Peter Krasilovsky offers some interesting points about American Towns current status. Worth a read.
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Civic Engagement… the new black
Civic engagement is all the rage. I addressed three different state-wide gatherings about the topic in the past week alone! Front Porch Forum is a long-term civic engagement catalyst and accelerator.
The concept goes by many names (see “public engagement” below), but mark my words, this will be THE NEXT BIG THING for nonprofits, academics, government agencies, etc… even pushing into the private sector.
The spark that started this wildfire came from President Obama’s campaign and his ongoing call to public service. Here’s a posting from
The old White House Office of Public Liaison (OPL) has been renamed the Office of Public Engagement (OPE) with some new responsibilities. Calling itself the “front door of the White House”, the official press release noted that the “OPE will help build relationships with Americans by increasing their meaningful engagement with the federal government.”
Most all of the OPL staff will remain in place for the new OPE, including its director, long-time Obama friend, Valerie Jarrett. The White House will be using both online and “offline” – face-to-face – fora to both gain input from Americans and communicate Administration policies.
Jeff Jarvis takes on “hyper local”
Jeff Jarvis blogged about his latest ideas in “hyper local”… some interesting points, including the comments. Here’s Bob Wyman…
The obvious question is: “Why isn’t Front Porch Forum integrated into the BurlingtonFreePress.com site or the sites of the New York Times, WSJ or other newspapers that serve those in your community?”…
Douglas Rushkoff Goes Local
Glad to see another of our society’s megaphone holders catching on to the importance of local. Douglas Rushkoff‘s new book, Life, Inc., apparently gives corporatism the once over and realizes that we’re in kinda deep. Okay.
Further, he prescribes turning real and local as a solution. Here’s a quote from Scott Heiferman‘s review…
84. instead of reconnecting people to their local communities, to one another, or to the value that tey might be able to create for one another, many well-meaning efforts against corp power conect people to abstract ideals and highly centralized organizations… disconnects us further from the truly bottom-up networks through which we can restore human-scaled activity
This is the power of Front Porch Forum. Where it’s working well, it’s catalyzing real, decentralized, non-corporate connections among neighbors who are organizing block parties and knitting clubs, political rallies and casserole brigades for people in need. And for many people, this action is better than what’s served by Comcast, or Facebook, or the WalMart.
In tough economic times people invest in community
Local traditional media could write a story like the one below from the Washington Post. Vermonters are flooding into Front Porch Forum to help connect with neighbors and build community at the neighborhood level. The harsher the economic climate, the more folks look for shelter by investing in community.
In Recession, Some See Burst of ‘Neighboring’
Tough Times May Be Helping Build Stronger Communities in D.C. Suburbs
By Annie Gowen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 4, 2009When Kris Kumaroo founded a new neighborhood association in Silver Spring in October, he was driven by a desire to combat recession-era problems such as vacant homes and petty crime.
Seven months later, Glenmont has its crime watch, but also much more: As the neighbors got out of their homes and started talking to each other, the sense of connection grew. They learned one another’s names and began to say hello at the nearby Giant. Somebody got Metro to trim the shrubbery around the Glenmont Station, which made it feel safer. They had a “visioning” session for their community and created a colorful Web site. At their first spring festival, April 25, 174 people showed up for face-painting and hot dogs.
The little Cape Cods and ranchers off Georgia Avenue have been there 55 years, but it took a global downturn to turn them into a real neighborhood.
Some sociologists and community organizers say they think there has been an uptick of “neighboring” in the recession, as residents who just waved hello before are instead reaching out, in person and through e-mail discussion groups. They’re talking crime and the economy, helping others through job losses and organizing money-saving potlucks. In Montgomery County, for example, the number of new neighborhood groups has doubled, while in hard-hit Manassas, active groups jumped from five to 20 in the past two years.
“There’s been an overwhelming increase in participation overall,” said Kisha Wilson-Sogunro, neighborhood services manager for Manassas. “People want to get back to the basics. They understand, especially with the housing crisis, you just don’t know who is living next to you, and all of a sudden it’s a foreclosure. . . . If you would have been neighborly, you’d know who to call if something’s going wrong.”
