DemocracySpace.org

Happy Independence Day!

For the Spring 2008 edition of Everyday Democracy's Focus newsletter, we asked four people from our network what the phrase “everyday democracy” means to them. Here’s what they said:

Everyday democracy means opening the avenues of participation and decision making in community life to everyone, every day. It means providing ownership for our collective problems, then finding creative solutions. This is full citizenry in action: the bedrock upon which our nation is based.


- Carolyne M. Abdullah, Program Director, Everyday Democracy

When the arts of democracy are practiced every day - in neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and government - we will understand that democracy means more than merely voting, and we can achieve the beloved community that Dr. King envisioned.

- Bruce L. Mallory, Provost and Executive Vice President, University of New Hampshire; member of the Paul J. Aicher Foundation Board

Everyday democracy is about the consistent and tireless efforts of common people being witness to the collective circumstances that make their community less than prosperous. It’s about getting involved on various levels to work towards a common goal.

- Carla Marratt, Horizons steering committee, Coeur d'Alene Reservation, Idaho

Everyday democracy, the foundation of local government, engages citizens as
partners in finding solutions to community problems. The greater diversity of involved citizens results in a stronger, healthier community for
 everyone.
      

- James R. Miron, Mayor of Stratford, Connecticut

A Friday Fourth of July means three days off of work for many of us. It means a chance to get together with family and friends to eat barbecue and watermelon, drink lemonade (or beer!), and watch fireworks. It may mean a parade, a picnic, or some well-earned lazy time in the hammock. No matter what this holiday weekend holds for you, also take time to reflect a little on what everyday democracy means in your life and in your community, and how you  - yes, you personally - might help make our democracy work better for everyone between now and July 4, 2009.

Have a great weekend!

Hard times can inspire creativity

Writing at her "Smart Communities" blog yesterday, Suzanne Morse of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change says pinched economic times like these might inspire local governments to seek more citizen input:

This is a time like no other to get citizens involved in the reality of local politics. I am not talking about a focus group to set priorities for local spending. I am talking about ways to inform and involve the public on the issues at hand. If there will be less for social services--say so--and ask for help. If parks and recreation are to be affected--say so--and ask for help. People are not stupid. They know that gas prices are affecting everything from food delivery to municipal services. This is an opportunity to change business as usual.

Suzanne goes on to say that the economy will eventually rebound, as it always does, and that if local governments take this opportunity to boost citizen participation in public life, "we will be better prepared, have closed the gaps, and will engage the community in ways not seen before." Read her whole post here - and if you know of any ways local governments near you are thinking creatively in these tough times, please note them in the comments.

Guest bloggers needed

What are your "50 Things to do Before You Die"? Sky dive? Travel to the Galapagos? Publish a book? Be a blogger?

Well, we can't help you with sky diving, international travel, or making the best-seller list, but we can help get your ideas out into the civics-minded blogosphere. DemocracySpace needs some guest writers this summer, from July 14-18 (except July 17) and again August 18-19. If you have something to say that would fit our nonpartisan mix of news and views, contact blog manager Julie Fanselow with your preferred date and a little bit about what you'd like to write. We'll set you up with a guest author credential and easy-to-follow instructions for making your blog debut.

Summer books roundup

It's time for our regular roundup of recent books of interest to people who are working, organizing, and educating for positive community change. Our selections this season include: A Greater Democracy Day by Day, edited by Sally Mahé and Kathy Covert; Inheriting the Trade by Thomas Norman DeWolf; and The She Spot: Why Women Are the Market for Changing the World - And How to Reach Them by Lisa Witter and Lisa Chen. You can get these books at your local bookseller, or online, or at the links offered below.

Everyday Democracy's executive director Martha McCoy gave a copy of A Greater Democracy Day by Day to each of our staff members and associates to commemorate the occasion of our organization's recent name change, from the Study Circles Resource Center to Everyday Democracy. The 2004 book is a collection of 365 quotations, each intended to help grow and renew our visions of democracy. (Here's today's: "Emergence, to a great degree, is simply what we didn't plan. How to arrive at the best possible unplanned outcome is what emergent democracy is all about." - Mitch Ratcliffe, author.) Each month opens with a small essay on such topics as Roots and Wings (January), Creativity (July), and Cooperation (November). There's also an annotated index with a brief biographical note about each quotation's author. This is an inspirational book for everyone working to strengthen our democracy, as well as anyone who writes, thinks, or speaks about the work in progress that we call the United States of America. (Order here.)

