Clean Elections

“There is a solution to the madness of money in politics,” says Frances Moore Lappé, “watch and be inspired.”

A Gallup poll released the last week of September 2007 includes the somber report: “[T]rust in many federal government institutions is now lower than it was during the Watergate era.” Public faith in the president is lower than it was on the eve of the Nixon resignation. Americans have even lost faith in themselves. A post on the Editor & Publisher web site says: “Americans are even losing faith — in themselves. Currently, 70% of Americans trust the public’s ability to perform its role in a democratic government…significantly lower than any other reading Gallup has taken.”

A new web-doc, Getting a Grip on Money and Politics examines campaign finance reform through new eyes. In 2000, Deborah Simpson, a waitress and recently divorced single mother ran for election under Maine’s Clean Election statute. Freed from having to raise money from private donors, she won and went on to serve four terms.

Simpson’s inspirational story is juxtaposed with comments of despair and disappointment from on-the-street interviews and masterfully highlighted by Frances Moore Lappé‘s passionate plea for us to embrace this new alternative to the trend of billion-dollar politics.

This video is based on Lappé‘s new book, Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad (available now). In it, she flouts conventional left-versus-right divisions and affirms the reader’s basic sanity – the intuition that it is possible to stop grasping at straws and to grasp instead the real roots of today’s crises. Lappé argues that American democracy is not stagnant or complete, but fresh and vibrant, changing generation by generation.

“Here you’ll find stories of what happens when people take the leap, when they rethink and re-engage – finding their voices and the joy of powerful community,” Lappé says. “We do have the power to create the world we want if we are willing to dig to the root causes – if we are willing to challenge the false assumptions that stand in our way.”

Deb Simpson was willing to “take the leap” and now she chairs the Maine House Judiciary Committee.

Note a lower-res version of this video is available on YouTube here.

More info:

GettingaGrip.org Find out more about the book that inspired this doc.

PublicCampaign.org Find out how to get involved.

Just6Dollars.org The national campaign for public financing of federal elections.

Clean Elections Act Alters Terrain in Maine, Boston Globe, February 26, 2001

Credits

Directed and edited by Anthony Lappé

Camera: Cecily Pingree, Anthony Lappé

Music: Jonathon Rowe, Nick Drake

A Small Planet Media production, in association with GNN

Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He has worked as a producer for MTV and Fuse. He is the co-author of GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc, BattleGround.