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. 

Tracking tales of civic revival

PACE - Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement - presented preliminary findings from its study of "How Local Governments Are Reinventing Civic Engagement" at a webinar today. "There's a lot going on, and it's coming from many directions," said lead researcher Mike McGrath, who shared these examples:

California is home to a groundswell of activity, ranging from Oakland's Neighborhood Law Corps to the renaming of Ventura's Marketing and Public Affairs Division as the Civic Engagement Division. In Palo Alto, the city council adopted public engagement as one of four priorities for 2008. The 1978 Proposition 13 property tax revolt in California created a climate where local governments faced with hard budgetary choices have had to seek greater citizen consensus on decisions.

In Sarasota County, Florida, several foundations teamed to create a nonprofit called SCOPE (Sarasota Openly Plans for Excellence). As its website says: "The idea for SCOPE emerged following a series of discussions among a broad-based group of Sarasota County residents concerned about the county’s future. After several informal meetings, a diverse group of community leaders came together to discuss the idea of undertaking a visioning or community goal-setting process." Since its founding in 2001, SCOPE has held citizen study groups on a wide array of issues, including affordable housing, family violence, traffic congestion, and  many others. See more about SCOPE's work here.

Dubuque, Iowa, was in sorry shape in the mid-1980s after the John Deere tractor company left town, but a series of visioning processes held since then have helped turn the former industrial town into a community that's pursuing riverfront development, a revitalized downtown, and greater broadband connectivity. A city that actually once had a "Will the last person to leave Dubuque please turn out the lights?" billboard now calls itself "the masterpiece on the Mississippi" and boasts the highest job-growth rate in the state.

Other communities mentioned included Portland, Oregon; Chicago, Illinois; Greeley County, Kansas; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Worcester, Massachusetts, where neighborhood teams use handheld computers and digital cameras to record code-enforcement eyesores and public safety problems. The PACE team also gave props to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which has worked with Everyday Democracy as it has addressed community growth, sustainability, and education issues via its long-running Portsmouth Listens program.

McGrath noted how it pays to go well beyond the usual suspects (a.k.a. "stakeholders") in engaging the public. Many homeless people in Ventura, California, live in the river bottoms when the weather is dry and aren't keen to move into the indoor shelter during the rainy season. Through a community conversation on the issue, an artist who lives near the river suggested that the homeless people establish a camp. With help from a nonprofit and city resources, "River Haven" is a self-regulating, self-policing community of homeless people.

Today's PACE presentation left participants with a sense that although a robust civic revival in the United States seems to be well under way, there's plenty of work to be done to create a more coherent national movement. Some questions include:

What's better - temporary processes for public engagement, or permanent structures? If the former, should they be run by city employees or outside facilitators? If the latter, how can such structures be sustained? Should more decisions be made and implemented at the neighborhood level? Should citizen participants be selected randomly or by interest level? Can we develop a new language to better describe these new forms of shared governance, as well as minimum standards to guide everyone doing the work?

Kudos to the PACE team for its work. Anyone who wants a copy of the report can request one via email.

Remember: Matt Leighninger's book The Next Form of Democracy: How Expert Rule Is Giving Way to Shared Governance - and Why Politics Will Never Be the Same - cited in today's PACE presentation - is the selection for the Everyday Democracy Book Club, which will be meeting right here at DemocracySpace on Thursday, May 15. Join us at 1 p.m. Eastern that day for an hour of live discussion on the sort of examples and questions raised at today's webinar.

Welcome to the Learning Exchange

About 50 people have gathered in East Hartford, Connecticut, this week from around the country to join in the first of two Learning Exchanges for Communities Creating Racial Equity. Everyday Democracy executive director Martha McCoy (below) greeted us by saying that the program is "a step in a dream we've had for a long time."

Formerly known as the Study Circles Resource Center, Everyday Democracy began focusing on racism during the 1992 civil disturbances in Los Angeles after the Rodney King beating. But in the 16 years since then, America has changed the way we talk about racism, McCoy said.

Early discussions were driven by King's plaintive question, "Can't we all just get along?" At first, it was enough for tens of thousands of people to come together in communities nationwide to talk about racial differences. Eventually, however, communities - and SCRC - understood that real change had to come on the institutional and policy level. Today, Everyday Democracy helps lead the effort to turn community organizing and dialogue into substantive change.  "We're working on two of the leading edges in the country," McCoy said: racial equity and making democracy work better.

CCRE participating communities include South Sacramento County, California; New Haven and Stratford, Connecticut; Jacksonville, Florida; Hopkinsville, Kentucky; Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland; Syracuse, New York; Burlington, Vermont; and Lynchburg, Virginia. Today at the conference, communities will tell their stories, discuss structural racism, and learn tools for evaluation and communication. Tomorrow, participants will look forward to the next six to 12 months of work, using markers of progress we'll identify this week (and backed by action grants that Everyday Democracy will award via generous funding from the Kellogg and Mott Foundations).

