Draft Four: Exit or use your voice?

Some thoughts on community and action.

First off, my appreciation for all who not only read last week’s letter – my list of 20+ jobs I might do in the future – but also replied with takes or recommendations. A student took a screenshot of the alt-journalism school idea and sent it back, my dad suggested a PhD, former collaborators told me they hoped I start something.

I found it all incredibly useful, so please know that I welcome your thoughts – if you were to advise me on my existing list, what would you have me do?

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I have a recurring alarm on my phone that goes off Mondays and Thursdays to remind me to unchain my apartment building trash bins, so they’d be picked up the next day. This Monday when I left for work, I saw our bins the fullest they’ve ever been – overflowing, with another 5-6 bags left next to them (it was party detritus – pizza boxes, cups, cigarettes etc.).

I reminded my neighbors on our group chat that what’s not in the bins won’t be picked up, and asked those who left the bags next to the bins to try and cram them in somehow. A couple of neighbors responded it wasn’t them that partied, or that they also partied but dumped their trash correctly. (Nothing to see here: just regular deflection group comms.)

I jumped in to say I’m not interested in spotlighting “the guilty party”. I simply don’t want trash outside with temperatures pushing 30, and it’s good to remind everyone of the collection rules.

At night, when I got back, everything was still the same.

I don’t know what you do in situations like these, but I usually get to work. I got larger bags, I smooshed the existing trash, and lined the bins out for collection with everything balancing on them. In the morning, it had all been taken away. Victory!

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On the group chat, the neighbors thanked me, the party apartment came forward, and we went on with our day. I don’t know what they did, but I descended into our building’s dingy basement to take photographs of sewer cockroaches to apply for a round of “free disinfection” provided by city hall (yes, they ask for uploads of bug shots). I actually did get a good picture in the eastern corner of our building – sun sneaking in through the windows, dozens of dead bugs in a gray empty concrete room. Bucharest poetry.

Some of you know I am president of our small homeowners association, and this is often the glamorous life of one: touching things I’d rather not touch, seeing things I’d rather not see.

I don’t mind doing it, because I see it as my contribution to our community: reduce our discomfort, keep our paperwork in order, make payments transparent. While it’s not pleasant to occasionally pick up other people’s trash, I do it because it also helps me. Sure, I also complain, and I also ask others to do their part, but I act more than I complain because that’s how I understand our unspoken social contract. (I also do my best to never send CAPSLOCK NOTES!!!).

I also change the toilet roll at the office if it’s about to run out, make coffee, wash dishes, and whatever else needs doing that will increase our collective well-being or reduce friction. These are small, silly daily things, but many of us don’t do them. Let’s not even talk about getting involved at a neighborhood or city or country level.

Why is that?

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Not long ago I saw a Facebook friend post something along the lines of “my biggest accomplishment is not being on my building’s WhatsApp group”. I understood the snark of that, especially being that ONE DUDE who always posts about bugs, trash, and collecting money. But I also didn’t: why is not being aware of this community or part of it a thing to brag about?

I have been thinking of the tension between the benefits and costs of participation in a community a since listening to Ezra Klein’s conversation with Kristen Ghodsee. Ghodsee wrote a book on social experiments and intentional communities, from kibbutz to cults, and what they got right and wrong. She criticizes existing structures of family and community and says they have left many of us “devoid of care and connection” Much of their conversation is about how we made child rearing an individual or couples’ problem – your child, deal with it –, when it used to be a communal responsibility. (The causes, you know them: we stopped living next to our extended families, we don’t live around friends, we choose careers over families etc.)

The promise of intentional communities is that this burden can be shared. You can also share other resources – from food, to money, to time. Yes, there is tremendous tension in many of these arrangements: some turn into cult-like free-love gatherings, some crumble because they can’t figure out a “business model” (putting our money together sounds like hell to many).

Yet we’re not going to abandon these fantasies anytime soon, because the idea of belonging and the need to share a tribe is powerful. What’s fascinating is that all of these communal forms of living or associating require some sort of sacrifice. If you join just to take, it’s not fair and it’s not sustainable. Participating in any community – in your building, at work, with your workout group etc. – demands something of you that goes beyond the main reason for gathering. (At a minimum, it demands kindness, and attention to others).

The quality of what others give back also depends on what you put in.

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A recent Eurostat survey shows Romania topping the list of states with people at risk of poverty and social exclusion – one in three Romanians meet these criteria. Earlier studies also showed Romanians to have the lowest disposable income in the EU, as well as large income inequality (the 20% with the highest income made five times more than the 20% of the population with the lowest income).

This is also a community problem.

We grew up dreading the specter of any kind of socialism, because we equate it with a corrupt regime that wanted to enforce unnatural equality by punishing people for their freedom to be more or earn more. Ceaușescu’s communism had plenty of cult, but very little community. It also obliterated trust and cooperation – ironically while also creating “cooperatives”, thus turning them into something to be wary of. Post 1990 capitalism went pedal to the metal in the opposite direction, but it didn’t deliver the prosperity and status it promised – the reactionary movements in the region today are fueled by this frustration.

