You Are What You Risk Korean Edition Launches

YOU ARE WHAT YOU RISK is now available in South Korea via Miraebooks

Media coverage:

Maeil Business Newspaper author interview: ‘Grey Rhino’ asks again after 5 years “Your risk fingerprint… Did you understand?”

Maeil Business Newspaper review

Newsis.com review

Econonovil[Taesan Joo Book Review] “The second ‘gray rhino’ is running, get on it!”

Alex Honnold Chats with Michele on Climbing Gold

Professional adventure rock climber and free solo master Alex Honnold hosted Michele Wucker in two recent episodes of his popular Climbing Gold podcast. The episodes apply lessons from both The Gray Rhino and You Are What You Risk.

May 27: Captain Safety
Alex chats with Michele and Colin Haley, aka Captain Safety, who has shaped his risk fingerprint through two decades of elite alpinism, soloing and identifying risk factors.

June 10: Spotting the Gray Rhino
To manage risk, you first have to see the threat. Best-selling author Michele Wucker and Alex talk about how he evaluates risk, creating safety nets and his greatest fear. 
Listen below or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

Exploring Cli-Fi Part II: Books by Theme

earth floating on a wave
Photo by Grafner on Dreamstime using NASA image

Exploring climate fiction is a journey into scientific, political, social, economic, epidemiological, zoological, philosophical, and practical new horizons. Last week’s post on how authors are grappling with the climate crisis really struck a chord!

Thanks to the readers who suggested some of their favorite titles and sent me links to additional resources. Here are two good ones: The website Cli-Fi.net is a treasure trove of links to news and popular culture references to cli-fi. The Econ-SF wiki of books at the nexus of economics and sci-fi has some intriguing cli-fi recommendations, several of which are included below.

Forthwith, loosely sorted by theme but otherwise in no particular order, is a list of cli-fi books. Many are fairly new, but I’ve also included a few earlier books that paved the way. No doubt this list is woefully incomplete.

I’ve read a few of the novels below. Others are by authors who have written other books I’ve enjoyed, and the rest are now on my to-read list. Some come from the lists I shared last week, some from recommendations from friends and colleagues both on and off of LinkedIn.

Authors Who Are Sub-Genres Unto Themselves

Kim Stanley Robinson’s many books of speculative climate fiction are practically a sub-genre unto themselves: 2312New York 2140, and the Science in the Capital series (Forty Signs of RainFifty Degrees BelowSixty Days and Counting) all look at the world after climate collapse. The Ministry for the Future (2020) imagines efforts to keep the collapse from happening. Other works by this extremely prolific writer, while not strictly about climate change, explore outposts on other planets, where humans presumably end up after ruining much or all of ours.

Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy explores what might happen in the aftermath of environmental collapse. The first installment, Oryx and Crake (2004) explores a world where humans have been decimated by a plague and genetic engineering gone wrong. The second, The Year of the Flood (2010) takes readers through the aftermath of the Waterless Flood, a pandemic. In the final book of the trilogy, MaddAddam (2014), the Children of Crake, the bio-engineered successors to humans, forge a new future.

Biodiversity Loss

Amanda Kool, Resembling Lepus (2022) After Earth’s Sixth Great Extinction, humans have supplemented natural fauna with high-quality replicas. Every living thing –both natural and human-created—is tracked, numbered, and categorized. A detective’s quest to solve a series of strangely staged murders of rabbits raises another question: What is the impact on humanity when mankind is required to play god to the creatures they have all but destroyed?

Michael Christie, Greenwood (2020) In this Canadian writer’s eco-parable, a new fungus is killing off the last trees of the last remaining forests in what is known as “the great withering” in 2038 -not so far in the future from now. (reviewed in The Guardian)

Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour (2012) imagines the catastrophic effects when pollution and other environmental disruptions send an entire colony of butterflies off track. No doubt you’ve heard of the butterfly effect whereby a single butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the planet. Now think about that magnified many, many times over. (Read all the way to the bottom of this review in The Guardian for one of the funniest corrections I’ve seen.) While not strictly cli-fi, many of her other works engage the environment so closely as for it to count as a character.

Sarah Blake, Clean Air (2022) Decades after a climate apocalypse in which trees suffocated humans with pollen, a serial killer stalks the residents of the domes in which humanity rebuilt a new society.

