Method: Referendum
May 5 '17
Synonymous with plebiscite and ballot question, a referendum is a direct vote by the populace on a single political issue such as a proposed piece of legislation.
Referendum
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Monthly Archives: May 2017
Celebrating Success
The Florida Joint Center for Citizenship is an organization that relies a great deal on the work of and collaboration between some very driven, dedicated, and passionate people. One of those people is our program coordinator, Ms. Peggy Renihan. Peggy has done a great deal of direct work with schools in an effort to help teachers and students become better civic learners and leaders, and she has spread the work and message of the FJCC across the northern part of Florida.
This weekend, Peggy graduates with her Masters in Educational Leadership from the University of West Florida. As educators, we never stop learning, and we never stop leading. Congratulations, Peggy, and thank you from your colleagues at the FJCC for all of the great work that you do.
Peggy Renihan stands with Dr. Doug Dobson (left), director of the Lou Frey Institute at UCF, and Bob Graham (right), former governor of and Senator from Florida
Thursday 5/11: Webinar on Price Transparency in Health Care
Next Thursday 5/11: Webinar on Price Transparency in Health Care
Engaging Ideas – 5/5/2017
Share Power through Public Participation… Or Else
As NCDD reflects on D&D in “flat” organizations during today’s Confab Call, we found a special appreciation for this insightful blog piece from NCDD member org The Participation Company. In it, TPC leader Debra Duerr writes on how conventional public participation still assumes a top-down model where the regular people address public officials who are really listening. She reflects on how the assumptions of that model are no longer working as power is ever-more concentrated out of the reach of everyday citizens and what might happen if we can’t facilitate, or even force, power sharing through real participation. We encourage you to read her provocative piece below or find the original here.
Revolutionary Conflict Resolution Styles
These are challenging times for us public participation practitioners. Our life’s work is conflict management and dispute resolution, plus adjusting to the various conflict resolution styles. To support this, we’ve built some nice, neat boxes that contain tools for working with people in most of the ‘real world’ situations encountered over the last 40 years. But, boy, the real world has changed. It seems there are no more boxes and no more rules.
The framework developed by the International Association for Public Participation to encompass the range of ways people can impact decisions is our ‘Spectrum’ (IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum). Says the organization, “IAP2’s Spectrum of Public Participation was designed to assist with the selection of the level of participation that defines the public’s role in any public participation process. The Spectrum shows that differing levels of participation are legitimate and depend on the goals, time frames, resources, and levels of concern in the decision to be made.”
Here’s the big But: This whole paradigm, including the ‘empower’ construct, implies that there’s an identifiable decision maker listening to what the public has to say. It’s an entirely top-down model. There are reasons why the top-down approach has worked for a long time, given the way worldwide democracy has developed over the past several decades. And there are reasons why it isn’t working anymore; the challenge is trying to figure out what those reasons are, and how to address them.
Everyone has conflicts that are eventually resolved through a variety of conflict resolution styles. A little history is helping me think about this. The bookends, for me, are the events and political climate of the early 1970s (when public involvement did not exist as a discipline) and the events and political climate of January 2017. So many parallels…
At the beginning of this phase, I wrote my thesis on Structural Constraints on Citizen Participation in Planning. It all had to do with Power: who has it, who doesn’t, how can power-sharing be forced, and what’s the role of professional facilitators in this process. In the intervening years, public participation in government (and even private industry) planning and decision processes has been recognized as not only legitimate, but crucial to implementing anything. To accommodate this, we’ve built structures in which citizens expect to have a voice, know how to make that voice heard, and expect that somebody’s listening – this is the ‘promise to the public’ that IAP2 honors. It’s been a long, slow process of building trust.
Breaking down that trust hasn’t taken nearly as long. It feels like it’s happened overnight – Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, Brexit, a mind-blowing presidential election, backlash demonstrations in the streets. It’s clear that social movements have a life of their own, and they are certainly not initiated or approved by decision makers.
I believe the common theme, then as now, is still Power. The more power is concentrated within the walls of the citadel, the more citizens will be pounding on the gates. Listen to us! Let us in! We want a piece of this! Off with their heads!
