Brown Logs Session Two of LEAD

On January 8-9, Turner Public School Senior JR Brown joined other Big Sky Leadership, Engagement, and Development (LEAD) team members for their second meeting. The group congregated in Helena, not only to watch government in action at the state capitol but to meet with elected leaders and to hear featured speakers Marc Racicot and Marc Johnson celebrate the career of Mike Mansfield.

After arriving in Helena on Wednesday and receiving an orientation about this session’s program, the group gathered on Thursday morning in the Montana State Capitol with Lobbyist and University of Montana Social Work Professor, Amanda Cahill, who descried “how to advocate for yourself and your community.”

Cahill’s lecture was followed by a tour of the Capitol, led by the Montana Historical Society. This tour not only provided a historical context of the building but an explanation of the political process, with extra emphasis put on the judicial

branch. The group also visited with various elected officials, including Secretary of State Christi Jacobson, Attorney General Austin Knudson, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Jim Shea.

Some of the tour’s highlights, according to Brown, involved talking about the future of government and learning about the seriousness of drug use and substance abuse in Montana. “In a conversation with Attorney General Austin Knutson, we learned that the Mexican cartels really need to be shut down. That’s a focus of his office. I also sat in on some committee meetings where people testified on behalf of certain issues, not necessarily bills, but they shared their opinions. That was interesting.”

In conversation with Jim Shea, Brown again described as interesting the fact that “Montana’s Supreme Court doesn’t really have a jury.” He added: “Because most cases are reviews of other court decisions, the justices review the record of prior proceedings and written arguments from each side and make their decision based on that evidence.”

That afternoon, the group attended a legislative session where bills were posed and voted on. By watching how Montana’s government works and seeing the legislative process in action, LEAD members discerned how they can influence policy themselves. Following the session, many visited in small groups with elected officials to discuss leadership and policy.

On Thursday evening, LEAD members gathered for a VIP Reception before listening to a Mansfield Lecture with author and historian Marc Johnson and Marc Racicot, former governor and attorney general of Montana, who also served as chair of the Republican National Committee. In order to facilitate mingling and socializing, the group feasted on a variety of finger foods at the Windsor Ballroom, a venue which Brown referred to as a “bourgeois setting.” Built in 1888 and advertised as a facility “for those born to run and raised rowdy,” the Windsor Ballroom sits atop the Historic Iron Front Hotel building in downtown Helena.

Following hors d’oeuvres, the group interacted with Racicot and Johnson. When asked if he sees himself as a Democrat or a Republican, Racicot responded: “I would probably say I’m a Conservative. I want to conserve our democracy. I want to conserve our way of life. I want to conserve our civility.”

In conversation with Johnson, Racicot discussed the ethical leadership of elected officials. Through his book Mansfield and Dirksen, Johnson chronicles the actions of the Senate in the 1960s in the face of political and cultural change. Even as battles over civil rights and the war in Vietnam dominated American politics, bipartisanship often prevailed through the efforts of what Johnson calls “two remarkable leaders who remain giants of the Senate—Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Montana’s own Mike Mansfield.” Johnson went on to explain how the “political and personal relationship of these party leaders, extraordinary by today’s standards, exemplifies what can be achieved when we bridge divides and lead with integrity.”

About Mansfield, Brown learned, “He wasn’t a credit seeker but a humble, down-to-earth guy. For instance, he wouldn’t agree to a memorial of just himself. It had to be of his wife Maureen and him, listing her name first.”

The group will next congregate in Missoula for their final session on April 23-24. As they focus on the theme Moving Democracy Forward, their featured Speaker will be Robert Putnam, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University. Putnam has advised numerous U.S. presidents on social capital — how our social networks, which have been declining since the 1960s, create the bonds necessary to build a stronger democracy. He attributes this decline to such factors as age, changes in work, family structure, women’s roles, suburban life, television, computers, and other technology.

To illustrate his point, Putnam will draw on evidence from his book Bowling Alone in which he publishes data from nearly 500,000 interviews over the last quarter century to show that “we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often. We’re even bowling alone. More Americans are bowling than ever before, but they are not bowling in leagues,” Putnam states.

Putnam goes on to claim that “in the past, America has experienced a storm of unbridled individualism in our culture, our communities, our politics, and our economics, and it produced then, as it has today, a national situation that few Americans found appealing. But we successfully weathered that storm once, and we can do it again.”

Putnam will share strategies with LEAD participants about how society can reconnect after having become increasingly disconnected, not only from family, friends, and neighbors but also from our democratic structures.