herself a modern-day Joan of Arc in a titanic struggle against communism.

Her crusade reached the boiling point in 1934 during the insurgent Democratic gubernatorial campaign of Upton Sinclair. The socialist author of The Jungle and other novels about the excesses of capitalism had pledged to "end poverty in California," but the evangelist, in an alliance with Republican leaders, Hollywood propagandists and political consultants, redefined the race in apocalyptic terms. "Someone has cast in the poison herb," McPherson bellowed on the Sunday before Election Day, "and if we eat thereof we shall all perish and the glory of our nation as it has stood through the years shall perish with us." 

Sinclair, at first the front runner in an era of mass unemployment and hard times, became the target of the nation’s first full-fledged "media campaign" and ultimately lost by 200,000 votes. McPherson had effectively seized on growing fears of revolution, convincing her flock – many of them poor – that the real enemy was satanic communism and its Democratic messenger.

First appearing on CBS stations in 1930, Father Charles Coughlin built a similarly ardent following with his volatile mixture of populism and nationalism. When CBS management insisted that he stop railing against “international bankers,” the evangelist appealed directly to his listeners, who sent more than a million letters of protest to the network. CBS responded by replacing all paid religious broadcasts with Church of the Air, a show that offered free, rotating air time to speakers from the three “major” faiths. 

This became a standard media approach with religious groups. But it didn’t deter Coughlin, who created his own network and turned even more political, eventually drifting toward fascism. Along the way – until he lost favor in World War II -- he suggested that “Christians suffer more at the hands of the Reds than Jews do in the Third Reich” and that Nazi Germany had to protect itself from Jewish communists who were influencing radio, journalism and finance. Attempts to censor him were often decried as “Jewish terrorism.”

For Lew Hill, interest in launching a radio station dated back to his time at the Coleville Public Service Camp in California, but was further stimulated by a stint announcing on the air at WINX in Washington DC toward the end of the war. Working there also brought him together with Joy Cole, a kindred spirit from an old American family who shared his anti-war sentiments and desire to create a better world. They married in 1944. But Lew couldn’t abide the restrictions and distortions that had become commonplace in commercial radio by this time, and his qualms ultimately became intolerable in May 1945, when he was handed a story about “the people at Tule Lake.”

He knew what that euphemistic phrase really meant. Tule Lake was the site of one of the most infamous internment camps for Japanese Americans during the war, a so-called "segregation camp" in northern California that warehoused more than 18,000 people for several years. In all, about 120,000 US citizens of Japanese ancestry were taken from their homes and imprisoned in remote detention centers. The Tule Lake camp had just closed but Lew, who knew about it from working as a war resister 300 miles away, refused to read what he considered a misleading report and turned in his resignation.

A year later, shortly after the Hills moved to San Francisco, he submitted his proposal for a radio station to the Federal Communications Commission and wrote an initial fundraising prospectus. The basic idea was that people who were committed to nonviolence could reach beyond the choir, beyond ivory tower intellectuals and pacifist war resisters, and reach the “average man” by bonding with the community through a station. “Pacifica Foundation has been organized to begin this job,” his description proclaimed. In what became the single most important document in Pacifica history, he outlined the purposes of the new educational foundation in a series of bold, idealistic statements that remained central to its self-image for the next six decades.

At the core, Lew Hill’s vision was that KPFA would “engage in any activity that shall contribute to a lasting understanding between nations and between individuals of all nations, races, creeds and color.” It would “gather and disseminate information on the causes of conflict between any and all such groups,” he wrote, “and promote the study of political and economic problems, and the causes of religious, philosophical and racial antagonisms.” 

And how would this happen? Through dialogue – diverse groups openly communicating with each other on the air. The objective, he explained, wasn’t to discover and convey indisputable truths but rather to nurture an open exchange of ideas that could help people come to know each other as human beings, dialogue that demonstrated the possibility of peace in practice.

