Isak Asare:  Struggle to get your kids to bed? Bring them to City Council. [LAUGHS]

Alex Chambers:  [LAUGHS] I mean, and also the way to get people involved.

Isak Asare:  That's right. [LAUGHS] That's right.

Alex Chambers:  You know?

Isak Asare:  That's right. [LAUGHS]

Alex Chambers:  If you're looking to get especially young parents, they're busy.

Isak Asare:  Exactly. It is a real thing, a lot of people have suggested this. I mean, when we think about the equitable access to city government.

Alex Chambers:  Something I want to talk about.

Isak Asare:  Yeah, and how many people can even attend our meetings, and so, you know, childcare is a big barrier to that.

Alex Chambers:  Okay, so here's the thing, I really do believe in local government. It's nice having a functioning sewage system, zoning affects all of us, the parks here in Bloomington are hard to beat. And yet, in spite of all that, I cannot get myself to a city council meeting. So, I wanted to talk with someone who can, someone who is so into city council that they wanted to join it. Last spring I heard Isak Asare on a local podcast, The 812. He was talking about what public life means to him. He had just become one of Bloomington's three At-Large City Council members, so I reached out. In his day job, Isak works at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies here at Indiana University. He's got some serious titles over there: the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education and Student Affairs, and The Co-Director of The Cybersecurity and Global Policy Program.

Alex Chambers:  He and I talked in May. He was only two months into his term as a Bloomington City Council member and he still had that warm glow of optimism most of us have at the beginning of a project. I think he'll keep it though and, in any case, that can-do attitude is what we want in our representatives. Isak and I talked about why public life is meaningful, how budgets are moral documents and about how protocol, which is kind of the most boring topic ever, like, do you get three minutes or five minutes to speak on a topic? Questions like that. We talked about how protocol affects who's able to participate in a meeting, which is to say how protocol is pretty intimately intertwined with justice. All right, here we go.

Alex Chambers:  As we talked about when I emailed you to ask about coming on, the thing that prompted me, that got me curious was that quote that you referenced in Steve Owen's podcast.

Isak Asare:  Shout out to Steve Owen. [LAUGHS]

Alex Chambers:  Shout out to Steve Owen. From Lee Hamilton about to be in politics is to live more fully.

Isak Asare:  Yeah, and I think his direct quote, what the incomparable Lee Hamilton said and I hope I'm not misquoting him, I would hate to ever do it, is that he said, "I can't say for certain that living a public life is to live better but I can say that it's to live more fully." I certainly have found that to be true and I think the reason why is service. At the end of the day, we are not here on this Earth for ourselves but for one another and we do live in a society and a community and our responsibility is to one another. There's that famous philosophical treaty, what we owe each other, and I think that through being involved in the political process, through being a politician, which I'm sort of loathe to say of myself, you know, people want to say to be a public servant or something like that, I've learned so much about our community.

 Over the last two years I've knocked on over 10,000 doors in this community. You learn a lot about the people that you live with. Then being elected, the type of concerns that people bring to you, I don't even know if I thought this was going to be as exciting as it was, but the first time somebody wrote me saying that during the roll out of the fiber optic cables the company had pierced a sewage pipe or something like that, just ever so slightly. And so, some months later the problem manifests for everybody in this neighborhood. And so, I get copied in in the middle of a thread by the neighborhood association saying, "What is our city going to do about this?" I just responded but it was thrilling, it was so thrilling because it feels like a mundane thing but this is affecting people's day to day existence.

 Potholes affect people's day to day existence. Whether sidewalks are complete affect people's day to day existence. Where there's parking, so on and so forth. It was so exhilarating, this was a couple of weeks into the term, to then work through, okay what really was the problem? Who in the city can help deal with this? How can I help get them the response that they're seeking? How can I get them the information they need? How can I put pressure to make this happen faster and then in the back of my mind thinking, how do I fix this so that nobody else has to go through these problems again? That is, in my mind, living life more fully and so not only getting to know our community, what drives people, what people are really worried about on a day to day basis but actually being in the arena to help make their lives a little bit easier, make their burdens a little lighter. I just can't think of anything more exciting [LAUGHS] than that.

