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Students embrace diversity through “Mix It Up”

 

Thousands of students across the country will be mixing it up in their cafeterias on Nov.13 as part of the national “Mix It Up at Lunch Day” campaign. On this day, students branch out sit with people outside of their normal social group. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Tolerance.org launched the campaign in response to hearing that young people can find it hard to fit in at school, and that nowhere is the divide between groups more clear than in the school cafeteria.

Mix It Up is not only about helping young people step out of their comfort zones, but it also aims to plant the seeds for change. “Mix It Up believes in the power of youth to create and sustain real change. We want to provide ideas and tools to help you break the walls of division in your school and community.”

In 2007, over 10,000 elementary, middle, and high schools participated, and over the six years of the program, over 43,000 schools and millions of students have participated.

What does Mix It Up at Lunch Day look like? Mix It Up’s website offers a number of ideas for hosting the event, including:

• Offering special food to create a festive environment that students will enjoy
• Inviting guests from the community to encourage and support students’ efforts to get to know each other
• Providing questions the students can ask each other in order to get to know each other
• Assigning students to tables, taking some of the fear out of finding a table
• Letting students pick new people to sit with (with assistance from teachers, if needed)
• Promoting the event with a fun theme, like wearing mismatched, or ‘mixed up’ clothing

Why did schools participate Mix It Up at Lunch Day in 2007?

Washington Irving School #14 in Indianapolis, IN – to combat bullying. One 4th grade student said: "I thought it was really cool and I was able to meet new people….We are not friends yet but I now know them. I can't wait until next year."

Central High School in Little Rock, AK – so students can “cross social boundaries, meet new friends, and learn that diversity is as accessible as a table in the cafeteria.” Despite the anxiety some students expressed as they looked for new places to sit, one girl told her friends, "Did you see who was sitting at our regular table? We should do this every day!"

Archie R. Cole Junior High School in East Greenwich, RI – to encourage kids to make a positive difference with their lives. Conversations that began at lunch extended into classroom discussions. In one 7th grad English class, students decided that they wanted to work “towards change through initiatives such as an anti-bullying campaign.”

How can I get my school involved next year? Go to the Mix It Up web page and check out the How to Mix It Up at Lunch information. You’ll learn how to organize, plan, publicize, educate, and act to get students, teachers, counselors, staff, administrators, and school clubs on board with this exciting event.

Friday digest-open thread 8/15/08

Classes will be back in session soon in most of the nation's schools. Earlier this month, The Oprah Winfrey Show focused on the unequal state of education in the United States, and how schools in both inner cities and rural areas often fail to provide the same sort of experiences enjoyed by students in wealthier districts. Explore the episode's website to get insight from author Jonathan Kozol, who says "We are now operating a school system in America that's more segregated than at any time since the death of Martin Luther King," and from Bill and Melinda Gates, who - together with former basketball star and education advocate Kevin Johnson - have launched a new campaign (Strong American Schools/ED IN '08, formerly StandUp) to address the crisis. Also, explore the tools available from Everyday Democracy to help launch action-oriented dialogues about education in your community - like the 500 folks in Dothan, Alabama, who recently did just that.

The Census Bureau reported this week that, by 2042, white people will no longer comprise a majority in the United States. Projections now estimate that the United States will have 439 million people in 2050 (up from about 305 million now). By mid-century, whites will make up 46 percent of the population, Hispanics will make up about 30 percent (double the current numbers), blacks will make up 15 percent (about the same as now), and people of Asian heritage - now 5 percent of the population - will be at about 9 percent. White non-Hispanic people today make up about two-thirds of the U.S. population, but only 55 percent among children younger than 5. "The white population is older and very much centered around the aging baby boomers who are well past their high fertility years," William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, told the Associated Press. "The future of America is epitomized by the young people today. They are basically the melting pot we are going to see in the future." Again, Everyday Democracy offers resources - such as our discussion guides Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation and  Changing Faces, Changing Communities - to help us all navigate these shifting demographics.

The DemocracySpace water coolers are taking an August break, but we'd like to know what topics you want to see featured in our mostly monthly live blog sessions later this year. If you have ideas, put 'em in the comments below or email blog manager Julie Fanselow. Thanks for reading!

Here's to good works

Last week, I wrote about one especially resonant exchange at the Harwood Institute's Public Innovators Summit, held August 1-3 in Stevenson, Washington. Now, as promised, I'd simply like to share links to a few organizations with which I wasn't too familiar before attending the summit. It was great to learn about the good works being done by these organizations, as well as to re-connect with others whose work I already knew. I only wish we could mention every one of them here ...

