Why is Utah behind the curve on modernizing elections? The rest of the country left the caucus/convention system of nominating candidates decades ago, and moved to a direct partisan primary system.

Today, while Utah Republicans argue about whether they can continue to shut out the majority of registered party voters from selecting their nominee, or whether they must allow candidates to appear on a partisan primary ballot through signatures, people around the country are moving to the next logical step: questioning the very method of nominating candidates for the general election ballot through party primaries.

States such as Washington, California, Nebraska and Louisiana already hold general nonpartisan primaries, and there is a national trans-partisan hunger for change. Other states such as Arizona, Oregon and Florida are getting serious with ballot initiatives to move to a nonpartisan system. The “Open Our Democracy Act,” calling for nonpartisan primaries in U.S. congressional elections, is gaining nationwide citizen support.

Why should this matter to Utah voters? Because most Utah elections aren’t competitive. The Republican Party holds every elected federal and state-wide office, and a supermajority in the state legislature. Unaffiliated voters account for more than 40 percent of registered voters, yet they are barred from meaningful participation in state-funded closed primary elections unless they consent to join a “private” political party. By the time independent voters get to vote in the general election, the decision is usually between a long-shot Democrat and a shoo-in Republican (or vice-versa in Salt Lake City) that they had no say in selecting.

Judge Richard Nuffer was just following precedent in his recent ruling, holding that it’s unconstitutional for Utah to require parties to open their party nominations to non-party members. Count My Vote has responded that they’re perfectly fine with that since the rest of their compromise stays in place. We can tell you that independent voters and other concerned citizens are not fine with a public primary system for exclusive private clubs.

We’re not asking for a challenge to Nuffer’s ruling. We’re asking Utah citizens to join us and call for an end to public elections being controlled by political parties. This is not a left/right issue. People from all political ideologies agree. In Democratic Party v. Jones (a case relied upon by Nuffer in his recent ruling) is the not-widely published statement that parties don’t have a constitutional guarantee to a nomination spot on the general election ballot. If the state designates the winner of a primary election as a party nominee, then it naturally cannot compel the party to open its nomination process to unaffiliated or other non-party voters. The state may, however, use a general, nonpartisan primary in order to determine which candidates appear on the general election ballot.

In a nonpartisan primary, candidates of all party preferences (including no party preference) appear on the same ballot. All voters, regardless of party, receive the same ballot. The highest vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election ballot, making the primary election a true preliminary round of the general election. Parties could still exist, and candidates could still belong to those parties, but party endorsement and advocacy would be done privately, like any other interest group.

Parties would no longer get special state-sponsored privileges that perpetuate their power in a system with straight-ticket voting, redistricting control, check-a-buck funds and more. More candidates who think outside the partisan box would step forward, and general elections would be more competitive. Let’s start a citizen initiative for nonpartisan primaries, and give the people, not the parties, the last laugh.

Tiani X. Coleman is a past chair of the Salt Lake County Republican Party and president of New Hampshire Independent Voters. Randy Miller is president of the Utah League of Independent Voters.

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Although the No Labels Problem Solver Convention, which I attended, hasn’t dismantled partisan dysfunction once and for all, it was nice to have one day during the pre-primary process where the candidates weren’t speaking exclusively to their own hyper-partisan base; but rather, were speaking to a broad-based group of Democrats, Republicans, and independents — a group more representative of general election voters.
For the most part, candidates toned down the divisive rhetoric and dialed up a more substantive conversation.

When prospective office holders give heed to all of the people they’ll be representing — and not just a small partisan fraction of them — they’re more likely to put careful thought into how they’ll approach pressing issues and arrive at real solutions. But with a primary system that awards those who can best promote the party line, attack the other side and fire up the base, it didn’t take long for many of the participating candidates to get back on the campaign trail with divisive partisan politics as usual.
So why don’t we change the way we conduct primary elections so that candidates will feel accountable to all voters throughout the election process?

Washington State, California and Louisiana each have nonpartisan primaries wherein all candidates from all party preferences to no party preference appear on the same primary ballot, and all voters, regardless of party identification vote on that same ballot.
The highest vote getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election. Such a move would put power in the hands of the people, instead of the parties. Citizens of other states (such as Arizona, Oregon and Florida) are working hard to push through their own nonpartisan primary initiatives.
Although we don’t have an initiative process in New Hampshire, I think the independent spirit of New Hampshire voters would welcome this approach.