Although the evidence is still largely anecdotal — U.S. Census and other data won’t be available until later this year — some scholars say the numbers of those involved in community activities could increase for the first time in years, after a long downward spiral that began in the 1970s because of longer commutes and time pressure on two-income families.
Historically, economic hard times can be tough on civic engagement — involvement dropped during the Great Depression, for example — but experts say that doesn’t take into account new social technologies, a burst of political involvement among the young and a president who has inspired many. Experts are waiting to see whether President Obama’s call for service will be felt locally, as it has on such national programs as AmeriCorps.
“Almost anyone in America can think in terms of ‘this could happen to me.’ It evokes a kind of empathy that is leading people to reassess what they value, what they care about and what they believe in,” said John M. Bridgeland, national chairman of the National Conference on Citizenship, a federally chartered nonprofit group that takes the pulse of communities through an annual civic health index. “In my view, we’ll find a stronger inclination, a higher level of ‘neighborliness’ and civic engagement as a result of the economic downturn.”
The group estimates that 33 percent of the nation attended a community meeting in the past year and that nearly 40 percent worked with others in their neighborhood to fix or improve something.
Keith N. Hampton, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, runs a Web site for neighborhood groups with 50,000 members. He said communication on i-Neighbors.org is up 25 percent this spring over last, with talk about topics including vacant homes and starting community gardens.
“I don’t think people will create silos and hide in houses to shield themselves from this,” he said. “They’re concerned about these issues, and they’re going to look for people to help solve those problems. Those tend to be your neighbors.”
Click here to read the rest.
Civic engagement: Terminology and Groups
Clips from Funding and Fostering Local Democracy by Matt Leighninger. First, on language… how many ways can you say “civic engagement?”
Civic synonyms
In common usage, “deliberation and democratic governance”
= active citizenship
= deliberative democracy
= citizen involvement
= citizen-centered work
= public engagement
= citizen participation
= public dialogue
= collaborative governance
= public deliberationDifferent people define these terms in different ways – and in most cases, the meanings are blurry and overlapping.
The primary reason for this language confusion is that this field developed in different places, in different fields and issue areas, simultaneously.
And a list of coalitions of people and groups working on this issue…
The professional infrastructure for deliberation and democratic governance is growing as fast as the field itself. There are four networks that serve deliberation practitioners and researchers in different ways:
The Canadian Community on Dialogue and Deliberation (C2D2) is a Canadian network that attracts many people from the U.S. and other countries to its biannual conferences. C2D2 convenes practitioners and advocates of related fields, such as intergroup dialogue and conflict resolution, in addition to people who work in deliberation and democratic governance.
The Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) is an alliance of practitioners and researchers representing more than 50 organizations and universities, all of whom share an interest in deliberation and democratic governance. More a think tank than a membership organization, the DDC develops publications, builds connections between different fields, and convenes meetings targeted at particular issues and areas for collaboration.
The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) is a network of practitioners that has particularly strong representation in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Many of the members of this association are planners and development specialists who have used democratic principles to involve citizens in land use and development decisions.
The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) is a network of over 700 organizations and individuals. Like C2D2, NCDD convenes practitioners in many related fields, such as intergroup dialogue, in addition to people working in deliberation and democratic governance. The NCDD website offers a comprehensive assortment of over 2,000 tools, best practices, and links related to participatory democracy, public engagement, collaborative action, and conflict resolution at all levels. The NCDD listserv reaches over 10,000 people.
New Report: Funding and Fostering Local Democracy
From Pete Peterson of Common Sense California…
The DDC (Deliberative Democracy Consortium) has worked with PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement) to develop “Funding and Fostering Local Democracy,” a guide designed to help the philanthropic community grapple with the question of how to support innovative and effective forms of democratic governance. The guide provides a detailed description of how local civic engagement has grown and developed over the past decade.
The guide is free and can be downloaded downloaded here. The strategies described in the guide—and the stories of how communities have used them to break policy deadlock, reduce tension and galvanize volunteerism—can help funders, public officials and community activists better understand the possibilities, and limitations, of various approaches to working with the public.
The report is worth a look.