Restorative Government
This article first appeared in the Minden Times and Haliburton Echo in August 2025.
Dissatisfaction with how democracy works is widespread at the moment. The longest ballot in Canadian history is making an appearance in a by-election in Alberta – the logic is a bit elusive, but generally the intent is to draw attention to the shortcomings of the First Past the Post approach to weighting votes. The Man Who Would Be King to the south is eviscerating what remains of democracy in that country and appears to be unstoppable. Carnage is happening all over the world and the institutions we created to curtail war seem to twiddle their thumbs. The global economy is in chaos and the market offers a Munch scream of horror and impotence.
There seems to be a building consensus that resuscitating democracy requires that we bring it home and start all over again.
Adrienne Maree Brown peels that onion to the core in a trilogy of dystopian fantasy books (Grievers, Maroons, Ancestors) that trace the recovery of Detroit after it is made vulnerable by economic abandonment and victimized by a pandemic virus, H8 (hate: get it?). Dune, an introverted teen who matures in this world, traces the pathway to recovering civilization by practicing ‘the repeated motion of care’, first for her dying grandmother, rippling into larger circles as she builds community. ‘If you want democracy in the world’, Brown says in an interview on Between the Covers, ‘you have to look at how you conduct your own household, how you are every day in the world.’ What is democracy, she asks, but a way of caring for each other at a high level?
The assumption underlying Brown’s trilogy is that human beings default to care rather than competition in times of crisis. This brings to mind Mark Carney chiding CBC senior reporter Rosie Barton in one of his first press conferences as prime minister. ‘Look inside yourself, Rosemary,’ Carney said (something like), ‘and ask why you presume that my intentions are negative.’ That conversation was about Carney’s financial assets, but it exposes the default position of negativity and gotcha-ism that masquerades as keeping elected officials accountable. If we treated new hires by expecting the worst of them, we’d soon have no staff. Which, come to think of it, is what seems to be happening in the political sphere.
While wandering in Maastricht, Netherlands, last May, my companion and I investigated something happening in a public building that turned out to be City Hall. In theory admission was guarded, but in reality we were carefully but warmly welcomed. The ‘happening’ was residents gathering for a birthday party hosted by the mayor for all who had birthdays that month. He arrived, greeted the crowd enthusiastically and whisked them off for a tour of the facility while staff laid out sandwiches and dainties. Wow. I think democracy had a growth spurt that day!
Closer to home, Dave Meslin in Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up, approaches in a different way Brown’s idea of ‘breaking down the society inside you.’ He parses each component of current Canadian political literacy and practice to expose the elements that destroy its efficacy from within. He urges us to start with our kids, our schools, our communities, our service groups to get it right – which he defines as increasing both the quantity and quality of political participation.
Some of his suggestions made me nostalgic. My generation learned the basics of governance as children, in the Red Cross Club, the Students’ Union, Ways and Means Committees. We nominated, we campaigned, we voted, we chaired, we took minutes, we kept financial books and defended them, we organized parties and fund-raisers, we did the grunt work, we negotiated improvements to current practice and future priorities. We practiced democracy.
Where did that education go? Why did it disappear? (If it didn’t, I’d be delighted to hear!)
You know I’m going to say that competition co-opted caring under the tutelage of capitalism. That the forces that brought Detroit to its knees are not a figment of Brown’s imagination but a visible consequence of ‘market forces’, the gown that capitalism wears. The germ of regenerating democracy are also evident there, based on throw-away invisible people finding their power by caring at various levels. Brown thinks magic is ‘the ritual of caring: repetitive, disciplined, knowledgeable’. She thinks everyone has it at their disposal.
If we feel invisible, silenced, impotent, exploited – all the things that democracy was supposed to do away with – it behooves us to look within ourselves to find the magic to turn it around. This starts with caring for ourselves (in harmony with the earth – a theme I’ll explore further another time), moving in ever-growing circles -- not to a Utopia, but to a sanctuary that is, by definition, in movement and therefore temporary. What isn’t growing is dying. Start tending!
