Three weeks ago last Saturday in a speech in Keene, New Hampshire, John Edwards called for more citizen engagement in government - including a biannual Citizen Congress involving up to a million people.
I reported on the One Democracy Initiative speech here at Kos, not because I am an Edwards supporter (he is not my top choice), but because I work in the civic engagement field and because I thought Kossacks would find his proposal worth talking about. Indeed, we had a lively discussion.
I'm back now because quite a few people have written op-eds and letters to the editor reacting to Edwards' idea. Read on if you are interested in ways to get people engaged in our democracy in ways beyond voting.
(More below the flip ...)
In his speech, Edwards said:
“I believe in the wisdom of the American people, and I think the more power they have in our democracy, the better our country will be. That’s why every two years, I will ask one million citizens to come together to tackle our toughest issues in local forums across the nation. These Citizen Congresses will combine old-fashioned town halls with 21st century technology. They will give regular Americans a chance to speak to each other, and to their elected officials in Washington, without the filters of interest groups and the media. Like so much of what Washington needs, this idea of grassroots democracy is already working out in the real world, in towns just like this one.”
We've learned that Edwards didn't pull the idea out of thin air. Joe Goldman of AmericaSpeaks wrote at deliberative-democracy.net about how Edwards got the idea for a Citizen Congress via a plan called Millions of Voices:
Four years ago, AmericaSpeaks was approached by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to come up with a strategy for what it would look like to engage the American public at a large enough scale to impact Congress. In response, we convened more than a dozen leaders in the field of deliberative democracy, including the Study Circles Resource Center, the National Issues Forums, and Viewpoint Learning to come up with a plan.
The result was a report called Millions of Voices, which served as a blueprint for convening national deliberations of millions of Americans. Recently, AmericaSpeaks engaged 21,000 Northeast Ohio residents in a regional deliberation on revitalizing the 16-county region’s economy, called Voices & Choices, to test-run the Millions of Voices strategy.
Our strategy combines a number of different kinds of forums to bring the public together. Thousands of people will take part in national town meetings that bring people together at multiple sites linked together by satellite. Others will come together on the web through national deliberations in asynchronous online forums. And many others will join smaller meetings in homes, community centers and schools.
It can be done. And it can make a difference.
Writing from New Hampshire, with its long history of citizen engagement, Mica Stark had this op-ed in the Manchester (NH) Union Leader:
While the merits of Edwards’ proposal need to be debated, the issue of how the public can be more involved in policymaking and governance should be front and center during the primary, and voters should be pressing all the candidates, on both sides, for their specific ideas in how they see citizens participating and partnering with the next administration in solving our collective problems.
Many of the presidential candidates have offered up good, substantive plans to expand opportunities for Americans to perform community service. While we need to continue to expand and encourage community service, we also need our leaders to tap the skills and experience of the citizenry to address our political challenges — to invite them to be part of the solution. After election day, most citizens are left on the sidelines as spectators with little opportunity to shape the decisions being made on their behalf.
Across the nation in Seattle, John Gastil wrote in the Seattle Times:
Edwards’ proposal is currently a 150-word sketch on a campaign website. At this stage, I find myself in the position of a fan who discovered and adored a garage band before they went mainstream. Having studied deliberative reforms for fifteen years, I hope that Edwards’ proposal remains true to its roots. The Citizen Congress can satisfy this hard-core fan only if its final form is transparent, representative, deliberative, directive, and influential. ... We should scrutinize the details of the One Democracy Initiative and ask other Presidential candidates whether they, too, support its most important reforms. In particular, by looking closely at the Citizen Congress we might help to shape this nascent institution into a deliberative body that we helps Washington earn at least a measure of our trust.
And in the nation's heartland, Lisa Blomgren Bingham wrote in the Indianapolis Star:
What if people from every part of the community could actually have a conversation and not simply passively listen to a disconnected series of three-minute speeches? What if people could do a better job at democracy?
Some leaders around the world believe we can. Great Britain's Gordon Brown, leaders of the European Union, Denmark and Australia, and an increasing number of leaders in the U.S. are using new ways to give citizens a chance to talk with one another and with government officials about important choices and public decisions. ...
...It is no coincidence that our political discourse has become more adversarial and less civil. Unless we talk to each other, unless we discuss issues with people who see things differently, we will just get locked into our existing positions.
The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation has set up a page where you can read these and other pieces written in response to Edwards' proposal.
There are skeptical views, too. At his blog, SustainaBill, William A. Shutkin writes:
My skepticism stems from my own experience in promoting a variation of the Citizen Congress idea for community planning. "Informed, equitable and collaborative" decisionmaking we called it. Trouble is, I found, even when presented with the best available information, a well facilitated process, technology support and a host of other decisionmaking aids, community members, whether in a big, diverse city or a small, homogeneous town, aren't necessarily prepared--cognitively or emotionally--to engage in a complicated planning process where tough trade-offs are at issue. They're not ready to digest the information, process it and come up with the kind of reasoned "public judgment" Archon describes. Rather, they often resort to their default positions, to their gut, to their fears and preconceptions. Not always, but often, which is in part why breakthroughs in public policy, new ideas and new approaches, are so rare.
What do you think? Has Edwards hit on something? Do you have personal experience in local civic dialogue and decisionmaking of the sort that bogged down, as Shutkin describes, or the kind that produced some real, positive, tangible results? (In his speech, Edwards cited just that sort of achievement in his mention of the Portsmouth Listens program in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. You can read more about Portsmouth Listens here and here.)
Please share your experiences, insights, and hopes for greater "small-d" democracy in the comments.
DemocracySpace is a nom de blog of Julie Fanselow, online organizer for the nonpartisan, nonprofit Study Circles Resource Center, soon to be renamed Everyday Democracy, and manager of its DemocracySpace.org blog. SCRC/Everyday Democracy helps communities address issues including racial equity, immigration, growth and sprawl, education, and others. Fanselow has also blogged at Daily Kos under the screen name Red State Rebel.