Science is not value neutral. It depends on democratic values of cooperation, free inquiry, and a commonwealth of knowledge.

Science is not value neutral. It depends on democratic values of cooperation, free inquiry, and a commonwealth of knowledge. Before World War II, a broad group of "scientific democrats" including John Dewey and thousands of other scientists, described in Andrew Jarrett's recent book, Science, Democracy, and the American University, helped to lead the movement for deepening democracy in America.

It is crucial to renew the explicit ties between democracy and science, declared Gerald Taylor, one of the nation's leading community organizers, on October 2, to a diverse audience at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia. Otherwise science can become a tool of oppression in extreme cases. The Nazis, after all, conducted first class scientific experiments - on human beings. So did the U.S. government, in the infamous Tuskegee experiment. Between 1932 and 1972 the U.S. Public Health Service intentionally infected a group of rural African American men with syphilis, who thought they were receiving free health care, to study the disease's untreated progression.

Taylor spoke at a workshop on civic science at the National Science Foundation, October 2-3. The meeting brought together a diverse group of scientists, community organizers, political theorists, social scientists, humanities scholars, graduate students, leaders in cooperative extension, humanity centers and science museum directors, federal administrators, program directors from the National Science Foundation, the United States Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Health, and others. For two days the group discussed the relevance of science to the complex problems of our time and the future of democracy.

As workshop organizers gathered on Saturday morning, October 4, to review the meeting, a news story from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science underscored the interests of scientists themselves in strengthening the link between science and democracy. "Battle Between NSF and House Science Committee Escalates." The story details an unprecedented review of files by the House committee investigators. "The visits from the staffers, who work for the U.S. House of Representatives committee that oversees NSF, were an unprecedented--and some say bizarre--intrusion into the much admired process that NSF has used for more than 60 years to award research grants."

The workshop was supported by an NSF grant, with additional support from the University of Iowa, Augsburg College, Imagining America, and Syracuse Universities. I was part of the organizing team, along with Taylor, John Spencer, Sherburne Abbott, Nick Jordan, Gwen Ottinger, and Scott Peters.

Collective challenges emphasized in the framing White Paper include climate change, education, health and agriculture. They also include polarization; widespread feelings of powerlessness; declining trust in public institutions; and forces which threaten free inquiry and access to public knowledge - generating a crisis of democracy itself around the world. Democracy's advance can no longer be taken for granted. The initiative includes a new website, http://civic-science.org/ .

Civic science is an approach to scientific inquiry which revitalizes the democratic purposes and practices of science. Civic science aims to make substantial progress on science-related controversies through bringing civic skills into science, and it aims to build participatory democracy in science and society. In civic science, scientific knowledge is a vital public resource "on tap not on top" in public problem solving. Peter Levine, a prominent political philosopher at Tufts University, argued in his blog that such civic science grows from the intersection of democracy, science, and civic life.

The premise of civic science is that scientists active in public problem solving need ground-level skills and habits of relational public work and strategic thinking if scientific discoveries are to live constructively in the world. Janie Hipp, who directs an indigenous food initiative among Indian tribes based at the University of Arkansas, pointed out that such skills are also needed everywhere.

John Spencer, founding director of the Delta Center at the University of Iowa, described breakthroughs in scientific research on early childhood development and learning, especially the concept of "executive function" which allows children to adapt to new and changing situations. For such science to be integrated into a national movement with sufficient public will to transform early education will mean scientists learning democratic skills such as understanding local contexts and collaborating with a wide range of interests and stakeholders.

Cathann Kress, Vice President for Extension and Outreach at Iowa State, described how Iowa cooperative extension - the large system of campus and county-based educators in Iowa and around the country - is seeking to revitalize the original concepts and practices of extension as democratic capacity building and deeply relational work engaging citizens. She and other leaders are moving Extension away from the "expert knows best," information transfer approach dominant in recent years.

