DemocracySpace.org

January book roundup

It's time for our more-or-less monthly roundup of recent books of interest to people who are working, organizing, and educating for positive community change. This month's selections include Acting Civically; Why Community Matters; and Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes. You can get these books at your local bookseller, or online, or at the links offered with each.

Acting Civically is a book by Tufts University professors Susan Ostrander and Kent Portney, who bring many scholars to campus to talk about civic engagement through Tufts' interdisciplinary Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG).In reviewing the book, Mark Warren, associate professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote, "Educators, civic activists, and community organizers should pay close attention to the pioneering work by Tufts University and community actors discussed in this book." Carmen Sirianni, professor of sociology and public policy at Brandeis University, added, “(This collection of essays) will be of interest not only to scholars and students, but also to practitioners and activists who seek to develop robust partnerships between universities and communities." (Ordering info.)

In Why Community Matters, Nicholas V. Longo explores the relationship between educational reform and democratic renewal. Harry Boyte, codirector of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota, wrote of the book: "Longo's Why Community Matters is an outstanding work that unearths unknown connections between Hull House and Highlander Folk School, two pivotal community-rooted sites in America in the twentieth century, and their contemporary offspring, the Neighborhood Learning Community in St. Paul, Minnesota. It brings all these to life with vivid stories, gripping history, and a compelling interpretative framework that recasts 'education for democracy' in citizen centered terms. This is a book of abundant hope, expressed through voices of new immigrants, organizers, young people, and educators of all kinds." (Ordering info.)

Not new, but just brought to our attention, Katya Andresen of Network for Good mines winning corporate strategies to great effect in Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes. A former journalist, Katya shows how nonprofits and social entrepreneurs can ethically and effectively use the same techniques used to sell soap, socks, and cigarettes. (Ordering info.) Katya also writes a blog on nonprofit marketing.

Do you have other books to suggest? What have you been reading for business or pleasure, or both? Please let us know in the comments. Thanks to Nick Connell and Eric Rigaud for their suggestions.

More essays on democracy

As we noted Monday, the Movement Vision Lab's blog is featuring essays on Participatory Democracy as its theme this week, including one written by Martha McCoy and me. Two more great essays have been posted.

Michael Leon Guerrero asks how we can advance democracy in the information age. Citing a study that shows how citizens today face an information glut, he writes: "Technology will not replace a face-to-face conversation as a way to strengthen a relationship or to build a democracy. While I was an organizer at the SouthWest Organizing Project in New Mexico, we used to say that the terrain that we organized in was the kitchen table. It is where organizers leave our comfort zone to meet people in their own home. This is where we really learn of the struggles and aspirations of people in their daily lives and what it will take to ultimately create change." Read more here.

Gerald Taylor of the Industrial Area Foundations shares a fable about three gifts - liberty, equality, and democracy. Which would you choose?

Making headway on health care

The economy is on everyone's minds these days. The faltering housing market has the spotlight, but the soaring cost of health care is another burden that American families and small businesses can barely shoulder. Members of the Cedars Unitarian Universalist Church on Bainbridge Island (near Seattle) met earlier this month to launch a round of study circles on “The Moral Imperative of Health Care."

Organizer Barbara Clarke, who formerly worked in managed care, told the Bainbridge Island Review that the debate has started moving beyond whether health care is a right or a privilege. “When you see that women with breast cancer and no insurance have a 40 percent less chance of surviving, that’s moral," she said. "When you see a mother who can’t take her children to the doctor, that’s moral.”

Meanwhile, syndicated columnist David Sirota writes about how the state legislatures in Washington and Wisconsin are considering legislation to extend health care to every citizen in those states. "The plan is simple," he says. "Employers and employees pay a modest payroll tax in exchange for full medical benefits, with no premiums. Patients never lose coverage and pick the doctors they prefer. And for the spendthrifts, here's the best part: According to an analysis of the Wisconsin proposal by the nonpartisan Lewin Group, the plan would save middle-class families an annual average of $750 on their existing health care bills. In all, the state would save almost $14 billion over the next decade." Read the whole column here.

Creating 'politics as unusual'

The Movement Vision Lab blog chooses a theme each week and invites people to write on the topic. Martha McCoy and I had the opportunity to submit an essay for this week's theme, Participatory Democracy. We wrote:

Another presidential election year is here, and you may feel you’ve heard all the political news you can stand. But take heart: Some of the nation’s best political stories are happening far from the media glare, in cities and towns where committed residents and visionary public officials are discovering – and reinventing – a stronger notion of democracy.

