Emma Addams and Jennifer Thomas Talk about Mormon Women for Ethical Government
Newsletter 295 - November 7, 2024
On October 14, 2024, I (Heidi Burgess) talked with Emma Addams and Jennifer Thomas, Co-Executive Directors of Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG) about MWEG and their work with it. Emma and Jennifer both have eclectic backgrounds. Emma has a degree in piano performance, and ran piano studios and performed for two decades while she was raising her three sons. She also worked for several years in law firms and startups in Silicon Valley doing legal contract negotiation, investor relations, and stock capitalization. Jennifer has degrees in art history and Italian, and did work in fundraising before she stayed home for awhile to raise her four boys. She also is an elected member of her town meeting, works with the PTA, and other plays other civic roles. When MWEG came along, she said, "she jumped in with both feet" -- just days after it was started as a Facebook Group. Emma came in a bit later, but with equal enthusiasm. So although their backgrounds don't obviously relate to what they are doing now, all of their diverse experiences have helped them co-lead a unique and critically important organization.
I first met Emma and Jennifer through the Intermovement Impact Project, and every time they said something, it struck me as particularly perceptive relating to the challenges to democracy we now face in America, and what might be done about it. I was amazed when I read on MWEG's website that it started as a Facebook group, and within one month, 4,000 people had joined--one of those being Jennifer. What was it about MWEG, I asked them, that drew you to it, and drew so many others to it that fast? Emma responded:
I think the cool thing is you can ask that question of all now 7,000 plus women, and you might get a little different answer from each of them. And I think that's what's so interesting about it. I do think for many of us, there is a foundation of peacemaking that drew us to it. There is this understanding that politics is oftentimes a place of a lot of contention and drama and maybe not the most fun place to spend your time. But MWEG has, from the beginning, been committed to engaging in the political sphere in a way that builds peace, rather than destroys it. And so I know for me, that was a big draw.
Jennifer added that for many of the women who joined early on,
there was this kind of inflection point where they had lived their lives and had not really thought much about politics. They just trusted that things were going well. They felt like they belonged to the political party that aligned with their beliefs. But then there were events over the last few years where they had to stop and say, "Hey, the things that I'm seeing play out politically that I'm making an implicit endorsement of because of my party beliefs, aren't necessarily aligning with my sense of discipleship or my sense of faith. And I think for a lot of women, it just became a little bit of an unbearable tension. They didn't quite know what to do, because the way we engage in our society is through our parties.
MWEG, she said, gave them a different way to engage. It gave them both a "principled and a peacemaking lens."
Women could say, "Hey, these are principles I believe in, and I know that the woman sitting next to me also agrees to those principles." And whether she's a Republican and I'm a Democrat actually doesn't matter a lot when we're agreeing on the principles and see a problem that we want to solve together. And when we've agreed to do that in a peacemaking way, suddenly that becomes this transformational opportunity for women to participate in a way that builds up their soul and allows them to feel good about the work they're doing, instead of depleting them morally and spiritually.
So what are these principles that hold members together, I asked? Emma explained that they are their " Principles of Ethical Government" which are all listed on their website. There are three pages of principles, but all are based on what they call their "triangle of ethical government," which is the rule of law, the rights of citizens, and then our responsibility towards one another. Emma explained:
We define rule of law as the government's duty to adhere to existing law. So one principle is that the government should follow accepted processes for how the law is to be established. We talk about people in positions of power should not violate or discard long-standing political norms. Elected and appointed officials must eschew conflicts of interest and avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. We have seven sub principles relating to corruption.
I asked if that principle had anything to say about orderly transfer of power after elections. Emma laughed and responded:
Yes. That is absolutely one of our core values as an organization that we are going to put forward: the peaceful transfer of power is everything to this nation. And I think we have focused on creating trust, building trust in elections and trust in the process amongst our fellow humans. So we've done the work of putting out lots of good content on social media for our own members and followers to share with their friends and family to start good conversations. But at the same time, we've really taken some very strong positions on elected officials and how they react to political violence in those situations and whether they are willing to unambiguously state commitment to accepting election results and a peaceful transfer of power. This is one of those lines in the sand, stakes in the ground, for us. So we are committed to it, and we will speak out on that over and over and over again and have in the past.
On their second principle, the rights of citizens, Emma explained that they believe that
every human being is endowed with rights that governments are obligated to protect and not violate. And that includes universal human rights, liberty and life, as well as civil rights, and then also equitable political representation and equal protection under the law. And then for each of those, we have a set of sub-principles that we've laid out.
At the same time, however, they balance rights with responsibilities, arguing that
all human beings are mutually accountable to our fellow human beings in our local communities, our countries, and in the world. So, within that would fall our responsibility to be educated voters and to have good media literacy skills and to follow truth and things like that.
Jennifer explained the relationships between rights and responsibilities further:
It's a really important balance to us, because rights are so important in our nation, in its history. They're one of the foundational elements of freedom and people's ability to construct a life as they see fit. But if rights become overbalanced, without people recognizing their responsibility to one another, we get out of step with each other. And so every time I assert my right, I also am required morally, we would argue, to do that in a way that recognizes my responsibility to others around me. I don't just get to move through the world freely saying, "This is Jen's right. This is Jen's right," regardless of whether that causes significant pain and harm to Emma.
