Conservatives have what we need to transform America—here’s how to find it

The Democrats’ stranglehold on the black and working-class vote was finally broken, at least for the time being. An entire army of celebrities, entertainers, and media pundits have failed to bully Americans into ignoring out-of-control inflation and creating violent crime.

Now, Republicans have a narrow window of opportunity to deliver where their predecessors failed, reducing crime without brutalizing lower-income populations and proposing a vision for upward mobility that goes beyond just cutting government programs.

Anyone who wants to reduce government spending—and I am one of those people—must support robust indigenous mediation structures. These are local institutions created by those facing the problem of poverty or crime. They are antibodies from socially toxic neighborhoods who have demonstrated that they can successfully administer cures from within.

Fortunately, building the capacity needed to grow these types of organizations requires only a fraction of the capital that government programs do and can be accomplished entirely with private money.

Also, these organizations overwhelmingly embody traditional values that have helped many people overcome oppression, poverty and other hardships, hard work, self-respect and responsibility among them.

However, these groups are out of favor with political elites on both sides of the aisle.

Conservatives tend to overlook these groups because they often prefer to make intellectual arguments about the issues at hand, offer abstract policy propositions, or philosophically dissect moral and political failures.

Leftists, on the other hand, treat the poor as fundamentally incapable of self-upliftment. They claim to speak for the people trying to defeat the oppressive welfare state, but ignore the facts that they are often part of the problem – and that traditional values are part of the solution.

Consider the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the institutions that emerged in its wake.

The mediation of civil society institutions began to provide services and represent the people better than the government did, near the end of the communist regimes – and in doing so, won the loyalty of the people.

The Charter ’77 in Czechoslovakia, a protest document signed mostly by intellectuals but strongly supported by the public helped galvanize the public and some political leaders against the state’s human rights abuses.

Solidarity, a Polish trade union, became so influential that it helped end communism in Poland, and its leader was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It had over 10 million members by the end of its first year in 1981.

The memorial is a non-profit organization that emerged in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union, partly as a protest against decades of abuses by the USSR. Its status and activities are still being aggressively contested by the Russian government, a testament to the great need of the Russian people for its work.

Each of these organizations used popular trust and favor into political capital abroad. US conservatives, as well as other sympathetic factions, supported these Eastern European institutions. Eventually the Iron Curtain fell – and these groups helped provide an alternative to the sprawling and oppressive state.

For the incoming administration, these are some real examples of success that can be replicated at scale today. They still exist today.

“Cajun Navy,” organized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and re-formed to help after subsequent storms, has rescued up to 10,000 people stranded on rooftops.

Today, as hurricanes sweep the Delta and Gulf Coast, these fishermen and a growing network of volunteer members continue to rescue people from their rooftops. It is a huge organization, but remarkably fast and efficient. It is on site before FEMA arrives, although it is run entirely by volunteers.

Pr. Charlene Turner Johnson has been working for decades to transform Highland Park, one of the most vulnerable drug-affected cities in Michigan, into a safe and thriving city. It helps the most vulnerable to find work, build businesses, acquire important life skills and renovate the city.

Kandice Freeman, founder of “Way of living,” is using a grant to help reduce gun violence in her community and improve the physical health of children in her area. Her unique approach combines education, intervention and food access events to get her work done.

The common threads running through all of these success stories are that the leaders live in the very zip codes they serve, not in an affluent suburb. They know best what needs to be done, they have the trust of the people they help, and they know how to solve the problem and the solution.

The key is not an administrative state so large that it crushes these groups with regulations. Nor is it a hands-off approach, claiming that tax cuts and deregulation will simply fix everything. Rather, our political leaders should find these successful mediating institutions and actively connect them to resources in the public and private sectors to replicate their successes at scale.

Empowering the men and women who do this kind of work transforms communities and lives in a way that no white paper or government program ever could.

That’s why it’s time to ditch the dominant model of identity politics and massive nonprofits that claim to speak for the poor but simply profit from activism. Find and empower the men and women who are already changing the world – and then give them what they need to make it better. If conservative donors are serious about real solutions, that’s what they will do.

If they are not, then they should be prepared to switch seats with the Democrats and be kicked out at the next election.

Bob Woodson is the founder and president of The Woodson Center and editor of “A Path to American Renewal: Red, White, and Black Volume II.”

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