Charlotte McConaghy, Migrations (2021) (The Last Migration in the UK)The protagonist of this Australian writer’s acclaimed novel tracks the world’s last Arctic terns across the high seas – migrating birds for what may be their last time– in search of the last fish. The Economist describes it as “Moby Dick for the age of climate change.”

Richard Powers, The Overstory (2018) This Pulitzer Prize–winning novel follows five trees and nine people across generations as a complex environmental catastrophe unfolds. (From The Guardian)

Security, War, Pandemics, and Other Cataclysms

Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock (2021) A geo-engineering scheme goes badly awry. Several people have mentioned this one, completely unprompted, so it’s high on my to-read list.

Jeff VanderMeer, Hummingbird Salamander (2020) A fast-paced thriller following a missing eco-terrorist.

Bethany Clift, Last One at the Party (2021) The diary of the sole human survivor of a pandemic and her golden retriever sidekick. (You knew I had to get a dog in this list somehow, right?)

Omar El Akkad, American War (2017) Northern U.S states outlaw fossil fuels in 2074, provoking a second civil war.

Tobias S. Buckell, Stochasticity, (2008) Eco-terrorists roam a dystopian post-fossil-fuel Detroit.

Tochi Onyebuchi, War Girls (2019) In 2172, two Nigerian sisters separated by civil war attempt to reunite after global climate and nuclear apocalypse.

Migration

Niall Bourke, Line (2021) This Irish writer’s fictional world is centered on the Line, a tented community and a state of the perpetual waiting, depending on whether you take things literally or metaphorically, in a world where people barely subsist 

Amitav Ghosh, Gun Island (2019) The Guardian describes this novel, focused on mass migrations of humans, languages, and animals, as the author’s answer to his own 2016 accusation that fiction writers were complicit in climate denial.

Water: Scarcity and Flooding

Paolo Bacigalupi, The Water Knife (2015) In a world where water is worth more than gold and the Colorado River is drying up, this thriller “deftly explores corporate greed, social inequality, deregulation, and privatization.”

Stephen Baxter, Flood (2009) and Ark (2011) This two-part series begins in 2016 -an interesting twist that puts the protagonists in what is now the recent past, though both were written just a few years before then– and continues for the next 42 years as the oceans rise higher and higher.

J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962): Set in 2045 in a world that climate change has rendered barely livable, this novel is an early, prescient, precursor to today’s cli-fi.  

Jessie Greengrass, The High House (2021) A family takes refuge in a house built high on a bluff, protected from floods and pandemic, amidst an increasingly uninhabitable world. “As I grew up, crisis slid from distant threat to imminent probability, and we tuned it out like static. We adjusted to each emergent normality and we did what we had always done,” one of the survivors laments.

Emmi Itäranta, Memory of Water (2014) In the future, when wars are waged over water, tea masters are entrusted with the knowledge of remaining stashes of the precious liquid.

John Lanchester, The Wall (2019) In this Pulitzer Prize winning novel, young “defenders” patrol Britain after it erected a fortress along its shores to protect the nation from rising seas. Read the review in The Guardian.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The New Atlantis (1975) This short novel is a prescient depiction of geological and social upheaval after climate change has raised seas and as populations grow out of control.

Rita Indiana, Tentacle (2018) A young maid in Santo Domingo must travel backwards in time to save the ocean and humanity. Translated into English by the talented Achy Obejas, Tentacle was originally published in Spanish under the title La mucama de Omicunlé. (If you know my first book, Why the Cocks Fight, you’ll understand why this one in particular appeals to me.)

Social Justice

Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993) “This seminal cli-fi novel addresses climate change, social injustice, and corporate greed,” wrote the editors of Grist/The Fix.

N.K. Jemison, The Fifth Season (2015) A woman searches for her daughter in End Times. “The first book in the Broken Earth trilogy addresses racial and social oppression with obvious parallels to the injustices of this world.” 

Sam J Miller, Blackfish City (2018) Disease ravages a floating Arctic city of climate refugees beset by corruption and widening social inequality when a mysterious warrior, accompanied by her orca and polar bear, arrives.

Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) Some commentators have credited this hallmark novel as having helped catalyze the rise of environmental activism.

