DemocracySpace.org

Welcome to the book club (5/08)

Update ... click here for the easier-to-read, threaded version of this discussion.

Welcome to this month's water cooler, which is also the spring meeting of the Everyday Democracy Book Club. For the next hour, from 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern, we'll be discussing The Next Form of Democracy: How Expert Rule Is Giving Way to Shared Governance - and Why Politics Will Never Be the Same with its author, Matt Leighninger.

Matt is the executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium as well as a senior associate with Everyday Democracy. His book, published by the Vanderbilt University Press, draws from his years of working with communities to better engage citizens in decision making, problem solving, and the daily work of democracy. As the jacket copy says:

Beneath the national radar, the relationship between citizens and government is undergoing a dramatic shift. More than ever before, citizens are educated, skeptical, and capable of bringing the decision-making process to a sudden halt. Public officials and other leaders are tired of confrontation and desperate for resources. In order to address persistent challenges like education, race relations, crime prevention, land use planning, and economic development, communities have been forced to find new ways for people and public servants to work together.

During the next hour, we'l learn from Matt and each other how innovative public officials and committed activists are forging new ways to run our neighborhoods, cities, counties, and beyond. Here's how the water cooler will work:

I'll ask Matt the first question at 1 p.m. Eastern. To follow the Q&A discussion, click on the word "comments" below this post. If you'd like to pose a question or add a comment, look for the phrase "POST A COMMENT" at the end of the existing comments. Below it, insert your name (real names, please); email address (it will not be visible online); and, if you like, the URL of your organization or program’s website. Write your question or comment in the box, then click “post.”

Please note: You will need to refresh your browser periodically to see the latest questions and comments that have been posted and answered. If traffic gets heavy, you may be asked to verify your comment with a "captcha check," or typing in a string of letters.

Also, if you see that several questions have already been asked, please be kind and give Matt a chance to catch up before posting your question.
We'll post a rethreaded, easier-to-read version of this live blog at our wiki within 24 hours. (You can read past water cooler discussions there, too.)

Thank you for joining us for today's meeting of the Everyday Democracy Book Club! And now, let the discussion begin ...

April books roundup

It's time for our monthly roundup of recent books of interest to people who are working, organizing, and educating for positive community change. This month's selections include Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon; Fight  Global Warming Now: The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community by Bill McKibben and the Step It Up Team; and The True Patriot: A Pamphlet by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer. You can get these books at your local bookseller, or online, or at the links offered below.

Slavery by Another Name tells how for decades after the Civil War, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, charged with outrageous fines, then sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations. The practice was finally given up due to government embarrassment over possible enemy propaganda about American racial abuse at the beginning of World War II. Blackmon, a white man who is Atlanta bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, started writing nearly a decade ago about how U.S. Steel Corp. relied on forced black laborers in Alabama coal mines in the early 20th century. This book grew out of that reporting. (Order here.) Click here for more of Blackmon's writings on race, school resegregation (he attended Mississippi schools as they were integrated in the 1970s), baseball, and more.  You can also read an excerpt from the book and listen to a "Talk of the Nation" interview with Blackmon here.

Earth Day 2008 may be behind us, but many communities are eager to keep the momentum going. In Fight Global Warming Now, McKibben and his collaborators offer a hands-on, locally oriented guidebook for halting climate change. McKibben draws from the lessons of 1,400 Step It Up demonstrations held last spring, one of the biggest days of environmental action since the original Earth Day and one that came together in mere months. He pledges that proceeds from the book will go back into efforts to combat climate change. (Order here.) Another recent McKibben book - Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future - is recently out in paperback, and it's a good companion to Fight Global Warming Now. McKibben shares why, particularly in our current era of unequal wages and dwindling natural resources, "more" usually doesn't mean "better." He shows how communities around the world are building vibrant local economies where people work together to create more of their own food, energy, and even entertainment.