So, what happens when large segments of the population feel that nobody’s listening? When conflict resolution styles and processes are not being followed or addressed? Revolution. I suggest that we put this thought on the table for dialogue and deliberation (as we P2 people are fond of promoting). If we can help create a way to channel the astounding energy and commitment of grassroots movements into the halls of power in a mutually constructive way, we’ll be heroes. We did it once; I think we can do it again … but it’s like eating an elephant.
Here’s some inspiration:
- from St. Francis of Assisi – “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
- from the seminal anthropologist of the 20th Century, Margaret Mead – “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
You can find the original version of this blog post from The Participation Company at www.theparticipationcompany.com/2017/03/revolutionary-conflict-resolution-styles.
21st Century Civic Infrastructure: Under Construction
The 28-page paper, 21st Century Civic Infrastructure: Under Construction, written by Jill Blair and Malka Kopell was commissioned by The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and published in spring 2015. The paper offers 3 keystones for building an effective and more equitable civic infrastructure: engaging all sectors; enlisting all voices; and creating vertical and horizontal thoroughfares for the exchange of information and practice. Below is an excerpt of the paper, which can be found in full on The Aspen Institute’s FCS’s site here.
From the introduction…
Our existing civic infrastructure was not designed with intention; it evolved over time in an ad hoc fashion and was built, in part, as a result of investments made over time, largely by philanthropy, but also by private and public sector entities. While philanthropy has helped to populate our current civic infrastructure with nonprofit organizations, the public sector has introduced civic infrastructure policies – from public hearings to citizen budget commissions, and the private sector has contributed to civic infrastructure as well by sponsoring everything from volunteer engagement programs to corporate social responsibility efforts.
The investments and contributions have created a set of institutions, organizations, policies and practices upon which society has come to rely to facilitate public engagement in what Alexis de Tocqueville described as “associational life.” This is civic infrastructure, and it is made up of civic platforms of interplay and participation that enable us to connect with one another and to discover, express, and act on our collective community and civic interests.
We are suggesting here that given the myriad ways in which the world has changed and the persistence of the problems our civic infrastructure is intended to address, there is a need not only to revisit that infrastructure but to consciously create an infrastructure capable of meeting the challenges of our times. Our existing civic infrastructure is, in some cases, failing to take advantage of opportunities, in terms of today’s technology, communications and access to information. In other cases, our current system is failing to meet the challenges it was intended to overcome. Some remnants of 20th century civic infrastructure are ineffective and others may be damaging or undermining or compromising our potential for positive social impact.
Purpose
As leading investors in public problem solving across all content and disciplines, we see philanthropy as the primary, but not the sole, audience for this paper. As problem-solving investors, philanthropy historically has been a source of support for many of the institutions and organizations that comprise our civic infrastructure. With that said, the concepts presented here are relevant to all individuals and organizations committed to building a better world — one in which fairness, justice, economic and educational opportunity prevail and where all people are engaged as stakeholders in civic and community life. We offer this concept of intentional civic infrastructure design to provoke broad interest and to spark participation in its further development and realization.
Approach
We set out to explore the nature of and to begin to frame the principles of an intentionally designed civic infrastructure. We conducted conversations with 18 individuals1 and facilitated a number of small group discussions representing a range of philanthropic, nonprofit and private sector organizations. Many of those interviewed are quoted anonymously throughout this paper. We posed questions about designing a 21st century civic infrastructure in small groups gathered to discuss a range of issues, from democratic practice to place-based or neighborhood-based philanthropy. From these discussions and building on our original intention, we have gleaned what we believe are the keystone elements of a 21st century civic infrastructure wherein organizations and relationships are redefined according to what is both needed and possible given the times in which we live. We offer these keystones in a nascent stage, hoping to provoke deeper exploration and exposition. We are convinced that this moment calls for a close look at what is possible, and a closer look at steps we can take to get there.
Goals
It is time to conceive and construct, imagine and then create, a new civic infrastructure that enables full engagement in community and civic life. We must build it to be more robust and to achieve greater impact on the most vexing and troubling issues confronting our communities and the nation at large.
We intend this paper to be the basis for a series of organized conversations during which the keystones will be refined and made practical by examples and by trial and effort. We hope our colleagues in philanthropy and beyond will consider how to apply the keystones to their own portfolios and their ways of doing business in order to consciously cultivate better conditions for 21st century problem solving. As we apply these principles and our new expectations to practice, the nature of 21st century civic infrastructure should become clearer. We will build it as we go; we will recognize it as it manifests along the way. We know this approach may require reimagining, recreating and dismantling organizations and strategies to which we have become accustomed (and perhaps even committed), but that is the nature of building.