Ashoka is a global association of social entrepreneurs. Its website says that, since 1981, Ashoka has supported more than 2,000 social entrepreneurs in more than 60 countries as Ashoka Fellows. Ashoka "envisions a world where Everyone is a Changemaker: a world that responds quickly and effectively to social challenges, and where each individual has the freedom, confidence and societal support to address any social problem and drive change."

We all hear a lot about giving peace a chance, but the Center for Global Nonviolence is advocating a much more in-your-face ideal: nonkilling. Based on the work of Glenn D. Paige (whose 2002 book is available as a free download at the center's website), nonkilling political science suggests that, contrary to popular assumptions and centuries of history, killing fellow humans is not a normal part of the human condition. This movement, according to Paige, "seeks to direct attention beyond 'peace' and even 'nonviolence' to focus sharply upon the taking of human life."

The Five Freedoms Project is dedicated to the freedoms outlined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Its website says the Five Freedoms Project "provides local school leaders with the leadership development, coaching and support they need to address two of America’s greatest challenges — improving the performance of our public schools, and strengthening the quality of our civic discourse."

Everyone knows about Goodwill, but the work of Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties goes far beyond its network of 17 neighborhood retail stores with its commitment to creating solutions to poverty and training people for living-wage jobs.

The Heat and Warmth Fund of Michigan (THAW) helps people pay their utility bills but also encourages folks to change how they use energy and advocates for long-term solutions to energy issues. THAW partners with Detroit radio station WWJ in an annual Winter Survival Radiothon to raise money for Detroit residents' essential heat and lighting costs.

The Omidyar Network - founded by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, and his wife, Pam - makes grants and investments based on a belief that every person has the potential to make a difference. Although I didn't know the name of Omidyar, I know the work of some of its grantees, including Witness (musician Peter Gabriel's project to help human rights defenders use videography to record abuses and pursue justice) and Digg, which allows people to categorize and prioritize the vast quantities of content on the Internet.

Revenue Watch Institute promotes the transparent, accountable and effective management of oil, gas, and mineral resources for the public good. RWI and its partners work in about 30 nations worldwide to help countries avoid "the resource curse" of corruption that sometimes accompanies great resource wealth. From its website: "With effective revenue management, citizen engagement and real government accountability, natural resource wealth can drive development and national growth. RWI provides the expertise, funding and technical assistance to help countries realize these benefits."

Rural Development Initiatives "is a catalyst for community vitality in rural areas. We work with rural leaders and volunteers to expand the knowledge, skills and networks for building communities that foster opportunity, thrive and endure."

Survivor Corps started as an organization to help land-mine survivors, and it's now a global network of people helping each other to overcome the effects of war and violence. Its credo: "Working together, we rise above our injuries and give back to our communities." Founder Jerry White was on ABC's "Good Morning America" last week to discuss the organization and his new book. (Video here.) Jean Feraca, another summit attendee, will welcome Jerry as a guest on her radio show Here On Earth this Tuesday, August 12.

Friday digest-open thread 8/8/08

The world's attention is turning to China as the 2008 Summer Olympics open today. As the Games unfold, people all over the world will be thinking not just about sports but about China's human rights record, its environmental problems, and its halting attempts at creating more political freedom. China is famously restrictive about what people can access on the Internet from within its borders, but a variety of blogs are offering news and insiders' views on the world's most populous country. Have a look at the China Media Project, Angry Chinese Blogger, and China Dialogue. And here's a fascinating article by Issac Mao, who became China's first blogger in 2002. He writes, "What I've witnessed in these six years is not only the explosion in big numbers of users and media space, but also these individual effects - including in my life. I'm now more like a global citizen than six years ago."

The Center for Community Change's Movement Vision Lab is introducing a new feature, "10 questions for  ..." in which MVL readers can pose questions to a civic leader. First up: Bill Vandenberg, the new director of the Democracy and Power Fund at the Open Society Institute. Questions can be posted here or emailed here until Wednesday, August 13.

The Northwest Area Foundation has awarded a $2.46 million grant to the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation to fund  the tribe's  10-year strategic plan to reduce a 46 percent poverty rate on the reservation. With an earlier NWAF grant, Cheyenne River Tribal Ventures has created eight Learning Centers that provide education and tribal services in remote and isolated regions of the 2.8 million acre reservation in central South Dakota; begun financial literacy training for youth, paid internships, and Individual Development Accounts that teach young people the value of saving and investing; created a Cheyenne River Chamber of Commerce; and developed a Lakota Daycare Immersion program in partnership with Presentation College that emphasizes preschool learning in the Lakota language. NWAF is also making small grants to many of its Horizons communities, such as this one reported on our website, which will fund distance learning scholarships in Ritzville, Washington.

