Manda Scott

Congress doing this kind of exercise.

They wouldn't even talk to each other, just be yelling at each other.

Right.

And so it has to happen locally.

But, you know, one of the things I've learned in the organizational change world where I spent, you know, you know, 30 years of my life is that change happens in only two ways in organizations.

It happens bottoms up and top down.

And it rarely happens without both happening.

So I think the truth is we've got to do lots of bottoms up experimenting.

So, Suzette, let's try that in a city election.

Let's try that in a county election and show that it works and then tell that story.

And maybe five or six or 10 other counties or cities do that.

But the second thing is I don't think this change will truly happen until we also have it from the top.

And what I mean is at some point, someone's going to run on a platform like that.

Someone's going to say, I want to create a different kind of democracy, a different kind of dialogue that involves you, where we come together to think about the future.

And one of the things I've learned in my organizational change work is it never happens just from the bottom up.

You know, the civil rights movement didn't really accelerate until Lyndon Johnson.

who was a Southern Democrat, realized that the Democrats would literally lose the South for decades.

But he was going to push for civil rights legislation.

And they lost the South to this day.

The Democrats lost the South, almost the entire South, in part because of what Lyndon Johnson did.