This is not a candidate diary, but a post for Kossacks who are involved in small-d democracy - community organizing, local governance, etc. Thanks for reading! And if you yourself blog about small-d democracy topics, please contact me via email to jfanselow at everyday-democracy dot org. Together with other organizations, we are building a national network of bloggers on public engagement issues, and we'd like to know what you are doing.
We’re hearing and reading a lot about hope this year. Rich Harwood of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation recently published an essay – Make Hope Real: How We Can Accelerate Change for the Public Good– that offers five succinct guidelines on how civic leaders and community organizers can nurture the new national impulse for involvement and change. Read below the flip to see these ideas and get a link to download the full essay.
Focus on the “sweet spot” of public life. Describing “pockets of change” across the country, in some of our poorest communities (including Youngstown, Ohio, and the Pittsburg neighborhood of Atlanta) Harwood says the most promising pockets tend to address both a pressing public issue and the desire to build community. He adds that we must connect these pockets to the work of larger democratic institutions. As Matt Leighninger wrote on Super Tuesday at DemocracySpace.org, local organizers need to know that their work is part of a bigger whole and that effective local efforts can help maximize scarce resources and time to address the larger challenges we face as a nation and a world.
Embrace citizen-based values or lose relevance. America needs to move away from the false divisions of red states vs. blue states, suburban vs. urban vs. rural voters, churchgoers vs. non-churchgoers, and so on. But simple calls for unity aren’t enough. Rich says that people yearn to unify around what he calls citizen-based values, which include integrity and honesty in public life; staying focused on public purpose (for example, the needs of children rather than the politics of education reform); and our ability to trust and respect one another, even if we can’t necessarily be friends with everyone.
Stand up for emerging leaders. Harwood describes the new breed of leaders as highly pragmatic people “who seek to find ways to make public life and politics work rather than to disparage it,” who are committed to ongoing citizen engagement, and who try to avoid overheated, hyperbolic rhetoric. As such leaders emerge – whether they are elected officials or neighborhood organizers – “then we must vow not to abandon them” in times of pressure and instead stand beside them and vouch for what they seek to do.
Commit to real action, not just activity. People are busy. We don’t need more busy work; we need to build and sustain what Harwood calls “boundary-spanning organizations” that go beyond niches and mechanistic “best practices” to bring wide swaths of our communities together. These organizations will help people find ways to make civic engagement part of their everyday lives and to help busy people create their own sustainable pathways to engagement.
Create civic mindshare. In our on-demand, consumer-oriented culture, and in an era where even nonprofits embrace a customer-service ethic, we’re sending a message that each of us, as Harwood writes, is entitled “to make claims and demands on public resources without much consideration for our sense of connection, duty, or obligation to one another or to society as a whole.” Yet the new sense of hope percolating in our public life signals that people aren’t content with this consumer mentality, and that many of us seek to work together for the greater good. It’s up to community leaders and organizers to develop that sense of “civic mindshare.”
Click here to download an electronic copy of Make Hope Real. Rich Harwood has recently discussed community building on two recent radio shows: the Wisconsin Public Radio program Here On Earth and on Nevada Public Radio in the wake of a school shooting in Las Vegas (click here; Harwood’s portion of the show starts at 28:10).
DemocracySpace is a nom de blog of Julie Fanselow, writer and online organizer for the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization Everyday Democracy (formerly the Study Circles Resource Center.) Fanselow also blogs at Daily Kos under the screen name Red State Rebel.
Cross posted at DemocracySpace.org.
Update: I forgot to mention earlier that registration is still open for The Harwood Institute's next Public Innovators Lab, set for March 17-20 in Baltimore. Get more info here.