The True Patriot has been out for a few months, but it may be a good prism through which to view the rest of this presidential election year. "We believe all politics is fundamentally about morality," Liu and Hanauer write in the slim book's introduction. "What rules do we need to live a good life together? How should those rules govern the choices we make not only as individuals but as a community?" Written in the style of Thomas Paine's classic Common Sense, The True Patriot has a decidedly progressive philosophy but one that calls to conservatives as well by appealing to core American values, like sharing of sacrifice. In a radio interview, Liu said, "I think if you take these values seriously, you’re able to find a zone where people of both parties can come together and say, 'You know what? This is the essence of true patriotism: whether we are looking out for the next generation, whether we have a sense of obligation and responsibility, not just to ourselves but to those who are going to come after us.'" (Order here.)

What are you reading these days? What's next on your list?

Friday digest-open thread 4/18/08

It's time to announce the spring selection for our Everyday Democracy Book Club. Join us here at Democracy Space at 1 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, May 15, as we'll meet with Everyday Democracy senior associate Matt Leighninger to discuss his book The Next Form of Democracy: How Expert Rule Is Giving Way to Shared Governance - and Why Politics Will Never Be the Same. In the book, Matt - who also is executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium - tells how communities all across the nation are seeing how officials and citizens can work together to address pressing issues.

This will be a great opportunity to share stories of "shared governance" and learn from other communities (and Matt's considerable expertise). Order the book from your local bookstore or online, and be sure to mark your calendar for May 15. And if you missed our last book club with Frances Moore Lappé, you can read the transcript here.

Speaking of the DDC, thanks to Joe Goldman for his tip on this recent article on Politico.com, in which e-democracy advocate Steven Clift asked this timely question: “Isn’t it interesting that the best-designed government websites are those collecting your taxes, while the worst sites are those giving you a say on how your taxes are spent?” The article tells how many other governments are way beyond ours in offering the public a chance to comment on legislation, submit petitions, and more. For example, write authors Andrew Rasiej and Micah L. Sifr, "In England, anyone can submit an e-petition directly on the 10 Downing Street website, and the most popular ones are featured on the site’s home page. More than 7 million people — one in 10 British citizens — have signed one of those petitions since the site’s launch in the fall of 2006."

Next week, Everyday Democracy will be holding the first of two Learning Exchanges for the nine communities involved in our Communities Creating Racial Equity initiative. Two important articles on this topic crossed our desks this week. Education Week had the bad but not unsurprising news that the academic achievement gap grows fastest for bright African-American children, particularly in schools with higher black populations, "where test scores are lower on average, teachers are less experienced, and high-achieving peers are harder to find."

Meanwhile, criminal injustice is in the spotlight in the current issue of the alumni magazine for Brown University, where economics professor Glenn Loury has been working to bring greater attention to the fact, as author Beth Schwartzapfel wrote, "that the number of black men incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails—a number wildly disproportionate to their representation in the general population—reflects the social dishonor to which African Americans are still subject today, a dishonor with roots in U.S. slavery." Click here to read "A Nation of Jailers."

The good news is that many communities are proactively deciding to address racial inequity, often with the help of resources from Everyday Democracy. If you caught yesterday's water cooler, you learned how Lynchburg, Virginia, successfully held the action forum for its first round of "Many Voices - One Community" dialogues on race and racism this week, and how activists from New Haven and Stratford, Connecticut; Jacksonville, Florida; Syracuse, New York; and Memphis, Tennessee are being - and leading - the change they want to see in their communities.

Next week at DemocracySpace: We'll have news from communities walking the walk for Earth Day and two days of live blogging from the CCRE Learning Exchange. If you like what you read here, you can get it delivered right to your email box by subscribing via the link atop the right-hand side of the page.

Happy Passover to our Jewish readers!

From the pop culture files

Welcome to the latest in a series of occasional posts on popular books, music, films, and more that might be of interest to people working on community change.

The 2008 Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz claimed the prize "for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life." Díaz's debut novel was hailed on its release last fall for its genre-bending mixture of literary styles, described by A.O. Wilson in his review in The New York Times as "a multigenerational immigrant family chronicle that dabbles in tropical magic realism, punk-rock feminism, hip-hop machismo, post-postmodern pyrotechnics and enough polymorphous multiculturalism to fill up an Introduction to Cultural Studies syllabus."

I haven't yet read Oscar Wao, but we offer props to the Pulitzer judges for recognizing a book that celebrates the United States as it is today: a gloriously alive, magnificently messy salad bowl of careening cultures that still usually manage to move toward unity. Here's an interview with Díaz in which he describes his literary influences and the decade-long process (following a widely praised first book, Drown) of finding the novel he wanted to write.

