Doing Democracy: Activist Art and Cultural Politics

Chapter 13 Democracy despite Government

315 Chapter 13 Democracy despite Government African American Parading and Democratic Theory Peter G. Stillman and Adelaide H.Villmoare Following Michael Jackson’s death, New Orleanians staged a parade in his honor. After Katrina in January 2006, the Black Men of Labor (BMOL) sponsored a parade that began on St. Claude Avenue, running through the Ninth Ward and ending on Claiborne Avenue, a main thoroughfare through African American neighborhoods that was destroyed as a commercial heart of Tremé when the I-10 elevated highway was built.1 And on August 31, 2009, a coalition of groups organized a parade to protest the destruction of Charity Hospital in the face of plans for a new medical center that would require demolition of parts of Mid-City New Orleans rebuilt since the storm. These parades, known as second lines, are part of a long African American tradition in New Orleans (NOLA) using city neighborhoods as public spaces for pleasure, articulations of community, modes of remembrance, and protest.2 NOLA is a city of parades throughout the year. Many of them wander through city streets and provide opportunities for public claims and challenges to social, economic , and political power. The authors would like to thank Michael E. Morrell for his comments on an earlier version of this chapter presented at a New England Political Science Association meeting, J. Paul Martin for his insights, Nancy Love and Mark Mattern for shepherding this essay through two lives, and Vassar College for research funds that enabled trips to New Orleans. 316 / peter g. stillman and adelaide h. villmoare African American parading in NOLA raises distinctive questions about “doing democracy.” Under conditions of notable inequalities of class and race, residents continue not only to survive but to nurture their own civic and public life and democratic values and encounters.3 Indeed, those marginalized from formal political and economic power demonstrate a remarkable political resilience and desire to articulate their places in the life of the city.The disempowered actively foster democratic values outside of and sometimes against structures, processes, and outcomes of formal political power—including government. They practice what we call democracy despite government. The concept of democracy despite government takes into consideration ways in which people have sustained themselves, their cultural lives, and their communities in reasonably open and equitable ways in the face of governmental coercion, indifference, failure, and rejection—in this case, in NOLA before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. Democracy despite government opens up meanings of democracy to include resistance to and sidestepping of government when it gets in the way of people’s lives and their cultural survival and when it is neglectful of the politically and economically marginalized. Democracy despite government does not necessarily generate public policy (although it can ignite governmental backlash) and is often not immediately instrumental in the sense of pursuing particular political interests. It nonetheless expresses lived political values, cultivates inclusive public spaces, and provides cultural sustenance for the marginalized. The argument here is not that democracy despite government can or should supplant governmental democracy either in practice or in theory. Rather, democracy despite government often exists alongside neoliberal and quasi- or undemocratic processes and policies and provides cultural voice and connections for neighborhoods and people under stress. Democratic practices, evincing values of equality and participation in civil society, may survive or thrive where government is democratic only in the most formal sense of having open elections and a rule of law. And they may survive or thrive where government is far from democratic.This conception of democracy comports with Sheldon S. Wolin’s contention that “[d]emocracy is not about where the political is located but about how it is experienced.”4 For scholars of democracy, democracy despite government cannot and should not replace existing theories of democracy. Rather, the goal is to expand how to think about democracy. For liberal democratic theorists of representative government who see free, unencumbered individuals democracy despite government / 317 voting their self-interests or who focus on voting for representatives as central, democracy despite government suggests that there exist other practices, outside of electoral democracy, whereby people can express the values of their community and their sense of freedom and agency. Moreover, for deliberative democratic theorists who wish to encompass as many citizens as possible, including those with little or no political power whose voices have been silenced or ignored, democracy despite government suggests the difficulties some...