By the time I became CEO more than half a century later Pacifica had evolved into something different: progressive radio, a source of “alternative” news and left-wing viewpoints, a platform for local constituencies, identity politics, and too often “politically correct” wisdom, as well as the site of angry and endless internal bickering over process, ideology, air-time and assigning blame that effectively prevented what had become a national network from making an impact on public discourse or, as Lew Hill more modestly hoped, creating constructive connections between people.

Despite altruistic intentions, there was ambiguity from the start. The goals, at least when Lew put them in writing, tended to shift with his audience. For instance, in pitches to the Ford Foundation and a 1952 book, Voluntary Listener Sponsorship: A Report to Educational Broadcasters on the Experiment at KPFA, he dropped words like “pacifism” and “peace” and replaced them with “personal freedom” and “imagination.” Rather than bonding with the community by discussing the local and familiar, he proposed that the station offer “serious cultural broadcasting” in order to secure the support of two percent of the area’s total FM audience. This two percent formula became central to his theory of sustainable listener “sponsorship” through voluntary subscriptions. For the first five years, however, not nearly enough listeners sent in money and the station depended mainly on wealthy benefactors and major foundations.

As Matthew Lazar explained years later in Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network, early Pacifica announcers would boast often that, as an advertisement-free station, KPFA didn’t need to appease commercial influences. “But this freedom did not protect Lew Hill and his band of utopians from the strict ideological requirements of the liberal corporate state,” Lazar wrote. “Nor did it inure Pacifica from the influence of the class able and willing to pay for commercial-free radio.”

Neither was the Bay Area radio experiment protected from the impact of television, which would soon transform communication and human consciousness itself.

NEXT IN THE SERIES: Rise of the Tube

To table of contents: Planet Pacifica 

Fragile Paradise: Those Lead-laced Blues

In 1978, ten years after I first arrived in Vermont, Nixon was gone, Jimmy Carter was president, and I returned to Bennington to see how things had played out. When I tried to contact school superintendent George Sleeman, however, he didn't want to meet. But I knew that he, along with Town Manager Lou Sarelas and assorted police and social workers, were scheduled to hold a Vandalism Task Force meeting that day at the Mt. Anthony Country Club. The place was for sale and the meals were cheap.

Meanwhile, I received kid-glove treatment from high school principal Don Banchik, a firm but open disciplinarian 21 years into his act. He’d solved most of the school's problems, he claimed, by instituting overlapping sessions to ease overcrowding and eliminating department heads. He and two assistants planned the whole curriculum now. Banchik dealt severely with vandals and drug users who "experimented" on school grounds. To prove it he showed me some dope and a collection of pipes in his desk.

"I do understand the euphoric feeling in a social sense," he explained, "but in school marijuana does inhibit learning. I know Jon doesn't agree with me. Right, Jon?" Jon, his faculty supervisor, looked up but wouldn't say.

Did the school have a Ms. subscription now? I wondered. "No, but there are a lot of magazines we don't have," he replied. I reminded Banchik that Ms. had offered the school a free subscription. He shrugged it off and talked instead about his new health curriculum. He wanted me to know that sex and drug education weren’t being neglected.

And what was the secret of this principal's success? "I'm very accessible at all times," he explained. "I'm in the hall, in classes, at all events, constantly exposed." I was already intimidated.

"I'm winning the confidence of the faculty," he went on. "We could even get a bond vote through for a new middle school now." That told me some things hadn’t changed. The project had been on the drawing board for 10 years, since the local parochial school closed and Mt. Anthony became overcrowded. When I ran for a seat on the school board in 1972, overcrowding was my campaign issue. I'd called my line the Open Door Party. My slogan was “Open the doors and let the kids out.”

By the time I arrived at the country club, Town Manager Lou Sarelas was eating lunch with Sleeman and the gang. Known as Suitcase Lou – because he’d held so many manager jobs that he supposedly never unpacked his bags – his agenda that day was to push through a neighborhood crime prevention program and a revolving fund to reward vandal-stoppers. "I see the protective arm joining forces with neighbors, people with CB radios, and organizations like the Lions," he explained.