Xolela Mangcu, a leading public intellectual in South Africa in the Black Consciousness Tradition who has detailed "technocratic creep" in South African society -- the spread of purportedly neutral, expert-knows-best approaches that disempower lay citizens- observed that western interventions on medical problems such as HIV AIDS can make matters worse if they ignore local community cultures and capacities.

Tai Mendenhall of the University of Minnesota's Citizen Professional Center described a case study called Family Education Diabetes Series (FEDS) initiative, which answers Mangcu's challenge. FEDS, a supplement to standard care on diabetes for members of the American Indian community in the Twin Cities, was created through collaborative work between health scientists and the Indian community over ten years. It has been based on relationships and mutual respect and trust, and the program's design, educational foci and format, visibility, implementation, and ongoing modifications have all been undertaken democratically. Well-documented health benefits have been found to come from the community-owned and community driven nature of the initiative.

Civic science is democratizing science, as Fred Kronz, director of Science and Technology Studies at NSF put it on a policy panel. The panel also included Ann Bartuska, Deputy Undersecretary for Research, Education and Economics at USDA and Paul Markham of the Gates Foundation. Bartuska described examples of civic science associated with USDA. Markham agreed with Mangcu that there is pressing need for foundations to bring in an empowering civic agency approach, around the world.

As the House raid on the NSF showed, many controversies - from evolution and climate science to educational reform and higher education's role in job creation - are based on caricatures of scientists. And as I described in a recent blog on "Disruption," the promotion film for the People's Climate March, scientists and their partners need to deepen their democratic skills and strategic approaches if they are to win support from the broad middle of America for their issues. The People's Climate March itself, much more inclusive in message than the film, suggests the possibilities.

Many scientists today are in a defensive or protest stance, finding it difficult to gain cross-partisan, broad support.

Civic science -- democratizing science -- holds potential to be a game changer.

Harry Boyte is editor of the forthcoming Democracy's Education: Public Work, Citizenship, and the Future of Colleges and Universities (Vanderbilt University Press), which includes several essays related to civic science.

In most people's minds, "democracy" means elections. The citizen's role is to be an informed voter. Most discussions of Scotland's referendum assume that the moment of vibrant democracy is over. But there are some like Whitman who see much greater promise in democracy.

In most people's minds, "democracy" means elections. The citizen's role is to be an informed voter. Most discussions of Scotland's referendum assume that the moment of vibrant democracy is over. But there are some like Whitman who see much greater promise in democracy.

In thinking about the recent Scottish referendum on independence from the United Kingdom, it is worth remembering the way the great American poet, Walt Whitman, envisioned democracy.

"We have frequently printed the word Democracy," wrote Whitman. "Yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawaken'd...a great word, whose history remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted." Whitman, a fan of Abraham Lincoln, may well have had democracy "of the people, by the people, for the people" in mind -- a democracy created by the civic labors of its citizens.

Albeit without thinking much about it, Scotland may have helped to pioneer in the "yet unwritten history" of democracy in the 21st Century.

Many "yes" voters in the campaign are depressed after 55 percent of Scottish voters chose to remain in the United Kingdom with England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Fiona Ivanski, a veterinary surgeon who voted for Scottish independence, described "a terrible emptiness" to New York Times reporter Katrin Bennhold, quoted in Bennhold's story about the election. "We got so close, you could almost touch it," said Ivanski.

In most people's minds, "democracy" means elections. The citizen's role is to be an informed voter. Most discussions of Scotland's referendum assume that the moment of vibrant democracy is over.

But there are some like Whitman who see much greater promise in democracy.

"One of the biggest attractions of the Yes campaign...is that it is a grassroots movement of people that has energized us and made us feel democracy could work," wrote Vicky Allan, an Englishwoman in Scotland, in a column in the Herald Scotland before the vote. "You don't have to be a Scot to relate to that."