The Shifting Nature of Humanity

Rebecca Roanhorse, Trail of Lightning (2018) As the gods and heroes of Indigenous legend roam a desolate world decimated by environmental disaster, a supernaturally gifted monster-killer and a medicine man must unravel a mystery that threatens the future. The Verge calls this novel “a fast-paced urban fantasy adventure with an exciting set of characters and an enticing world that begs for further exploration.”

Leandra Vane, Cast From the Earth (2017) In this post-apocalyptic novel, an epidemic turns men into monsters. The protagonist, a one-legged woman, and her companions fight for survival.

Lauren C. Teffeau, Implanted (2018) Climate catastrophe has forced humans into domed cities, where human connections are artificially heightened by neural implants. (from Grist’s Definitive Climate Fiction list)

This article is part of my LinkedIn newsletter series, “Around My Mind” – a regular walk through the ideas, events, people, and places that kick my synapses into action, sparking sometimes surprising or counter-intuitive connections. 

To subscribe to “Around My Mind” and get notifications of new posts, click the blue button at the top right corner of this page. Please don’t be shy about sharing, leaving comments or dropping me a private note with your own reactions.

For more content, including guest posts and ways to engage me for keynotes, workshops, or strategic deep dives, please visit www.thegrayrhino.com.

Exploring the Future via Cli-Fi

Earth on tightrope above flames
Image © Grafner via Dreamstime.com

Several colleagues have recently suggested novels that imagine the future if the world fails to arrest climate change. When a national security specialist recently asked for recommendations along the same lines, I asked around for more books, which I realized fit into the relatively new genre of “cli-fi.”

“Born as the unfortunate love child of global environmental crisis and narrative imagination, climate fiction is a timely cultural reaction to the growing societal awareness of human impact upon the planet and its climate system,” Juha Raipola wrote in Fafnir, the Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research.

Climate fiction tends to fall into two categories: one that is realistic, describing climate change affecting its protagonists in a world like the one we know, and the other more closely resembling science fiction. Raipola describes the latter as follows: “Speculative visions of flooding cities, melting glaciers, catastrophic storms, or drought-suffering environments demonstrate the potentially disastrous effects of climate change on the global environment, while the plot-level events of the narrative focus on the experience of living in a changed world.”

Cli-fi novels can play an important part in changing the conversation about climate crisis because of the way that fiction immerses readers in the reality that the author creates. It establishes an emotional connection in a way that no scientific analysis, modeling, or regurgitation of facts can do. That’s why the most dedicated policy wonks and business nerds can benefit from reading fiction related to their work.

Without an emotional connection to a challenge, it is hard to create urgency. And without a sense of urgency, it’s hard to change the way we do things.

I’ve started reading a few of the suggestions I dug up. This week, I’ll share some of the places I found promising lists and anthologies.

Grist, a nonprofit media outlet dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions, has published a glossary of cli-fi sub-genres, which you can peruse HERE. You’ll find descriptions and book recommendations exploring diverse versions of futurism; solar, eco, cyber, and hope punk; ecotopia, dystopia, and “ustopia” (a mix of the two). The list is part of the Climate Fiction Issue published by Fix, Grist’s networking and events arm.

The Guardian’s Claire Armistead compiled a list focused on “the new wave of climate fiction” and reached out to Margaret Atwood, Amitav Ghosh, and other novelists for insightful comments about their own work and the genre writ large. “Cli-fi often rests on the familiar trope of a nightmarish new reality unleashed by a catastrophic event,” Armistead wrote. But authors have also woven in various narrative tools and tropes including myth and mysticism, social comedy, thriller plots, stream-of-consciousness, and experimental formats.

Heather Hansman recently compiled a list for The Atlantic of books in which climate change plays a role. “The books below aren’t about climate change—they’re about immigration, corporate malfeasance, and tourism; they focus on families, neighbors, and friends,” she wrote. “But in each, the anxieties of our warming age force their way in, simmering quietly in the background or erupting across the page.”

Andrew Dana Hudson, himself a prolific author of climate fiction, in a Medium essay similarly poses the question of how to define the genre. “Many stories set in the future are classified as science fiction, or sci-fi. Doesn’t that make climate fiction, or cli-fi, just a form of sci-fi?” He makes the point that “In most science fiction, social change is driven by advancements in science and technology. It’s fiction about science.” In imagining science-driven transformations, sci-fi examines the impact on society. And here, Hudson argues, is how climate fiction differs from the broader sci-fi genre: It lets us pick up a different theory: that the biggest driver of social change in the coming century or more will be climate change.