One of the things that we ask our women to do, particularly in an election season, is be part of what we call our "Principled Voter Campaign." Here we ask women to go through serious steps to individually interrogate themselves about what they're voting for and why. At the end of every one of those series of questions is a final question, which basically says that "I have an obligation to vote in a way that does not do overt harm to other people or leave them behind. I need to always be voting as what we call a "golden rule voter." And so I certainly should use my vote to assert what I think is right and to create the society that I want. But I also have to be very aware, am I voting for someone who's going to absolutely trample and hurt others? And then I probably need to question whether that's a good choice.
Emma and Jennifer explained that MWEG has two fundamental goals. One is to advocate for ethical government — both as an organization, and through their members. And the second goals is to empower their women to be able to be effective advocates themselves.
So, Emma explained, the MWEG members form the basis of what MWEG is as an organization. And everything MWEG does as an organization is truly focused on building the membership.
And when I say "building," I don't just mean numbers, though that's certainly important to us. It means every single one of those women, we hope, comes to MWEG and becomes a better person. They become better advocates. They become truly empowered. And if we are living out the two parts of our mission, one being to do what's obvious in our name and advocate for ethical government, and the other one being to empower women to become independent civic actors or actresses—if we're living out our mission, then our women are learning and growing with us. They are oftentimes going and creating new things or doing things beyond MWEG. We hope they continue with us and they almost always do continue to be with us as well. But we're really empowering them to start new projects or go run for office or do this whole long list of things that you could do to be what we call a "principled citizen."
Jennifer continued:
We develop our members in four ways. The first is in media literacy and truth. We believe that a democracy can't exist if we aren't grounded in a basic common shared truth. So helping women to understand how to filter truth in a very complex media environment is one way. Secondly, we help them become principled citizens, as Emma said. Third, we help them develop a political identity that is independent of party, even if they do participate in party politics, and to use peacemaking [as an approach to politics]. And then the fourth is just civic engagement, teaching them and giving them the skills to be engaged in the civic sphere, building up and sustaining our democratic systems of government.
In addition to helping their members become better citizens and advocates, MWEG itself engages in advocacy for ethic governance. As Jennifer explained,
We advocate for ethical governance in five areas. Our core value is protecting democracy. Then we do environmental work. We do work around immigration and refugees, and work that we call "rooting out racism," working to eliminate racism. And then finally, we work around the economic and social well-being of children and families. We take on advocacy efforts at mostly the federal and state levels, where we feel like MWEG and its members, most specifically its members, have the opportunity to move the needle. Sometimes that means we think we can get a piece of legislation passed. Sometimes it means that we think we can change discourse and dialogue. It can really be as nitty-gritty as working to fight off bad environmental efforts or as vast as doing federal legislation.
For example, MWEG worked with Protect Democracy to get the Electoral Count Reform Act passed. For us, it was very important to speak out about that. We're going to use our voice. We're going to encourage women to speak to elected officials to ask them to respect the outcomes of elections and abide by them.
We also started immediately working on making sure that there were structural foundations to support the rule of law and to not allow bad actors to manipulate our society. And we pursued that on two tracks: first trying to undergird the foundations of our society [with the Electoral Count Reform Act], while also working with citizens to encourage them to speak up for this value, this sincere belief that a peaceful transfer of power has been one of the hallmarks of our nation. And without it, we won't long continue.
And those two things [advocacy and empowerment of their members] work really well together because our goal is to develop women so that they are prepared, educated, and have the sophisticated ability to engage in this advocacy. And then we make sure that our advocacy efforts don't ever tip over into hyper-partisanship and are always peacefully oriented. So we hope that by helping women become really peaceful and powerful political actors, we achieve advocacy in a different way. We achieve advocacy in a way that always is building up our women and making them better prepared for their next political and social engagements. We try to do those two things, really, hand in hand. Other advocacy organizations often treat their grassroots members as the point of the spear. We try never to do that; we make sure that we are being very protective of our women and training them and helping them so that any work they do in conjunction with MWEG leaves them stronger, better, and part of a more robust community, rather than depleted.
We also discussed the fact that they talk a lot about "peacemaking," and call themselves "peacemakers," even though many people tell us that "peace" is a word that is seen as silly, stary-eyed, hippie idealism that causes people not to take you seriously. Emma responded:
I think it's one of those things where you have to put a stake in the ground on words. Sometimes words change as different people interpret them, or sometimes they become words that you can no longer use. But "peace" is one that we've put a stake in the ground on. At the same time, though, we've also done the work to rehabilitate the word a bit within our membership. I think sometimes there's an initial reaction that since we're peacemakers, that must mean that we're all soft and quiet, and that we are nice, that we just let people do what they want to do, and that's being nice. So we've really done the hard work of defining what peacemaking is in a much more robust and real way. And then we hold ourselves to those standards as we do our work.