Allan agreed with my point in an earlier Huffington Post blog that there are limits to electoral politics in generating lasting movements for participatory democracy. She picked up the question I had heard from a young man in the final televised debate between Darling and Salmond, leaders of the "no" and "yes" campaigns: how can the tremendous energy and political interest of the campaign continue? "The answer," Allan replied, "Is [that] it will be up to us to make sure it does, whatever way the vote goes -- not just here but in other parts of Britain too."

The problem with participatory democracy, Allan worried, is that "then I would have to participate." She was likely thinking about participatory democracy as off-hours voluntarism. This reflects many people's views, akin to Oscar Wilde's famous quip about socialism: "it takes too many evenings." A democracy of active volunteers, in addition to elected officials, seems only for the most public-spirited.

But there is another way to understand participatory democracy, one that I believe will be central to democracy in the 21st Century.

As Marie-Louise Strӧm, my wife, observed in our family trip through Scotland in August before the referendum, democratic energy was everywhere -- and such energy was associated with the idea that "we can build the society we want."

Such comments intimate an understanding of democracy built by the people. In such democracy, citizenship is much more than campaigning, voting or volunteering. Citizenship is expressed through everyday work with public significance and impact. And such citizenship is not only practiced by those able to vote. We were struck by the energy and interest of children and young people in the referendum, below the voting age of 16.

Work with public qualities, or public work, produces what Sara Evans and I have called free spaces in places such as classrooms and schools, colleges, local businesses and unions, religious congregations and many other sites. Free spaces are centers of civic life and empowerment, sustained by public workers, where people come together on an equal footing to develop relationships across differences, learn democratic habits and create sustained cultures of imagination and innovation.

Free spaces and public work educate a democratic people. And only a democratic people can form the foundation of a democratic society.

We saw many intimations of free spaces in the Scottish referendum. The campaign not only activated volunteers and voters. It also energized civic life in businesses, professions, schools and colleges -- even in Holyrood, the Scottish parliament, which we visited.

What would it mean for such civic energy to continue?

Fiona Ivanski, the woman who felt "terrible emptiness," also argued that "you have to take the positives" from the election. Her husband Vincent, who voted no, agreed. "This may be the beginning of something new," he told the New York Times. I believe that he is right -- Scotland was pioneering things to come.

The fledgling movement for "civic science," mentioned in my last blog, "Democracy and the People's Climate March," is another case that suggests possibilities for democracy at work.

As a group of us organizing a forthcoming workshop on civic science at the National Science Foundation describe in our White Paper, A Call to Civic Science, "In civic science, scientists express democratic citizenship through their scientific work: they engage in democratic world-building efforts as scientists."

This effort, like the Scottish referendum, may help in the great work of reawakening democracy.

Revitalizing American traditions of empowering grassroots action and democratic aspiration could give the climate movement appeal far beyond the ranks of the highly committed

Revitalizing American traditions of empowering grassroots action and democratic aspiration could give the climate movement appeal far beyond the ranks of the highly committed

If organizers of the 1963 March on Washington were transported fifty years later to plan the forthcoming "People's Climate March," to held at the United Nations in New York, September 21, they would not call the march's promo film released on Monday night, Disruption. The 1963 organizers, I believe, would propose a message of democracy -- we can take the future in our hands.

Revitalizing American traditions of empowering grassroots action and democratic aspiration could give the climate movement appeal far beyond the ranks of the highly committed

Keya Catterjee, Director of Sustainable Energy for the World Wildlife Fund and one of the organizers of the People's Climate March, points to the 1963 March on Washington. She argues that success happened when people left their homes and took to the streets. "All the big social movements in history have had people in the streets." The energy of the organizers involved in the Climate March resembles the March 51 years ago.

But Disruption does not convey the democratic spirit which gave the March on Washington such appeal, nor does it illuminate the process of everyday empowerment which animates grassroots democratic movements like civil rights.

