A Plea for Humanity

From the founder of the Democracy, Straight-Up Project, Dahlia Hart 

Because of it, tens of thousands of people were dying every day. Half of them children under five. In cities, about a quarter of all infants died because of it before their first birthday. Strong adults were felled by it too-families lost, not just loved ones, but breadwinners, and could sink into sudden poverty. Not to mention, the countless others who were chronically ill and weakened because of it.  

Enteritis. Cholera. Dysentery. Typhoid. They ran rampant because of it.

Everyone knew the culprit. The scientists, the politicians, even the public—they all knew.

It was contaminated water.

So, why was nothing done about it?  

Dr. John L. Leal, circa 1900

Public misinformation. Professional opposition. Institutional inertia.

Fear of the solution.

That was enough to stop life-saving action.

During the civil war, Dr. John Rose Leal, a Union physician, contracted chronic amoebic dysentery from contaminated battlefield drinking water and suffered from that disease for nearly two decades before dying of it in 1882. 

He had a son. His name was also John. His father’s death would define his career and lead him ultimately to undertake a daring gambit that would have serious legal repercussions–and which would lead to one of the most singular and spectacular successes in the history of public health. 

Dr. John L. Leal (1858–1914) was an American physician and public health pioneer who first introduced the continuous use of chlorine to disinfect a public water supply.

By the early 1900’s, Leal had seen enough preventable death. He was convinced that municipal water desperately needed a chemical safeguard. As luck would have it, he was put in charge of the Jersey City water supply during a time of crisis when quick action needed to be taken. 

But there was a problem. He knew the powers that be vehemently opposed chlorination. He knew the public would violently reject the idea of being asked to drink "poisonous chemicals." 

So he didn’t ask.  He just did it. 

In the aftermath, there was outrage. The effort was accused of ‘poisoning’ the populace. Leal was in court, twice, defending legal attacks against the effort. But the evidence he presented at trial was incontrovertible. And there was another key piece of evidence: 

Typhoid rates in Jersey City plummeted almost instantly.

Leal was exonerated. Other major cities, recognizing the low cost and high efficacy, rushed to adopt the practice. By 1941, roughly 85% of all U.S. municipal water supplies were chlorinated.

What had been condemned as poison became one of the greatest lifesaving interventions the world had ever seen.

I often think about John Leal during those years leading up to his 1908 victory. He saw the death around him, day in and day out. He knew how to prevent those deaths. Not only that, it was within his power to actually do what it took. The only things standing in the way were public misinformation and institutional inertia. 

Don’t fail to imagine what that is like. Each day ticking past–

they are dying and I can stop it, 

they are dying and I can stop it, 

they are dying and I can stop it–

and each day the forces arrayed against him, against allowing him to stop the deaths are implacable, unmovable, and unforgiving.  

I’ve written a paper titled The Mortality Burden of the Legacy System: Political determinants of health, chronic powerlessness, preventable policy failure, corruption, war, and conditional comparative predictions about harm reduction

I argue that people are dying every day through pathways that public policy can alter: inadequate healthcare, poverty, environmental exposure, regulatory failure, corruption, war, and political decisions that remain durable long after their human costs are known. The people who bear those costs do not possess effective control over the legislative decisions that sustain them.

That is the legacy system.

We are taught that voters govern because they periodically choose the people who will govern them. But choosing who will exercise power is not the same as possessing and exercising that power ourselves. The public remains separated from the legislative decision-right, even when the consequences are borne in our bodies and measured in human lives.

You may argue that the voters ‘are already in charge’ in the current system. I would argue that given the immiseration and death–both caused by and overlooked by–our current policies, there is no way to argue that we live in a reality where the people who are most affected by the system are in charge of the system. Call it what you like. This cannot possibly be what self-rule looks like.

I cannot promise what voters will decide. That is the point. No founder, representative, donor, party, or expert should own their decisions. Certainly not me!

But I can say what becomes possible when the people possess the institutional means to act on what they know and correct the policies that are killing them.

Things that now appear impossible will become possible.

This is why I am undertaking the Democracy, Straight-Up! Project.

Not to advance my career.  I do not want to serve in Congress, become a Straight-Up Representative, or hold a privileged position within the system I am working to create. Neither do I wish to spend my time chipping away at one harm while leaving untouched the structure that continually produces others.

I just want to live in a world where people are not dying, day in and day out, from deaths I know how to prevent. 

The metaphor is apt.

The remedy is total voter sovereignty over legislation.

Not eventually.

Now.

The theoretical case has been made. The architecture has been designed. The strategy is in place. We do not need another generation of theories explaining why or exactly how people should govern themselves. We do not need another miniature pilot that tests everything except what happens when voters actually possess power.

But ‘total voter control’ is violently resisted. It is seen as a poison.

Those implacable, impassive forces that John Leal faced–I face them every day.  

This is a plea for humanity. I do not need approval from academia. I do not need the political establishment to open the door. I do not need another invitation to discuss whether the people might someday be ready for their own sovereignty. 

I need the resources to build. 

The Straight-Up Strategy is laid out at StraightUpDemocracy.org. Examine it. Challenge it. Read the papers. Put them into an artificial-intelligence system. Search for what is missing. Search for what could go wrong. Search for the strongest argument against it.

You will find unanswered questions. You will find risks. You will find details that must be developed and decisions that must be made.

Then ask the question that our culture of caution persistently avoids:

What is the cost of refusing to act?

Given the scale of the suffering, the inadequacy of the political remedies we have repeatedly tried, and the strength of the possibility that organized voter sovereignty could open an entirely different future–can withholding the resources needed to attempt it truly be justified?

People are dying while public policy remains trapped behind institutions they do not control. The reforms we have repeatedly attempted leave the ownership of legislative power untouched. Organized voter sovereignty offers a path to an entirely different future. 

I am not asking you merely to believe that I am sincere. I am asking you to recognize that I am ready. I have spent forty years working towards this project and years working out its philosophy, architecture, strategy, and implementation. I know what must happen next. I know the order in which it must happen. I know how to take this from a body of ideas to an operating political institution. 

Direct democracy in America at the national level. The first Straight-Up Rep sworn in on January 3rd, 2029. 

And once people see that legislative power can belong to them—not symbolically, not periodically, but continuously and in fact—the political world will not return to what it was before. 

What, for so long, we thought was poison will prove to be the remedy we’d been searching for. 

Help me build the institution that will make that possible.

For the sake of humanity! My own, yours and everyone else's.