This is an excerpt of the paper, which you can find in full here.
About the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions
The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solution’s mission is to support community collaboration – including collective impact – that enables communities to effectively address their most pressing challenges. The Forum works to accomplish this mission by pursuing four complementary strategies including: 1) building awareness by documenting and lifting up impactful strategies and stories of success; 2) mobilizing stakeholders through knowledge and network development; 3) removing barriers by advocating for effective policy; and 4) catalyzing investment by encouraging funder partnerships.
Follow on Twitter: @AspenFCS
Resource Link: http://aspencommunitysolutions.org/21st-century-civic-infastucture-under-construction/
New Open Source License Fights the Enclosure of Seeds
As more and more plant varieties have become privatized through patents, and as large corporations have bought up smaller seed breeders, a dangerous consolidation has occurred. The genetic diversity of agricultural crops has shrunk, making crops more vulnerable to disease and our food supply more insecure. Meanwhile, farmers and the public have become more dependent on a few large agrochemical companies.
In short, seed patents have become a tool for privatizing seed from the pool of open and commonly owned plant genetic resources: an insidious enclosure of seed commons.
This scenario is eerily similar to the consolidation of software for personal computers some twenty years ago. Microsoft used its market dominance to incorporate all sorts of software programs into its Windows operating system, a strategy sometimes referred to as “embrace, extend and extinguish.” As Microsoft exploited its de facto monopoly over common software systems, programs for word-processing, spreadsheets and other functions began to go out of business.
But just as open source software served as a powerful antidote to proprietary software, so a group of academics, activists and plant breeders in Germany has now pioneered a similar antidote to seed patents: an open source license.
The Open Source Seed license, recently released by a group called OpenSourceSeeds, is trying to “make seeds a common good again.” The license amounts to a form of “copyleft” for new plant varieties, enabling anyone to use the licensed seeds for free. Like the General Public License for free software, the seed license has one serious requirement: any seeds that are used, modified or sold must be passed along to others without any legal restrictions.
This is the “share-alike” principle, which is also used by Creative Commons licenses. Its purpose is to prevent the privatization of a common resource by requiring any user to share it freely and forever.
The Open Source Seed license directs any users:
You will in particular refrain from making any claim to plant variety rights, patent rights or any other statutorily possible exclusivity rights of the seeds or their propagation and enhancements.
Simultaneously, the licensing provisions oblige you, in turn, to subject any seeds or enhancements of the seeds obtained from the present seeds to these licensing provisions, and only to pass them on to third parties on these conditions (“copyleft”). Should you infringe the obligations arising from this licence agreement, you will forfeit your rights of use of the seeds or any seeds or enhancements obtained therefrom.
By acquiring or opening the packet of these plant seeds you accept, by way of an agreement, the provisions of a licence agreement where no costs shall be incurred to you. You especially undertake not to limit the use of these seeds and their enhancements, for instance by making a claim to plant variety rights or patent rights on the seeds’ components. You shall pass on the seeds, and propagations obtained therefrom, to third parties only on the terms and conditions of this licence. You will find the exact licensing provisions at www.opensourceseeds.org/licence. If you do not wish to accept these provisions, you need to refrain from acquiring and using these seeds.
The open source seed license was released on April 25 in Berlin by the Association for AgriCulture and Ecology (AGRECOL e.V) and the German NGO Forum on Environment and Development. They also released the first two open-sourced seeds, the tomato “Sunviva” (Lycopersicon esculentum L.) and the spring/summer wheat known as “Convento C.” (For more on this event, see this story by Intellectual Property Watch.)
OpenSourceSeeds hopes that plant breeders will use its license to protect access to new crop varieties, eventually producing a new sector of open source seed production. The group’s website invites breeders and seed distributors to register on its database so that buyers can discover where they can purchase open source seeds.
OpenSourceSeeds explains that its agenda is to promote food security through seed diversity; restore crop seeds as a common good; and assure free access to seed (meaning, no legal restrictions on use; seeds can still be sold).
