Having spent the past few years working closely with state and local governments to reduce burdens in safety net programs, this year has been particularly challenging. Making even a small change in a complex government system—where stakes are high, resources are tight, and procedures are intricate—is anything but easy.
Some people may want a big government, others a small one. But we all need a better government, because it’s the foundation of both economic growth and fair distribution, a government that knows what needs to be done, and how to do it.
When things get difficult, it’s easy to give in to despair. Pessimism is contagious. Yes, probabilistically, it’s hard to make positive change under difficult circumstances. But this is precisely when we must remember the difference between probability and possibility. Unlikely doesn’t mean impossible. If everything were determined by the current distribution of resources, the poor and weak would be doomed. Most of the time they lose—but sometimes David still defeats Goliath. As theologian Walter Brueggemann argued, probability describes the world as it is, while possibility invites us to imagine and work toward what could be.
I learned this lesson from Marshall Ganz, the master teacher of political organizing at Harvard Kennedy School, and from Hahrie Han, my postdoc mentor, long-time collaborator, and now a MacArthur “Genius Grant” awardee. Marshall’s first book, Why David Sometimes Wins, shows how organizing can transform the improbable into the possible. Hahrie has carried this idea forward in her work at the P3 Lab, where the central question is how people build the power and collective imagination to make change possible. Their work reminds us that collective action can transform what seems impossible into the achievable.
I also learned this lesson from my long affection for literature. Like religion, one of literature’s enduring themes is possibility rather than probability—the search for hope in times of despair. One of my favorite quotes comes from William Faulkner’s 1950 Nobel Prize speech.:
“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”
I’m not a poet or an artist. I’m a political scientist, a data scientist, and a policy scholar. Yet I also strive for possibility while staying grounded in probability. This is what the late Michael Burawoy described as balancing between dystopian reality and utopian imagination. My research aims to help governments and communities build the capacity to implement policies more effectively. If I have an ultimate goal, it’s to be useful. To borrow my colleague Ray Block Jr.’s words, I want my research to be of service. I don’t give up because I believe my work is my purpose.
Moreover, I haven’t given up, even though pursuing this line of work is challenging and recognition can be uncertain, because I’m not alone. I learn as much from bureaucrats and community organizers as I do from theories and data. All meaningful work is collective. There are no single heroes—only groups of people striving together.
If you want to be reminded of that, read Michael Lewis’s new book Who Is Government: The Untold Story of Public Service. I read it cover to cover twice.
If you don’t have time for the book, visit servicetoamericamedals.org/honorees, which profiles the winners of the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals, the so-called “Oscars of public service.” These federal employees are not household names or, of course, movie stars, but they deserve recognition and our appreciation because they have made a difference in millions of lives.
My recent favorite is Michael Byrne, who served as the Federal Communications Commission’s Geographic Information Officer. Byrne led the creation of the National Broadband Map, an interactive, searchable online tool that showed broadband availability across the United States. He made broadband accessibility visible to policymakers and other stakeholders. As one of his colleagues put it, Byrne “literally put the FCC on the map.”
Michael Byrne was the winner of the 2014 Citizen Services Medal. (If the video doesn’t play in the app, watch it here in your browser.)
For every significant achievement in government, there are people like Michael Byrne behind the scenes. One fun fact is that he’s also featured in Jennifer Pahlka’s acclaimed book Recoding America. In the book, Byrne reflected on the difficulty of doing this work within government, where strict rules and limited resources are common. Still, he also spoke about his mission to help people and compared his broadband efforts to rural electrification in an earlier generation.
Pessimism is contagious, but so is courage. It’s easy to give up when you think you’re doing this alone. But you’re never alone.
We can never turn away from reality. That’s our starting point, no matter how dystopian it may seem. But it should never be our destination.
Possibility is always there, no matter how small, like a mustard seed of hope that can grow if we remain committed to endure and to prevail.