Watching a video of an interview with Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower, fugitive and public intellectual living in Russia. I saw Citizen Four, the movie about his decision and actions to release information about the widespread NSA surveillance both in the United States and around the world, last night. The story impressed me, not in small part because it featured Snowden in his humility, his philosophical thinking, his challenge of the contradiction between the American value of the right to privacy — encoded in the Fourth Amendment — and the justification for gathering data about millions of Americans under the Patriot Act.
The video I’m watching contains a set of lines from Snowden that I love and resonate deeply with conversations I’m having with colleagues and friends about the question of government and governance (for they are not the same thing) and what it means to live in a democracy:
…We should be cautious about putting too much faith or fear in the work of public officials. At the end of the day, this is just a president…If we want to see a change, we must force it through ourselves. If we want to have a better world, we can’t hope for an Obama, and we should not fear a Donald Trump. Rather, we should build it ourselves.
Can we have a people-powered movement, a change that flies in the face of corporatism and cronyism and doublespeak and corruption of not only democracy but also critical thinking? Can we have a government, again, of the people, by the people, for the people, as Lincoln once mused?
Paciencia, then. Estamos plantando. Let’s start planting.