Alex Chambers:  [LAUGHS] So, was that a surprise to you how exhilarating it was or was that exactly why you had gotten into it?

Isak Asare:  In retrospect, I can say that it was exactly why I got into it but if you would have asked me two years ago, are you looking forward to helping people fix potholes or something like that? I would have been, like, woo, right? [LAUGHS] I don't think I would have shouted with joy. But honestly, it is. This is still true, this is also part of what makes this very exciting, is that it's not just the immediate things but it's also having some influence and power over changing some of the larger structural things. Thinking about the reasons, the structures, the rules, the processes that are leading to those type of outcomes in the first place and being able to think on a systems level about all of the people in Bloomington.

 So, it's as much about as John who lives in house X on street Y and his issue with the pothole in front of his house, as it is about thinking about how are we funding street maintenance? How do we find out whether or not there are potholes? But then there's a lot of other things too. Poverty and food insecurity and housing, obviously. So, it is just very, very exciting. We think about this role as sort of classified as a part time job with the city. There's not a moment when I'm not thinking about these things. You should ask my wife at some point if I'm still as fun to go on walks with because I go on walks and I'm thinking about why is there a tree there, why don't we have benches here? Oh, that building could have a cooler facade. Who approved this? [LAUGHS]

Alex Chambers:  Yea, that must be a little hard for the people around you sometimes. [LAUGHS]

Isak Asare:  I don't always share these things but I'm maybe over emphasizing this but it's true. I really think that Lee Hamilton had it right, this is a way to live more fully.

Alex Chambers:  So, I want to come back to the thinking structurally aspect and the tactics and strategy and what is the strategy for the community and all that stuff, and especially around equity. I might even want to talk about Robert's Rules of Order. [LAUGHS]

Isak Asare:  [LAUGHS] My favorite topic.

Alex Chambers:  But before we get to that. [LAUGHS] I'd love to hear a little bit about what in your personal history brought you to this point of being interested in city politics. You were born in...

Isak Asare:  Sweden. Yes. [LAUGHS]

Alex Chambers:  In Sweden. And grew up all over the place and have also worked internationally and you've advised governments and all kinds of things on AI policy. What in your growing up led you to the point that you are now the person whose also a city council member?

Isak Asare:  In short, I have no idea.

Alex Chambers:  [LAUGHS] This is the place for you to figure that out. [LAUGHS]

Isak Asare:  Yea, exactly. [LAUGHS] Existential questions here with Alex Chambers.

Alex Chambers:  Yea, exactly. [LAUGHS]

Isak Asare:  [LAUGHS] It might seem trite to say this, my mom, so you said, I was born in Sweden and that's because my mother was in Sweden doing her LOM but she had decided to do that because she was pursuing her own heritage, if you will. Her dad was Swedish and so she was trying to get a better sense of who she was. She met her dad there who was a refugee from West Africa and then sometime later my mom joined the State Department. And so, that's the reason we moved so much, she was working in international law mostly for USA ID and so we were moving every two to three years. They did other things in between as well. I think it was instilled in us very early on that when you can make a difference, if you don't then that's a problem.

 I just want to do everything possible to make our community everything it can be. So, I think, it was sort of the tension between a impatience [LAUGHS] and an optimism. So, there's this I want things to change and I have to be involved to make them change. But also just knowing that our efforts aren't in vain and that we can be everything that we imagine being as a community and it's just an exciting thing. How do you say no to that opportunity? [LAUGHS]

Alex Chambers:  It's true. So, what are some of the barriers that you have been seeing?

Isak Asare:  Well, let's start off with information flows. We are essentially in a news desert at the moment and this is no knock on any of the incredible journalists who work and live in this area and cover this area. But the reality is that with the trends in media news coverage right now, is that sometimes events are reported two or three days after they happen and it's very difficult to get information about what's going on in Bloomington. In fact, this is quite fun but probably the most popular Facebook group in Bloomington is What's Going On Bloomington and then of course, there's the counter culture one which is called What's Really Going On In Bloomington. But those are places for people to look for a contractor who can help, is what they sort of evolve into.