Last week marked the PBS broadcast premier of Traces of the Trade, a film about one family's exploration of its slave-trading past. One of the 10 family members who made the trip from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba and back wrote the book Inheriting the Trade about that experience. Thomas Norman DeWolf's book has been out since January but is now gaining attention as a companion piece to the film. On the book's website, DeWolf notes how the book and film are invitations to a deeper conversation about who we are and how we relate to one another, adding,  "We live in fearful times in a troubled world. I believe we are called to wake up, to open our eyes wide and recognize our kinship with each other, with all others, as equals. We can meet the challenges we face in our world by truly developing compassion for each other, by our intentions, and our actions, to understand those who differ from us." (Order here.)

I read about The She Spot in the June issue of Free-Range thinking, the monthly newsletter from communications consulting firm a goodman. The book's authors, Lisa Chen and Lisa Witter, work for Fenton Communications, the largest public interest communications firm in the United States. Asked by Andy Goodman to define the "She Spot," Witter said, "It's the spot that motivates women to get involved in social change." "And if I had to physically locate it?" Goodman asked. "I'd point to the head and the heart," Witter replied. Chen added that women are tougher customers than men (making 83 percent of consumer decisions) and "that's why if you meet women's bottom line, you'll pick up men, too." The authors add that community-building is another important way to reach women. (Order here.)

Reminder: The Everyday Democracy Book Club will meet here on Wednesday, July 23, for a discussion of Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism with author James W. Loewen.  Please plan to join us!

Friday digest-open thread 6/27/08

Welcome to the second official weekend of summer. From coast to coast, we have reports of people working together to strengthen the democracy whose 232nd birthday we'll mark next Friday. Here's an email we received today from Carolyn Lukensmeyer of AmericaSpeaks:

One of our current projects that I am particularly excited about is a workshop that AmericaSpeaks, Demos, and Everyday Democracy are convening in late July. We are inviting 40+ key people from the fields of deliberative democracy, electoral reform and community development to develop an agenda for expanding democracy to be presented to the new president in November.

More and more people are recognizing this is a unique moment in American politics and that it is essential that we seize the opportunity to become more of the country we really want to be. We have the possibility of demonstrating that transparency, inclusion, and accountability, key principles underpinning the foundation of our democracy, can be realized.

That realization is happening at the local level, too. In Burlington, Vermont, a Thursday luncheon with the theme "Vermont Leadership at the Crossroads" drew about 40 people who are eager to promote and pursue a new, more diverse leadership style for the state. The guest speaker, civic entrepreneur Hal Colston (founder of Good News Garage and NeighborKeepers), told of a vision where, by 2018, the state's aging, mostly homogenous leadership would meet regularly with upcoming minority leaders to forge new levels of trust and understanding between races and class groups.  "That apparently sounded pretty good to his audience, which applauded warmly at the end," Tim Johnson of the Burlington Free Press wrote today. " Why wait till 2018, someone then asked. Why not start now?" Wanda Hines, co-coordinator of the Burlington Legacy Project and head of the Social Equity Investment Project - which sponsored the luncheon - confirms that people are eager to get moving. "After the event was over nobody wanted to leave," she wrote in an email today. "Instead the majority stayed discussing what could be, where do we sign up and when do we get started."

Community members in Colorado Springs, Colorado, are looking ahead, too. Today marks the kickoff of Dream City: Vision 2020. "The aim of the project is to give everyone living here - kids, construction workers, artists, teachers, military personnel, engineers, retirees - a greater role in shaping our future," Warren Epstein writes in The Gazette. The first phase is  inspiration, he adds, centered on a Dream City 2020 website, "which will give you many opportunities to participate. Whether you'd like to give your two cents about what our community needs or you'd like to find a place for your classroom or organization in Dream City, you'll find it there." Epstein was among a team of Colorado Springs people at our recent Making Every Voice Matter national conference in Denver, and we are eager to see where citizens and the plan's partners - which include the newspaper, Leadership Pikes Peak, the Pikes Peak Library District, and the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region - go with this project.

And in California (plus one at the NCDD conference in Texas), Antiraciscm.com has a full schedule of its White Ally Learning Lab workshops this summer and fall. Some W.A.L.L. experiences are one day; some are weekend events; all will help participants get the tools to recognize privilege, overcome racism, and pave the way for a better, more socially just world. CoAction also plans a summer reading group club around Understanding & Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America by Joe Barndt. We'll post more info on that when we get it. You can see a preview of the book here.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court made one of its most anticipated rulings of the year, deciding 5-4 to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban. Many politicians from both major parties hailed the ruling as a 2nd Amendment victory, but Dawn Turner Trice of the Chicago Tribune expressed some reservations in her column today, writing that in the ruling, "five members of the court edited the 2nd Amendment. In essence, they said: Scratch the preamble, only 14 words count. In doing so, they have curtailed the power of the legislatures and the city councils to protect their citizens." (More here.)