While independents in New Hampshire can vote in primary elections, they still have to register with a party and choose one party’s ballot; nobody can vote for their favorite candidate in each race when split between parties. With independent voters accounting for 43 percent of New Hampshire voters, why should we have to pick one of the two major parties in order to vote in the first round of our public elections? Don’t we have a right to not affiliate with a party? Shouldn’t we still get a say in every stage of the election process?
The problem with shutting out so many voters in primary elections is even more pronounced in states or districts where one party dominates, be it Republican or Democrat.

In those states and districts, general elections aren’t competitive, so the primary elections are always the most determinative elections.
Thus, primary elections (which are publicly funded) should be true preliminary rounds of the general election — equally open to all voters and candidates, without requiring them to join a political party and stay in the box.

We have a broken process in need of reform when primary elections are just a way for private clubs (parties) to get a public stamp of approval on their private endorsement process, with near-exclusive access to the final public election ballot.

Indeed, parties should be able to endorse and advocate for their favorite candidate in each race, but they should do so like any other special interest group, without special advantages that shut so many out.

That’s why New Hampshire Independent Voters has joined independent voters around the country in supporting the “Open Our Democracy Act” in Congress, which in addition to addressing redistricting reform and making Election Day a federal holiday, calls for nonpartisan primaries in U.S. House and Senate elections.
Some speakers at the Problem Solver Convention said the problem is with the people, not the system. But I believe most people start out wanting to solve problems; our partisan electoral system, combined with big money, makes it nearly impossible to do so.

All citizens, regardless of party identification or money should get a meaningful say in determinative elections. And when they do, candidates and office holders will be accountable to all voters, and not just the most partisan among us, leading them to act more magnanimously to solve problems.

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I recently wrote a play about an American politician, a woman, on the eve of her being elected president. No surprise, the central character is based on Hillary Rodham Clinton. No surprise, then, that I viewed the CNN Democratic presidential primary debate as if it were the opening scene of a theatrical drama.

I am new to playwrighting, though not at all new to politics. I am an independent and a progressive and, together with independents across the political spectrum, I have done battle with the partisans and the ideologues to create a new kind of political culture. In this evolving humanistic “play,” the action is driven by the needs of ordinary people, not the needs of the political parties.

Like many a mainstay in American theatre, the CNN debate was a family drama. Like A Raisin in the Sun, or Death of a Salesman, or Streetcar Named Desire, there is conflict from the start among the members of the family. A pending inheritance, a decline in social status, a shameful secret-somehow the family is being tested by certain social and psychological pressures.

In the CNN debate, or Scene One of this presidential play, we meet the family. Hillary is the matriarch, the center of the family’s world. She is a polarizing figure in the neighborhood, feared and revered, but she has made a success of her life. She defines the universe within which the family revolves. There is Uncle Bernie, the socialist, the outspoken, uncompromising renegade who rebels against Mother Hillary and all she represents, while lovingly protecting her. “The American people are sick of hearing about your damn emails!” he exclaims, as she beams. This, after she had finished pounding him on gun control, from the left, and socialism, from the right. Never mind, though. It’s all in the family.

Every family drama has its minor characters through whom the lesser conflicts and themes play out. There is Jim, the down to earth brother, back from the war, who has seen unspeakable things. There is the young nephew, Martin, handsome, earnest, articulate, and on the make. There is the kindly distant cousin, Lincoln, though no one can quite remember how he is actually related.

The main action revolves around Mother and Uncle, as it is their struggle which determines the family’s fortunes. He is a crusader against the unstoppable greed of capitalism. He is passionate and angry for the working man and for the planet. But, ever the nimble triangulator, she is, too. She agrees with Uncle Bernie, to a point. “We have to save capitalism from itself!” she proclaims. Right at this moment, giving in to my playwright side, I prayed that Bernie would deliver this line: “No, Hillary, we have to save the Democratic Party from itself!” Sadly, he didn’t.

