Telling Leaders Apart From Political Windsocks
What if you are holding buckets of water while standing next to a fire that threatened a child, and you stand there and offer your outrage at the fire?
What if you stood with unused bandages next to a bleeding friend, and rather than stop the bleeding, you offered thoughts and prayers?
When we have the capacity to act in solidarity, and we express only our strong concerns, we are not leaders, no matter what our office is.
"Show me your budget", my friend, Dr. Rodriguez would say.
"Don't tell me how committed you are to inclusion, don't tell me how much you value diversity, don't give lip service to social justice. Show me in the budget. I'll know your commitments and values when you show me how they're reflected in the budget."
For Dr. Jeanette Rodriguez, empty words from people in power were all too common. When I met her, she had been working for decades with communities who were being marginalized, while institutions offered thoughts and prayers without action.
Dr. Rodriquez has spent significant time over the last several decades in Central America working side-by-side with families impoverished by corrupt economic systems and threatened by domestic and international perpetrators of violence. And, she's worked at the highest levels of religious and educational institutions here in the U.S.
Her bullshit meter is finely tuned.
So when she was sharing with me what it meant to actually stand in solidarity with folks, or to create genuinely equitable structures for justice - she cut right to the chase.
How do you tell the leaders from the political opportunists? Look at where those in power spend their money. Look at where they spend their social capital. Look at where they spend their time. How do people in power use the tools at their disposal?
Ignore their statements of public intentions or private assurances. Give no mind to those in power who offer thoughts and prayers without offering meaningful action. When people in power fail to act, their thoughts and prayers were never with you.
And, beware of those whose support or outrage reaches only as far as words. When those in power are leaders, rather than political windsocks that blow in the direction of public opinion, their outrage turns into action. There is an actual repentance, a changing of direction.
To be sure, in the complexities of social life, power is not equally distributed. But this message is not just about outcomes, it's about mobilizing the tools in your toolbox. The point of "asking to see the budget" is not to understand simply "how much" is being spent on an issue, but to understand how what is being spent relates to one's capacity and context.
If, in response to injustice, we only hear thoughts and prayers, statements of concern, and expressions of outrage from those in power, but never see a change in the way they allocate their time and resources - they are complicit in the continuation of injustice.
We're seeing it play out here in the U.S. right now. Powerful office holders, on a nearly weekly basis, are failing to use their tools to address the very problems they publicly lament. They have no backbone, no innate structure to help them point the way toward justice. They are animated only by the political wind that blows by them.
I've wanted to keep these writings to positive statements. In other words, describing what leadership is rather than what it isn't. But occasionally, it feels that being silent at a moment of great moral failure by people our culture celebrates as "leaders" is just not an option.
At this moment, we can say without hesitation, that these are not leaders. They are political windsocks.
We need new leadership, not just at the national level, but in every community. To each of us I would say, "Show me your budget."
How do you spend your time and resources? What tools have you mobilized relative to your power? What tools have you failed to mobilize? Where have your thoughts and prayers failed to materialize into actions based on your capacity and context?