 And so, it's really difficult to get information about what's happening and I think that we're meeting here two days after an election where ten percent of the population showed up to vote. That ultimately decided quite a few elections and people didn't show up and then you look at the commissioner campaign, most of the candidates spent most of their energy describing what commissioners do, as an example. So, I think that's a barrier. I think that we've lost a lot of our third places, if you will. When we talk about third places, it's people need a new home, that's your first place, a place of work, that's your second place, and then a sort of social space and civic spaces. I think we've lost a lot of that. I think this was made worse by Covid and then of course, other external things.

 So, I think with all of those things happening at once that this sort of leads us where we are today. And then you have a city government that's very bureaucratic. You start with our budget as the first thing. It is inaccessible. Even as somebody who broadly does public policy [LAUGHS] for a living, as a normal, just an everyday, a non-public citizen, maybe is a better way of saying that, I used to say, "How's the city spending its money?" I could never figure it out. In the type of time that one would want to commit to it, I should say. [LAUGHS] That's a problem. That's a problem. Our city council meetings go until midnight and most of it is process. [LAUGHS] Very little substance actually takes place during the many, many hours.

 So, if you were to come to one of our meetings, you might sit there for an hour before you hear the first presentation on the thing that we're going to vote on.

Alex Chambers:  So, let's get into that just a little bit more. Explain to me how most of it is processed.

Isak Asare:  Okay. So, this is how a business meeting goes. We start at six thirty, at which point we're going to spend about ten to 15 minutes welcoming the meeting, this is what the agenda is today, we're now going to do our land and labor acknowledgment. After that, every council member gets time to give an update. Now, there's no real structure for how we give updates. We can just say whatever we want in this point in time.

Alex Chambers:  Do you have limited amounts of time?

Isak Asare:  There's an overall limit for this, so this section of the time can take, I think, about 20 minutes. But so all of us just say some things. "I had a constituent meeting" or "I'm going to have a constituent meeting" or "I just had some thoughts about some thing" or "I'm going to read something about something". [LAUGHS] It's just whatever.

Alex Chambers:  It's sort of a check in.

Isak Asare:  It could be anything. There's no upper or lower limit here.

Alex Chambers:  Wow.

Isak Asare:  So, that happens for a while. Then we do reports from committees and even if there's no reports, we have a whole thing to have to say there are no reports today. We approve minutes. That's a whole thing. We'd like to make a motion to put all the minutes together, so we can vote for them as one. Is everybody in favor of voting for these as one? Yea, let's vote on whether or not we can vote on them as being one. Well all vote in favor. Yea. Oh, but somebody's online, we have to vote role call. Okay, each person is going to have vote one by one. Council member so and so, council member so and so. Okay, yea, we all agree we're going to now vote for the minutes. Now, let's vote for the minutes. Would anybody like to approve the minutes? Well, actually there's a comma on page two that's missing, so can we please add that comma. Okay, so once we've done all that, it's alright, now let's get to work. Now, if you've come to opine on a new development, it's now seven thirty, eight maybe and at this point now we're going to do presentations on the thing that we're about to vote on.

 And so, by the time you're done with the first presentation, by the time we get to questions, it's been now two hours maybe. Now public can comment on the thing. That's a barrier. And so, I've been advocating a lot about, for example, how we should start thinking about different ways to meet because what I'd love to see is more open input time with the constituents.

Alex Chambers:  From the community?

Isak Asare:  Yea, that's right, like, earlier on. That time shouldn't be in between the first meeting on the first Wednesday and the second meeting. That doesn't make sense. That should be part of the process and it should be built in and scheduled and then followed through with.

Alex Chambers:  So, that people can be having conversations about the thing that might happen and they can find out about it, don't end up in that situation of, Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's Guide where he's, oh well the fact that we're going to tear down your house for the highway was on clear view in the basement behind a locked door for months.

