Solving for Pattern in Democracy and Civic Life–In Kentucky and Elsewhere

Written By Daniel Stid

In February, on a sunny afternoon that broke open a gray stretch of winter, I decided to go outside and take a walk while doing a phone call. I was catching up with Savannah Barrett, co-founder of the Kentucky Rural Urban Exchange (RUX), to learn more about the organization’s work. 

Each year for more than a decade, RUX has engaged a diverse cohort of Kentuckians from all across the Commonwealth and brought them together in a series of weekend gatherings. RUX’s goal is to help cohort members connect across the boundaries of geography, class, race, religion, etc. that can keep them from recognizing identities and values they share in common. RUX began its work well before political upheavals led to a flood of interest in bridge-building and pluralism. As a result, its mission has retained a unique flavor. 

Throughout, RUX has kept a steady emphasis on developing the civic leadership and shared social capital of its cohort members. In their lives, and more broadly, RUX has generated countless positive ripple effects. For example, RUX has supported the replication of its program via the Minnesota Rural-Urban Exchange and the start-up of the Lexington, Kentucky-based CivicLex. RUX has also crafted a rich set of case studies, Living With Complexity, and a handbook on its model, The Currency of Connection, to help others learn from its efforts.

Hearing Savannah’s stories about the improbable connections that she and RUX delight in fostering gave me a sense of encouragement I hadn’t experienced in a while. Halfway through our conversation, energized by it and the fresh air, and no doubt having Kentucky on my mind, a thought popped into my head: RUX is solving for pattern. 

Wendell Berry and solving for pattern

The idea of “solving for pattern” comes from an essay bearing that title written in the 1970s by Wendell Berry, the great writer, farmer, and citizen of Henry County, Kentucky. In the essay, Berry writes about problems of agriculture. But his principles travel well into and illuminate other domains, not least democracy and civic life. “It is only when it is understood that our agricultural dilemma is characteristic not of our agriculture but our time,” Berry observes, “that we can begin to understand why these surprises happen, and to work out standards of judgment that may prevent them.”

Berry laments modern solutions that seem to solve one problem, only to give rise to several others. He asks us to consider the example of finishing cattle for the market in large feedlots:

“Within the boundaries of the feeding operation itself a certain factory-like order and efficiency can be achieved. But even within those boundaries that mechanical order immediately produces a biological disorder, for we know that health problems and dependence on drugs will be greater among cattle so confined than among cattle on pasture. “

“And beyond those boundaries, the problems multiply. Pen feeding of cattle in large numbers involves first, a manure removal problem, which becomes at some point a health problem for the animals themselves, for the local watershed, and for adjoining ecosystems and human communities. If the manure is disposed of without returning it to the soil that produced that feed, a serious problem of soil fertility is involved. But we know too that large concentrations of animals in feed lots in one place tend to be associated with, and to promote, large cash-grain monocultures in other places. These monocultures tend to be accompanied by a whole set of specifically agricultural problems: soil erosion, soil compaction, epidemic infestations of pests, weeds, and disease. But they are also accompanied by a set of agricultural-economic problems (dependence on purchased technology, dependence on purchased fuels, fertilizers, and poisons; dependence on credit) – and by a set of community problems, beginning with depopulation and the removal of sources, services, and market to more and more distant towns. And these are, so to speak, only the first circle of the bad effects of a bad solution.”

To be sure, beef from feedlots, and food from industrialized agriculture generally, is less expensive for consumers. This is an important consideration in a country where nearly one in five households with children lack consistent access to the food they need. There is a reason why the pasture-raised beef at your local farmers’ market is 2-3x more expensive than feedlot beef at the grocery store. It costs more to produce it. But the higher price one pays for it does nothing to address the externalities and social costs of large-scale feedlot production. Those are indirectly borne by, well, all of us. 

Once we start to look for them, we see examples of similar at-first-glance helpful but ultimately problematic solutions throughout our democracy and civic life. Many of them, unfortunately, result from large-scale infusions of philanthropy intended to solve urgent national problems. 

Solving one problem, generating others

A prominent example occurred in the months immediately preceding the 2020 election. Across the U.S., chronically underfunded election administrators were hard-pressed to meet the challenges of conducting a socially-distanced election during the COVID-19 pandemic. Up stepped Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, and his wife Priscilla Chan with massive and unprecedented grants totaling $419 million to help the administrators out. 

The funding was distributed by two reputable nonprofit organizations on a nonpartisan basis to local and state election agencies in both “red” and “blue” jurisdictions. Election administrators used the funds to recruit and pay poll workers and temporary staff, rent polling places, buy ballot-processing equipment, procure personal protective equipment, provide nonpartisan voter education, etc. After the election, administrators in jurisdictions that received support praised it for enabling them to conduct a fair election in adverse conditions. What is not to like about that?