If Bernie had uttered those words, it would have been what theatre people call the Big Reveal, the family secret that threatens to tear the family apart. What is that secret? That in the context of a widening wealth gap, a simmering racial divide and a level of international instability unimaginable just a decade ago, the Democratic Party has managed to produce only an old-style socialist and a hawkish neo-liberal. The party-the family-must choose between the two. Since the family believes that Uncle Bernie cannot win, but Mother Hillary can, the family will settle its scores on that basis. Is there room for a new independent form of progressivism, one that seeks to take the political process itself beyond partisan warfare? No. The family cannot afford to let such an independent movement blossom.

The curtain had barely touched down on Tuesday night when the ever-influential New York Times critics were declaring Hillary the winner of the debate, both in editorials and in the “news” section. Bernie may have gotten rave reviews on Facebook, and even Al Hunt of Bloomberg News pointed out that Bernie did quite well, even if he wasn’t presidential. That’s the family rap on Uncle Bernie after all. He’s smart, he’s tough, he cares, but he doesn’t look good in a suit. Mother Hillary, as at home with the Joint Chiefs as with her one-year-old granddaughter, had prevailed. She calmed fears in the extended family that Brother Joe might have to make an appearance to save the day. No need now, the family is intact. Brother Joe can remain an offstage voice.

Ironically, it’s Bernie’s ardent anti-capitalist performance (no less real for being a performance!) that helps Hillary maintain her hold. He defines a certain kind of progressivism, and she snuggles up to it, just enough to get the glow. The militant anti-corporate rank and file who are pushing Bernie to the top of some polls will still vote for him. But perhaps they are also readying themselves for Bernie’s rapprochement with Hillary. After all, Bernie already dramatically pre-figured it in Scene One.

Some shameless self-promotion. In my play, which is not a family drama but is a musical, the “Hillary” character gets the nomination and is poised to break the glass ceiling. But, there’s a twist that might take her through the looking glass instead. Votes! opens at the Castillo Theatre in New York City on March 4th, the week of Super Tuesday. I hope you’ll come.

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I couldn’t agree more and have contacted my House representative and asked them to support HR2655 to open our democracy.

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As much as Donald Trump called “foul” on tough questioning in the Fox debate, including the Big Question about whether everyone was committed to supporting the Republican nominee, from the point of view of independent voters, the questioners weren’t nearly tough enough. Or, put another way, independent enough.

Trump was the only one on the stage who refused the GOP loyalty oath, threatening an independent run for the presidency. Since Trump raised that possibility, it is more than fair to consider the questions that independents would ask of him. What does he have to say to the 44 percent of Americans who have refused to join a political party? Does he have or is he seeking support from any leaders in the independent movement? Can he point to a successful history in third party politics? Is he willing to support the political reform agenda that binds independents together, in spite of our ideological differences?

Surely, in upcoming debates, it wouldn’t hurt to ask all the candidates on all of the debate stages whether, for example, they support opening the Republican presidential primaries to independent voters. This is timely, especially given that GOP hardliners from South Carolina to Arizona have been trying to force open primary states to close them.

Trump has touched a nerve in the Republican electorate and he has frightened the GOP establishment with his threat of an independent run and his refusal to abide by the rules of political correctness. But Trump’s populist performance is only in the rhetoric. Independents see deeper structural problems in our political system, which are both a product and propellant of the “political correctness” divide that so many Americans would like to move beyond.

For the record, Trump actually does have a history in third party politics. When the Perot revolt was in full bloom and this turn of the century populist movement—which housed a genuine right/left alliance—was consolidated in 1996 into the national Reform Party, some Republican outcasts “came a courtin’.” Most notable was Patrick Buchanan, who led a conservative pitchfork rebellion in the GOP presidential primaries in 1992, but who had lost much of that support. Recruited by Perot’s 1996 Vice Presidential running mate Pat Choate, Buchanan bolted from the GOP in 1999, marched into the third party arena, and began to compete for the $18 million of public funding that the party would receive for the 2000 election. The Republican establishment excoriated him for disloyalty, much as the Republican field did to Trump last Thursday night.

The partisan outrage was compounded when Buchanan asked for, and received the endorsement of a Reform Party leader, Lenora Fulani, a black radical activist who had run for president as an independent in 1988, becoming the first woman and African American to appear on presidential ballots in all 50 states. The Buchanan/Fulani alliance, which lasted for several months, provoked outcry from the right and the left.