And along the way - via DemocracySpace, our website, and other tools - we'll share much of the communities' progress with you so that cities and towns beyond the initiative can take what we're learning and make it your own.

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!

Friday digest-open thread 4/11/08

Have you had enough talk about race yet? We haven't either. So mark your datebook for next Thursday (April 17), when we'll be holding our more-or-less monthly water cooler from 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern right here on DemocracySpace. The topic will be how communities like yours are working to create greater racial equity. No RSVP necessary. Just show up and blog with us!

Following Martha McCoy's post yesterday about how big media may be missing the mark on its coverage of race, we posted the following discussion question on the Everyday Democracy page at Facebook: Do you think the media is getting a clue to the idea that substantive change will come not from talking about race relations but about racial equity? The discussion board is here, so if you are on Facebook, please join our group and weigh in on that topic. (Your comments are welcome here as well.) Meanwhile, in a response to Martha, Michael Weiksner wonders at e-thepeople whether it's wise to focus on problems like poverty through a strictly racial lens.

Writing at The Democracy Movement, Everyday Democracy senior associate and Deliberative Democracy Consortium executive director Matt Leighninger tells how, in civic-engagement programs originally launched to talk about race, many participants have come to question traditional assumptions. For example, he says, "they question the notion that racism is just an easily identifiable, individual sin – that we are all either racists or non-racists. When people take a closer look, they usually begin to see racism as a blurry spectrum, a series of individual and institutional biases that get progressively more inaccurate and damaging." Read more here.

In Lynchburg, Virginia, where the Community Dialogue on Race and Racism has brought more than 600 people together with the goal of dismantling racism, the local newspaper asked city council candidates: "Explain whether you feel issues of racial inequality do or do not continue to persist in Lynchburg. Specify what, if any, role is played by the city government in those issues. Further specify whether you feel the dialogue is an effective way of dealing with concerns related to race." You can read their answers here. Wouldn't it be great to see local editorial boards nationwide ask probing questions about racism as campaigns unfold this year?

The Human Rights Commission in Jacksonville, Florida, is launching a new series of study circles on racism this month. Visit the City of Jacksonville website to learn more and register. Jacksonville and Lynchburg are among the nine partners in Everyday Democracy's Communities Creating Racial Equity  initiative. Many more communities are engaging on the issue through resources such as our Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation discussion guide. Click here to learn more.

Update - Friday afternoon: Everyday Democracy staff member Molly Holme Barrett has passed along word of a show set to air on MSNBC at 9 Eastern /8 Central tonight. (Check your local listings.) “Meeting David Wilson” depicts the journey of 28-year-old David A. Wilson - a black man from New Jersey - to North Carolina to meet 62-year-old David B. Wilson, a descendant of the white Southern family that owned his ancestors during the slavery era. See more here. The program will include a 90-minute live discussion of racial issues in America.

Update - Monday, April 14: Peter Levine wrote this post at his blog Friday afternoon citing both Martha's post and a recent one by Rich Harwood on the changing narratives and need for action in our conversations on race.

Friday digest-open thread 10/5/07

Another weekend is upon us. What have you been working on and thinking about this week? This is our weekly news digest and open thread, so please feel free to share events, news, and commentary in the comments below. Your comments are important here!

Two people with ties to study circles in Windsor, Connecticut, have been recognized as 2007 Windsor Bridge-Builders by the town Human Relations Commission. Patricia Gardner and Doreen Richardson received the honors September 27, WindsorJournal.com reports today.

From Dallas Morning News columnist Norma Adams-Wade: "Noted civil and human rights attorney Morris Dees will speak in Dallas at the three-day embRACE conference exploring the danger and impact of racism, classism and oppression. Mr. Dees, who founded and heads the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., is known for successfully challenging hate groups and winning judgments for victims of hate crimes." The event starts at 7 tonight, Friday, October 5, at First Unitarian Church of Dallas, 4015 Normandy Ave. Click here for more info on this and other Dallas-area events.

There's one more week to go until the early-bird registration deadline (October 12) for the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Skills Symposium will be held November 12-16 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Click here to learn more. (Hat tip NCDD.)

African refugees to Australia and their allies are protesting Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews' claims that they are "a problem and a challenge" for Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald has more here. Reuters Africa reports that Prime Minister John Howard "denied on Wednesday that the decision was a pre-election pitch to immigration-wary voters."

Study circles are under way in Delray Beach, Florida, where participants are sharing personal stories of how race and racism have impacted their lives. Lula Butler, director of the city's Community Improvement Department, told the Sun-Sentinel that circles are "an excellent way to engage the community; people feel safe in small groups. That's how to make a difference, one small group at a time."