The Vandalism Task Force was especially sensitized by a recent attack, the weekend trashing of the junior high school library and main offices. Vandals also had wrecked local gardens, town signs, the high school, even the local graveyard. Bennington was witnessing a weekly demolition roulette. Yet when the Task Force was formed not one student wanted to join.

Poisoned pot, bad water, teen criminals – the ingredients for a major psychic illness were all here. George Sleeman wasn't about to confide in me, not after a critical article I'd written on his powerful family before becoming Suitcase Greg. But maybe Suitcase Lou would have some answers, I thought. A flat tire on his town car after the meeting provided me with a perfect excuse to give him a lift to the office.

Beginning the interview, I asked about the lead in Bennington’s water. It had been discovered over a year earlier during state Health Department tests of industrial lead levels at Globe-Union. "We've added a combination of sodium bicarbonate and sodium hydroxide, which forms a coating on the lead pipes," he explained. But people claimed the water tasted worse than ever. "It does affect the taste," he admitted, "especially when we add chlorine. But it's mostly imagination."

Lou fancied himself a long-range planner, and therefore was willing to admit that water was indeed a limiting factor in Bennington. Aside from the health hazards, he mentioned the increased demand created by development. Yet he supported the major new projects in the works and pooh-poohed the paranoia of local merchants.

Before exiting he referred cryptically to narrow-minded people who were blocking change. I probed for names. Could it be Reggie Perrott, the reactionary selectman who ran a local bar well-known for its brawls? Perrott had recently confessed to income tax fraud, yet remained on the board afterward. "Reggie's a fine, upstanding citizen," said Lou.

Then what about Frank Velkas? He was the guy who blew the whistle on Bennington's water pollution, a psychoanalyst without clients whom Banner reporter Tim Powers had described to me as "certifiable."

"Velkas has very accurate information," Lou warranted."What bothers me about him is his methods." Since he obviously wasn't going to name the narrow-minded, I gave up amiably. Yet his line on water problems left a bad taste. Maybe I had those lead-laced blues. My next stop just had to be C. Frank Velkas.

"I'm gonna bury them," he told me over the phone before we met. Tough rhetoric, but I wasn't certain who "they" were. Celestin Frank Velkas turned out to be rational – at first – and armed with hard data. When he couldn't get action from local and state officials about lead levels running up to 10 times the federal standard, and after the Center for Disease Control called it "a major public health hazard," he’d gone to the top: the Environmental Protection Agency. Eventually, the town received money to distribute lead-free water and agreed to replace some of the corroding pipes.

Velkas was offered an EPA National Merit award but turned it down. As far as he was concerned, the problem hadn't been solved. "Sodium hydroxide, what's that used for?" he asked. "When you start mixing chemicals strange things happen. No studies have been done on the effects of mixing water with lead, chlorine and these chemicals. After they started treating the water, you know what happened?" I didn't. "All the goldfish in Knapp's Pet Shop rolled over and died. There's an animal test for you. The town is doing just what Globe-Union is doing, and the damage continues while they fiddle around. We're in an era of contamination, and the culprits are pillars of the community."

His verdict was brutal. "They would rather see people go down the tubes than do anything about it." But what was he going to do? His lawsuit had been rejected. "What's the use of filing suits when the system won't respond," he snapped, wavering between indignation and despair.

When we began the interview he’d assured me that "I'm gonna resolve the issue here." By the end he was playing public enemy, closely watched by government agents. And when I finally reached my car to leave he stood in the road to block my departure. Now he was pessimistic.

"It's too late to help this generation," Velkas warned. "To some extent we're all brain-damaged. Even you."

With that diagnosis I headed out of town, eager to avoid further contamination. Yet even with my foot on the accelerator, I could barely hold an anxiety attack in check. I was prepared to believe almost anything – even lead-induced craziness – about this place now. That might even explain the town's vandalism.