It envisions a more ecological approach to farming rather than the monoculture crops of industrial agriculture. It wants to develop and promote a diversity of crop types, and promote varieties with ecological potential for niche locations and landscapes. All of these goals require a non-private, commonly owned seed sector where private profit is not the primary goal.
If you’d like to explore this topic further, here is an informative background essay, “Liberating Seeds with an Open Source Seed License,” by Johannes Kotschi and Klaus Rapf, of AGRECOL, the Association for AgriCulture and Ecology, in Germany.
Bravo, OpenSourceSeeds, for this ingenious initiative! May your new license and ethic of seed stewardship produce many bountiful harvests in the future.
Update: Check out the Open Source Seed Initiative in the US, too. It is quite active in advancing the same goals as OpenSourceSeeds and its license.
New Open Source License Fights the Enclosure of Seeds
As more and more plant varieties have become privatized through patents, and as large corporations have bought up smaller seed breeders, a dangerous consolidation has occurred. The genetic diversity of agricultural crops has shrunk, making crops more vulnerable to disease and our food supply more insecure. Meanwhile, farmers and the public have become more dependent on a few large agrochemical companies.
In short, seed patents have become a tool for privatizing seed from the pool of open and commonly owned plant genetic resources: an insidious enclosure of seed commons.
This scenario is eerily similar to the consolidation of software for personal computers some twenty years ago. Microsoft used its market dominance to incorporate all sorts of software programs into its Windows operating system, a strategy sometimes referred to as “embrace, extend and extinguish.” As Microsoft exploited its de facto monopoly over common software systems, programs for word-processing, spreadsheets and other functions began to go out of business.
But just as open source software served as a powerful antidote to proprietary software, so a group of academics, activists and plant breeders in Germany has now pioneered a similar antidote to seed patents: an open source license.
The Open Source Seed license, recently released by a group called OpenSourceSeeds, is trying to “make seeds a common good again.” The license amounts to a form of “copyleft” for new plant varieties, enabling anyone to use the licensed seeds for free. Like the General Public License for free software, the seed license has one serious requirement: any seeds that are used, modified or sold must be passed along to others without any legal restrictions.
the remarkable budget deal
Many have been rightly alarmed by the Trump Administration’s commitments to terminate programs related to scholarship and science, aspects of k-16 education, environmental and climate research, and national and community service. The critical response from citizens has been appropriate and welcome. But it’s also valuable to recognize the limits on any administration’s ability to change federal priorities, the degree to which valuable programs enjoy bipartisan support in Congress, and the extraordinarily inept record of the Trump team so far.
All of those factors are evident in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017. The bill is 1,665 pages long, and it is written as a set of dollar figures plus instructions (“riders”). Because these aren’t presented as changes compared to last year, it is hard to see what Congress has done. But as far as I can tell, most of the changes have been in the direction of more funding for education, culture, science, and even climate science.
The National Institutes of Health, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Endowment for the Arts all see increases (source). NEH’s research funding is modestly cut, while support for the State Humanities Councils goes up. (My friend Elizabeth Lynn has explained how the State Councils are responsible for the NEH’s political fortunes since the 1970s.) The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is fully funded (source).
EPA faces a one percent overall cut. The Department of Energy’s research budget and the National Science Foundation see increases. Climate research within DoE is boosted. “The Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service all would see more money under the bill, which included few policy riders for the agencies” (source). NOAA receives an increase, and the Climate Program Office within NOAA is held flat. The National Environmental Information Office and Regional Climate Centers have flat budgets.
Education as a whole is cut by 0.1%. Within Education, Title I funding rises; support for education research is trimmed.
The bill “restores year-round Pell Grant funding, a longtime priority sought by student aid groups since its elimination as a cost-saving measure in 2011. The deal also … provides modest increases to college readiness programs TRIO and GEAR UP, which were reduced significantly in the proposed White House 2018 budget plan” (source).
Normally, the president proposes and Congress disposes. In this case, the president has alienated enough potential allies, failed to fill enough key positions, and played his hand so badly that after he proposed, Congress just developed an entirely different budget on a fairly bipartisan basis. To be sure, next year could be worse; and some of the people responsible for implementing these programs will do their best to sabotage them. Still, the new budget deal ought to be an antidote to defeatism.
(See also “mixed feelings on the DeVos nomination battle,” in which I argued that the new Education Secretary will have very limited impact on policy.)