DemocracySpace.org

Jax dinner serves hope

The Dinner with a Difference held last week in Jacksonville, Florida, was a great success. We had approximately 430 attendees, many who were totally new to the study circle process of action-oriented dialogues that bring together a wide variety of people. The event brimmed with energy and allowed everyone to get a taste of a study circle session.

After the catered meal, we began by looking at a video which depicted the disparities between races in everyday life. Then we had more than 40 facilitators, each speaking with groups of 10 to 12 people each at separate tables. Everyone openly and honestly discussed the video along with their perceptions of race in Jacksonville.

At the end of the evening we had closing thoughts and a strong next-steps statement which motivated people to continue to learn about the study circle process and get more involved. Our director, Charlene Taylor Hill, summed up the event’s vision and sent everyone home with a sense of purpose. Many business, civic, and political leaders who normally would not be at this type of event were there. The biggest comments were that people now had a feeling of "hope" and that "the city has never had an event like this before.”

We are now moving forward and looking to capitalize on the success by launching more study circles, identifying potential facilitators, and establishing relationships with new coalition partners. Internally, we are moving forward in setting up our action Forums, planning a facilitator gathering to introduce Anthony Butler, the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission’s manager of education and community outreach, and establish a new focus. We are also looking to refine our coalition partner list and focus on a more specific aspect of the racial equity issue as it pertains to a particular social ill in our city. All in all we are excited about where we are and eager to move to the next step: focused action.

Lisa Stafslien works for the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission, one of nine programs taking part in Everyday Democracy’s Communities Creating Racial Equity initiative. Contact her here.

If your community would like to post a report of its organizing work here at DemocracySpace, please contact blog manager Julie Fanselow. 

Urban schools chat today

The Education Week website is holding an online chat from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern today (Monday, May 5) on achievement in urban schools. From the edWeek website (where the chat will occur later today):

Public school students in the nation’s largest cities are scoring higher than ever before on state and national tests, according to the annual Beating the Odds report from the Council of the Great City Schools. But only about half of students in those cities are graduating from high school, as reported in Cities in Crisis, prepared by the EPE Research Center. 

What does the research tell us about education reform in cities, achievement gaps, and the road ahead for urban schools? Join Christopher B. Swanson and Michael Casserly as they take your questions on public schools in the nation’s largest cities.

You can submit a question in advance here. Also, have a look at this recent research from the Annenberg Institute showing how grassroots community organizing efforts are building stronger schools. Everyday Democracy has tools to help your district do this sort of hands-on organizing, no matter what your school district's size.

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!

YouthBuild, MTV team up

It's not every day that low-income youth get their voices heard in the nation's capital, but it's happening this week. Last night, nearly 500 youth held an "Our America" town hall at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington to unveil a "Declaration of Inter-dependence” informed by their life experiences. Today, about 100 of them are on Capitol Hill to advocate for change in six key areas of the declaration: the public school system, family supports, economic development in low-income communities, the justice system, the environment, and the role of young people in society.

Participants in the town hall included young people from 28 states who have had setbacks such as dropping out of high school, being homeless, having a teen pregnancy, or doing time in jail, but who are rising above such difficult challenges. The town hall was sponsored by YouthBuild USA, Think.MTV.com, and dozens of other national organizations with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. MTV News correspondents Sway Calloway and Kim Stolz served as emcees.

“We have gathered in Washington DC to bring attention to the conditions facing young people in low-income communities, and to call upon our elected officials and presidential candidates to join with us in finding solutions,” explained Antonio Ramirez, President of YouthBuild’s National Alumni Association, and a speaker at the event.

“We wrote the Declaration of Inter-Dependence because we believe it is our responsibility as young leaders to think through the important issues facing our communities and our nation, and to make proposals that can lead to changes and improve these conditions," said Verondha Henry, another YouthBuild graduate. “We recognize that there is an interdependence between young people in low-income communities and the future of America. In the Declaration, we voice our views about the public schools, the justice system, the system of family supports, the economy of our local communities, and how to improve these systems to break the cycle of poverty.”

“This is a unique gathering of low-income young people whose voices are too often overlooked and have been absent from policy decisions on issues that directly impact their lives and futures,” said Dorothy Stoneman, president and founder of YouthBuild USA, a national nonprofit in which low-income youth work toward their GEDs or high school diplomas while rebuilding affordable housing for poor people. “Their leadership and commitment demonstrate that young people should be part of the conversation and they should be encouraged to take action to transform America’s most pressing problems."