Bennington had gone modern, but the name of the game wasn't progress – unless that means reckless demolition, thoughtless expansion, and benign neglect. The kids apparently knew that things were out of joint, and their main mode of expression was a coarse comment on local leadership. They were mad and rightly so. The law was on the drug warpath, there was nothing doing downtown, and the high school had long ago ceased to be a good place to hang out, talk or roughhouse.

I slipped into fourth gear, speeding past the fenced-in school and Veterans Center, out onto terminal beltline, and beyond the flood-plain mall site. The road whipped into the foothills between blasted rock. Once upon a time this place had been my idea of paradise. I'd loved it and never wanted to leave. But faced with Lead City in the flesh, I decided to keep wandering in the wilderness.

Check out other chapters of Dangerous Words, or continue to the next part of the story: Prelude to a Revolution …

The Casting of the President

We can do better than Donald Trump. We all know it. But I'm not talking about his politics. I'm talking about his performance and entertainment value. After all, he's just a reality TV star who has played the corporate version of Judge Judy. Before that it was all bit parts and walk-ons, mainly self-promotion for his gaudy real estate empire.

    No wonder his presidential campaign feels like a political sitcom featuring Biff Tannen, the Back to the Future bully to whom Trump is often compared. The plot, gags and catch phrases are already wearing thin, as if Veep morphed into Breaking Bad.

    But seriously (not), if we want an entertainer-in-chief, at least let's get first-rate talent. Personally, I'm for Bernie Sanders. Not showy, but believable and increasingly entertaining (and right on the issues). But if being believable and entertaining are what make you electable these days, actors and other performers may have an edge. We’ve already had one actor in the role, Ronald Reagan, who knew how to sustain his appeal and sell almost anything – from Borax to Star Wars.

    For a while we also had an actor in the 2008 race, Fred Thompson. He had even played a real president, although it was Ulysses Grant in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. But Thompson's real problems were that he couldn’t find a decent script and seemed uncommitted to the part.

     What about someone who has played a fictional president? That could provide experience imagining and handling a crisis, especially one that hasn't happened yet. Feels like some sort of advantage. Remember when  Bill Pullman saved us from an alien invasion in Independence Day, or when Harrison Ford faced off terrorists in Air Force One? Those were terrifying times, they boldly took charge, and everything worked out. Or how about John Travolta? He played a charming, fictional Bill Clinton and he can fly a plane. 

    For a while Martin Sheen seemed destined for the role. First, in The Dead Zone, he played a presidential candidate whom Christopher Walken foresaw blowing up the planet. Years later he returned as the longest running president in TV history, keeping America witty, safe and fast-talking on The West Wing. Clearly, he had learned from “experience.”

     Other qualified prospects, all of whom have played the President at some point, include Sam Waterston, James Earl Jones, Jimmy Smits, Alan Alda, Morgan Freeman, Tom Selleck, William Petersen, Dennis Haysbert, Tim Robbins, Michael Douglas, Rip Torn, Robert Duval, Michael Keaton, James Brolin, Billy Bob Thornton, two Quaid brothers, both Jeff and Beau Bridges, and even Kris Kristofferson.

    Want a comedian, someone far more entertaining than Trump? You can't do better than Chris Rock, a stand up president in Head of State. Imagine his State of the Union speech.

    A female alternative to Hillary? The supply of tested candidates is growing. Julianne Moore almost crashed the glass ceiling as Sarah Palin in HBO's Game Change. But let's not forget Geena Davis, who kicked ass on Commander in Chief – and won a Golden Globe for Best Actress. Glenn Close, Patty Duke, Patricia Wettig … they all have recent presidential experience, plus acting chops. 

     We must also seriously consider Meryl Streep, who nailed an Oscar as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady -- with a flawed script. Sure, Thatcher was a British head-of-state, but Streep is pure American, born in New Jersey. 