So when I say "rehabilitate," we stress that peace is not just being nice. It's not just being sweet. In fact, it is oftentimes seeing a conflict, whether it be one that you actually see or one that you can see on the Internet, and actually going directly into that conflict and doing the hard work of helping to resolve it or mitigating harm. That's the opposite of soft. That requires a stiff spine and requires a commitment that once developed and practiced, becomes a muscle that you can use. I would argue that that's exactly what we need our citizens to be doing right now. So it's much more beyond the soft.
Jennifer added that they have had to do a lot of rehabilitation work
helping women understand that there's a really big difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking. Just keeping things as they are and keeping everyone quiet and happy and cheerful is actually not productive, always, of peace. It resolves tensions in the moment. But it can leave really important structural injustices in place. It can allow people to suffer and not find that anyone's addressing their suffering. And so we've really tried to reframe peacemaking as something that is proactive, courageous, and moves towards resolving injustice in the world and helping women understand that peace comes when people's needs are being met, when they're doing that work collaboratively, and they're resolving tensions in a way that is nonviolent and not conflict-oriented.
Jennifer's answer led me to ask where they came down on the dispute over whether peacemakers should be neutral third parties or advocates for a particular side. Emma responded:
You just got right at the heart of the tension that is MWEG. It is tension, so it can be difficult. But it is also our greatest strength as well. Because what we're saying is that we're both peacebuilding and pro-democracy. So I guess I would argue that it doesn't build peace to watch as democratic norms erode. There is actually a short-term peace and a long-term peace. And the long-term peace of our nation is dependent upon checks and balances and the rule of law and the rights of its citizens and our responsibilities towards one another.
And so in order to hold that tension, it basically means that every minute of every day, we are having difficult conversations, even within our own leadership team, even between Jen and I, about how to go forward and take the positions we take. So the positions we take aren't taken lightly. They are really batted around quite a bit, discussed, researched, and that's why we're a little bit slower, you might notice, than some groups to respond to things, or we choose not to respond to a lot. We try to really focus in and respond to the things that are the most meaningful to those concepts that I laid out.
And then we go about responding in a way that doesn't dehumanize anyone in the process. And I think that also is what brings peace. By demonstrating how you can disagree and how you can take hard positions and make tough calls, but always do it in a way that honors the humanity of everyone involved. And that's hard work, and there's no easy formula other than trying to bring good people into it and give them the tools they need and the spaces and places to do that work.
Jennifer added to that thought:
I think sometimes people, particularly people who are hyper-partisan, try to neuter anyone who's nonpartisan by saying, "Well, you violate nonpartisanship anytime you disagree with me." Anytime you take a position that is not my position, you are therefore, by definition, partisan, right? And that basically means that absolutely no one can operate in the political sphere by that definition unless you are X or Y.
We would argue that, for us, "nonpartisanship" means a very specific set of things. It means that we do not endorse candidates. We don't work to support and advance political parties or their agendas. But that doesn't mean that we're viewpoint neutral at all. We have as much of a stake in this society as anyone else, and we've actually found that being nonpartisan, and just saying very freely and clearly, "We are not here to advance anyone's party politics. We are here to advance principles and policies that we see are productive of common good and on which we can get buy-in from our members of our organization from both sides of the political spectrum." That allows us to take very strong, like Emma said, robust positions that are really vetted from women in our organization who lean right and also who lean left. And it's a strong position. And it's stronger for having input from both sides of the aisle. But it doesn't mean that we're just going to abdicate any space where someone from the right or the left has claimed that space. In fact, quite the opposite. We're going to move into those spaces and say, "You don't own that problem. People should have a say in that, whether or not they're interested in advancing your party politics."
We also talked about how they do their training, more on how they do their advocacy, how (and who) can join MWEG (answer: any women, regardless of their faith), and whether they can be cloned because I, for one, think their model is extremely powerful. To learn about these issues and/or watch/read the whole discussion, please click here:
Please Contribute Your Ideas To This Discussion!
In order to prevent bots, spammers, and other malicious content, we are asking contributors to send their contributions to us directly. If your idea is short, with simple formatting, you can put it directly in the contact box. However, the contact form does not allow attachments. So if you are contributing a longer article, with formatting beyond simple paragraphs, just send us a note using the contact box, and we'll respond via an email to which you can reply with your attachment. This is a bit of a hassle, we know, but it has kept our site (and our inbox) clean. And if you are wondering, we do publish essays that disagree with or are critical of us. We want a robust exchange of views.
About the MBI Newsletters
BI sends out newsletter 2-3 times a week. Two of these are substantive articles. Once a week or so we compile a list of the most interesting reading we have found related to our topics of interest: intractable conflict, hyper-polarization, and democracy, and we share them in a "Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links” newsletter. These links include articles sent by readers, information about our colleagues’ activities, and news and opinion pieces that we have found to be of particular interest. Each Newsletter will be posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
NOTE! If you signed up for this Newsletter and don't see it in your inbox, it might be going to one of your other emails folder (such as promotions, social, or spam). Check there or search for beyondintractability@substack.com and if you still can't find it, first go to our Substack help page, and if that doesn't help, please contact us.
If you like what you read here, please ....