Fighting Apathy, Getting Results: One Man’s Difference

Let’s see, if this is Wednesday and Orange County, it must be stop No. 42 on Sam Harris’ national book tour. Only 43 more to go. From a phone booth in San Diego (or is it San Jose?) Harris says this interview is his 106th since January when his book, “Reclaiming Our Democracy,” was published.

That’s a lot of sound bites. A lot of airplane trips, cab rides and hotel beds.

Harris needs a massive tour because he has a tough book to sell. In an age of cynicism--if not outright hostility toward government--he’s trying to convince individual citizens they can still make a difference.

No, it’s not a humor book.

Now 47, Harris is the founder of Results, a Washington-based organization with the goal of ending world hunger. A key element of that has been to involve local citizens, like the chapter in Orange County, to contact their congressional delegates and newspaper editors. A few years ago, the Washington Post quoted a congressman who called Results, “pound for pound, the most effective lobby in Washington.”

“For the first 31 years of my life, I really felt hopeless about solving any big problem,” Harris says. “I wanted to feel I could have some impact some way, but when it got down to, if it were a big problem like the environment or world hunger, I felt it was beyond my scope, that there was nothing I could do about that kind of thing.”

He came to realize, however, that he wasn’t hopeless about the magnitude of the issue--but about human nature. “People wouldn’t do the right thing,” he fretted.

A former high school music teacher, Harris was shocked at how little connection his students felt toward elected officials. His informal polling of 7,000 students over a couple of years revealed that about 200 could identify their representatives.

He began Results in 1980 from Los Angeles, he says, and operated without a paid staff until 1984. “All I knew is that there were deaths from needless hunger and disease and that they were preventable. I knew there were experts who had called for political will (to tackle the problem), and that we were ill-equipped to produce it.”

So he began his volunteer army of local residents, fighting with little more than telephones and pens and pencils. Results now claims more than 100 citizen groups in the United States and another 40 in eight other countries. Each month about 300 volunteers gather for a national conference call.

Their efforts, he says, have helped reduce childhood deaths due to diseases preventable with immunizations and also from dehydration brought on by treatable diarrhea. A key part of that success was citizen pressure on Congress to appropriate money earmarked for those problems, he says.

Lamenting the attention to so-called “tabloid” news at the expense of more sober topics, Harris says: “People think they make some difference with their families and maybe with their neighborhood, but when it comes to the nation or world, people don’t feel they make any difference. It’s a painful place to be, so it’s almost kind of useful to cover that pain with diversity and distractions, rather than look at the world and say, ‘What can I do about it?’ ”

One of the converts was Shirley Kline Williams, now a 65-year-old retired art teacher in Corona del Mar. She’s been active in the local chapter since sitting in a dozen years ago at a nationwide Results conference call. “I was just so moved,” she says. “I was so touched by this group of people who were doing this kind of work that I got more and more involved.

“Often you hear people saying, ‘Politicians, they’re in it for money.’ Obviously, they’re not, because most are lawyers who would make 10 times more if they were doing law work. People have not really felt that politicians (were) on their side or even cared. Our experience over and over is that politicians really do care. The reason they’re in it, mostly, is because they care.”

I hear you laughing out there. Harris has heard the laughter too. “It’s not pie-in-the-sky influence, where you’re going to get everything you ask for, but, yeah, you absolutely have influence and probably a little bit more because so many other people are discouraged and inactive. Your voice probably is a little bit louder.”

I would remind the skeptics that the recent “three strikes” legislation is largely being attributed to the efforts of a single angry and motivated citizen.

Among the key strategems, Harris says, is to pick an issue you’re passionate about, take action and line up support.

I suppose that’s the way this democracy was supposed to work. And to hear Harris tell it, as he will tonight at 7 at the Costa Mesa Neighborhood Community Center, 1845 Park Ave., you almost believe it still can.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.