     Some names on this list are past their box office dates. But it's just a starting lineup. Look at it this way: In addition to serving as commander-in-chief, the president must now deliver a sustained public performance on the biggest stage of all. Whoever gets the job will be in our living rooms almost every day for at least four years. That's something to consider. The role calls for believability, authenticity, a bit of star quality, and a talent for conveying both compassion and righteous outrage, plus a talent for improvisation and an instinct for public taste. Oh yes, also good judgement and such...

     Anyway, restricting the field to amateurs -- governors, senators and other so-called political "insiders" -- clearly isn't working out. The best they can deliver is awkward guest shots on SNL and The Daily Show. What do they know about building a fan base, staying in character, and looking comfortable on TV? Isn't it time to for someone who can really handle the role?

The Emergence of World Citizenship

Proposals to prevent war and enlarge human freedom have been advanced for centuries. Even before the industrial revolution transformed aggression from a regional tragedy into a global threat, philosophers and politicians looked beyond the borders of their own nations.

     In 1792, for the French revolutionist Jean Baptiste du Val-De-Grace, the answer was a World Republic that would place human rights above the rights of individual states. Three years later, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed a similar but more modest plan: a confederation of nations. Urging world citizenship and freedom of movement, he envisioned a “covenant of peace” would some day make national conflict obsolete.

     Diplomats and statesmen struggled with formulas for transnational order for the next century. Finally, in 1899, at the urging of Czar Nicholas, an agreement – The Hague Treaty – was reached between 24 states. Recognizing that modern warfare and weapons posed a threat to humanity, these nation-states pledged at least to attempt the settling of their differences through “pacific methods” rather than force and violence.
     Ten million people died during World War I anyway. The massive violence of that conflict was a sign that few nations could ignore. 
     In the aftermath, the League of Nations was established. Like plans before it, however, the League was complex and largely ineffective, burdened with responsibilities while deprived of real authority. Despite human rights declarations dating from 1789 in France, the League still represented only states, with no mention of the sovereignty of ordinary people. Within four years of its creation, it began to split into hostile alliances.
     During the next World War, at least 60 million people died, more than half of them civilians, and in 1945 the “nuclear age” crashed into existence when atomic bombs were dropped on Japanese cities. The nature of war had become global and the survival of humanity was now at stake. Yet the nation-state war game continued unabated. By this time, the idea of some global authority could no longer be shrugged off. The possibility of nuclear warfare made the choice clear: global coordination or oblivion. But what kind?
     The United Nations, also launched in 1945, was more like a forum than a government. It could not legislate on worldwide problems, nor enforce its views through any means but military action. Its members, all nation-states, still remained absolutely sovereign, free to make treaties or declare war without a nod to the UN.
     Over the next half century, whenever UN decisions or Charter provisions stood in the way of some “national” agenda, they were ignored. As the Cold War gave birth to a nuclear arms race, as more than 50 armed conflicts between nations “great” and “small” created millions more victims, it became apparent that this latest attempt to create peace through a confederation of nations was a sterile and often deadly exercise. War, deprivation and torture gave grim daily testimony to the fact that the UN was largely powerless to protect and promote peace or human rights. 
      So long as the nation-state’s self-imposed amnesia persists, wars are inevitable. Like previous attempts to “rationalize” conflict without a fundamental transfer of sovereign power, the UN can only succeed in rare cases, when armed conflict no longer serves the selfish interest of the belligerents. Mainly, it is a hostage of the system it is expected to transform.
     But if the confederal approach isn't the form of “higher authority” that can break nationalism’s spell, moving us to a workable and democratic world order, what will?