Isak Asare:  That's right, and we debated it at a time when you weren't even there and we made this decision and that was based on a plan that was written in 1982 that we're now getting around to doing. That's a problem. And so, it is our responsibility to make government accessible. It's not people's responsibility to access government. This is where, the Mayor and I talk a lot about this, this notion that the metaphor works that you say I want to bring more people to the table but actually, that's not what you want to do. It's not that you want to bring more people to the table. You've made a lot of decisions in that case. I'm six six, so if people have never seen me in person, if you invite me to your table, I may not fit at your table. You've decided what table we're going to sit at. [LAUGHS]

 You've decided where I'm going to sit at that table. You've decided who else is going to be at that table. But what you really want to do is engage people to help you build the table in the first place. [LAUGHS] If we're going to extend the metaphor. That's equity. That's the difference between the notions of inclusion and equity. In the US we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, a lot of other places they put equity first, they call it EDI. And so, the main goal is actually that everybody should have a stake here and we want to be purposeful about helping residents be a part of this process. We have to do that by design, it's not going to happen incidentally.

Alex Chambers:  And what are some models for that?

Isak Asare:  I don't know in terms of local government, like if other places have done this well. If you look at cities that, I think, are maybe really interesting for us, like places like Fort Collins, as an example, which I think if you look back 15 years ago was a city about the size of Bloomington, college town. We're about 50 50 student population to non-student population and their's maybe 20 80, so maybe a more thriving non-student population. But they have an open budgeting process that lasts about two years and think about it, everything we do goes from this moral document that is our budget. And so, they've adopted what's called the budgeting for outcomes process, which is not perfect but starts with you saying, what are the goals that we want to have as a community? That then necessitates input from the community and they do this over a two year window.

 Then they're going to budget for two years. So, if you imagine a four year council term, the first two years are getting input for the next two years. [LAUGHS] And so, in order to make this budget work, which is a moral document that is going to determine all of the programs, all of the activities of your city government, you're getting all of this input from constituents throughout. So, I think that's a really interesting model. I'm actually presenting a resolution to move us towards a similar model to that this coming Wednesday. So, I think that's a really interesting model. I think there's a lot of really interesting work being done around consensus building activities. When you think about consensus, I think a lot of people misuse that term. What they mean is that consensus means everybody agrees. But what consensus means really, technically speaking, consensus is that nobody has a reason to say no. [LAUGHS]

 So, it may not be that everybody says yes. Getting everybody to yes is probably not ideal. It's not a realistic ideal, is what I should say. But it is possible to get everybody to a position where they say, this isn't my best outcome but there's no reason why I need to oppose this. You said you might talk about Robert's Rules as an example. The fundamental issue of Robert's Rule is that it's an up down system. It is not built on consensus, it's built on majority passing things. So, you either accept it or you reject it. Now there are provisions where you can sort of say, I want to accept line one and you separate the question and say, I don't want to do this but I do want to do that. But that's really difficult to negotiate.

Alex Chambers:  And probably incredibly time consuming, goes back to that other issue you were talking about earlier.

Isak Asare:  Yes, and it favors those who have the ability to know the rules. So, it's not actually focused on, how do we get to the best outcome here, about the things that we're working on. It's just focused on how do we get a thing passed with as many people as possible saying yes. It's subtle but that's, to me, I think a radical difference. And so, thinking about incorporating more consensus building activities, I think, could be really, really interesting as well. So, those are, I think, maybe some unstructured thoughts on what was a very good question.

Alex Chambers:  [LAUGHS]

Isak Asare:  [LAUGHS]

Alex Chambers:  That was great. I thought that was interesting. You're right, we got the Fort Collins example, so that was helpful. [LAUGHS]

Isak Asare:  [LAUGHS] There are other places like Bend, Oregon, I think is another similar place. Bolder, Colorado, another similar place. And then there are big cities who do these type of things, like, Seattle and Baltimore.

Alex Chambers:  Do you think you're going to run into challenges in trying to pass this?

