We want to encourage our NCDD members to join the good people with Everyday Democracy, an NCDD member organization, for a helpful webinar they are hosting this April 9th at 4pm EST. The webinar is called “How to Recruit Leaders and Volunteers for Your Cause” and is a great chance for those of us who work with volunteers or are interested in growing our organizations.
The webinar will feature insights on recruiting and retention from Everyday Democracy Program Officer Janee Woods Weber. Here’s how EvDem describes the event:
Join us for a webinar on recruiting new leaders and volunteers on April 9 at 4pm ET.
This is a webinar to explore best practices for recruiting coalition members, facilitators, and participants for your dialogue and action work. We’ll talk about how to get started, how to recruit groups that are hard to reach, and 10 tips for recruiting new leaders. Join this webinar to get some great tips on getting people to sign up for your cause!
We live in a time of growing complexity, a time that calls for new thinking, new conversations, new ways of working together and new forms of organization that support continuous learning and innovation. Finding new ways to work within and across organizations and communities is critical to address current needs for climate change, resource use, social innovation and social justice.
Rethinking Complexity is a forum to explore these issues, examine best practices, and share critical research at the cutting edge of how organizations behave, systems change, and complexity can be managed for the good of humanity.
Produced by the Organizational Systems program of Saybrook University, Rethinking Complexity holds a system must be sustainable and support the human potential of the people it touches before it can be considered effective.
About Saybrook University Saybrook University is the world’s premier institution for humanistic studies. It is a rigorous and unique learner-centered educational institution offering advanced degrees in psychology, mind-body medicine, organizational systems, and human science. Saybrook’s programs are deeply rooted in the humanistic tradition and a commitment to help students develop as whole people – mind, body, and spirit – in order to achieve their full potential. Experiential learning and professional training are integral components of the transformative education offered through Saybrook’s programs.
Our global community of scholars and practitioners is dedicated to advancing human potential to create a humane and sustainable world. We accomplish this by providing our students with the skills to achieve and make a difference, empowering them to pursue their passions and their life’s work. Our scholars and practitioners are creative, compassionate innovators pursuing new ways of thinking and doing for their professions, organizations, and communities.
On April 16, The Welcome Project will host its annual YUM: A Taste of Immigrant City event. I serve on the board of The Welcome Project, and am chair of the organizing committee for YUM. It’s a fun event, and I hope to see you there!
Here is the full event description:
YUM: A Taste of Immigrant City 2015
Thursday, April 16 | 7pm
Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA 02143
Tickets: $35 in Advance, $40 at the door | yumsomerville.org
Join The Welcome Project for live music and delicious food as we celebrate 25 years of building the collective power of immigrants in Somerville.The event will feature the diverse tastes of 13 immigrant-run restaurants, an exciting silent auction, and music by Son Del Sol. Additionally, the evening will recognize local leaders Franklin Dalembert, of the Somerville Haitian Coalition, and Lisa Brukilacchio, of the Somerville Community Health Agenda at CHA. Proceeds go towards the work of The Welcome Project strengthening the voices of immigrant families across the city. Individuals interested in purchasing tickets can do so by visiting www.yumsomerville.org.
Participating restaurants are:
Aguacate Verde, Mexican; Fasika, Ethiopian; Gauchao, Brazilian; La Brasa, Fusion; Masala, Indian and Nepali; Maya Sol, Mexican; The Neighborhood Restaurant, Portuguese; Rincon Mexicano, Mexican; Royal Bengal, North Indian/Bengali; Sabur, Mediterranean; Sally O’Brien’s, Irish; Tu Y Yo, Mexican; Vinny’s at Night, Italian
China: Xi Jinping is “a president who has ruthlessly centralised power while embarking on an ambitious project to revitalise Communist rule and to secure the party’s future. … One of his major themes is a war on ‘western values’, including a free press, democracy and the constitutional separation of powers, all of which he believes pose an insidious threat to one-party rule. … Xi considers himself the antithesis of the ‘weak man’ who turned out the light on the Soviet empire.”
India: A “cult of personality is slowly building around” Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “No surprise, then, that he rules firmly. … Many fear that unchallenged by a weakened opposition, Mr Modi will help turn the world’s largest – and most diverse – democracy into a Hindu nationalist state. There’s trepidation over a lack of tolerance among many of Mr Modi’s supporters, particularly on social media, to any criticism.”
Russia: “The elevation of Mr Putin as a father of the nation, a man who may be elected in a nominal political process but is in fact apart from and above politics, is a symptom of Russia’s ‘deep demodernising trend’, according to Andrei Zorin, a historian at Oxford University.”
Turkey: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip “Erdogan’s achievements are now shadowed by his undeniable lurch toward autocracy. Over the last year, he has initiated a harsh crackdown against peaceful protesters, political opponents, and independent media outlets.”