The anthologies below give a taste of cli-fi in a wide-ranging set of short stories.

Anthologies

Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction, Vol. 1 (2016), Vol. 2 (2018), and Vol. 3 (2021). Published by Arizona State University Imagination and Climate Future Initiative, this series of anthologies was named after a quote from a talk that Margaret Atwood gave at Arizona State University in 2014.

Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers (2018) and Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters (2020). This pair of anthologies combines utopian and dystopian visions of a future characterized by extreme heat and extreme cold.

Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors. The winners and finalists of the first climate fiction contest organized by Fix and the National Resources Defense Council.

McSweeney’s Issue 58: 2040 A.D.(2019) A collaboration between McSweeney’s and the National Resources Defense Council, this anthology brings together literary luminaries including Tommy Orange, Elif Shafak, Luis Alberto Urrea, Asja Bakic, and Rachel Heng, all of whom set their stories in 2040.

Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures (2021) A global roster of authors explores the impact of climate change on cities.

The Weight of Light: A Collection of Solar Futures (2019) This optimistic anthology of short fiction imagines what a solar-powered world might look like.

Warmer. (2018) A collection of seven short Kindle books, also available as audio books, which amazon.com plugs as “Fear and hope collide in this collection of possible tomorrows.”

Next week, I’ll share a list of novels sorted by focus, ranging from drought and flood to violent conflict to biodiversity loss and social justice, with a few authors qualifying as genres unto themselves.

Do you have any favorite cli-fi authors or books? Please share them in the comments.

[Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links]

This article is part of my LinkedIn newsletter series, “Around My Mind” – a regular walk through the ideas, events, people, and places that kick my synapses into action, sparking sometimes surprising or counter-intuitive connections. 

To subscribe to “Around My Mind” and get notifications of new posts, click the blue button at the top right corner of this page. Please don’t be shy about sharing, leaving comments or dropping me a private note with your own reactions.

For more content, including guest posts and ways to engage me for keynotes, workshops, or strategic deep dives, please visit www.thegrayrhino.com.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU RISK Romanian Edition Launches

You Are What You Risk is now available in Romanian as Esti Tot Ce Risti, published by Editura Creator.

Esti tot ce risti. Arta stiintei de a naviga printr-o lume incerta.

Esti tot ce risti este un apel clar pentru o conversatie cu totul noua despre relatia noastra cu riscul si incertitudinea. In aceasta carte revolutionara, Michele Wucker analizeaza de ce este atat de important sa intelegeti amprenta de risc si cum sa va faceti relatia de risc sa functioneze mai bine in afaceri, viata si in lume. Bazandu-se pe povesti de risc convingatoare din intreaga lume si tesand in cercetarea economica, antropologie, sociologie si psihologie, Wucker face o punte intre conversatiile profesionale si cele cu risc laic. Ea contesta stereotipurile cu privire la atitudinile de risc, reincadreaza modul in care sunt legate de gen si de risc si arunca o noua lumina asupra diferentelor dintre generatii. Ea arata cum noua stiinta a “personalitatii de risc” remodeleaza afacerile si finantele, cum ecosistemele de risc sanatoase sprijina economiile si societatile si de ce o atitudine dispusa la risc poate rezolva conflictele.

Wucker impartaseste informatii, instrumente practice si strategii dovedite care va vor ajuta sa intelegeti ce va face cine sunteti si sa faceti alegeri mai bune. Esti tot ce risti introduce un nou vocabular pentru a vorbi despre aceste amenintari. Toata lumea are o “amprenta de risc” personalizata care descrie ce fel de risc isi asuma, modelata de personalitatea, educatia si experientele lor. Intarirea “muschiului de risc” te poate ajuta sa iei decizii bune. Wucker se concentreaza pe examinarea situatiilor dificile personale si se apropie de crizele globale, analizand modul in care oamenii se lupta cu alegerile si incertitudinea. – Grist, revista online americana non-profit 