Panic set in inside the Reform Party, as some leaders believed Buchanan would make Reform the laughingstock of American politics. Foremost among them was Jesse Ventura, who presumably knows something about laughing stocks. Ventura and his crowd turned to a figure they hoped would enter the Reform primary process and be a serious and moderate alternative to the arch conservative bomb thrower Buchanan. Guess who? Donald Trump.

Trump met with Reform Party leaders to test the waters for a run. He attempted to field a slate of pledged delegates to the Reform Party national convention through the New York Independence Party (which elected Mayor Michael Bloomberg the following year), but those slates were disqualified for insufficient signatures. Trump, who had re-registered into the Independence Party, was neither serious enough nor popular enough among independents to meet this simple benchmark. He funded the anti-democracy wing of the party, to no avail. His independent candidacy faded away, before it even began.

It is not without some irony that Trump, the anti-Buchanan of 2000, has become the Buchanan of 2016, a politically incorrect social conservative disrupting the Republican status quo and threatening to break open the floodgates to a third party candidacy.

However, the independent movement of today is not what it was when the Reform Party, Buchanan and Trump imploded in 2000. Much has happened to shape the independent movement since then.

The size of the independent voting bloc has ballooned to almost half the electorate. These voters don’t like parties and they don’t like partisanship. The issues that animate independents across the spectrum are process issues, namely how to reform the political system to give political power to the people, not to the parties and the partisans. The center of gravity among reform activists is shifting away from campaign financing toward nonpartisan elections, redistricting, and disclosure. Self-dealing control of the mechanics of elections is being challenged by billionaires and black militants, sometimes even together.

Trump has the money to launch an independent bid. It will cost $15 million to get on 50 state ballots and tens of millions more to promote his candidacy. But, as an independent, and with the Republican base tied to whomever the GOP nominee is, he will be hard pressed to poll the 15 percent necessary to qualify for the general election presidential debates. If the debate qualifications are changed, as many are currently demanding, and Trump manages to capture a single debate slot reserved for a non-major party contender, the blowback in the independent movement will be uncontainable. Independents rejected Buchanan’s efforts to turn the movement into a social conservative haven. They will also balk at the idea that Trump is the legitimate product of the independent sector.

Likely, Trump’s ride inside the GOP will come to an end, but not before he has done significant damage to the party. This alone will enhance the long term appeal of independent politics, which grows as the two parties are made hysterical— in both senses of the word—by their internal conflicts. Trump is a bump along that winding road. By contrast, the independent movement is here to stay.

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Earlier this month, I was a guest on the PBS show Arizona Horizon hosted by Ted Simons. In the makeup room before we went on air, Ted told me his worries about the decline in primary voting — it’s down to 24 percent — and the anemic participation by independent voters. Only 12 percent turn out in major party primaries. We kicked the statistics around while checking the powder on our noses.

Naturally, Ted brought this up on the air, and we had a disagreement about whether independents feel apathetic (his view) or feel alienated (my view). The extreme culture of partisanship makes most people feel powerless, because they are.

The increase in independent voters — now 35 percent of Arizonans and 42 percent of Americans — is a statement about that powerlessness. When people choose a political identity that is other than what the parties want, it is an act of resistance, a step towards changing the partisan nature of the system.

In Arizona, the Republican Party runs the table, politically speaking, and it is wary of the rise of independents, trying to knock out a quasi-independent redistricting commission and considering a move to ban independents from any primary voting. In this regard, the Arizona Republican Party is aligned with the national GOP.

However, it would be a mistake to conclude that the Democratic Party stands for anything other than that. If the Republican Party wants an Iron Curtain around its party privilege, national Democrats have taken to using an “iron fist with a velvet glove” approach. Such was the case a few weeks ago when Hillary Clinton, frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, formally entered the race.

Hillary began her campaign kickoff week with a speech at Texas Southern University. Her theme was voting rights, and she berated the Republican Party for voter suppression and fear mongering about voter fraud. She advocated for basic democracy reforms — automatic voter registration at age 18; 20 days of early voting in all states; and the restoration of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which provides an enforcement mechanism to protect the rights of African American and Latino voters. All good in my book.