In a growing number of places where people previously felt sidelined by the political process, they and public officials are starting to realize that it is possible to value everyone’s participation, and to make a difference on tough issues such as racism, sprawl, and educational achievement. They’re finding ways to connect the voices, needs, and hopes of all kinds of people to decision-making and problem solving. And their actions may contain the seeds of change for our national politics, too.

Click here to read the whole essay, where we talk about how inclusion, outreach, and shared power are essential to this new style of participatory politics. And while you're at the MVL blog, check out this week's other contributions, which include Josh Lerner writing about the growing practice of participatory budgeting and Germonique Jones reflecting on how excitement over the history-making 2008 presidential campaign is but "a hopeful step" toward true democracy. "To be sure, defined power in society does not simply mean we can get the presidential candidates to trip all over themselves to court our votes during the election season," she writes. "It means we can get our political leaders to trip all over themselves to make the changes we as citizens want in our society once they are elected."

Friday digest-open thread 1/25/08

As Martin Luther King Jr. Week winds down, take a few minutes to watch this wonderful video from Delaware-based Hearts and Minds Films. It features clips of Dr. King himself interspersed with children of today speaking his words. It's beautiful stuff ... click on the image above, and pass it along.

In other news:

Nearly 600 people in Lynchburg, Virginia, have signed up to take part in that city's Community Dialogue on Race and Racism. More than 400 of them showed up last Friday for a kickoff celebration. The action-oriented dialogues begin during the first week of February. Lynchburg has been selected as one of eight communities that will partner with the Study Circles Resource Center - soon to be renamed Everyday Democracy - on our Communities Creating Racial Equity initiative.

Also in the Middle Atlantic region, the YWCA of Lancaster (Pennsylvania) also has launched study circles on racism in the nearby community of Lititz, with plans to possibly grow the discussion series throughout Lancaster County. "Study circles are definitely in keeping with the two key missions of the YWCA, as an advocate for women's issues and confronting racism," Dorothy Evans, assistant executive director of the Y, told the Lititz Record.

Lima, Ohio, is a city that pioneered study circles in the early 1990s amid racial tensions after the Rodney King verdict in Los Angeles. Now, Lima residents are on edge again following the January 4 fatal shooting of an African American woman during a drug raid in which police officers arrested the woman's boyfriend.

"The shooting has led to much soul searching about the mistrust between minorities and police and what happens to cities when manufacturing jobs move out and drugs move in," Associated Press reporter John Seewer wrote in an article this week. Read it here. Another recent AP story - this one by Ramit Plushnick-Masti - explores the rise in the drug trade in other Rust Belt cities.

Now, go back and re-watch that video.

Social Security: Can we talk?

We've been reading stories for years speculating what might happen once the Baby Boomers begin receiving Social Security benefits. Only now, it's actually happening; the first boomers eligible for early retirement are cashing their checks this month.   

As a result, Facing Up to the Nation's Finances has convened a blog carnival to encourage commentary on what, if anything, we need to do to be sure Social Security remains solvent for future generations. Here at the Study Circles Resource Center (soon to be renamed Everyday Democracy), we know that widespread citizen engagement such as the Americans Discuss Social Security project pioneered a decade ago by AmericaSpeaks needs to be a key part of the process.

As we explored in the last blog carnival, our nation already faces $9 trillion in national debt - a figure sure to grow if we don't find ways to reduce annual deficit spending and rein in spending on such key big-dollar budget items as entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) and defense. And the bigger the national debt, the more strain we'll see on the economy as a whole. Click here to read the government's latest assessment of Social Security and Medicare solvency.

How can we best "fix" Social Security? Plenty of ideas have been floated:

In 2005, the Bush administration suggested privatizing Social Security by allowing American workers to put all or part of their Social Security money into the free market. Although the idea drew wide opposition, it still has its supporters. But because Social Security remains the foundation of many Americans' retirement money, would workers be willing to gamble their funds in the current stock market?

We could raise the retirement age. Wait a minute ... that's already happened: People who were born between 1938 and 1942 must work a few months past their 65th birthday; workers born between 1943 and 1954 must now wait until age 66 to retire with full benefits; and those born after 1960 will be working until age 67 to secure their full check. (Click here for a chart showing exact retirement ages.) Even with people living longer, how much higher do we want to go?