Dupa cum ilustreaza Silicon Valley, atitudinile si comportamentele de risc se afla in centrul motivului pentru care organizatiile si economiile prospera sau se indreapta spre dezastru. In Esti tot ce risti, Michele Wucker exploreaza dinamica din spatele relatiilor indivizilor si companiilor cu riscul, de la experienta personala la valorile culturale si pana la ecosistemele politice. Cunostintele sale originale si recomandarile practice ii vor ajuta pe cititori sa aleaga asumarea sanatoasa a riscurilor in locul greselilor periculoase din afaceri, viata si lume. – Deborah Perry Piscione autor al Secrets of Silicon Valley: What Everyone Else Can Learn from the Innovation Capital of the World 

Fie ca esti investitor, antreprenor, ca incerci pur si simplu sa-ti croiesti cariera strategic in orice domeniu, vei beneficia de abordarea inovatoare si clara a lui Michele Wucker de a-ti asuma riscuri intelepte si de a naviga in incertitudine. Aceasta carte va va ajuta sa treceti de la obisnuit  la extraordinar. – Laura Huang, profesor de administrarea afacerilor la  Harvard Business School si autor al Ascendent. Cum sa transformi dificultatile in avantaje 

Michele Wucker a inventat termenul de “rinocer gri” care simbolizeaza o noua perspectiva asupra evenimentelor probabile, evidente, de impact si care ne ofera posibilitatea de a alege sa actionam. Ea este autoarea a patru carti influente, inclusiv The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore, care a mutat pietele financiare, a modelat politica guvernamentala si strategiile de afaceri din intreaga lume. Totodata, a inspirat o discutie populara TED care extinde teoria “rinocerului gri” la probleme personale. Fost director media si CEO Think Tank (Grup de experti), este fondatoarea firmei de consultanta strategica Gray Rhino & Company din Chicago. A fost recunoscuta de World Economic Forum ca Young Global Leader si ca bursiera Guggenheim.

Michele’s Favorite Thought-Provoking Global TV Binges

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I haven’t been able to go around the world the way I did in Before Times but traveled virtually via way more time watching television than ever before.

When a friend recently asked me for recommendations of the TV binges that have gotten me through the pandemic, I realized that my favorites had common threads running through them. As you might have expected, I particularly enjoy shows that let me travel the world vicariously and have something to say about society, present and past.

So, since I’m in the mood for something a bit lighter this week, I wanted to share the list with you. Here it is:

Dramas

Photo credit: Netflix

Money Heist (“La casa de papel”) Set against the backdrop of the massive money printing unleashed during the Great Financial Crisis, this series is the story of not one but (eventually) two robberies: of the Spanish Central Bank and of the Spanish Mint. Every time you think the series could not possibly do more with the story of a rag-tag band of thieves led by a nerdy master criminal (who is hot despite, or maybe because of his nerdiness), it proves you wrong. (2017-2022)

The Bureau (“Le bureau des legendes”) is a French spy thriller exploring the complex relationship between the US CIA and European intelligence agencies in the Middle East, North Africa, and Russia. Powerful story lines, great writing, moral dilemmas, and fully drawn characters. (2015-2020)

Lupin Assane Diop, a French-Senegalese gentleman master thief out to avenge his father, who as a boy saw his father’s wealthy employer frame him for a diamond “heist.” Diop is inspired in his exploits by a series –17 novels and 39 novellas–written by French novelist Maurice Leblanc about the gentleman burglar and master of disguise, Arsène Lupin. (2021)

Homeland Brilliant and bipolar, CIA officer Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) risks everything, including heartbreak and sanity, at every twist and turn of this long-running thriller. Against a global backdrop that takes viewers from Washington, DC, to Iran, Syria, Germany, Afghanistan, Russia, and Israel, Homeland has its own take on the global War on Terror and its unintended consequences. Oh, and it showcases award-winning performances by Claire Danes, Damien Lewis, and Mandy Patinkin. Need I say more? (2011-2020)

The Americans This drama about two Russian spies posing as Americans in suburban Washington, DC, in the 1980s, was inspired by the spy ring that the FBI busted in 2010. A few months before that bust, I briefly met one of those spies, an eager young man who handed me his card after a panel in New York City where I was speaking about risk. He later became a travel agent, inspiring the profession of the husband in this series, played by the talented Matthew Rhys. Keri Russell was also fantastic, as was Costa Ronin, who later played a Russian spy in Homeland. (2013-2018)