Isak Asare:  For sure. I have to explain something about this that I didn't say well just because I'm taking for granted what the name communicates. So, I think we should move towards an outcome based budgeting model. Again, not a panacea, no silver bullet here. But what that does is you start with the goals and priorities that you have for your city government. So, the things that are most important to us are these, let's say a hundred things. 20 things, ideally but here are the hundred things we're working towards. And then you have to have a very difficult conversation, which is which of these matters most. Which of these things is the most important to us and as a consequence, what outputs should we be funding that are going to lead us toward this outcome.

Alex Chambers:  Right. I want to go back for just a second to that conversation, that really difficult conversation. How does that happen? How does that conversation happen? What does it look like?

Isak Asare:  To answer your question about, do you get push back here? That's the hard part and that's the part I don't know the answer to. We're starting to think about this. How do you come up, even just with a group of nine, how do you get nine council members to say, we agree, here are our priorities?

Alex Chambers:  Yea.

Isak Asare:  That's hard. So, this is going to be the experimental part, right?

Alex Chambers:  Okay. Which points in the process is the broader community involved?

Isak Asare:  Right, and it should be. That's right.

Alex Chambers:  Because it could be never ending, on the one hand but at the same time you need people.

Isak Asare:  It should be iterative and it should be a never ending process. This isn't a, we say our number one priority is homelessness, addressing issues around the unhoused, helping end homelessness. That's even too bold. I'm not being precise enough. What we want to do is make homelessness rare, brief and unrepeating. That's what we could call functional zero and we say, priority number one is reaching functional zero in this community. Okay, so we reach functional zero in this community, let's say that's in five years, three years, two years, whenever. Do we then turn around and say, you know what, we don't need to do anything with homelessness anymore. Of course not.

Alex Chambers:  Right, we just drop that whole thing and move on.

Isak Asare:  Yea, exactly. So, it's always going to be an iterative process that we say, okay it's about housing. Okay, if housing is priority one, two or three, wherever it's high on our list in Bloomington, we have to be even more specific. What do we mean? Is it just we need more houses? Is it that we need more affordable housing? Is it that we need more people to own houses? What exactly do we mean? This is something interesting, when I was campaigning I talked to so many people and everybody says, oh housing is the number one thing. I finally talked to somebody who said, they've been saying that for 15 years. And it's like, okay, how is everybody constantly saying, that's what it's all about, running on that platform, getting elected on that platform and then running again on that platform in eight years.

 So, that's because we haven't had the hard conversation of actually what do we mean? How do you hold people accountable to ideas that aren't measurable? How do you hold people accountable to ideas that aren't built on consensus? How do you move from that? [LAUGHS] I think that becomes a barrier for people participating in the process in the first place because--

Alex Chambers:  Because they lose hope. They feel like nothing's going to happen.

Isak Asare:  That's it.

Alex Chambers:  Because one of the things you're saying, I feel like, you were saying at the beginning, was one of the things you find so energizing about it is being able to be a participant and actually see your ideas and the things that you see as valuable, play out. And so, if non-elected people also, regular citizens were able to see those things happen too, they might be more likely to be involved.

Isak Asare:  Exactly, and it creates this virtuous cycle where you know your input was tied to some output and if you know that's the case, you're going to keep contributing and if we can continue to build on that, before we know it, we'll all be engaged. [LAUGHS]

Alex Chambers:  [LAUGHS] We'll all be coming to city council meetings, the whole town.

Isak Asare:  That would be wonderful. Then they certainly wouldn't be as long.

Alex Chambers:  [LAUGHS]

Isak Asare:  We'd be much more judicious about how we spent time because the realities, these sort of vague realities, they're true now but it's vague, that it's like we are spending your time. You're not spending my time if our meeting is long. But we are literally spending your time.

Alex Chambers:  We being the council.

Isak Asare:  Yes. I think, at this level, talking here in a studio, it's very easy to say that, that the people of Bloomington are the forefront of everything that I say and do but to actually incorporate that in decision making processes is, I think, easier said than done.

Alex Chambers:  Alright, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll consider going door to door to talk about city budgets and whether society exists. Stick around.

Alex Chambers:  Welcome back. As I mentioned at the beginning, Isak had been in office for about two months when we spoke.