Some politicians and economists recommend increasing or eliminating the cap on earnings that are subject to the Social Security tax. As of 2008, earnings up to $102,000 are taxable. People earning less than that pay Social Security taxes on every dime they earn, while wealthier Americans pay only on their earnings up to that amount.

There may be no one easy answer to an issue that is now, with the first wave of Baby Boomer retirements, staring us right in the face. But citizen engagement needs to be a major part of the process that we'll use to find solutions and reach consensus. Ten years ago, AmericaSpeaks - an organization that seeks to reinvigorate democracy through increased public participation in decision making - involved nearly 50,000 citizens in all 50 states in a groundbreaking national discussion on Social Security. As the case study on AmericaSpeaks' website reports:

Americans Discuss Social Security had an immediate and direct impact on the Social Security debate. The project demonstrated the intense public interest in the future of Social Security reform and showed that Americans had more of a "middle ground" approach than special interests or lawmakers had believed. For example, contrary to insiders' expectations, participants overwhelmingly supported raising the cap on payroll taxes. These results were considered credible because of ADSS's neutral stance on the issue, the diversity of participants, and lawmakers' direct involvement in the process. 

Other organizations have taken up the call for citizen engagementon this topic, too. Three years ago, with the privatization debate at its peak, the National Issues Forum published a discussion guide, "The Social Security Struggle: Fixing the Retirement System." In promoting the guide, NIF staff wrote, "With the retirement of the first baby boomers just a few years away, fundamental differences remain about how Social Security can be sustained and how it might be changed. It is a national discussion that we can't afford to put off any longer."

Well, it's three years later, and the future has arrived. Will 2008 be the year that we finally finish what AmericaSpeaks started and resume a true national conversation on whether and how to fully fund the safety net that we've promised to each other?

Does your town have 'heart & soul'?

The Orton Family Foundation is inviting communities of fewer than 50,000 people in four New England states (New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts,
and Vermont) and four Rocky Mountain states (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming) to apply for grants of up to $100,000 to help fund planning initiatives that reflect the town's "heart and soul." Two communities from each region will be chosen.

From the Orton website:

The Orton Family Foundation helps citizens and leaders of small cities and towns identify and express their community’s heart and soul—those attributes citizens hold dear and that connect individuals to one another and to the community as a whole. When they are fully understood, these heart and soul attributes can be used to shape and drive decisions that protect and enhance local character and values even as change occurs.

According to a FAQ that accompanies the foundation's request for proposals, planning projects will include "an open, in-depth listening and visioning process characterized by broad, direct citizen engagement." Find out if your community fits the profile by reading the RFP here and the FAQ here. The application deadline is March 3, 2008.

Gearing up to work for racial equity

Over the coming months, DemocracySpace will periodically include news about Communities Creating Racial Equity. This exciting new initiative - a project of the Study Circles Resource Center, soon to be renamed Everyday Democracy - will help eight communities across the United States "create and sustain public engagement and community change on issues around racial equity."

With SCRC's assistance (and funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and C.S. Mott Foundation), the communities will work to reduce persistent inequality among racial and ethnic groups that show up in education, housing, health care, the justice system, immigration, and jobs. Participating communities also will form a national network and meet together twice (in spring 2008 and spring 2009) to learn from one another.

SCRC staff involved in the program had a webinar today to get updates on key aspects of the program, which is designed to pull together all the tools and ideas SCRC has gathered over a decade-and-a-half of helping communities move to talk about and then take action to create greater racial equity. For example, each community will work with a biracial team of SCRC staff and associates who will visit the community and lend support to community efforts. But even before the partners visit their communities, they will work together to honestly share and hold each other accountable for viewing and doing their work through "a racial equity lens."

Within the communities, SCRC/Everyday Democracy teams will help communities build multiracial leadership, assess current levels of racial equity, and work toward ever greater awareness of anti-racist practices. No matter is too small: For example, organizers will be asked to review meeting times and places to make them as welcoming as possible to people from all racial and ethnic groups.

SCRC staff and associates will also be standing ready to help the participating communities document their work and share their stories with the wider world. Each community will be asked to designate a communications liaison. SCRC staff will help the liaisons approach their local media, use online tools to tell their stories, and help share their experiences with other communities both within and outside the network.