Writing in the cover story for the August 11 issue of Newsweek magazine, Christopher Dickey uses the presidential race to describe his native South as a region undergoing an uneasy transition: "There is a sense that a world is ending, maybe not this year but inevitably. The election, and Obama's candidacy, have focused these anxieties like a lens. I found whites frustrated and indecisive about the campaign, families at odds, generations divided. Many who thought themselves beyond prejudice were surprised by their suspicions of the young black man from up north. Meanwhile, many slave-descended blacks, hugely supportive of the half-Kenyan, half-Kansan, Hawaii-reared Obama, seemed afraid to hope too much, inoculating themselves with pessimism about the chances that any man of color could win the presidency, even this man, even today, or that, if he does, he will survive." Read more - and access Dickey's video diary and a photo gallery - here.

Friday digest-open thread 7/25/08

Congress is on the cusp of passing a bill aimed at relieving the nation's home foreclosure crisis, just as a new report released today showed that foreclosure filings doubled in the second quarter of 2008 over the same time period last year. Last month, half a dozen writers for the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity's new Critical Issues Forum blog wrote how the foreclosure crisis has disproportionately affected communities of color:

The disproportionate impact of subprime mortgage foreclosures on racial minorities is clear: Foreclosure means a loss of the wealth invested in a home, the abandoned buildings cause declines in neighborhood property values, and the vital asset wealth that minority homeowners have long sought is lost.   The structural racism analysis does not assert that any individuals involved in mortgage finance were motivated by prejudice or bigotry. Rather it suggests that the cumulative effect of regulatory policy, institutional practices, and self-interest has been to harm minorities disproportionately – but to ultimately impact society more broadly.

Having located the causes of racial disparity in the subprime crisis, we can consider possible remedies.  For example: greater regulation of mortgage finance would prevent the proliferation of high cost loan products which precipitated the crisis in the first place; financial education in poor minority communities would minimize the capacity of predatory lenders to mislead their clients; municipal efforts to manage abandoned foreclosed properties would prevent neighborhood decline.  The contention of the structural racism analysis is that as we explore these and other viable policy solutions, we must specifically consider the problem of racial disparity, and how new policies and programs will reduce that disparity.

Read more of their analysis and call to action here.

The Pine Bluff (Arkansas) Commercial newspaper editorialized today about the energy generated by this week's town meeting of Pine Bluff 20/20 - a Vision of What Can Be. The process is going well, the newspaper said, but there's always room for even more involvement. "We’re grateful to those who are participating in the 20/20 process. If you would like to see the goals achieved, why not become involved? Nine-hundred people who helped set the goals and 250 who are actively involved can do a lot, but with your help, we can do a lot more." Pine Bluff has about 55,000 people.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland kicked off a Conversations on Education tour this week that will include stops in a dozen cities. Jim Provance of the Toledo Blade wrote: "The governor has said he would consider his administration a failure if it did not address a school-funding system dependent on property taxes - ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court - that places students in poorer districts at a competitive disadvantage." Citizens at the Columbus kickoff advocated for more early childhood education, especially for special needs children of poor parents.

Three steps toward healing

Yesterday at the summer meeting of the Everyday Democracy Book Club, we had a good exchange with James W. Loewen, author of Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. Dr. Loewen offered this three-point plan for the thousands of U.S. communities that have a history of excluding people of color, writing:

Every (former) sundown town in the US needs to do at least these three things:
1. Admit it. ["We did this."]
2. Apologize. ["We did this and it was wrong, and we're sorry."]
3. State "We don't do it any more," and put teeth into that last statement -- if someone thinks we have discriminated, we have this racial ombudsperson to see, or this civil rights commission, or whatever. And we have indoctrinated our real estate agents. And we are hiring diversely for our school system and public works departments.

He also suggests:

• That cities consider becoming part of the National League of Cities' Inclusive Communities Partnership of cities that are committed to diversity in all its forms. Nearly 200 cities - including at least one former Sundown Town - have done so.
• "If you know a history teacher whose students might do this as a project, or if you can form a study group or action group at your church or civic organization, or if you need a project for a course you plan to take next fall in college ... consider something on sundown towns. It's virgin territory, and your work will likely lead to change." You can report anything that you learn about a town's history at Loewen's website. Click this map to learn more about what's already known.

You can read a transcript of yesterday's discussion here and order Sundown Towns here or from your local bookseller.