If you're looking for a slightly silly, slightly sweet movie tribute to community life and interracial friendships, check out the recent film Be Kind Rewind, probably currently playing at a bargain movie house near you. The basic plot is that Mike (played by Mos Def) is minding his boss' video store in Passaic, New Jersey, when his best friend Jerry (Jack Black) gets into a freak accident that magnetizes his body. After Jerry manages to erase all the VHS tapes in the store (there are no DVDs), Mike and Jerry decide to make amends by filming their own versions of films including Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, and Driving Miss Daisy. Soon, people are lining up outside the door to request remakes of their favorite films.

The subplots are even more intriguing. Neighborhood kids love to hang out at Be Kind Rewind, not so much for its movie selection as for the repartee with Mike, Jerry, and store owner Elroy (Danny Glover). Mike and Jerry acquire a sidekick, Alma (Melonie Díaz), from the dry cleaners down the street, and she helps not only add female casting to the remakes, she challenges the young men to consider the depth of their relationship. The owner of a nearby modern video emporium comes to the rescue at a critical juncture. There's even a historic preservation thread as the city of Passaic has designs on tearing down the video store - perhaps the boyhood home of jazz great Fats Waller - to build upscale condos. Be Kind Rewind was written and directed by Michel Gondry, who also made Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He definitely has a gift for offbeat, fun, and soul-warming films.

Have you read any good books lately? Seen any good films?

March book roundup

It's time again for our monthly books roundup of new and/or notable books for community organizers.This month's selections include Talking About Race: Community Dialogues and the Politics of Difference by Katherine Cramer Walsh; Message Matters: Succeeding at the Crossroads of Mission and Market by Rebecca K. Leet; and an oldie-but-goodie, Building Communities from the Inside Out by John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight. You can order these books from your local bookseller, or online, or at the links offered with each.

Talking About Race came out from the University of Chicago Press late last spring, before we started DemocracySpace and our book roundups, but it deserves a mention this month since its subject has been atop the news these past few weeks. Walsh - an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison - took a scholarly look at community dialogues about race and, according to the book's back cover, learned  that "while meeting organizers usually aim to establish common ground, participants tend to leave their discussions with a heightened awareness of differences in perspective and experience . .... Disputing the conventional wisdom that unity is the only way forward, Walsh prescribes a practical politics of difference that compels us to reassess the place of face-to-face discussion in civic life and the critical role of conflict in deliberative democracy." John Gastil of the University of Washington writes: "Reading Walsh's book will help citizens, policymakers, reformers, and deliberation scholars imagine a public discourse that balances civic action with governmental involvement, self-discovery with political strategy, and quiet listening with pointed inquiry." (Ordering info.)

Featured this month in the fine Free-Range Thinking newsletter from Andy Goodman, Message Matters offers a career's worth of advice from Leet, who has developed messages for organizations including the American Red Cross, the Ford Foundation, the World Bank, and many others. Some of her advice includes keeping messages short and simple; focusing on action rather than awareness; and tailoring messages to the recipient, not the organization. For example, Leet cited the difference between the recent messages used in MBA program ads by Georgetown University ("Leadership with a global perspective") and George Washington University ("How are you going to change the world?"). Which one speaks most directly to a potential student? Leet added to Goodman: "When I worked with the American Lung Association, I developed the slogan, 'When you can't breathe, nothing else matters.' They replaced it a couple of years ago with, "Improving life, one breath at a time.' That's the perfect example of a mistake. The first slogan is about the audience. The second is about the organization." (Ordering info.)

Finally, I learned about this month's third selection (and several other intriguing books) from the Idaho Horizons program, which lately has been posting questions on its statewide blog and asking participants to answer on their own community blogs and perhaps win a book or two for their efforts. Although it came out a decade ago, Building Communities from the Inside Out has lasting advice for communities that are trying to identify and capitalize on the assets that are uniquely their own. A reviewer on amazon.com wrote: "The book offers practical advice, helpful tools, and powerful stories that help us see communities in new ways--as treasure troves of talent. Kretzmann and McKnight's front-line experience working with neighborhoods across America has created a vital tool for transforming city blocks into neighborhoods and isolated residents into change agents." Click here to read the book's introduction; there's ordering info at the bottom of that page.