Declaring World Citizenship

We live in a geocentric world of nation-states, preoccupied mainly by “national” problems of the economy, society and politics. No matter where we live, for most of us the “nation” is the center of our political universe – the point around which revolve other nations and, supposedly, the rest of the world.
     Our attachment to our nation, whether by birth or adoption, is not merely legal; it is profoundly emotional. Yet when nations deal with other nations, these attachments are given no weight. In the “international” context, the individual is nowhere to be found. Yet all nations claim to represent the very people they so often ignore. And ironically, most nations actually claim to derive their very legitimacy from their citizens. But if the people themselves are truly the source of each nation’s authority, it follows that the highest authority is humanity as a whole.
     In any case, the power of nation-states certainly doesn't make them the only legitimate participants in decision-making. In a world threatened by war and injustice, responsible citizenship means a powerful assertion of humanity’s sovereignty. As Thomas Paine put it, “individual human beings, each in his or her own personal and sovereign right, enter into a compact with each other to produce any government.”
     For such a higher authority to become a reality, however, a new compact is also needed, a global civic contract that transcends the national paradigm. The good news is that such a contract already exists, both naturally and legally.
     Founded by Garry Davis in 1948 and formally established in 1953, the world citizens movement is both an extension of the individual and an expression of humanity as a whole. It grows from your sovereignty and mine, and from our shared commitment to each other’s protection and survival. It is a horizontal network based on natural rights and the human rights affirmed by national constitutions and international agreements like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is also “vertical,” the political expression of a world community by those who recognize the limits of the planet itself.
     In 1945, while observing delegates at the founding of the UN in San Francisco, E.B. White wrote: “Whether we wish it or not, we may soon have to make a clear choice between the special nation to which we pledge our allegiance and the broad humanity of which we are born a part.” World citizens make the second choice. 
     At the start, declaring yourself a world citizen was often symbolic, a way to embody a new transnational civic identity, one adopted by millions of people who registered as world citizens beginning in 1949. Gradually, however, it became more: an embryonic structure for the evolution of a global movement. An administrative arm, the World Service Authority, was established in 1954, and began to identify people from all corners of the planet, issuing documents to anyone who pledged allegiance to the new global compact.
     In the decades since then, world citizens have worked to overcome the psychological barriers imposed by the polarized nation-state system. For example, the movement and the documents used by world citizens expose the anti-democratic core of most nation-states. But for many people – especially refugees and other victims of nationalism – world citizenship is more basic. For them, it means global political asylum.
     Today the world continues to endure the incessant roar of chaos and conflict. But the primary causes of the chaos are nation-states themselves. Appeals to nationalism won't solve the problem. They are the problem.

A Global Response

It doesn't require much, certainly not the surrender of any personal  freedom, the renouncing of “national” citizenship, or disloyalty to the nation of one’s birth. World citizenship simply replaces allegiance to an outdated political system that emerged in the 18th century with a modern global contract that recognizes the dynamic interdependence of our time.
     We are linked across many artificial frontiers; communication, science, commerce and ecology don't recognize borders. In these areas and more, we already have one world. Many barriers are crumbling. World Citizenship makes our politics more consistent with reality.
     To help build the movement, the World Service Authority responds to the needs of world citizens not only by issuing documents such as birth and marriage certificates, visas and passports. It has also sponsored study commissions, established a court and experimented with a monetary system.      
     The World Court of Human Rights was established in France by a General Assembly of World Citizens in 1972. A provisional statute for the court was drafted, and later the World Judicial Commission was set up to handle preliminary complaints filed by world citizens. The International Court of the Hague only handles cases between sovereign states, and only if both parties agree to the litigation. The UN Commission on Human Rights is powerless to help individuals when their interests and the arbitrary will of a nation-state collide.
     World citizens, whose exercise of their human rights can contravene existing “national laws,” need a new kind of court, one grounded on the legal defense of global rights and accessible to all. As the first Chief Justice of the World Court, Dr. Luis Kutner explained upon accepting the post, “The international community has come to realize that human rights are not an issue to be left solely to the national jurisdiction of individual states. These rights obviously need protection at a higher level within the framework of international law.
     Over the years, a number of study commissions have also been formed to deal with specific issues. Experts, all advocates of a just and democratic world order, have been recruited to pursue research in areas such as health, space, culture, economics, women, education, forestry, political asylum, communication and cybernetics.
   The World Passport remains the most widely used document, a practical symbol and a useful tool for travelers. Contributors to the WSA's Refugee Fund have made it possible to issue passports for free to thousands of refugees and war victims, at least half of them women and children.
     In sum, world citizens constitute a self-empowered global community of sovereign individuals who support an emerging body of “common world law,” including human rights covenants, the Stockholm Environmental Declaration and the Nuremberg Principles. This is not a parallel government or a supra-national federation. It's a meta-government of free human beings.