However, what was telling about Hillary’s roaring rhetoric (she’s a feminist, we’re going to hear a lot of roaring) is what was missing from it: the rights of independent voters and the need to reform the primary system to make it inclusive and nonpartisan. Without addressing those issues, her voting rights appeal is, in effect, a form of voter fraud. If you don’t speak out against the barriers faced by all voters — including the 42 percent of those who have opted out of being members of a political party — you have distorted the cause of voting rights.

Historically, these questions have revolved around the status of African American and Latino voters, and, of course, women. These Americans were enfranchised by the 14th, 15th and 19th amendments. The Civil Rights Movement translated its vision of nondiscrimination and racial equality into the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since then, the voting rights cause has centered on protecting voters of color and ensuring full admittance to the political process. This struggle continues to this day, even as both parties use the issue as a political football to telegraph messaging to their core bases.

At the same time, a new self-selected political constituency has arisen in America, the independent voter. This includes an increasing and significant number of voters of color, who have opted for independence as their political identity. Does Hillary Clinton, voting rights “champion,” intend to speak for them, too?

In 2007, Hillary ran around the country, trading on her husband’s popularity, presenting herself as the candidate of African Americans. At the time, the country’s leading Black independent, Dr. Lenora Fulani, an early Obama supporter, asked “Who decided Hillary was best for the Black community?” Black America decided she wasn’t.

Today, I ask another question. Who decided Hillary is the champion of voting rights?

In Arizona, for example, 50 percent of Latinos are independents. But come the presidential primary on March 29, they will not be permitted to vote in either party primary, because the presidential primaries are a “members only” affair. They won’t even be able to vote for Hillary Clinton! Isn’t that practice a conspicuous form of voter suppression?

Young people coming of age politically, more than half of whom identify as independents, will also find themselves locked out of primary voting. In nearly every state, meanwhile, the taxpayers are footing the bill for an exclusionary system.

Hillary proclaimed that Americans are “problem solvers” and that “our political system is so paralyzed in gridlock” that the American people have lost trust in government. However, she says, “We don’t hide from change, we harness it.”

Hillary, here’s your chance to do that. Even though you are a Democrat — actually because you are a Democrat — don’t hide from the fact that 42 percent of Americans are independents. Don’t demean the cause of voting rights, to suit your political purposes. Fight to give all voters — including independents — the chance to vote and to build bridges together, regardless of party affiliation. That’s how the American people can solve our problems.

In Arizona, that challenge is looming. The acute education crisis can only be resolved if people come together across party (and no party) lines. Governor Ducey and the Legislature can’t get it done, because they are too vested in party power. Any and all barriers to nonpartisan alliances need to be struck down to make change possible.

My message to Hillary, woman to woman, is this. If you are not prepared to challenge your own party to fight for voter freedom for all the American people, then you shouldn’t be president. And that goes for Jeb and Bernie and Carly and Rand and Marco and Martin and the rest. When they come to Arizona, the independents will have to tell them so.

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Last July, Sen. Chuck Schumer wrote an editorial for The New York Times advocating for sweeping reform of the primary system. “For those of us who are in despair over partisanship and polarization in Congress, reform of the primary system is a start.”

It’s more than a start. There are 2.9 million independent voters in New York whose voices are left out of an important part of the democratic process — vetting candidates for the general election. Reformers recognize that our current electoral system is out of sync with the country. Forty-three percent of voters now identify as independents. Half of young voters, ages 18 to 29, do not identify with any political party. Yet the current system allows the majority of voters to participate only after all of the decisions have been made to serve as a rubber stamp for decisions made by party activists.

This is not only unfair; it further insulates our elected officials from the voters.

The partisan control of the primary system further damages the growing trust gap between the people and our government. In the six months since Schumer penned his editorial, the fight over how primaries are conducted — and who gets to vote in them — has heated up. There is a growing conflict between partisan insiders and reformers. Unlike most political fights in America, this one is not between Democratic interest groups and Republican interest groups. It is between interest groups of both parties and the rest of the country.

Political stakeholders want as much control of the primary system as they can get. In response to the growing movement to open primary elections Democratic and Republican lawmakers and party leaders from Hawaii to South Carolina have intensified their legal, legislative and public relations efforts to enact closed primaries in states that currently allow independents to “pick a primary.” At the same time, a rapidly expanding coalition of independents and insurgent Democratsand Republicans is incubating efforts to enact nonpartisan, open primaries across the country. Reformers are asking the courts, state legislators, members of Congress and the voters to consider two fundamental questions.