El Presidente (Do you really need this translated?) This Emmy-nominated eight-episode Chilean drama takes viewers inside the 2015 FIFA soccer scandal from the perspective of a hapless small-town soccer association club who is tapped to head Chile’s national soccer association. The FBI later leans on Sergio Jadue, who becomes the linchpin of their case against FIFA. It’s a poignant, sometimes comical, look at how corruption insidiously drags people in and how hard it is to give it up. (2020)

Quirky Comedies

Call My Agent (“Dix pour cent”) is a French comedy drama about a talent agency, with cameos by real-life movie stars playing versions of themselves. (2015-2019)

Kim’s Convenience Based on a play of the same name by co-producer Ins Choi, Kim’s Convenience is the story of a Korean family in Toronto running a small convenience store. The dynamic between the Korean-born parents, Umma and Apa, and their Canadian-raised children, is achingly bittersweet. See the performances that got Simu Liu noticed and cast as the Marvel hero, Shang-Chi. (2016-2021)

The One I Missed

I may be the last person on the planet who has not seen Squid Game, the global phenomenon released in 2021. I was eager to watch because I’ve enjoyed so much other TV, film, and music from Korea’s amazing culture industry, and because of its implied commentary on global inequality and economic desperation. Alas, I only got a few minutes in to the first episode then became too squeamish. But as I understand it, that’s entirely my loss.

I’m always looking for new suggestions, particularly smartly written series from around the world with well-developed characters and insights into salient issues. Please share your favorites in the comments.

This article is part of my LinkedIn newsletter series, “Around My Mind” – a regular walk through the ideas, events, people, and places that kick my synapses into action, sparking sometimes surprising or counter-intuitive connections. 

To subscribe to “Around My Mind” and get notifications of new posts, click the blue button at the top of this page. Please don’t be shy about sharing, leaving comments or dropping me a private note with your own reactions.

For more content, including guest posts and ways to engage me for keynotes, workshops, or strategic deep dives, please visit www.thegrayrhino.com.

You Are What You Risk Taiwan Edition Launched

Michele’s latest book, YOU ARE WHAT YOU RISK, is now available in Taiwan in traditional/complex Chinese characters as “Find the Gray Rhino in Your Life: Knowing Your Risk Fingerprints and turning a Crisis into Opportunity,” published by Commonwealth (Tianxia/World Culture imprint).

Use your browser translator (if needed) to read this profile in Global Views Monthly Magazine published on occasion of the book launch.

Watch video highlights (in English with traditional Chinese character subtitles) below:

NYC Allows Legal Immigrants to Vote in City Elections

The New York City Council has overwhelmingly approved a bill to allow more than 800,000 lawfully present immigrants to vote in municipal elections, becoming the largest U.S. city to do so. As a founding member of the New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights, created in 2003 to research, recommend, and advocate for the ideas that culminated in this new policy, I could not be prouder. Even though I moved to Chicago in 2014, part of my heart will always remain in New York City and I am so happy that New Yorkers who support vibrant democracy have finally carried this initiative over the finish lines.

If this is the first time you are hearing about noncitizen voting –which was widespread in the U.S. until early in the twentieth century– please wait before you pass judgment. Many of the arguments of opponents simply do not hold water. The word “citizen” comes from the days when people’s allegiances lay with their cities because nations did not yet exist. The NYC policy does not allow voting in state or federal elections, so does not remove an incentive for recent immigrants to become U.S. citizens. To the contrary, it helps prepare them to become full federal citizens as they wait until they are eligible.

Below is the testimony that I delivered to the New York City Council for November 14, 2005 hearings on Intro. 628, the first bill introduced in favor of municipal voting rights for lawfully present non-citizens.

“Why the Voting Rights Restoration Act (Intro. 628) Is Good for New York City”

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on why New York City should allow non-citizens who reside legally in this city to vote in municipal elections. My name is Michele Wucker and I am a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute at The New School, where my research focuses on immigration and citizenship issues, particularly on how immigrants integrate into their host communities, on the policies that can promote or retard that process, and on the consequences. With Ron Hayduk, I am a co-founder and co-director of the Immigrant Voting Project (www.immigrantvoting.org), which documents and analyzes the initiatives to enfranchise non-citizens around the United States and the world, both throughout history and during a revival of the practice that began in the 1960s and accelerated in the 1990s through the present.

