Better Living Through 'Parks and Rec'

I'm leading an online study and action group that asks, 'What Would Leslie Knope Do?'

I’ve been starting all of my events for my book Parks and Rec by playing a lengthy clip of my favorite sequence on the show: Leslie’s disastrous rally during her run for city council, the first major effort of her scrappy campaign team made up of her friends/colleagues. Every one of them has bungled some portion of it: They’ve accidentally ended up at an ice rink instead of a basketball court; the red carpet is too short for the distance from the entrance to the “stage”; they have only a fraction of the banner they ordered; and their guest of honor, local hero Pistol Pete, is in emotional crisis.

As they realize their mistakes in the locker room just before Leslie is scheduled to go on, they remain sure of one thing: They will all go out there together, as a team, including April and Andy’s three-legged dog, Champion.

The scene that follows as the entire group tries to scooch on the ice together from the end of the red carpet to the stage is such a masterwork of physical comedy—with the added bonus of Gloria Estefan’s “Get on Your Feet,” of all things, playing repeatedly—that it’s easy to miss what has happened here. They decided to go out there together … when it actually would have been a lot easier for Leslie to do it alone. She had a better chance of baby-stepping it out there without everyone. Even if she fell once, she wouldn’t be pulling a whole group and a dog down with her.

But, dammit, they insist on staying together, because that is what Parks and Rec is truly about.

Parks centers Leslie and her staff in the town of Pawnee, Indiana, from the show’s premiere, which originally aired in 2009. But throughout its run, which ended in 2015, it became a show about the power of group effort, and the importance of local government to make incremental, and eventually significant, change in constituents’ lives.

When I first watched Parks and Rec, during its initial run on NBC, I didn’t think much about its political implications beyond enjoying its references to gay marriage debates, gubernatorial sex scandals, and soda-size legislation.

But the reality is that Parks and Rec came out before we needed it. In its time, it felt like the water we fish were in. By the time it hit streaming in 2017, Donald Trump was president, and we needed its vision of optimism in government. By the time the pandemic hit, even more. And our need for it only seems to increase every day.

Now its purpose seems clear in its very contrast to our current times: Parks and Rec is about the power of democracy. It’s about the value of competent government officials helping everyone, not just those they deem deserving. It’s about making your community incrementally better, and about working with others to do so, even if their beliefs differ significantly from your own.

That’s why I’m hosting a study and action group, inspired by Parks and Rec, from now until the midterms. We’ll start with a larger event that I’m co-hosting with my friend and colleague Saul Austerlitz, who has taught himself to be a bold and effective political organizer and wrote a book about it, How to Assemble an Activist. We’ll be looking at examples from the show and talking about how to apply them to our own work as we approach crucial midterm elections this fall. That will be at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on June 25 online via our Substack collective, Ministry of Pop Culture.

After that, once a month, we’ll gather online to discuss an assigned episode of Parks and a reading selection from my book. Then we’ll take some civic actions and write or post about our desperately important midterm elections.

Who’s with me? If you’re interested, hit me back here and I’ll put you on the list. No cost at all, except political donations if you’re amenable and able. Let’s get on our feet and make some change.

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