My Community, My World

…it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence…
President Dwight Eisenhower

I work in a legislative office, so you might think I’m biased in favor of legislation.  Okay, so I am biased in favor of legislation.  But I feel strongly that legislating a solution to a problem is not always the best solution to a problem - it’s often just the easiest.  Writing a law, despite the difficulty of getting agreement from all the other parties required to pass a bill, can be much easier than going out into the community to create a solution that will address the problem better.

Y’see, I have a very strong belief that while a legislative solution can create opposing sides on an issue, both with completely legitimate objections, a hands-on, real-world solution that engages the community can sometimes bring both sides together in agreement.

Recently, for example, an intern in our office decided to involve himself in a struggle over a recently-passed city ordinance.  This Sacramento ordinance prohibits anyone from going through the recycling bins distributed to residences.

The ordinance was passed to prevent identity theft – there is a law against rifling through trash cans, but not against going through recycling bins.  So a police officer who spots someone hanging around some trash cans in a residential neighborhood can’t do anything, because they can claim they were going for the recycling bins, whether they actually were or not.  Of course, those who oppose it feel that it unfairly deprives the homeless of one of the few revenue streams they have.

So who’s right?  Assuming both sides have done some research to back up the accurancy of their claims, both sides have legitimate reasons to hold opposing positions.  Each can choose how to balance the welfare of the poor against the privacy concerns of city residents.  One side may win, but probably without adequately addressing the concerns of the losing side.

What can be done?  Sometimes a solution that goes beyond the legislative process can bring both sides together.  I humbly submit a suggestion for this particular issue.  A homeless organization could pass special “recycling bags” to residents interested in supporting the homeless and poor who collect the recycling.  As a resident, I would place my recycling in the bag instead of in the recycling bin, and place it on the street next to my bins.  The ordinance could prohibit rummaging through bins, but allow placing the bags on the street.  The bags would make the task faster and easier for people collecting the cans and bottles, and would encourage people to think more about how to help the poorest in our communities.  (Any recycling company could also pick up the bags, of course, which would prevent them from piling up if a street were neglected by individual collectors.)

Okay, my point is not that I’ve cleverly solved the problem of people digging through trash cans.  My suggestion isn’t perfect, and has issues, and might not actually work out upon implementation for any number of reasons.  My larger point is that the effectiveness of legislation can be augmented by cooperation with existing agencies, organizations, and communities.

People who aren’t familiar with the law-making progress are sometimes surprised by how difficult it is to predict the outcome of a particular law.  Laws frequently don’t have quite the intended effect – the way a law pans out has a lot to do with how enforcement efforts are carried out, and how those efforts interact with organizations and communities affected by the enforcement.  Arguments for or against legislation often grapple with how laws will actually be implemented – gun control laws, for example, discuss whether the law will effectively limit gun ownership, or only encourage a black market.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his very interesting book The Tipping Point, describes how a drug agency’s effort to distribute clean needles was unexpectedly successful.  The agency decided to provide free a needle swap program so that heroin users could avoid infection.  Some time after implementing the program, they ran an audit to find out if it was effective.  They found that individual users were not swapping needles; a few men were coming to swap out bags full of dirty needles for clean ones.  These men took the needles into heroin dens and sold them for $1-2 to users.  At first, the agency was horrified – someone is making a quick buck off our free needles! But they soon realized that without these middle men, there was no way the agency could reach individual users in heroin dens.  Users wouldn’t buy clean needles in advance; they only thought to grab a needle when they were in the act of shooting up.  The middle men bridged the gap between the agency and the users.

The agency’s effort was successful because it interacted in unexpected ways with the existing players in the heroin ecosystem.  But many other efforts are hampered, stymied, or even backfire because they don’t try to engage with the affected stakeholders.  Reaching out to the community, outside the legislative rotunda, is difficult, and is outside the comfort zone of many legislators, but is often critical to the success of a new law.