Ghost of Midnight

… about neighbors, community and Front Porch Forum

Eugene Jarecki and Civic Engagement

Posted on Monday, December 29, 2008 by No comments yet

Mike Ives profiles Vermont filmmaker and author Eugene Jarecki in Seven Days this week.  Jarecki’s 2006 documentary, Why We Fight, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

And he has a new book out…

… he told Jon Stewart recently, he hopes The American Way of War will inspire a sense of common civic engagement that withered during the Bush years. “I’m on a real mission,” he explained to the Comedy Central host. “The worse thing that’s happened is, we’ve become disengaged… ”

And…

Jarecki is trying to make a difference in his community. Neighbors say the Big Picture Theater & Caf© in Waitsfield, which Jarecki co-founded in 2006, is an important civic space for residents of the Mad River Valley.

Good stuff.  Many of Jarecki’s Mad River Valley neighbors have asked us to bring Front Porch Forum there… we hope to in 2009… working on pulling pieces together now.  In Burlington, where we’ve been operating for two years, a survey found 93% of respondents claiming that FPF led to increased civic engagement for them… real, face-to-face, in the community kind of stuff.

Posted in: Community Building, Democracy, Front Porch Forum, Knight Foundation, Local Online, MacArthur Fellows, Neighborhood, social capital, Social Networking, Vermont


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