DemocracySpace.org

Happy Independence Day!

For the Spring 2008 edition of Everyday Democracy's Focus newsletter, we asked four people from our network what the phrase “everyday democracy” means to them. Here’s what they said:

Everyday democracy means opening the avenues of participation and decision making in community life to everyone, every day. It means providing ownership for our collective problems, then finding creative solutions. This is full citizenry in action: the bedrock upon which our nation is based.


- Carolyne M. Abdullah, Program Director, Everyday Democracy

When the arts of democracy are practiced every day - in neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and government - we will understand that democracy means more than merely voting, and we can achieve the beloved community that Dr. King envisioned.

- Bruce L. Mallory, Provost and Executive Vice President, University of New Hampshire; member of the Paul J. Aicher Foundation Board

Everyday democracy is about the consistent and tireless efforts of common people being witness to the collective circumstances that make their community less than prosperous. It’s about getting involved on various levels to work towards a common goal.

- Carla Marratt, Horizons steering committee, Coeur d'Alene Reservation, Idaho

Everyday democracy, the foundation of local government, engages citizens as
partners in finding solutions to community problems. The greater diversity of involved citizens results in a stronger, healthier community for
 everyone.
      

- James R. Miron, Mayor of Stratford, Connecticut

A Friday Fourth of July means three days off of work for many of us. It means a chance to get together with family and friends to eat barbecue and watermelon, drink lemonade (or beer!), and watch fireworks. It may mean a parade, a picnic, or some well-earned lazy time in the hammock. No matter what this holiday weekend holds for you, also take time to reflect a little on what everyday democracy means in your life and in your community, and how you  - yes, you personally - might help make our democracy work better for everyone between now and July 4, 2009.

Have a great weekend!

Hard times can inspire creativity

Writing at her "Smart Communities" blog yesterday, Suzanne Morse of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change says pinched economic times like these might inspire local governments to seek more citizen input:

This is a time like no other to get citizens involved in the reality of local politics. I am not talking about a focus group to set priorities for local spending. I am talking about ways to inform and involve the public on the issues at hand. If there will be less for social services--say so--and ask for help. If parks and recreation are to be affected--say so--and ask for help. People are not stupid. They know that gas prices are affecting everything from food delivery to municipal services. This is an opportunity to change business as usual.

Suzanne goes on to say that the economy will eventually rebound, as it always does, and that if local governments take this opportunity to boost citizen participation in public life, "we will be better prepared, have closed the gaps, and will engage the community in ways not seen before." Read her whole post here - and if you know of any ways local governments near you are thinking creatively in these tough times, please note them in the comments.

Guest bloggers needed

What are your "50 Things to do Before You Die"? Sky dive? Travel to the Galapagos? Publish a book? Be a blogger?

Well, we can't help you with sky diving, international travel, or making the best-seller list, but we can help get your ideas out into the civics-minded blogosphere. DemocracySpace needs some guest writers this summer, from July 14-18 (except July 17) and again August 18-19. If you have something to say that would fit our nonpartisan mix of news and views, contact blog manager Julie Fanselow with your preferred date and a little bit about what you'd like to write. We'll set you up with a guest author credential and easy-to-follow instructions for making your blog debut.

Friday digest-open thread 6/27/08

Welcome to the second official weekend of summer. From coast to coast, we have reports of people working together to strengthen the democracy whose 232nd birthday we'll mark next Friday. Here's an email we received today from Carolyn Lukensmeyer of AmericaSpeaks:

One of our current projects that I am particularly excited about is a workshop that AmericaSpeaks, Demos, and Everyday Democracy are convening in late July. We are inviting 40+ key people from the fields of deliberative democracy, electoral reform and community development to develop an agenda for expanding democracy to be presented to the new president in November.

More and more people are recognizing this is a unique moment in American politics and that it is essential that we seize the opportunity to become more of the country we really want to be. We have the possibility of demonstrating that transparency, inclusion, and accountability, key principles underpinning the foundation of our democracy, can be realized.

That realization is happening at the local level, too. In Burlington, Vermont, a Thursday luncheon with the theme "Vermont Leadership at the Crossroads" drew about 40 people who are eager to promote and pursue a new, more diverse leadership style for the state. The guest speaker, civic entrepreneur Hal Colston (founder of Good News Garage and NeighborKeepers), told of a vision where, by 2018, the state's aging, mostly homogenous leadership would meet regularly with upcoming minority leaders to forge new levels of trust and understanding between races and class groups.  "That apparently sounded pretty good to his audience, which applauded warmly at the end," Tim Johnson of the Burlington Free Press wrote today. " Why wait till 2018, someone then asked. Why not start now?" Wanda Hines, co-coordinator of the Burlington Legacy Project and head of the Social Equity Investment Project - which sponsored the luncheon - confirms that people are eager to get moving. "After the event was over nobody wanted to leave," she wrote in an email today. "Instead the majority stayed discussing what could be, where do we sign up and when do we get started."

Community members in Colorado Springs, Colorado, are looking ahead, too. Today marks the kickoff of Dream City: Vision 2020. "The aim of the project is to give everyone living here - kids, construction workers, artists, teachers, military personnel, engineers, retirees - a greater role in shaping our future," Warren Epstein writes in The Gazette. The first phase is  inspiration, he adds, centered on a Dream City 2020 website, "which will give you many opportunities to participate. Whether you'd like to give your two cents about what our community needs or you'd like to find a place for your classroom or organization in Dream City, you'll find it there." Epstein was among a team of Colorado Springs people at our recent Making Every Voice Matter national conference in Denver, and we are eager to see where citizens and the plan's partners - which include the newspaper, Leadership Pikes Peak, the Pikes Peak Library District, and the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region - go with this project.