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Ivan Krastev has written beautifully (and tragically) about “the light that failed” in Central and Eastern Europe, giving way to new forms of populism and anti-Western sentiment. He also touches on the idea of “life being better elsewhere”, and uses a framework developed by the Albert Hirschman to analyze two possible and conflicting reactions:

“In his most famous work, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, Hirschman contrasted two strategies that people adopt when confronted with an unbearable status quo. People can ‘exit’, that is, they can vote with their feet, expressing their displeasure by taking their business elsewhere. Or they can decide to ‘voice’ their concerns by staying put, speaking up, and choosing to fight for reform from within.

For economists, exit is the favoured method for improving the performance of producers and service providers. It is the strategy employed by the average consumer.

(…)

Voice represents an alternative way for individuals and groups to influence the behaviour of firms, organizations and states. Not only are the two mechanisms different, but the effective exercise of voice assumes that people who choose not to exit do so because they are deeply committed to the organization they hope to rescue or reform.

Rather than shifting to another service provider, in the manner of a rational consumer, they work to better their organization’s performance by participating, offering ideas, and assuming the risk that goes with publicly criticizing and opposing those charged with making decisions. Voice, therefore, unlike exit, is an activity based on loyalty.”

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What are you choosing every day when you feel things are not what they should be? In school, at work, in your neighborhood, in your relationships? Exit or voice?

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Recently, I edited three stories about the Journalism school of the University of Bucharest because a group of students there chose voice. (I’ve written about them before). As their sometimes-teacher, as someone who wants better journalism education, as someone with some power and privilege, editing the stories Carla Lunguți wrote was choosing a form of voice. (Two of them have already been published in Libertatea: here’s the first, and here’s the second).

Interestingly, not all students choose voice, even when given the tools (this is what the third story will show): feedback forms, although anonymous, go unfilled, because why bother? Nothing will ever change. I heard 3^rd year students say this to their representative once. He calmly replied: “What’s certain is that nothing will ever change if we don’t fill out these forms”.

Often the mechanisms for voice are shaky. But are we using them?

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The city hall in Bucharest’s Sector 2, where I live, has begun towing cars this week. The outrage of citizens is palpable, but the macro image is more complicated. Making Bucharest less friendly to cars is necessary, and it will require painful sacrifices. But it will also require more communication on the part of the authorities, plus less threats and punishment.

Romanian bureaucracy operates with too many sticks, and not enough carrots. I have rarely felt incentivized by a local agency of any kind to be a better neighbor or citizen for the sake of a better life together. I have to be one, they tell me, or else I’ll be fined.

In a culture that operates on the basis of punishment it’s no wonder that the simple idea of “the 15 minute city” became a fodder for conspiracy theories. The 15 minute city simply says that we’d have a higher quality of life if some essential services – local administration, schools, grocery stores, parks – were closer. Conspiracy theories say this is how “they” want to restrict our movement, by creating urban ghettos and taking away our cars.

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Victoria Stoiciu, an activist and thinker I admire, joined the ranks of advisors of Romania’s new prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu of PSD. Some people attacked her on social media for aligning herself with evil. At the same time, nominally, PSD is a Social Democratic Party. What if Victoria – and others – are joining in the hopes that one day it’ll actually be more than a corrupt oligarchy, and do what it theoretically stands for?

Maybe it’s naïve. But it’s not an exit, and I still hope to vote social-democrat one day without cringing at the party figures from the past that come to mind.

We all choose where we can have the most impact. We all choose exists when the glass is full. It’s how it should be. I’m not saying we should all “sacrifice” our lives and go into public service, or risk our wellbeing challenge our employers, or step up to run our buildings –, but I commend anyone that does.

What I am saying is that there are myriad ways in which we can do right by a community – families, peers, colleagues, neighbors, whichever you choose.

I believe the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have increased our self-preservation instincts. They’ve rightly pointed out that we’ve neglected ourselves in many ways, but there is a downside to the overcorrection some of us engage in, putting me in front of any kind of us, choosing the exit over voice.

You don’t have to repackage your building’s trash or photograph the cockroaches for a city hall project. But I’m hoping you are finding joy and fulfilment and validation in doing something, anything, for an us. Exiting is a consumer choice. Voice is a citizen choice.

We’ll need as many of the latter as possible in the coming years.

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SIDE DISHES:

1. There are many connections between functional communities and equity. Studies show that many strivers (people determined to advance and climb the social ladder) sacrifice their families and communities to be able to adapt and live in a new reality.

2. Maybe some conversations about community, and class, and change would do us good, if we could hold them without shaming and blaming. This podcast is going there by asking questions such as: are rich people bad?

3. More on the “15 minute city” in this episode of On the Record, and in this thought experiment.

4. Speaking of turning to ourselves – travel is an oft-cited tool for self-transformation. But what if it achieves nothing? What if travel is actually harmful?

5. If you live in Bucharest, have you filled out the City Hall survey meant to help with a new urban plan? It takes 10 minutes.