Alex Chambers:  So, you're really coming in and seeing these things, like I imagine your eyes are really being opened to these things in a new way, having been there for a few months?

Isak Asare:  Well, realizing that you see it from the outside and when as an engaged citizen you start seeing well, sometimes the refrain that you would hear here is people being like "Well it's a lot more complicated than I realize." And that's actually not my response. I would rather say that every complication is our own doing. We literally have 100% agency to change these things. Someone said something along the lines earlier I was just commenting on, "One should change some process this way or that way." And the person says, they go "Well that would require a change in code." But the implication was "Ah, that would be so hard. Like, we can't change code.' I'm like, "That's literally our job. Like our job is like code right?" And so I'm like "Okay, let's do that then. How about we change it?"

Alex Chambers:  Have you managed to convince anyone yet? Not necessarily...

Isak Asare:  Oh yeah. Somebody said you can only really do one thing right? So, I said, they can only not just one thing ever but they say during your term on counsel the advice that everybody gave was just, "Focus on a thing." So, the thing I've been focusing on is like we're gonna have better processes.

Alex Chambers:  Woo hoo. That's so exciting.

Isak Asare:  So sexy right?

Alex Chambers:  I want to come to that meeting.

Isak Asare:  Sign me up for a TikTok. I mean, I'm being so flippant about something that's super interesting.

Alex Chambers:  It is, it's really interesting and important. I mean, as we've also been discussing but this is the problem.

Isak Asare:  We'll find out if you post this broadcast.

Alex Chambers:  Right, right if it makes the cut. I don't know yet.

Isak Asare:  But you're right. The point is that nobody actually focuses on those type of things, right? And it's very difficult stop a moving train. Momentum and inertia I think are our biggest enemies in many cases in government because there's both the positive inertia of like the thing is moving so it's not going to stop but there's also the thing is not moving to it's not going to move thing, right? As an example, we set the schedule for the counsel basically the whole year in advance. So you sort of say, "Here are all the times we're going to meet." Now when I was coming in they sort of sent us 'hey, this is what we're about to vote on just so you're all aware, this is what the sechdule is.' And I'm like 'why are we even meeting that much?' And I don't mean that in like a flippant way I'm just saying like it's really hard once you've scheduled a meeting to unschedule that meeting, right? And if you have a meeting scheduled you're going to fill that schedule just like a gas natural, you know, it's going to fill all available space.

Alex Chambers:  Hot air.

Isak Asare:  Yes and so we have to be really mindful of that but it's really difficult once you're in that to take a step back and say 'hey, actually, let's not do it this way, right?' I mean you can go find lots of fun clips of me making all types of suggestions during meeting to, "Hey, how about we do this right now?" And they'll be, "That's too complicated. How dare you say that?" But I will say I think that I think lots of people are starting to say many of the same things and so that's sort of opening up the conversation in positive ways to 'okay, what do you control of our process?' So, we'll see. I would love to check back with you in a year.

Alex Chambers:  Yes, yes definitely. I want to move this to a broader thing but before we do that. What else should people know about how City Government works that they don't realize?

Isak Asare:  I think that our budgeting process matters a lot and how the city spends money matters a lot. Not just from the prospective of this is like taxpayer dollars and etc, that type of political discourse that always takes place around government spending, but from the prospective we make these decisions in advance, the things that we're going to do. And people should be very engaged in helping to shape that process. Not just the week of, "Hey, oh now it's budget month or whatever, everybody get serious about thinking about it.' But no, these should be things we should be thinking about consistently "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we had more funding for this?" Great, let's starting thinking about how we get to that moment. And they're really difficult decisions but you're operating with a limited amount of money. And so anything that we want to increase means that there's something else that has be decreased and nobody wants to answer those questions. And I think that if you really want to understand City Government then follow the money and be engaged on those questions of how budgets are formed and presented and demand input on that.

Alex Chambers:  And is that something that the community is involved with generally?

Isak Asare:  It can be, yes.

Alex Chambers:  But are they?

Isak Asare:  No.

Alex Chambers:  Yes. Because who wants to think about a budget?