Written with Garry Davis for Passport to Freedom: A Guide for World Citizens

Thinking Globally: Beyond Fear and Loathing

Looking at the behavior of many political leaders, it's easy to conclude that government itself isn't to be trusted. Whether the men (and occasionally women) in charge head regimes dominated by military cliques or ethically-challenged bureaucrats, they rarely inspire much faith that the State will consistently promote fairness and protect individual rights in exchange for the power it assumes and penalties it imposes.

     In the US, this suspicion dates back to the colonial secession from England - a primal rejection of illegitimate central authority. Since then, distrust and fear of government has fueled many forms of resistance - from Daniel Shays' 1786 tax revolt to Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. But as Gary Wills argues in his study of government distrust, A Necessary Evil, the real victims of this attitude are the millions of poor or shelterless or medically indigent who have been told, over the years, that they must lack care or life support in the name of their very own freedom. Better for them to starve than to be enslaved by 'big government.' That is the real cost of our anti-government values.

     In the late 20th century, this distrust - often buttressed by specious constitutional arguments about state's rights, individual freedom, and the sanctification of private enterprise - has fueled a global crusade to privatize services, shred safety nets, and turn management of the planet over to a corporate and bureaucratic elite with its own rules. Since Ronald Reagan successfully redefined the US federal government as the problem, not the solution, we've been told that government is basically wasteful and ineffective - if not crooked - while business is dynamic and effective, the best way to protect liberty and produce wealth.

     As I've mentioned before, anti-government attitudes make people susceptible to reactionary, often isolationist appeals. Even though they may understand that no single nation can control violence, reverse environmental destruction, or protect basic rights around the world, many also believe that any form of global management is either fantasy or a potential nightmare - the dreaded One World Dictatorship.

     Only one problem: it's already here, operating behind closed doors and accountable only to those managing its administrative agencies. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund virtually run the economies of many countries, primarily in the interest of transnational industries and global financial interests. Sure, the UN plays a small role, as a forum for dialogue and a convenient place to dump problems. But even there, the real power lies with the five permanent members of the Security Council - the US, Britain, France, China, and Russia.

     Meanwhile, the World Trade Organization (WTO) continues the transfer of economic decision-making to the global level, turning human beings and the environment into tools for expanding trade and commerce. Rather than worrying about secular humanists or black helicopters, those concerned about the New World Order might want to consider the open conspiracy to create a Corporate World Order.

     Some suspicion of government's potential power is certainly legitimate and relevant. Yet, the form of centralized power that most threatens us today isn't public, it's private: the negative power of big business and elite financial institutions. These interests, influencing and sometimes even determining the actions of governments, ought to be the main focus of scrutiny and action. Conveniently, the same interests lead the campaign to convince us that freedom means me against the world or me against the government. Appealing to fears of government intrusion is a convenient way to derail intrusions on the right to profit at the expense of the general health and well-being, and exploit in the name of freedom.

     One step in the right direction is certainly the emerging movement to challenge our de facto world government, the mobilization against globalization that protested the [1999] WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle. More accountability, as well as consideration of environment, labor, and human rights impacts, is the least we should ask. Beyond that, however, we need to move beyond fear of government and work for democracy at the world level.

     Clearly, we need some planet-level guidance, to ensure health and freedom for all, and deal with arms proliferation, malnutrition, toxic materials, and genetic engineering, among other problems. Rather than continuing to accept the myth that government is inherently evil, let's begin the new millennium by working for effective and participatory global governance, a high authority that nurtures children, helps poor regions develop along sustainable lines, and defines and enforces global standards of human rights.

By Greg Guma, originally published as an editorial in Toward Freedom, December 1999