Some of the community teams have already launched their work. Click here to read an article on how Stratford, Connecticut, plans to use a CCRE grant to take a proactive approach to racial tensions, and click here to learn more about CCRE and all the communities involved. If you'd like to hold a dialogue-to-change program in your own community, click here to order or download a copy of Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation.

Pursuing a New Community

Happy King Day! This morning, Professor Harold A. McDougall of the Howard University School of Law delivered the King Day Address at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.

Professor McDougall (himself a civil rights organizer earlier in his career) drew on Dr. King's writings and speeches to explore how strong character - coupled with inclusive dialogue, personal storytelling, deep listening, and creative teamwork  - can help us re-ignite the dream of a New Community first seen, but left "on hold," during the Civil Rights Movement. Here's an excerpt:

Character is not something we are born with. It is by definition a social construct, it’s cultural. Dr. King’s character, for example was shaped by his father and by his father's church, by the colleges he went to, and by the Movement of which he was originally only a small part.

Today, our culture, and our character, is shaped as much by the television shows and commercials we watch, our Internet partners, and the music and talk-radio to which we listen, as it is by our families and churches, communities and schools. We live in a homogenized culture where we parallel play, parallel shop, and parallel work and our kids in school parallel learn. This is supposed to make us feel safer and less hassled because we really don't have to deal with anyone else, only tolerate them.

But instead we’re more and more stressed, more and more afraid, and shopping seems to be our only creative outlet. No more conversation, no more community action, even church is passive.

We were already heading in this direction in the 1950s, as American culture began to be reshaped by suburban living and TV commercials. But the Civil Rights Movement put that on hold. The isolation of suburban living was challenged; even the television was taken over by images of demonstrators being attacked, and later, by coverage of the Viet Nam War.

The Civil Rights Movement created a new sort of community, a network of people willing to share the best of their own communities with others, to make the world a better place. The New Community created a progressive cultural context; it attracted people, developing them, reinforcing them.

The citizens of this New Community were bound together, not by tradition but by passion and energy and camaraderie. They shared a deeply spiritual intuition that the world can be more just, more equitable, more fair, and also more creative and productive. Their optimism was striking, and infectious. With Dr. King as its standard bearer, the New Community promised a culture of diversity, of many voices speaking not as one, but to one another.

But the New Community was put on hold when Dr. King’s voice was silenced.

To realize this New Community, more will be required of all of us.

Click here to read his entire speech.

Professor McDougall is a member of the Board of Directors of the Paul J. Aicher Foundation, which oversees the work of the Study Circles Resource Center, soon to be renamed Everyday Democracy. He is also a civic innovator whose "Invisible College" (described in his speech) helps middle and high school students gain and share citizenship skills. Read more about his work here. Thanks to Professor McDougall for allowing us to excerpt his speech here on DemocracySpace.

The 2008 race, up close

No regular Friday digest today ... your correspondent is on a road trip to Elko, Nevada, where four presidential candidates (Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney) are speaking in a 20-hour period. Nevada's early caucus, set for tomorrow, is giving residents of the Silver State an up-close look at the people who would be president. But unlike residents of Iowa and New Hampshire, Nevadans - who are voting much earlier than in previous years - aren't really used to this attention and don't seem to know how to react. 

At The Star Hotel - a Basque eatery - last night, my friend and I shared a table with some local folks who had come in for dinner. We figured that, on hearing that a presidential candidate (Edwards) was going to be speaking, they'd stick around to hear him - but they paid their bill and left. "I guess I'm not a very good citizen," one of them said.

This morning, we got up early to go hear Mitt Romney at a local middle school. Between 200 and 300 people were there, but in a county of 50,000 people - 78 percent of whom voted for George W. Bush in 2004 - the crowd seemed a little sparse. Clinton and Obama have large gymnasiums reserved for their appearances this afternoon, so it will be interesting to see what sort of crowds they get.

Elko is a nine-hour roundtrip drive from Boise, but - even as a "Super Tuesday" state - Idaho will not see a parade of presidential candidates this primary season. It was worth the trip to see and hear these people in person. Wouldn't it be great if every American - no matter where we live - had the sort of access that the early primary and caucus states enjoy? Then again, if we did, would we know what to do with it?