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.

'His Panic' illuminates fear

TV journalist Geraldo Rivera has a new book titled His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S., which National Public Radio described Tuesday as "his effort to explain why so many Americans are concerned about illegal immigration." Here's an excerpt from Rivera's interview on NPR:

"Many of the most fervent anti-immigrant activists are themselves the children or grandchildren of immigrants," he says. "The style changes, the accents change, the geographical antecedents change, but it's the same. You can track headline for headline the response to the Irish wave of immigration in the mid-19th century to the reaction of the Minutemen and similar radical anti-immigration groups today."

Those people who say they're worried about border security are being disingenuous, Rivera says.

"Are you really concerned about 'border security,' or are you concerned about the changing demographic face of the United States? [For] example, if it is terrorism that you are concerned about and you want this fence built between the United States and Mexico, why don't you want the same fence built between the United States and Canada? Why isn't there this clamor ... ?

"It's not [fear of] crime, it's not terror, it is demographics that is the true fear. If we wanted secure borders, what about the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts?"

Click here to hear the entire interview and read an excerpt from the book. Everyday Democracy has resources for people who would like to organize large-scale, inclusive, and productive dialogues about how immigration is changing our communities. Click here to learn more.

February book roundup

It's time again for our monthly books roundup.This month's selections include Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School; Lost & Found in America; and Political Communication and Deliberation. You can order these books from your local bookseller, or online, or at the links offered with each.

Yesterday, Education Week hosted a live chat with Mica Pollock, associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and editor of the forthcoming book Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School, which will be released in June by The New Press. Giving the book some advance praise, Tim Wise, author of White Like Me, said, "Teachers and parents often want to act on the issue of racism, but don’t know how. This one-of-a-kind volume is the blueprint; no one should teach another day without reading it." Have a look at the chat transcript (free registration required) for a preview of the book, which features robust and realistic strategies for teachers who want to move beyond frustrations about race.

Lost & Found In America is a new book that, according to its description at amazon.com, "is the story of Akobo Adele, an immigrant from Africa, who, after the events of September 11, 2001, got caught up in both personal and socio-political circumstances that changed his perceptions about United States and transformed his relationships and well being. Lost & Found in America explores the multi-faced circumstances of new African immigrants in the United States and provides unique lenses through which folks from Africa see and analyze events in the country, including how they deal with racism, expectations from home, love, romance, the African-American sub-cultures, and the need to find a sense of place in a new culture." The book was written by Tokunbo Awoshakin, the executive director of Civic Life International, an organization dedicated to using dialogue, deliberation, and media strategies to strengthen local communities in Africa and United States.

John Gastil was co-editor (with Peter Levine) of The Deliberative Democracy Handbook. His new book, Political Communication and Deliberation, was recently released by Sage Publications Inc. and features an accompanying instructors' website with teaching resources. Martin Carcasson of Colorado State University says, "Professor Gastil has been a leading voice in the deliberative democracy movement for the last 15 years, and with this book he has created a wonderful resource that adeptly captures the broad, valuable work being done both inside and outside academia concerning public deliberation and political communication. I hope this book will help spark a whole new generation of courses focused on this critical topic." You can listen to a podcast of the first chapter of the book here.

Finally, it's almost time to announce the next selection for our Everyday Democracy Book Club (which last month featured Frances Moore Lappé and her book Getting a Grip). Stay tuned for that! And be sure to look at Everyday Democracy's website for resources on addressing issues including racial equity, education, immigration, and more.

Books for the next president

Following yesterday's Super Tuesday voting, it looks like we still won't know for a while who the 2008 presidential nominees will be. (That's good: It means more Americans will have the opportunity to have their say.)

Meanwhile, people are also weighing in on another interesting topic: What books ought to be on the nightstand of our next president? Inspired by a question that CBS Evening News anchor Kate Couric put to all the candidates, Bill Moyers extended the question to readers of his blog: "What one book do you want your next president to read?" As of noon Eastern today, he'd received 2,237 responses. Here are some of them ...

I wish all politicians would read "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine, so that never again would they dare to pretend that the Founders intended to create a Theocracy.