We'll skip the Friday digest next week in order to celebrate the Fourth of July. But watch DemocracySpace next Thursday for an opportunity to say what everyday democracy means to you.

Summer book club selection

We're pleased to announce the summer selection for our Everyday Democracy Book Club - Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. The author of the book, James W. Loewen, will join us to discuss the book at 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 23, right here at DemocracySpace.org.

Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about Sundown Towns in its starred review:

According to bestselling sociologist Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me), "something significant has been left out of the broad history of race in America as it is usually taught," namely the establishment between 1890 and 1968 of thousands of "sundown towns" that systematically excluded African-Americans from living within their borders. Located mostly outside the traditional South, these towns employed legal formalities, race riots, policemen, bricks, fires and guns to produce homogeneously Caucasian communities—and some of them continue such unsavory practices to this day.

Loewen's eye-opening history traces the sundown town's development and delineates the extent to which state governments and the federal government, "openly favor[ed] white supremacy" from the 1930s through the 1960s, "helped to create and maintain all-white communities" through their lending and insuring policies. "While African Americans never lost the right to vote in the North... they did lose the right to live in town after town, county after county," Loewen points out. The expulsion forced African-Americans into urban ghettoes and continues to have ramifications on the lives of whites, blacks and the social system at large.

You can order Sundown Towns from your local bookseller, find it in many libraries, or buy it online here, here, or here.  Read the book, then be here at Democracy Space.org at 1 p.m. Eastern on July 23 as we join author James  W. Loewen for a lively discussion of Sundown Towns.

Watch, discuss 'Traces of the Trade'

Just a reminder: the PBS series P.O.V. will air the national premier of Traces of the Trade: A Tale from the Deep North tonight (Tuesday, June 24). The documentary explores filmmaker Katrina Browne's discovery that her ancestors were the largest slave-holding family in the early United States, and her contemporary journey with nine relatives to understand both their history and slavery's ongoing role in contemporary race relations.

Traces of the Trade will air from 10 to 11:30 on most stations, but check your local listings. Everyday Democracy's executive director Martha McCoy served as an early advisor on the film, and from that work, she says, "I can vouch that it will be a powerful portrayal of history, the meaning of whiteness, and a great way to a deeper understanding of ongoing effects of racism."

Watch the film, then record your thoughts about it in the comments section below.

Update, Wednesday morning: I've posted some thoughts in the comments below, and I hope other readers will, too. There's also a discussion of the film ongoing at the P.O.V. blog.

Blog puts town on the map

Eveleth, a community in northeastern Minnesota, is known as the home of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame and the site of Sen. Paul Wellstone's 2002 plane crash. The mining town has seen tough times lately as its population has dropped from just over 4,000 in 1990 to about 3,600 today. Steady population and economic declines are among the reasons that Eveleth decided to become involved in Horizons, the Northwest Area Foundation's rigorous program - in partnership with Everyday Democracy and the Pew Partnership for Civic Change - aimed at reducing poverty in small rural and reservation communities across the Upper Midwest, Great Plains, and Northwest.

In June 2007, several participants in Eveleth's Horizons program launched a blog as a way to share the information, ideas, and action projects that were bubbling up out of the process. The first post, on June 14, was a reprint of a local newspaper story on the wrap-up of study circles held in Eveleth. Before long, however, the Eveleth Horizons blog was itself turning into a chronicle of happenings in Eveleth - a way to record progress, bring the community together, and provide a valuable service in a town where the traditional weekly newspaper is not available online.

One year later, Eveleth bloggers Stefanie Jarvis, Heather Lindula, and Beth Peterson are going stronger than ever, with nine posts made so far in June. (There were six total in June and July 2007.) The three women are examples of the growing ranks of community bloggers who combine grassroots reporting and leadership skills to be sure the most important local stories are recorded for history. As an example, Eveleth held its community visioning event last November 1. The Eveleth Horizons blog not only promoted the event with several advance posts, but boasted coverage of the actual event the very night it happened.

Also like a good local newspaper, the Eveleth Horizons blog is like a combination scrapbook and bulletin board. Recent posts have featured a bike rodeo (photo at left), a call for election judges, a town clean-up, and a warning against economic stimulus check scams. The blog's left-hand "sidebar" lists "Community Successes," links to local organizations and Horizons partners, "Positive Action Ideas," and shout-outs to local businesses and sponsors that have helped make Horizons and related activities happen. The blog is also packed with photos and it features a colorful calendar (made for free at localendar.com) highlighting local events. In short, in a global 24/7 media culture ruled by breaking news, scandal, and celebrity gossip, the Eveleth Horizons blog is serving as a major source of the news that matters most to the people in Eveleth.