Isak Asare:  Yes but there's right well tension of in a representation democracy you elect people because you do not want to do that, right?

Alex Chambers:  Right.

Isak Asare:  But on the other hand, then it's like those elected officials need your input. If we're talking about iterative processes then we need your input. There is this other tension, and at least I think it's sort of a sub-tension of the same one, which is do you elect people to basically just make all decisions? So in other words, okay we've elected you now, broad goals whatever make Bloomington awesome, go. Check back with us in a couple of years. Right? Or do you elect them to constantly represent you like in the evolving sense, right? And I think that it has to be closer to the latter but again, it's then the responsibility of the elected person to do the work to really engage with the people of the city to shape input as they're developing. And if there's a time where I'm like "Hey, I have this wonderful idea and none of you are on board with it" well then it's also my responsibility to convince you before I move forward on this.

Alex Chambers:  Right.

Isak Asare:  Right?

Alex Chambers:  You being the community?

Isak Asare:  Yes that is correct. Saying like, "I think this is a great idea," of course I'm not going to do something outside just because, "Well, I'm elected it's within my." No, no, no, I want you to come along with me, right?

Alex Chambers:  Exactly.

Isak Asare:  And I might be very right. But I could be dead wrong but I've got to make sure that people are coming with me.

Alex Chambers:  So then, how do those conversations happen on the ground?

Isak Asare:  So easily the most effective way is door-by-door constantly. I mean we do it when we're trying to get elected, we should be doing when we're.

Alex Chambers:  Do you do that?

Isak Asare:  Yes.

Alex Chambers:  Really?

Isak Asare:  Yes, yes, yes knock on people's doors and ask them what they're thinking about things. Now I wish I could do it more, I wish I had time this summer, for example. I have a lot of time and my intention is to knock on doors with very structured questions that I want to know, "What's your input on these things?"

Alex Chambers:  I do want to take this a little bigger now. I am thinking about our larger issues in the country and the partisan divide and all that stuff. And there's lots of theories and I think there's a lot of different aspects that we can understand, a lot of media and how media works and everything. And one of the things I guess, I mean the theory that I would have is that it has to do with people's access to government and how much they can trust it as a result.

Isak Asare:  Trust certainly is one side of this. I think the other side of it though is what we were talking about earlier, which is being able to directly tie government to the outcomes that you're...

Alex Chambers:  Like the pothole, do you mean?

Isak Asare:  Yes, yes. It's really quite interesting. I'll make this statement and then there are some things that I should say before I say this. But, just to directly illustrate the point is that right now we have a presidential election where objectively this last administration, this current administration has passed some of the largest most significant spending bills infrastructure, chips act, right? And this is both Republicans, Democrats right? So there is good to go around, okay? That's not really a central part of the current election cycle.

Alex Chambers:  That's for sure.

Isak Asare:  And thinking about how you connect this really cool thing has happened and we're working for you to, you know, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan came to power around the same time with an ethos that was built off of this simple idea. Society doesn't exist, right? You are an individual, a rugged one at that, who can exist on your own and build yourself up, right? And if you're poor that's your fault, if you're unsuccessful that's your fault and if you're successful that's because you're great, right? And Ronald Reagan said the greatest lie, or whatever he said, evil or something like that I'm probably misquoted but is, "I'm the Government I'm here to help." So this is that notion that what we need is to be left alone.

Isak Asare:  Now, you would think that during the Coronavirus pandemic, that we would have learned very clearly that regardless of our desires to be left alone that we are in fact living in a society that the decisions that you make affect me whether I do everything right or not, right? And the decisions that I make affect you, and what this is maybe too ambitious, but what we would have learned as United States if we had a global perspective is also that the decision that we're making as a country are actually affecting everybody in the world? So, like our policy choices on how we responded to Coronavirus affected everybody. Now, instead we again saw the clash of those ideals, of rugged individualism versus collective good. I think that it's somewhat misleading when people say like America's more partisan than it's ever been. If you talk to folks who retired, they're like, "It's been this way, this is nothing new." I think the difference is that we're so polarized in the way that we do not talk and never shall the twane mix or whatever, right?