You’ve heard important testimony today about rights, democracy, and the ways that non-citizens would benefit from being given a voice in the city’s affairs. But I wouldn’t blame you, or your constituents, for asking, “What’s in it for me?”

All New Yorkers should care whether or not non-citizen New Yorkers can vote in city elections for the same reason that we care whether anybody votes at all. It’s not at all hard to see why people are alarmed that the voter turnout last week was below 40% and the lowest in five mayoral elections. Municipal voter participation reflects how much residents care about the city where they live and how much of a stake they feel they have. A recent New York Times Magazine article argued that, given that the likely benefit to any one individual of casting a vote is tiny, it’s a wonder that anyone votes at all. The broader community benefits far more than any individual does when he or she casts a vote.

In Fall 2003, the Los Angeles community of Lynwood, where 44% of voting-age residents are not citizens, discovered the hard way what happens when a large part of the community is disenfranchised. Taxpayers were funding Lynwood City Council members’ exorbitant salaries, fancy meals and junkets to Rio de Janeiro and Hawaii. The whole city suffered because the local government was not accountable to all of its residents.

When a city fails to create engaged local citizens, the consequences can be devastating, as has been happening in the immigrant suburbs of Paris. Similarly, the 1992 Washington Heights riots here in New York City were caused in part because community residents were isolated from the rest of the city and felt they had little say or influence over policies that affected them. The solution was to develop policies to address residents’ needs. In Washington, D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighborhood in 1991, ethnically charged riots inspired several suburbs to respond by granting local voting rights to noncitizen residents as a way of making sure that their concerns were addressed before they reached a breaking point.

When I first heard about the idea of noncitizen voting rights, my reaction was similar to the one I often get today when I tell others about the work of the Immigrant Voting Project and the New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights. Why would someone bother to become a citizen if they already enjoyed the right to vote? While it is an understandable reaction, because Americans are far more likely to vote in national elections than local ones, it also is mistaken. The New York movement, like many similar ones across the country, only involves city-level voting rights; you still must be a citizen to vote for, say, President of the United States.

Adopting a new nationality is an emotional and very personal decision. Legal residents must wait five years before they can even apply to become a naturalized citizen, a long and often frustrating process. For many immigrants, the big hurdle in deciding to apply for naturalization is emotional: when they say the Pledge of Allegiance, they want to mean it. They want to feel like they belong to a place before they do the paperwork and undergo a process that is so complicated and frustrating that only those who really want to be citizens will go through. Giving incipient Americans a voice in their communities is a way to create involved, educated citizens at the local level, which will encourage many of them to go on to become U.S. citizens as well. At the same time, by cultivating all immigrants as citizens of this great city, New York will benefit immensely by welcoming into our civic life even those individuals who may not ever naturalize.

Becoming a “citizen of the city” is very different, both emotionally and in terms of results, from being a citizen of a nation. While it is only logical to think long and hard before changing their nationality, people are arguably citizens of a new city the minute that they take a job, sign a lease, enroll their children in schools, or begin a school semester of their own. Everyone who lives in a city immediately have an interest in securing safe and clean streets, good schools, and reliable and affordable transportation and health care. City officials’ decisions have immediate and tangible effects on the daily lives of every single resident: whether we have to walk through garbage or pass by crack dealers on the corner, how long we have to wait at the bus stop or subway station. We cannot afford to wait until the newest New Yorkers become U.S. citizens to make them full citizens of the city.

All residents depend on their neighbors being willing and able to participate in making sure that elected officials know what their needs are and meet them. Last year, I moved to Washington Heights, a neighborhood that is heavily populated by recent immigrants who, because of their citizenship status, cannot vote. I had to depend on the “A” train, which I quickly learned was unreliable at best. But, because the residents of Washington Heights had only a limited political voice, nobody expected more frequent or reliable train service any time soon. Meanwhile, lower Washington Heights finally succeeded in ending the skip-stop 9 train and increasing 1 train service, a feat achieved only when the number of likely voters to be courted hit critical mass. I think about the businesses that depend on reliable transportation for their workers no matter what their citizenship status and about the citizens who cannot get the services they need because their neighbors have no voices. And in these examples, I hope that you too will see clearly the answer to the question, “What’s in it for me?”