"An Ordinary Man" by Paul Russesabagina is not only a book for America's next President, it's a read for everyone. As many know, it's the story of how one person saved more than 1,200+ lives during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda when more than 800,000 were slaughtered.

The Poems of Rumi, near at hand at all times, would provide our next president with wisdom, understanding and a certain lighthearted reality check as he/she tackles the monumental challenges ahead.

"Free Lunch," by David Cay Johnston, because it exposes the dirty little secret that the government is in collusion with the wealthiest few among us to ensure that the upper one percentile maintain their lifestyle at our expense.

I believe "The War Prayer" by Mark Twain is essential for the next President . . . and perhaps the country!

For a Republican president, Grapes of Wrath. For a Democrat, Atlas Shrugged. I know they are dated, but they each go right to the core of what the two parties just don't get.

Because the next President will have to repair the country to restore it, I recommend the Constitution by our Founding fathers.

Economics for Dummies. (I'm serious.)

Debunking 9/11 Debunking" by David Ray Griffin. Easily one of the best summaries of the most important historical event of our time.

"Collapse" by Jared Diamond is both fair in assessing the unprecedented and deteriorating condition of global ecosystems, and immensely sobering in detailing the history of ten collapsed civilizations on earth.

Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau to remind the candidates what it means to stand up for what's ethically right and not politically expedient.

Moyers added in a postscript to readers, "I want you to know I read every offering this evening. I wish that I could answer all of them because each one of you has made an interesting suggestion for a book. We'll give air time to a few next Friday night and put out a press release with a list of all the books recommended. I appreciate very much your taking the invitation seriously." He also promises to reveal which book he'd choose for the president on his PBS show Bill Moyers Journal this Friday night - if he can narrow it down to one.

Thanks to my colleague Molly H. Barrett who brought Moyers' request to my attention - and who would recommend The Fifties by David Halberstam. "It
demonstrates the tendency we humans have to allow history to repeat itself, or, at least, allow ourselves not to learn from other's mistakes. ... It shows how radically people's expectations changed and what influenced that."

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.

Welcome to the book club

Click here for the easier-to-read, re-threaded version of this event.

(Here's an introduction from Martha McCoy, executive director of the Study Circles Resource Center, soon to be renamed Everyday Democracy...)

"I'm very pleased to welcome my friend and colleague, Frances Moore Lappé, for the first meeting of our Everyday Democracy Book Club here at DemocracySpace.org. I have been fortunate to know Frankie ever since the early days of the Study Circles Resource Center, when she agreed to be on our advisory board. She has been a great supporter of the work of the citizen activists we work with, and many others. She has unflagging energy for making democracy a reality, and for reminding us that we can all work toward that in our everyday lives. And she reminds us that the best of this work is joyful, and adds to the quality of all our lives and our communities.

"I was profoundly influenced by Frankie's work in my early graduate work - I literally happened upon one of her early books in the library stacks, pre-internet days! - and so it feels fitting that we are welcoming her to our first online book club meeting, as we are about to change our name to Everyday Democracy. Frankie, thank you for taking this time in your global travel schedule to be online with us today." 
 

(And now just a few housekeeping notes from blog manager Julie Fanselow ...)

We are indeed pleased and honored to have Frankie join us today. Frances Moore Lappé is the author of sixteen books, including the groundbreaking Diet for a Small Planet. Her recent books - Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life and Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad - explore how we can (and must!) trade a top-down Thin Democracy that fails to engage citizens for a robust, ever-changing Living Democracy that helps everyday people take control of our civic lives. Welcome, Frankie, and thank you for sharing this hour with us today.

Here’s how our water cooler will work: I will ask Frankie the first question, which you will see in the comments. She will answer in the comments, too.

If you have a question for Frankie, you can ask it in the comments as well. To make a comment or ask a question, click on the word “comments” below. A window will open where you can post your name (real names, please); email address (it will not be visible online); and, if you like, the URL of your organization or program’s website. Write your question or comment, then click “post.”

Please note: You will need to refresh your browser periodically to see the latest comments that have been posted and answered.

Also, if you see that several questions have already been asked, please be kind and give Frankie a chance to catch up before posting your question.

Thank you for joining us for the launch of the Everyday Democracy Book Club! And now, let the discussion begin ...