First: to whom does the first round of elections belong, the voters or the parties?

Second: Do the parties have the right to use taxpayer funds to conduct “members only” primaries?

Partisans insist that their parties are private associations and as such have the first amendment right to decide who can, and who cannot, participate in their primaries. They assert this even as they accept hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fund primaries that exclude voters.

Schumer has been quiet for the last nine months on this subject. But by picking up the mantle once again, he can exert a powerful influence over this debate. The Democratic Party of New York could decide to allow the 2.9 million registered independent voters to vote in their 2016 presidential primary. Schumer could pick up the phone and ask his party to do the right thing and allow independents access. Over the last several months, thousands of New Yorkers have signed a petition urging him to do just that.
The fight for primary reform is heating up. Schumer made clear where he stands, and now millions of independent voters in New York need him to stand up for their right to vote in the 2016 presidential primaries.
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Jessie Fields is a physician, a founding member of the Independence Party in New York City and is on the board of Open Primaries, a national nonprofit organization working to enact and protect open and nonpartisan primaries. Anthony Del Signore is a recent graduate of Pace University and an open primaries activist.

Two weeks ago, I went to the burial of my first cousin Sandy’s 29-year-old son. He was murdered by another young Black male in Florida. I had never met her son, Gibran, but knew of him, and I knew what it meant to grow up Black and poor in Florida. Sandy and I grew up together in Chester, Pa., and over the years, I have experienced her fury at and fears for him.

I know that fear. I myself have a son and as a mom have grappled with how to help him maneuver a life as a Black American male.

Sandy’s father, Paul, was my mother’s brother. Both he and my father and various other men in my family were alcoholics. They fought in our country’s wars, worked at jobs that were somewhat plentiful in the late 1950s and struggled with the humiliation and assault of being Black men in America. They covered it over—the anger, pain and the attack on their manhood—with drink, misguided fury and an unspoken despair.

My father died when I was 12. For years, I had made it my business to clean up all of the wine bottles under his bed. I was fiercely protective of him, as was Sandy of my Uncle Paul. We both loved our fathers deeply and somehow knew that they lived with relentless and unspeakable pain. I spoke briefly at the memorial in Philadelphia, sharing that I had recently been to Ferguson where Michael Brown was gunned down in the streets by a policeman. I said that in many ways, my cousin’s son and Michael had died from the same malady: America’s abandonment of the African-American community and the ways that abandonment expresses itself relative to the roles, locations and inclusion, especially of poor and working-class African-American men.

I have also been watching the demonstrations and the energy of America’s young—Black and white—as they marched through the streets of New York and other cities in opposition to the police and this culture of violence. I understand their fury and love them for their integrity. I have participated in numerous marches over the years in response to police shootings and racial killings of Black and Latino males. More often than not, the fury and marches peter out because, at some point, we all have to go back to business as usual. That is, until the next shooting!

However, if we want to break the cycle of what is happening to Black men in America (and to the Black and Latino poor), we have to do something other than just react to the numerous situations when things go wrong or injustice occurs. And we have to go beyond our fury at the “beat cop.” We have a system that fails young Black men and us every day, which has created the prison pipeline for Black men, because it won’t create an America where all can flourish. Yes, we have the right and obligation to demand justice, but we need to demand justice from all quarters: from a school system that does not educate; from the politicians who hide behind their fear of losing elections; from the teachers unions who pit our kids and parents against what is best for learning and development. We need to demand continuous and bigger forms of justice!

I currently run a program called Operation Conversation: Cops & Kids, where I listen to the cops and teenagers express a lot of the same fears—losing their lives in the streets and not being able to return home to their families at the end of the day. Like many New Yorkers in all communities, I was deeply upset by the useless shooting of police officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. On Christmas Eve, I convened “Unity for the City” gathering where police officers, youth and the community made a collective statement about the need to come together to overcome the violence. One police officer who spoke to the overflow crowd said we need peace, love and understanding. And, yes, we do need peace, and our communities also need power.

