Last Sunday I heard some interesting comments from an Iowa State Daily reporter.

While I was at the office in good ole’ Hamilton Hall, this reporter (who shall remain anonymous because I want to cash in on that Primary Colors thing) was talking about his frustration with the vague answers he got at a Marshalltown campaign stop when he asked a couple of politicians how they would save social security for future generations.

You know how it is. A lot of times specific legislative plans are not offered to mere peasant voters like you and me and the message seems to be, “Trust us. We are the Ivy League elites. We’ll solve the problem.”

Heck, why do average people even need to know the details? Most Americans have a low level of political knowledge by any objective measure.

Government policy, at home and abroad, generally gets formulated in the high circles of government within groups like the Council on Foreign Relations and other public and private elite groups consisting of top policy specialists, CEOs, bankers, investors, and some academic researchers.

These are the people who reach the upper circles of power and become secretaries of state, defense, commerce, treasury, and the heads of the CIA and the National Security Council. They design and monopolize policy.

All that’s expected of the public is that they give a stamp of approval to either a jackass or an elephant on election day (wow, what exciting choices). Let the enlightened rule, right?

I’ve heard political science profs and TAs say that they’re unconcerned that the U.S. has the lowest voter turnout of any democracy in the world. It would be even better if only political science professors were allowed to vote, they say.

In response, I’d say elites do their best to monopolize policy and mislead the public, and they’re often quite successful.

But it should be pointed out that much of the great legislation in America came about only after massive struggle by ordinary people.

Can someone tell me what president or high-powered policy maker led the struggle for civil rights?

Sure, elites reluctantly were in favor of a Fair Employment Practice Commission in the late 1940s, ending Jim Crow policies in the South, a Civil Rights Voting Act in the 1960s and other policies.

But these policies were only concessions after decades of struggle by ordinary people, most of them African Americans.

You’d also be hard pressed to name politicians and corporate leaders who fought for the 50-hour work-week, or later for the 40-hour work-week.

What elite pushed for collective bargaining, public education, community health standards, and the abolition of child labor?

Some individuals from privileged backgrounds advocated these things, but usually not as representatives of corporations or elite policy groups.

“Abolishing child labor and going to shorter work weeks will drive us out of business,” they used to say. After all, if these were things the rich and powerful wanted, it wouldn’t have taken so much agitated protest to get them.

Yeah, but those are national issues, you might say. Well, how about some ISU examples?

Do you think administrators just woke up one morning and said, “Let’s divest from South Africa because it will help drive the apartheid system into collapse?” Not exactly.

In the 1980s at ISU and at colleges and universities throughout the country, students and faculty protested and demanded that their schools divest their corporate investments from the racist regime. Luckily, ISU finally did divest.

Look at the McHub. A protest, a forum, and input from many brought justice on this issue.

This is not to say no policies originate from the power brokers. They created the FBI, the CIA, foreign aid programs to military dictators, as well as the costly interventions around the globe to make the world safe for those who own it, i.e. companies like General Motors, General Dynamics, and the United Fruit Company.

They gave us the Savings and Loan scandal due to the deregulation of banking. And guess who’s going to pick up the tab for the biggest financial scandal in the history of the world?

Not the crooks and speculators who screwed up. The taxpayers will be paying multibillions of dollars for decades to come. The elites capitalize the profits, but when they screw up we’re often left holding the bag.

So what can be learned from all this? It should give us hope. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things if they organize and agitate.

Hopefully in the years to come, as in the past, when things look hopeless, a new cry will echo throughout the land and the masses of the people will march together for peace, equality, and justice.

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Andrew Chebuhar is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Muscatine.