Isak Asare:  That these two sides are so far apart that there's no dialog in-between. And so we're living in a time where nuance is required but nuance isn't allowed.

Alex Chambers:  Because of the ways that we're talking and not talking?

Isak Asare:  That's right.

Alex Chambers:  Social media, on-line versus like you were saying earlier about the loss of third spaces and civic organizations, religious organizations.

Isak Asare:  So I think in the real sense, if you really talk with folks, then we talked about door-to-door as an example. Being in Indiana we talk about the Indiana way, right? We've stopped talking about it, we should talk about it a lot more, but the Indiana way traditionally was that you were bi-partisan or a political, that you were pragmatic in that you new your facts. This was sort of the Dick Lugar sort of approach, right? And I would say this is actually how one of my favorite people, Senator Young is. That's what the Indiana way was about. If you talked to folks at a door-to-door no matter where you are, whether you're in super liberal Bloomington, Indiana or wherever in this state, we're just pragmatic folks like on a normal sense. We're not that overtly political, not that overtly red or blue or anything, we're just people who care about, okay let's be pragmatic here. But, at a mass level there's no space for that communication right now.

Isak Asare:  And so, what we can do at local government, so you're sort of taking the conversations that we're having and expanding it, if we hear, "Do the work of engagement," we do the work of equity, equitable produce bringing folks in to build the table right? We do good communication on "Hey, we just received $5 million in ARPA funding from the Federal Government to do x, y, x." These are the things that we're doing and providing for the people in Bloomington, Monroe County, whatever. I think that that's one of the ways that you start to build in more third spaces, right? All politics is local at the end of the day is really what I'm trying to say. And that breakdown of local media, that breakdown of local political structures are inability to get out of our own way right as a City Government to serve the people that elected is, I think are all making this polarization worse. So, it's something that I think we can play a huge role in and I think we also have a good opportunity to show, again like when I talk about the Indiana way I think it really is an opportunity that we have a state, as a community to show that there is a better towards sort of bridging divide and bringing folks together and moving forward.

Isak Asare:  There were so many other things but I feel like we could have another hour of a conversation. I hope that we can maybe some day.

Alex Chambers:  I'd like to. Yes, I definitely want to.

Isak Asare:  Tomorrow?

Alex Chambers:  Tomorrow, right sure, sounds good. Sounds good. Let's definitely do it again. But in the meantime thanks so much.

Isak Asare:  Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Alex Chambers:  And that's our show. If you, like me, have struggled to get involved but, unlike me, you've found a way we'd love to hear about it. Sending us an email or a voice menu through the contact tab on our website wfiu.org/innerstates. Tell us our story and we'd love to share it on a future episode. And, if you like the show, give us a rating and review on your favorite podcast, it'll help other people find it. And tell us what you've been up to while you listen. Like, maybe you recently got laid off and so you've been taking some time to polish up your resume and it's a little weak in the managing people area. And it so happens that your sister-in-law is looking for someone to take over for her as the chaperon for a field trip of about 50 kindergärtners to an exhibit of ancient Greek urns and faces and she says it'll be a really good place to develop those management skills. And you've been trying to decide all week and then you were listening to Inner States today and you heard Isak Asare say...

Isak Asare:  How do you say no to that opportunity?

Alex Chambers:  And you thought, "Good point," and now you're hiding in the museum bathroom questioning whether you really want to keep listening our show. The Inner States staff wants to apologize but we still want to hear about it. Okay, we've got your quick moment of found sound coming up but firsts the credits. Inner States is from WIFU in Bloomington, Indiana. It's produced and edited by me , Alex Chambers. Our Associate Producer is Dom Heyob, our social media master is Gillian Blackburn. We get support from Eoban Binder, Natalie Ingles, LuAnn Johnson, Sam Schemenauer, Payton Whaley, Lisa Robin Young and Kayte Young. Our Executive Producer is Eric Bolsterage. Alright, time for some found sound.

Alex Chambers:  That was a wood chipper on campus a couple of weeks before school started. Until next week, I'm Alex Chambers. Thanks, as always, for listening.