Gara LaMarche has spent most of his adult life in public service. From his various positions at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to acting as Director of the Freedom-To-Write Program of the PEN American Center, to Associate Director of Human Rights Watch, to his current position as Vice President and Director of U.S. Programs for the Open Society Institute (OSI), LaMarche has dedicated himself to protecting the rights of others.

“You can see it in terms of jobs, or you can see it in terms of episodes or initiatives,” says LaMarche. “I’ve had a series of interesting jobs that have allowed me to put my talents to work toward things that I care about.”

A Historical Perspective

Having held these jobs puts LaMarche in a unique position to look back on the evolution of society. For example, he was at the PEN American Center when Salmon Rushdie’s Satanic Verses was published. “I don’t know that I’ve been involved in anything as intense,” says LaMarche about the campaign to protect Rushdie’s right to write without death threats. “It was the top story in the world.”

His work with the ACLU put him on the frontlines of the battle over the death penalty. LaMarche found himself Director of Texas Civil Liberties Union in the mid-1980s, just when states started to execute inmates again. “The director of the ACLU in Texas was really the only point-of-contact with the families of inmates on death row,” says LaMarche. “These people had been on death row for five to 10 years or more and many of them had not seen a lawyer since they got there, so they had a lot of appeals left to them. They were mostly poor and mostly black and had poor representation in the first place.”

LaMarche and his colleagues set out to get volunteer lawyers from big cities to represent many death row inmates in Texas—a responsibility he took very seriously. “I put my energy into creating a state agency that would provide representation to death row inmates,” says LaMarche. “It seemed crazy to me that their lives would depend on the whims of the ACLU being able to find them a volunteer lawyer.”

Although no longer on the battlefield against the death penalty, LaMarche still finds himself on the frontlines of this controversial issue. “At the Open Society Institute we have been trying to work on broader policies responding to the continuing crisis of the death penalty,” says LaMarche. “I was against the death penalty when I went to Texas, but I think if I hadn’t been I would have had the sort of evolution that the Governor of Illinois did,” he says, referring to former Illinois Governor George H. Ryan, who changed his view on the death penalty after a local college journalism class uncovered nearly a dozen instances in which a defendant was wrongly found guilty and sentenced to death.

“I would defy anybody to look up close at how the death penalty works and find it tolerable,” says LaMarche. “The capriciousness of who may live and who may die as it relates to lawyering and individual wealth is intolerable. The governor of Illinois—a conservative Republican who started out in favor of the death penalty—actually changed his position when he had the power of life and death in his hands.”

Creating Social Change

With the money and vision of philanthropist George Soros, the Open Society Institute implements a wide range of initiatives aimed at promoting open societies by shaping government policy and supporting education, media, public health, and human and women's rights, as well as social, legal and economic reform. It’s a tall order, but philosophically LaMarche is completely in accord with Soros’ philosophy.

“On the global front, Soros has gone into country after country making a transition from repression to democracy and found individuals or groups to lead that change. He knows he can’t do it from the outside. His money is helpful, but individuals and organizations—the bar, the press, and teachers—all have to be leading the change,” he says.

“I am—by virtue of my race and gender—in a privileged position,” he says, “and I’m proud that I can use whatever power or access I have on behalf of people. That’s what gives me the most satisfaction.”

A Perspective on Power

From its Economic and Business Development Program, which assists in promoting the restructuring of transitional economies, to the Human Rights and Governance Grants Program, which provides support to nongovernmental organizations operating in the fields of human rights and governance, the Open Society Institute has numerous programs that affect change on a wide variety of levels. OSI focuses on programs throughout Europe, Latin America, Russia, and the United States that concentrate on education, public health, social justice and youth development, to name a few.

Despite the weight of his responsibility, LaMarche keeps his role in perspective. “Philanthropy is a peculiar position in that you’ve either got your own money or you’re the gatekeeper for someone else’s money,” he says. “You have to be very careful to realize that it’s temporary power and that you are not the source.”

“I spent the first 20 years of my life actually doing things and raising money, so I have a sense of how I like to be treated or not like to be treated,” says LaMarche. “There are always more people who want support than you’re able to give. It’s useful to come to it having been on the other side, but the moment that you like all of the perks that come with it, you should probably get out of the business.”

A Real Democracy

After agreeing to speak as part of UC Irvine’s School of Social Sciences’ Distinguished Speakers Series, LaMarche had to come up with a topic. He could have easily chosen to speak about the death penalty or any of the ambitious initiatives undertaken by the Soros Foundation. Instead, he chose something a bit more provocative: the state of democracy in the United States.

While LaMarche believes that we, in the United States, don’t have sham elections seen in other countries, he says increasingly “we have the form but not the reality of democracy.” He also says that we have lost the ability for political imagination and “can’t see the forest we would like to dwell in because we are trying to protect tree after tree from the buzz saw.”

LaMarche points to our political system as the culprit. “Our early and critical presidential primaries have taken on the feel of one of the ubiquitous “reality” shows. Everyone—including candidates like Howard Dean—knows the system is no way to choose a leader, but on this political Fear Factor, no one has the courage to change it.”

LaMarche also points to the flaws in the 2000 Presidential election, specifically the votes not counted in Florida, as a major cause of “structural disenfranchisement,” which brings his argument back to the basic fight for civil rights. “It is shameful enough that we are inured to a situation in which the quality of teaching and schooling, housing and police protection, sanitation and public amenities, is highly correlated with the wealth and skin color of a neighborhood’s residents,” he told the audience at UCI. “If it is also the case— as it seems to be—that the quality of democracy is linked to those factors as well, it is no wonder that we live in a country in which the rich get richer and the poor stay poor.”

Just as he did in his battle against the death penalty, LaMarche uses facts to bring home the point. “Most of the money spent in our vastly expensive elections comes in chunks of $1,000 or more, yet less than one-tenth of one percent of the American population can afford to contribute at that level.”

LaMarche goes on to speak of media consolidation, the USA Patriot Act and the way our elections are organized as contributors to the erosion of true democracy. He creates a convincing argument. An argument that if listened to, will no doubt start the process of change.

One thing LaMarche would not change is UC Irvine. “It’s a beautiful campus with a diverse faculty pursuing a number of cutting-edge projects with very engaged students,” says LaMarche. “I was taken with how many faculty are working on key Open Society issues—immigration, conflict resolution and improving education for poor and minority students, for example.” All issues LaMarche has spent his life working to improve.

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