I’ve invested a lot of energy and expertise into creating a context in which police and young people can see the other and share some of their concerns, using innovative approaches that allow for them to have a totally different experience of being with the other. The poor community feels it needs the police on the streets, and that is real. So is the outrage at what the police often do on those streets.

In many ways, the police are the least of the problem. They are often left to navigate the responses to and outrage about the circumstances that occur because of the failure of these societal institutions. But what about the responsibility of those who run them? Why don’t the politicians do more than show up at a protest march after the fact? What are the people of our city who are being abandoned supposed to do about the reactions to that abandonment? What should they do with their fury? The fact is that we have to do some harder and more difficult things after we march. We have to engage, for example, the growing poverty in our communities and the abandonment of the poor by the people who run this country and our cities. We have to take seriously what it means to try to function in social and political institutions that don’t work for or with us. We have to look at who and what creates the circumstances that make it impossible to function in the world and live decent lives. We have to consider whether all those we believe to be our allies—such as the Democratic Party, for example—truly are.

I work with people of all ages in our various programs at the All Stars Project. I hear stories from the teenagers of how they go hungry when there is little to eat in the refrigerator so that their younger siblings will have something for dinner. I comfort them when they fail chemistry and science tests and have never had a chemistry or science book or a teacher who could teach the subject matter. My mother had a sixth-grade education and had to work hard to help feed and clothe me. What about that reality?

Over the past two years, more and more Black men have started to participate in our programs. I see in them the struggles of the men in my family. They, like my father and uncles, have lived very hard lives and are filled with the emotional challenges of what it means to be a Black male—unloved and unappreciated—in America. I love them for finding their way to us, and I help them express the despair that has been their lives and the burden of hiding that pain, not to mention the often unexpressed fury of not being allowed to be a “real” man in this country. I listen to the subjective torment of our poor who blame themselves for America’s refusal to include us and who have been taught that America’s poverty is their shame.

I am currently leading a series of talks throughout our city on “Democracy and Development” as a key to the advancement of our people. Yes, we should march, but we must also become more sophisticated and learn how to navigate and re-engineer the faults in our democratic system to make it work on our behalf. I look forward to our continued work together as we struggle as a community—and a country—to grow. I write this in memory of Paul Gibran Howard Johnson. May you rest in peace!

Lenora Fulani is co-founder of the All Stars Project, a constellation of privately-funded after-school development programs that serve more than 10,000 inner-city youth and adults each year, among them Operation Conversation: Cops & Kids, a program she directs in partnership with the New York City Police Department.

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Grief can be a terrible blinder. Tears fill our eyes and make it hard to see, even though we feel more clear-eyed in the face of tragedy. I fear that the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York City will blind us and foster illusions about the political actions the Black community must take.

The messengers of the status quo, known to us as the Democratic Party, are knocking on our doors and stuffing our mailboxes with fliers. “Remember Ferguson,” they say. “So be sure to come out and vote in record numbers for Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate.” “At all costs,” we are told, “preserve the Democratic majority in the Senate.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton recently observed, “People feel like they would be betraying the spirit of what happened in Ferguson, as well as enabling this impeachment rhetoric, if there’s a low turnout.”

What a trap. We who have been victimized by a profound and never-ending racial violence are to be blamed if we do not turn out in record numbers to prevent the Democratic Party from losing seats in the Senate. Need I mention that the governor of Missouri and the mayor of New York City are both Democrats?

I am an independent, not a Democrat. I ran for president as an independent. In 1988, I became the first African-American and the first woman to access the ballot in all 50 states. In 1992, I forged an alliance with the Perot movement, propelling a multi-racial movement to reform the electoral process. Today, 42 percent of Americans are independents, many are people of color.

It’s old news that we are taken for granted by the Democrats and that our political power is diminished by voting in predictable ways. And yet we are again being told that the Democratic Party is our savior and the Republican Party is evil incarnate. Neither is true.

Because of open primaries in Mississippi in which all voters are free to choose to vote in any primary, Black voters cast their ballots against the tea party candidate in the Republican Senate primary runoff. The whole world took notice because this voter mobility allowed Black people to slam the door on the far right. The more mobility we have, the more powerful we can be. In 2005, I led a New York City coalition that pulled 47 percent of Black voters away from the Democratic Party for independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Democratic Party bigwigs from Hillary Clinton to Eliot Spitzer went on a rampage to undercut us. We survived, but the message to the Black community was clear: Stay put, politically speaking, or you will pay a price. We have largely stayed put. And we continue to pay a heavy price for that.