Unfortunately, the same context that prompted the philanthropy set the stage for a backlash. Throughout the pandemic, state and local administrators had scrambled to adapt election processes via emergency administrative actions. These extra-legislative changes, combined with President Trump’s demagoguery about the election being rigged by his opponents, primed his more partisan supporters to regard so-called “Zuckerbucks” as fueling the rigging. 

In aggregate, the evidence does not suggest that the funds were granted or distributed in ways intended to benefit Joe Biden and the Democratic party. All jurisdictions were invited to apply without regard to the party that controlled them; all that applied received support. The bipartisan Federal Election Commission unanimously dismissed a complaint against the donors and the nonprofits that regranted the funds alleging they put a thumb on the scale for Biden. 

This did not quell the GOP skeptics. When it comes to Silicon Valley billionaires and Mark Zuckerberg in particular, skeptics are legion. He gave them more reasons to doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 election. 

State policymakers subsequently codified that mistrust. Since 2020, 27 states have passed new laws that prohibit or limit philanthropic support of election administration. Before 2020, smaller-bore and scrupulously nonpartisan philanthropy had long been used to supplement and help improve state and local election administration. But in these 27 states, that option is now off the table. This could have been a constructive change if the states banning philanthropy had simultaneously stepped up to close the funding gap. Unfortunately, they have not done so.

In 2024, then, we can expect ongoing struggles among administrators in the states that are not adequately funding their elections, nor allowing any philanthropic support for them. We can expect nonprofits that have prided themselves on working with election administrators in nonpartisan ways to continue to be unfairly vilified. We can expect the three battleground states that have not banned philanthropic support for election administration, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, to garner a higher share of it. The legitimacy of their closely contested elections is likely to draw even more scrutiny and conspiracy theorizing as a result. 

The one-and-done solution that Zuckerberg and Chan funded in 2020–they have since sworn off future support for elections–-has thus pushed a bow wave of new problems into 2024.

Standards for judging solutions

How can we tell if solutions are solving for pattern? At the end of his essay, Berry provides a provisional set of standards for solutions in agriculture and other realms. He proposes that “the validity of these standards seems inherent in their general applicability. They will serve the making of sewer systems or households as readily as they will serve the making of farms.” Here are some excerpts:

  • “A good solution accepts given limits, using so far as possible what is at hand. The farther-fetched the solution, the less it should be trusted.”

  • “A good solution improves the balances, symmetries, or harmonies within a pattern–it is a qualitative solution–rather than enlarging or complicating some part of a pattern at the expense of or in neglect of the rest.”

  • “A good solution solves more than one problem, and it does not make new problems. I am talking about health as opposed to almost any cure, coherence of pattern as opposed to almost any solution produced piecemeal or in isolation.”

  • “Good solutions have wide margins, so that failure of one solution does not imply the impossibility of another.”

  • “A good solution should be cheap, and it should not enrich one person by the distress or impoverishment of another…any solution that calls for an expenditure to a manufacturer should be held in suspicion–not rejected necessarily, but as a rule mistrusted.”

  • “Good solutions exist only in proof, and are not to be expected from some absentee owners or absentee experts. Problems must be solved in work and in place, with particular knowledge, fidelity, and care, by people who will suffer the consequences of their mistakes. There is no theoretical or ideal practice.” (Berry’s emphasis).

  • “It is the nature of any organic pattern to be contained within a larger one. And so a good solution in one pattern preserves the integrity of the pattern that contains it.”

Exemplars of solving for pattern

After walking and talking with Savannah Barrett, and recollecting Berry’s notion of solving for pattern, I returned to my office and re-read his essay. Doing so affirmed my sense that RUX was solving for pattern in exemplary ways. 

As I reflected further, I realized that the same is true for many of the leaders I have interviewed here at The Art of Association recently. Consider, e.g.,

  • How Anna Kellar and Democracy Maine have woven together an organic set of reform groups and ideas to make democracy work better for Mainers.

These leaders, and their respective organizations and networks, are tackling different challenges in different ways. But common themes reflecting Berry’s standards show up in all of their work.

They focus on particular communities, activating neglected shared identities and responding to common concerns of the people living in them. 

They are lean in their operations, bootstrapping resources and building whenever possible on what already exists – supportive institutions, online communities, in-kind contributions, etc. They rely heavily and in some instances exclusively on volunteers to carry out their missions.

They are not overly dependent on or driven by philanthropic funding; they take care to preserve their autonomy and initiative. They go slower knowing they are traveling farther.

They develop leadership and social capital among the people who participate in their work. They welcome the beneficial knock-on effects of what they have set in motion but do not control. 

They are not prone to chronic pessimism about the future of democracy and civic life. They take the long view and work with resolute hopefulness.

Like Savannah Barrett and RUX, they too are solving for pattern. We need more like them.

Daniel Stid
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From Local Journalism to Civic Media: A Conversation with Darryl Holliday