This is a radically incomplete list, but it includes the leaders of countries with nearly 3 billion subjects and great international influence. How profoundly disappointing that the ascendant ideology of the 1930s should again confront us.
Of course, the momentum in the direction of macho, nationalist, centralizing authoritarianism is not unstoppable. This trend is of fairly short duration–so far–and could still be checked. The question is whether we can develop a sufficiently cohesive, energetic, optimistic, and truly global democratic movement to resist it.
Only an education animated by belief in each person's potential can reverse the dramatic shrinkage which has been taking place in our imaginations about democracy, citizenship, and people themselves. It is crucial to remember pioneers in education for democracy who radiated such belief.
Only an education animated by belief in each person's potential can reverse the dramatic shrinkage which has been taking place in our imaginations about democracy, citizenship, and people themselves. It is crucial to remember pioneers in education for democracy who radiated such belief.
At its best, higher education, embodying what Byron White of Cleveland State University calls a "student-ready" culture, begins with the talents, interests, and potential of each student. Such a culture is based on radical and unsentimental public love, growing from respect for human beings and their potential ( public "love" based on unsentimental respect is certainly absent in most discussion of campuses today).
Only an education animated by belief in each person's potential can reverse the dramatic shrinkage which has been taking place in our imaginations about democracy, citizenship, and people themselves. It is crucial to remember pioneers in education for democracy who radiated such belief like Jane Addams, Alain Locke, and John Dewey.
Today the public culture is full of bitter polarizations and poisonous recriminations. Americans on all sides of the political spectrum deny, suppress, and forget that those different from themselves are human beings of immense complexity, with potential for democratic and generous action as well as mean-spirited and anti-democratic action. Whole swaths of the social landscape are portrayed in monochromatic terms as good or evil - conservative Christians, liberals, Muslims, government bureaucrats, white working class, black teenagers...the list is endless.
In this context, the third century debate between the Christian theologian Origen and the pagan Celsus is instructive. Celsus expressed contempt for large groups of people. Origen countered:
"Yes, they are the rag tag and bobtail of humanity. But Jesus does not leave them that way. Out of material you would have thrown away as useless, he fashions people of strength, giving them back their self-respect, enabling them to stand on their feet and look God in the eye. They were cowed, cringing, broken things. But the son has set them free."
Though John Dewey was not a Christian - all his life he chafed at his mother's strict religious beliefs - his respect for people's immense potential had similarities to Origen's. The centennial of Dewey's classic, Democracy and Education, will be celebrated next year.
To recall the formative period in Dewey's life is to go back to young intellectuals involved in what Lewis Feuer called the "back to the people" movement. "The depression of the 1880s, the riots, the waves of immigrants accumulating in the new slums, and the stark drama of the Haymarket anarchists, shook America out of its complacency," as Feuer put it. Jane Addams, a leading voice of this generation, said, "[We were all motivated] by a desire to get back to the people, to be identified with the common lot."
The University of Michigan where Dewey first taught was a leader in the momentous shift in American higher education toward the public university, with its commitment to access for a diverse citizenry and to extensive engagement with the society. James B. Angell, Michigan's president from 1871 to 1909, strongly believed that public universities needed to embody and also help shape the dynamics of a changing democracy. He built on the pioneering admission of women in 1870 to create a "democratic atmosphere" on campus, full of debate, discussion, experimentalism, and open play of different viewpoints. The seminar as a teaching method increasing was increasingly used to engage students in interactive education. Students also were able to take a wider selection of courses. There was a growing emphasis on scientific approaches to problems and analysis of the world, understood as democratic practices such as cooperative inquiry and testing of ideas in practice.
Dewey's closest associates among the Michigan faculty were George Herbert Mead, Robert Park, James Tuft, and Alfred Lloyd, all highly engaged intellectuals with a passionate identification with the popular movements for reform that were sweeping America. In views which echoed those of Jane Addams, the settlement house visionary, and Alain Locke, father of the Harlem Renaissance, development of human potential was at the center of his first serious statement on democracy, his essay "The Ethics of Democracy," written in 1888.
Democracy, according to Dewey, involves an ethical ideal, not simply a government. Its aim should be the development of the potentials of each person. "Democracy means the personality is the first and final reality," Dewey wrote. "It admits that the chief stimuli and encouragement to the realization of personality come from society; but it holds, nonetheless, to the fact that personality cannot be procured for any one, however degraded and feeble, by anyone else, however wise and strong."
Dewey also emphasized the importance of work as a source of human learning and democracy, extremely unusual among political theorists, combining such emphasis with a sharp criticism of most people's degraded experiences of work. "Democracy is not in reality what it is in name until it is industrial as well as civil and political..."
He envisioned a variety of ways to tie education and learning to the work of the craftsman, the artist, and the professional. Forty years after he had introduced the idea of human development and learning through work in the "Ethics of Democracy," he argued in "Art as Experience" that "the intelligent mechanic engaged in his job, interested in doing well and finding satisfaction in his handiwork, caring for his materials and tools with genuine affection, is artistically engaged."