Electing Barack Obama was a great accomplishment for the nation. But his ability to lead is impaired by the demands the Democratic Party places on him to re-enforce its power. Black people feel very protective of Obama. He is Black, and he has come under vicious attack. The Democratic Party exploits this by requiring loyalty to the party above all else.

Promoting the idea that justice for Ferguson means voting for Democrats is one more manipulation in that game. Sadly enough, the legacy of America’s first Black president may be to leave the Black community more isolated, deprived and disempowered than it has been in the past 60 years.

I want the Black community to join me in helping to build the nonpartisan reform movement. We need a nonpartisan political system that encourages, rather than represses, new coalitions and voter mobility. This is how new and effective approaches to poverty, to police/community relations and to developing our youth can become public policy. This movement is already successfully putting pressure on the establishment. For example, Sen. Charles Schumer recently endorsed a nonpartisan primary system, a shift from his prior position. We must make the most of this opening. My colleagues, Dr. Jessie Fields and Alvaader Frazier, Esq., are leading a campaign demanding that Schumer now lead the fight for nonpartisan elections in New York.

No voter, regardless of race, political creed or color, should be required to join a political party to participate in an election. We must do more than go to funerals. We must free up the Black community to become more politically powerful. Join me in building a national Black reformers network.

Dr. Lenora Fulani is a developmental psychologist, an education innovator and the country’s leading political independent.

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As we get ready for primary elections, instead of just accepting the long-held tradition of partisan primaries, let’s ask ourselves if nonpartisan primaries might be a better way to conduct primary elections. George Washington warned us about the “mischiefs of the spirit of party,” yet we see that the party mechanism for manipulating power has won out. Now we find ourselves in a country deeply divided, and too polarized to make progress on difficult issues that have been plaguing us for years, and are only getting worse.

I’m an independent, not affiliated with a party, along with 41% of New Hampshire voters. Yet, when it comes time for the primary elections, we don’t get a say unless we pick a party ballot, which joins us to a party. Shouldn’t we be able to get a say in determinative elections without being forced to work within a party system? After all, we pay taxes that help fund the primary elections. And shouldn’t the electoral process be open enough that candidates who don’t want to be boxed into a party can have a real chance at running for office? Parties get to have their cake and eat it, too. They get to be officially labeled as private organizations, but enjoy the benefits of being public entities. They can exclude people who don’t belong to the club from getting a say in who they endorse. But they get to have their endorsement procedure be an essential step in the public electoral process, such that one and only one member of the private club gets to be on the general ballot. What a perfect way to amass and hold onto power! We’ve taken the first and most essential step in the public election process, and allowed it to be manipulated and controlled by private interest groups. This gives major parties an unfair advantage of extra exposure, credibility, and power.

New Hampshire Independent Voters are joining independents across the country in a “Voting Rights are Primary” campaign this year. We’ll hold a peaceful, informational picket in Manchester and elsewhere on Sept. 9, to raise awareness and inform the public about more fair and open nonpartisan primaries. In nonpartisan primaries, political parties may still organize, endorse, and advocate on behalf of candidates, but a party’s endorsement process would be wholly private, as it is for any other special interest group. As a true preliminary round for the general election, the people, not the parties, would determine which candidates advance to the general election. All candidates — from all party preferences to no party preference — would appear on the same primary ballot, voted upon by all primary voters. Those receiving the most votes, regardless of party affiliation, would advance to the general election. Not only will this approach give more voters a meaningful say in elections, but it will help us think outside of the false dichotomy of the two-party system. We’ll have a greater ability to take on entrenched interests, as well. California’s relatively new top-two nonpartisan primary system has gotten positive reviews (like Washington’s). And we could allow more than the top-two vote-getters to advance, and/or use ranked choice voting. Let’s quit doing things the way they’ve always been done. Nonpartisan primaries will introduce more competition, more thoughtful, out-of-the-box solutions, and more cooperation among those with different viewpoints and perspectives. Let’s transcend party politics as George Washington hoped we would.

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