Is it hard to do? Blogger Stefanie Jarvis (who also works, goes to school, and raises two young children) says she has sometimes spent three to four hours a week on the project, but that it's been a good creative outlet. She likes to find new ways to jazz up the blog, such as scrolling text and an "email us" button using code she copied from a MySpace page. It's also cheap: There's no charge for Google's Blogger weblogging tool nor for most of the widgets that are abundantly available on the Internet.

Is it worth it? "Oh absolutely," Stefanie says. "It's one of the best decisions we made early on." Although the blog draws few comments, it has attracted nearly 7,000 visits since the hit counter went up late last summer, and Stefanie says the bloggers frequently get requests that they put a story on the blog. At the town clean-up this spring, about five participants said they read about it on the blog, and people of all ages seem to use it, too.

Is your community interested in creating a blog or using other online tools to document your dialogue-to-change stories? We have a guide to online tools on our wiki, as well as links to the Eveleth blog and several other good community blogs. Let us know when we can add yours! We also can provide coaching to communities in our network that are interested in starting a blog. For help, contact Everyday Democracy online organizer Julie Fanselow.

Friday digest-open thread 6/20/08

Have you taken the DemocracySpace survey? After almost 10 months of near-daily posts, we're wondering if the blog has been useful to you and what sort of news and information you'd like to see here. Click here to take the 5-minute survey. Thanks very much!!

Westword, Denver's news and arts weekly, blogged about our 2008 Making Every Voice Matter conference. Click here to read Maddie Wolberg's post, "Everyday People." Janis Foster of Grassroots Grantmakers wrote about some of her experiences at the conference on her blog, too. And thanks to Corinna Moebius for her mention of the meeting at Imagine Miami.

Many communities around the country will be holding Juneteenth events this weekend to commemorate the day - June 19, 1865 - that slaves in Galveston, Texas, received word of their freedom. From its Texas roots, the holiday has spread to cities and states across the country and even around the world. Visit this Juneteenth website to learn more and locate events near you.

Also related to Juneteenth, the film Traces of the Trade: A Tale from the Deep North, will make its national broadcast premiere on Tuesday (June 24) on PBS' provocative documentary film series, P.O.V. From the show's website:

First-time filmmaker Katrina Browne makes a troubling discovery — her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine fellow descendants set off to retrace the Triangle Trade: from their old hometown in Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana to sugar plantation ruins in Cuba. Step by step, they uncover the vast extent of Northern complicity in slavery while also stumbling through the minefield of contemporary race relations.

Check your local TV listings or the P.O.V. website for times. Our friend Sandy Heierbacher of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation reminds us that an early cut of the film was screened at NCDD's 2004 conference in Denver, and that it will be screened and discussed again at the 2008 NCDD Conference, set for October 3-5 in Austin, Texas.

Have a good weekend, and don't forget to take our survey.

Race and geography

Much was made during the recent presidential primary season about how Barack Obama did not do well among white voters in certain parts of the country, notably the Appalachian region. Pundits and political scientists also have speculated about how voting patterns may represent geographical differences more than racist attitudes. Two recent stories out of the Northwestern United States show a regional attitude about race that embraces both cheeky humor and strong affirmative action.

In the mostly white college town of Corvallis, Oregon, two young men - one black, one a white Jew - gained national attention when they rented a booth at the local farmers' market and hung out a sign that read "Meet a Black Guy." The purpose was literally that: for people to stop, chat with 21-year-old Jeff Oliver, and even have their picture taken with him. “It’s a statement about diversity in Corvallis. It’s not a very diverse place,” Oliver told the local newspaper. Some people seemed offended by the notion that a black person was held up as a curiosity, while others saw it as a means to get people talking, which seemed to be the intent of Oliver and his friend, Sean Brown. The booth definitely sparked discussion at the newspaper's website here and here, as well as at NPR, which aired an interview with Brown and Oliver last week.

Meanwhile, in Idaho - which at 90 percent white is even less diverse than Oregon - the state Democratic Party held its convention last weekend and selected delegates to the party's national convention in Denver. Although fewer than 1 percent of the state's population is African American, blacks make up nearly a quarter of the delegation, which also includes two people of Native American heritage, a Latina, a physicist from Calcutta, a college student of mixed racial background, a gay man, and a lesbian woman. The delegation's diversity seems sure to change Idaho's reputation as a place that's less than accepting of racial differences - but then again, Idaho also gave Obama his biggest primary season win, with 81 percent of the state's caucus voters choosing him.

What do you think? Do attitudes about race differ by region? If so, why is that - and if attitudes are less accepting in some areas than in others, how can that be changed?