He decried the rarity of such experiences in the modern work site. "No permanent solution is possible save in a radical social alteration, which affects the degree and kind of participation the worker has in the production and social distribution of the wares he produces...."
In sum, Dewey envisioned "education for public work," students who would be change agents for work with public qualities and public purposes, not simply fit into existing work roles. This is far different than the "workforce preparation" touted by politicians like Scott Walker.
We need such education today. And we need its animating principle of radical and unsentimental public love and respect for the "rag and tag and bobtail of humanity."
The National Issues Forums Institute published this Issue Guide (2014), America’s Future: What Should Our Budget Priorities Be?, to provide participants a resource to deliberate national budget issues.
From the guide…
America is slowly coming out of a long recession. Unemployment, after peaking at 10 percent in 2009, has fallen below 8 percent; more new homes are being built, although just gradually. Despite the heavy blow we’ve taken in the last few years, the US economy is very large and still growing…
We have significant resources, but they are finite. What direction should we take?
The Issue Guide presents three options for deliberation:
Option One: Keep Tightening Our Belt
Though painful, the sequester (mandatory across-the-board budget cuts) showed that we can get by with less. We should continue cutting gradually to bring down the deficits, shrink the national debt, and let the private sector drive the recovery.
Option Two: Invest for the Future
We are making progress on the deficit. We need to make some adjustments to entitlements, but now is not the time to slash programs; it may result in hobbling the recovery. Instead, we should make strategic expenditures and grow the economy, which in turn will shrink the deficit.
Option Three: Tame the Monsters
The steady growth of defense, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid are the main drivers consuming the federal budget…Social Security and Medicare, in turn, should be need-based and self-sustaining. We should get away from the whole concept of “entitlement,” which is bankrupting those programs. We also should reform and simplify the tax code.
More about the NIFI issue guides NIFI’s Issue Guides introduce participants to several choices or approaches to consider. Rather than conforming to any single public proposal, each choice reflects widely held concerns and principles. Panels of experts review manuscripts to make sure the choices are presented accurately and fairly. By intention, Issue Guides do not identify individuals or organizations with partisan labels, such as Democratic, Republican, conservative, or liberal. The goal is to present ideas in a fresh way that encourages readers to judge them on their merit.
Issue Guides are generally available in print or PDF download for a small fee ($2 to $4). All NIFI Issue Guides and associated tools can be accessed at www.nifi.org/en/issue-guides
Today, the Internet seems to be full of articles titled “10 things you didn’t know about St. Patrick’s Day,” or “Everything you know about St. Patrick’s Day is wrong.”
I’m not sure who these articles are geared towards, but they seem to comprise mostly of tidbits of information which I imagine most people who actually know about St. Patrick’s Day already know.
To be fair, there are plenty of people who don’t know anything about St. Patrick’s Day – which is perfectly fine. It is, after all, a somewhat obscure Catholic holiday primarily popularized in the United States.
Albeit among the more popular Saint’s Days, Saint Patrick’s Day isn’t particularly more notable than, say, St. Brigid’s Day.
St. Brigid, if you didn’t know, is another patron saint of Ireland. Sharing a name with the Celtic goddess Brigid, St. Brigid’s Day is February 1, marking the beginning of spring. In another not-coincidence, St. Brigid’s Day corresponds to an important Celtic cross-quarter holiday: Imbolic…which marks the beginning of spring.
In my matriarchal family, St. Brigid always seemed arguably more important – we didn’t celebrate St. Brigid’s Day, but we did have a St. Brigid’s cross – but somehow, nationally, the male St. Patrick seems to get all the glory.
It’s a complicated holiday to celebrate, though.
Saint Patrick is a patron saint of Ireland because he was one of the leading forces in Christianizing the Celtic nations.
He used the three-leaf clover – the Shamrock – to explain Catholicism’s trinity. He used the Celtic pentagram to describe the five wounds of Christ. Like other missionaries of his day, he took pagan customs and symbols and wielded them for his Christian cause.
Famously, St. Patrick “drove all the snakes from Ireland” – a particularly miraculous feat since the isle didn’t have snakes to begin with.
Or could it be, as some argue, that “snakes” is just a metaphor for driving out “the old, evil, pagan ways out of Ireland”?
Well, that’s nice.
St. Patrick’s Day isn’t just a day where we stereotype the Irish as drunkards and all get to be “Irish for a day.”
It’s a day of history – about loss and pain, about new beginnings and a complicated past.
We raise a pint to hope for the future and to properly mourn the past. We raise a pint because maybe that’s all there is in this life. We raise a pint, indeed.
Eat, drink, and be merry – for tomorrow we may die.
The webinar is called “How to Recruit Leaders and Volunteers for Your Cause” and is a great chance for those of us who work with volunteers or are interested in growing our organizations.