The greatest challenges

Before the national meeting, Everyday Democracy did a survey asking those who planned to rank the greatest challenges their communities face. Those original survey results are here. But participants in Friday's afternoon plenary got to add to the "greatest challenges" list, then re-vote. Here were the results (on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest; new items suggested Friday are in italics):

Poverty    7.6
Cost of energy 7.4
Health care    7.4
Crisis in the public schools    7.3
Economic downturn    7.3
Lack of affordable housing 7.2
Growing gap between rich and poor    7.0
Role of race    6.7
Lack of infrastructure for real civic engagement    6.7
Moving from polarization to common ground    6.7
Failure of government to provide resources    6.4

Also on Friday afternoon, participants drew up a list focused on the question "What do we most need to work on?" See the results at our wiki.

Dreaming big for our schools

Have you heard of TED? It stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and it's the name of an annual conference where some of the world's top thinkers and doers in all fields - not just those named above - are challenged to give "the talk of their lives" in 18 minutes. Each year, three of them are awarded this $100,000 prize, along with the chance to pursue their wish to change the world. One of the 2008 winners, writer Dave Eggers, won with this wish:

I wish that you - you personally and every creative individual and organization you know - will find a way to directly engage with a public school in your area, and that you'll then tell the story of how you got involved, so that within a year we have 1,000 examples of innovative public-private partnerships.

The 2007-2008 school year is winding down, but it's not too soon to think about ways you could help fulfill this wish for a school in your community. A new website, Once Upon a School, is powering this wish by recording the 1,000 examples. So far, they include a school literary magazine in San Francisco, an "ImagineSCIENCE" partnership between the Rochester (New York) Institute of Technology and the Rochester City Schools, a book drive for a New Orleans school that's still rebuilding its classroom libraries three years after Katrina, and an Indiana scientist who developed a classroom presentation called "My Beautiful Bucket of Brains."

You have until October 31 to get involved with a school near you and help meet the challenge of 1,000 success stories. Three projects will earn their originators a free pass to the 2009 TED Conference in California. Click here for more information on Once Upon a School.

How to truly 'Live United'

As we noted a few weeks ago, Everyday Democracy executive director Martha McCoy recently spoke at the United Way's annual national conference in Baltimore - a meeting at which United Way president Brian Gallagher also announced new 10-year "Goals for the Common Good" (focused on education, health, and income) and unveiled a new motto: Live United.

Now Richard Harwood of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation has used his Redeeming Hope blog to explore, as he put it, "what would these two words mean in daily life for those of us seeking to create hope and change?" His answers, in brief, are below - full of challenges spurring us to see clearly, work across divisions, and pursue the public good with integrity. Go to the blog to read his amplifications on each of these ideas.

1.  We must help people in our communities to see and hear those individuals who are different from themselves.

2. We must root our work in the public knowledge of our community.

3. We must act as boundary spanners in our communities.

4. We must focus on undertaking efforts that by their very nature bring people together and demonstrate that we can step forward and work collectively.

5. We must orient ourselves toward the "public good," which in practice means seeing people as citizens not "consumers."

6. We must be incredibly hard-nosed about selecting the right partners to work with. 

7. We must not confuse our desire to imagine a better world with the need to root our work in the daily realities in which people live.

8. We must tap the energy and enthusiasm of young Americans, who bring into public life a sense of tolerance, can-do spirit, and a practical bent.

9. We must learn to tell stories of hope and change - what might be called civic parables - so that people can see themselves in public life.

10. We must be willing to take on enemies of the public good.

Read more here, and for even more good and timely thinking on these matters, see Rich's recent essay, Make Hope Real.

Also worth noting: the United Way is planning a national Day of Action on Saturday, June 21, the longest day of the year. Click here to learn what it's all about and to see volunteer opportunities.

Program provides skills boost

If you're reading DemocracySpace, you know that "business as usual" no longer applies when it comes to doing the public's business. You may also be the sort of person who'd be interested in Fielding Graduate University's graduate-level certificate program in Dialogue, Deliberation, and Public Engagement. The 19-week program will run mid-August 2008 through mid-January 2009, and an informational teleconference on the curriculum will happen at 5 p.m. Eastern next Wednesday, June 4. (To register for that teleconference, contact Nathan Lewin.)

The program - now in its fifth year - is designed and delivered in collaboration with The International Institute for Sustained Dialogue, the Kettering Foundation, and the Public Dialogue Consortium. By focusing on recent innovations and by working with faculty and guest speakers who are pioneers in the field, the program helps professionals achieve mastery in the practice of dialogue and deliberation. Online and telephone coursework will be complemented by two face-to-face workshops, set for October 5-8 in Austin, Texas, and January 10-13 in Santa Barbara, California.

Tuition is $3,490 for students who register by July 15. National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation members get a discounted rate of $3,140 before that date. After July 15, tuition rises to $3,740 (or $3,390 for NCDD members). Click here to read testimonials from past students, and here to register.