Scientists in Disruption detail a long tradition of science, from Joseph Fourier in the 19th century to Charles Keeling in 1959, who described the rise of C02 emissions in the atmosphere. They make a potent case about the dangers. Scenes of cataclysmic weather add urgency. Sheldon Whitehouse, Senator from Rhode Island, argues cogently that "behind the economic problem" of taking action on climate is a "political problem."

But Disruption does little to address the political problem.

The 1963 March on Washington was based on the strategy of Bayard Rustin, March organizer, posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom last year. As Rachelle Horowitz, his young aide who handled March transportation, describes in the CNN oral history documentary, We Were There, Rustin believed that the task was to "win over the middle." A third of the nation was behind the goals of the civil rights movement. A third was opposed. Most Americans, with everyday concerns focused elsewhere, had to be convinced.

Martin Luther King's brilliant "I Have a Dream" speech embodied this strategy. Stretched out on the floor in a sleeping bag in my father's hotel room, I heard King practice the speech in the early hours of August 28th. My father had just gone on staff of King's organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dad called me while I was hitch-hiking in California before I went to college and told me to come back. "We've planned a march to get the nation's attention," he said.

In "I Have a Dream," King strikes a bold note to gain the nation's attention. "There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights," King said. "The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges."

King also coupled his challenge with an inclusive dream, integration in every corner of the nation, as well as a call to discipline. These were carefully crafted to appeal to mainstream America. "Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline."

The narrative of the People's Climate March needs to have a similarly broad appeal. It needs to invite business owners, Pentagon officials, Evangelical Christians, civic leaders in Middle America organizing sand bags lines to protect their towns from flooding. All have voiced concerns about climate change. They are not present in the documentary, "Disruption," which has a decidedly liberal-left tilt of voices.

But the march creates other opportunities to reach out.

The People's Climate March also needs to convey grassroots empowerment. Bayard Rustin, like other organizers, saw the March not as an end in itself, but as a way to surface long developing people power and give it further momentum.

Civic power germinated in what Sara Evans and I described as "free spaces" in our book Free Spaces, described in my last blog, on what makes some movements democratic, in contrast to reactive or divisive protests.

Free spaces are places in communities like churches and synagogues, schools, beauty parlors, neighborhood groups, local businesses, unions and other settings which acquire empowering, public, self-organizing qualities. In free spaces, people develop skills of collective action across differences. They cultivate imagination about possibilities of change

In the civil rights movement, community settings deepened free space qualities through SCLC's Citizenship Education Program (CEP). The vision of CEP, drafted by Septima Clark, was to "broaden the scope of democracy to include everyone and deepen the concept to include every relationship." From 1961 to 1968, CEP, directed by Dorothy Cotton, trained more than 8,000 people at the Dorchester Center in McIntosh, Georgia, who returned to their communities and trained tens of thousands more in community organizing and nonviolent change-making.

The process transformed identities from victims to agent of change, a story Cotton tells in If Your Back's Not Bent: The Role of the Citizenship Education Program in the Civil Rights Movement. "People who had lived for generations with a sense of impotence, with a consciousness of anger and victimization, now knew in no uncertain terms that if things were going to change, they themselves had to change them." Cotton calls citizenship education "people empowering."

King, often at the Dorchester Center, wrote in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" that the movement "was bringing the whole nation back to the great wells of democracy dug deep by the founding fathers." The civil rights movement's vision of a participatory democracy inspired a generation.

The People's Climate March could similarly help to reanimate democracy. Several other developments addressing climate questions also have this potential. For instance, a National Science Foundation workshop in October on "civic science," descends from the initiative which John Spencer and I described in an earlier Huffington Post blog.

Civic science explores, with rich case studies, how scientists can reconnect with their identities as citizens, and how the public work of addressing wicked problems like climate change create opportunities for deepening democratic capacities and democracy itself.

If the march articulates a vision of participatory democracy as well as addressing carbon emissions, it can help to revitalize a sense of "We the People" as the foundational agents of change.

Otherwise it could contribute to the political problem of polarization -- the last thing the climate change movement needs.