And in California (plus one at the NCDD conference in Texas), Antiraciscm.com has a full schedule of its White Ally Learning Lab workshops this summer and fall. Some W.A.L.L. experiences are one day; some are weekend events; all will help participants get the tools to recognize privilege, overcome racism, and pave the way for a better, more socially just world. CoAction also plans a summer reading group club around Understanding & Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America by Joe Barndt. We'll post more info on that when we get it. You can see a preview of the book here.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court made one of its most anticipated rulings of the year, deciding 5-4 to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban. Many politicians from both major parties hailed the ruling as a 2nd Amendment victory, but Dawn Turner Trice of the Chicago Tribune expressed some reservations in her column today, writing that in the ruling, "five members of the court edited the 2nd Amendment. In essence, they said: Scratch the preamble, only 14 words count. In doing so, they have curtailed the power of the legislatures and the city councils to protect their citizens." (More here.)

We'll skip the Friday digest next week in order to celebrate the Fourth of July. But watch DemocracySpace next Thursday for an opportunity to say what everyday democracy means to you.

Friday digest-open thread 6/20/08

Have you taken the DemocracySpace survey? After almost 10 months of near-daily posts, we're wondering if the blog has been useful to you and what sort of news and information you'd like to see here. Click here to take the 5-minute survey. Thanks very much!!

Westword, Denver's news and arts weekly, blogged about our 2008 Making Every Voice Matter conference. Click here to read Maddie Wolberg's post, "Everyday People." Janis Foster of Grassroots Grantmakers wrote about some of her experiences at the conference on her blog, too. And thanks to Corinna Moebius for her mention of the meeting at Imagine Miami.

Many communities around the country will be holding Juneteenth events this weekend to commemorate the day - June 19, 1865 - that slaves in Galveston, Texas, received word of their freedom. From its Texas roots, the holiday has spread to cities and states across the country and even around the world. Visit this Juneteenth website to learn more and locate events near you.

Also related to Juneteenth, the film Traces of the Trade: A Tale from the Deep North, will make its national broadcast premiere on Tuesday (June 24) on PBS' provocative documentary film series, P.O.V. From the show's website:

First-time filmmaker Katrina Browne makes a troubling discovery — her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine fellow descendants set off to retrace the Triangle Trade: from their old hometown in Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana to sugar plantation ruins in Cuba. Step by step, they uncover the vast extent of Northern complicity in slavery while also stumbling through the minefield of contemporary race relations.

Check your local TV listings or the P.O.V. website for times. Our friend Sandy Heierbacher of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation reminds us that an early cut of the film was screened at NCDD's 2004 conference in Denver, and that it will be screened and discussed again at the 2008 NCDD Conference, set for October 3-5 in Austin, Texas.

Have a good weekend, and don't forget to take our survey.

Share your news and questions

In the comments from the "What did you take home?" post, Bliss Bruen of Durango, Colorado, asked: ""If we want to write up longer pieces to share and/or ask questions that we think not everyone will want to wade through, should we send them directly to you?" Here are my answers, repeated from that thread:

We LOVE to publish pieces from communities here at DemSpace. So if you have news to share, please email me and I'll make arrangements to help you post your news (and/or photos and/or video clips) here on the blog. If it's news about how you are making your community work better for everyone, it definitely has a home here.

If you have a question about community dialogue-to-action programs, you can send it to me via email and we can make it the basis of a webstorming session - that is, a brainstorming session right here on the blog. I will be sure that our staff and associates see your question and can jump in with their answers.

I know from our time together last week that you all have great news to share, and burning questions, too. So don't be shy: Send 'em on to DemocracySpace and let everyone in on how your community is working to make every voice matter.

Denver tool kit

This post will be to list websites and other resources suggested by people here at the Making Every Voice Matter national meeting. Feel free to add others in the comments!

Padres Unidos, an organization right here in Denver that holds multiracial conversations about citizenship

National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. See especially its Bridge curriculum.

Everyday Democracy's recently revised Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation discussion guide.

www.antiracism.com - tools and dialogue to move us through the barriers of racism, toward a thriving and socially just world. "Be open. Be humble. Belong." From CoAction Connection.

More to come ... also, see the list of "Empowering Democracy" and "Democracy at Work" links at left for organizations and communities that are working to make every voice matter.

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.

Looking for good help?

If you're hiring employees or looking for work in the nonprofit sector, Idealist.org is a great place to start your search. What's more, Idealist is offering free ad postings during the whole month of June. Here's the scoop:

Usually, job postings on Idealist cost only $60, but this month we are inviting all nonprofit organizations, as well as vendors and consultants who serve the nonprofit sector, to post all their job openings for free. (Volunteer opportunities, internships, and jobs posted outside the United States are always free.)

If you have never tried Idealist, or if you have used us only for entry-level jobs, we hope you'll try us for all your positions. 60,000 people come to Idealist every day, and many of them are seeking high-level jobs.

And if you are looking for a job, our goal this month is to get you as many job openings as we can, but to do this we need your help. If you know anyone at an organization that is not currently using Idealist, please invite them to join us. And if you have a way to get the word out to friends and colleagues across the sector - through a mailing list, a blog, or any other way - please tell them that Idealist is free for the whole month of June.

So go check it out by clicking here. Hat tip: Sandy from NCDD.