To keep the momentum going, YouthBuild now has an "Our America" group page on ThinkMTV.com described as a place that's "open to ALL youth who want to amplify their voices and share ideas for tackling poverty in this nation." Elsewhere on the Think.MTV.com site, users can share their views on a wide range of issue-oriented forums, including poverty. Check out the full list here. And while you're on the MTV site, have a look at the Teen Hero Awards page for info on how teens you know can try to win grants for their charities of choice.

Friday digest-open thread 2/29/08

Today is Leap Year Day. Can you imagine what it would be like to be a leapling - someone born on February 29, whose birthday comes only once every four years? Fun facts: The last time February 29 fell on a Friday was 1980. The next time will be 2036. Here's a special website for folks born on February 29, and a list of Leap Year events all around the world. Are you doing anything special to mark the occasion?

Writing on his blog yesterday, Peter Levine (director of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement) mentioned a new CIRCLE study which found dramatically different voting patterns based on whether or not young adults have attended college. From the CIRCLE website: "Although half of young Americans ages 18-29 have never enrolled in college, 79 percent of the young voters on Super Tuesday attended college, according to new CIRCLE research. This gap was also evident in youth turnout rates: one in four eligible young voters with college experience voted on Super Tuesday, compared with one in 14 eligible young voters with no college experience." Peter writes: "One important reason is unequal civic education. The activities in school that help people to participate are basically reserved for our more successful students." The Associated Press and National Public Radio did stories based on the findings.

Last weekend was the annual State of the Black Union conference in Washington, D.C. At the meeting, National Association of Realtors President-elect Charles McMillan, himself a black man, noted that his organization "is committed to removing disparities in homeownership and making the face of homeownership in this country look more like America.” According to the Census Bureau, slightly less than half of black households own their own homes, while about three-quarters of European-American families do.

Registration is open now for "American Evolution: Arts in the New Civic Life," the 2008 conference from Americans for the Arts, set June 20-22 in Philadephia. Planners say: "At this convention, Americans for the Arts will come together to share the strategies and the secrets of leading creative communities. We'll celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first percent for art ordinance in the city that created it. We'll visit traditions in arts education that date back to the founding of the country and continue on the cutting edge." Get more info here.

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.

Live chat: Racial issues at school

Education Week plans a live chat this Wednesday (February 27) at 2 p.m. Eastern with the theme "Getting Real: Addressing Racial Issues in the Classroom." From an email announcement:

In a forthcoming book titled Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School, Harvard University researcher Mica Pollock poses the question: "When should educators be race-conscious and when should they be colorblind?"

To be sure, there are no simple answers to that question. But the book attempts to raise educators' consciousness on race-related issues in the classroom and offer practical advice on everything from choosing posters for classroom walls to determining how to group students in classrooms. Yet the issue of race raises a host of other questions. When, for instance, is it appropriate to single out a student because of race? When is it OK to place students in racially homogeneous environments and when is it unacceptable? And how can educators talk more openly about how to break down racial disparities in schools without raising the defenses of colleagues who feel blamed?

Pollock will be joined online by Karolyn Tyson, an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and author of a chapter called "Providing Equal Access to Gifted Education," that appears in Pollock's book.

All you need to do to take part in tomorrow's event is show up at the Education Week chat site at the appointed time. Click here to submit a question in advance.

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.

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.

In education, 'Quality Counts'

Education Week published its annual Quality Counts report today, with an emphasis on "cradle to career" preparation for success in life. It found that across the United States, we're averaging a "C" in our educational system. States in New England are faring best, with Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Vermont taking the top five slots. Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Wyoming, and West Virginia are the bottom five. But even states as high as No. 32 (Idaho) earned an overall D grade for their efforts.

States were ranked for K-12 achievement; standards, assessment, and accountability; transitions and alignment (mainly indicators of school and college readiness); school finance; and the teaching profession. In the K-12 achievement area, which measures student performance and how well schools are closing the achievement gap between poor students and well-off ones, Massachusetts and Maryland were the only states to receive a B, the highest grade. (New Jersey netted a B-minus.)

One area of special interest is the report's look at education's "human capital" system, or how well teachers are trained, retained, and paid for their efforts. The report indicated that teachers are paid 88 cents to one dollar earned by people in many careers requiring comparable training and skills (including clergy members, accountants, occupational therapists, and registered nurses), and - unlike experienced people in some of those fields - the best teachers rarely have a chance to earn more based on experience and exceptional performance. The lowest pay is in North Carolina, where teachers made 78.8 cents to a dollar earned by people in the comparable careers; Rhode Island tops the list at $1.118.

Also noted: "Low-income and minority students are far more likely than their white and better-off peers to be taught by teachers who are inexperienced or who lack majors in their subjects." Read more and access state reports here.