Exploring System Change in the Hudson Valley

Posted on November 5, 2019 by David Bollier

If there is any doubt that ordinary, non-credentialed people are prepared to step up to the daunting challenges of climate change and Peak Oil, I’m pleased to report that the good people of Kingston, New York, gave a resoundingly positive answer this past weekend.

More than 230 people (1% of the city’s population!) showed up at a bold convening called “Surviving the Future: Connection and Community in Unstable Times.” The event invited the public to explore some of the big questions facing humanity right now, with a local twist: “What do we need to navigate these tumultuous times an create the systems and ways of being together that best serve us?” “What’s already going on in and around Kingston?” “What more do we think is possible?”

This event was the brainchild of six community groups seeking to pull together activist-minded doers. It was an experiment in trying to catalyze a new level of emergence in the Hudson Valley and discover if artists, tenants, racial justice advocates, sustainable farmers, alt-transportation experts, relocalization enthusiasts, and many others, could come together and start to develop a shared vision for change.

The event began with three talks on Friday evening to frame the challenges. People heard an inspiring talk from Kali Akuno of the famed Cooperation Jackson project that is using cooperatives to empower the people of Jackson, Mississippi, to take charge of their lives. Ariel Brooks of the New Economics Coalition explained what is meant by a “Just Transition” ("transition is inevitable; justice is not"). And I introduced the commons as a valuable tool in this quest and noted the “pluriverse of noncapitalist alternatives” already emerging. (Micah Blumenthal and Evelyn Wright were excellent facilitators throughout!)

The next day, about 130 people showed up for a full day of breakout sessions to dream up provocative new ideas and make plans for a different future. While a post-capitalist future is not going to arrive tomorrow, countless minds were expanded and many seeds of change planted.

Among the self-organized “unconference” sessions was one on “bringing ecological intelligence to culture” and another on “co-operative development.” One session asked people to imagine “a city/world without police,” and yet another gave guidance on “transitioning what and how we eat” (preparing simpler but tasty food).

I was enthralled to learn about The Center for Post-Carbon Logistics, which is exploring how to move “goods and people from place to place in a climate constrained future.” I met Jesse Brown, co-founder of Hudsy.tv, a “digital storytelling platform for the Hudson Valley, NY…[that provides] an integrity-based video content distribution option” for filmmakers. The idea is to create a platform cooperative that does not act as a giant money-machine sucking personal data and money from independent filmmakers and viewers who care about the Hudson Valley.

One gentleman invited the audience to join a small team in identifying the antisocial incentives of Kingston’s zoning code. An entire breakout group contemplated solutions to the city’s rampant gentrification and other housing issues. Clearly this is a town whose citizens have the courage and imagination to think big.

By coincidence, the day before the conference, The Guardian had published a first-person account by a former Kingston resident marveling at the city’s progressive ambitions. With some hyperbole, the headline read: “The US City Preparing Itself for the Collapse of Capitalism.” The article focused on the inspiring healthcare project known as O+ (“O positive”), which has worked with artists to secure medical, dental and wellness services for them, while enlisting their energies in street art and an annual public festival.

O+ is just one of many Kingston initiatives that are developing functional alternatives to the standard “economic development” vision. We all know how Chambers of Commerce like to attract large outside investors to build big facilities and spur local employment – not appreciating that such ventures often siphon away the life and money of a town while making them more dependent on outsiders.

Folks in Kingston have very different ideas.There is Radio Kingston, which gives voice to a full panoply of community members on the air every day. Hudson Valley Farm Hub is a huge tract of farmland whose managers are exploring how to grow more food for local distribution, in more ecologically and socially mindful ways. Its Native American Seed Sanctuary is working with the Akwesasne Mohawk Tribe to grow Native American varieties of corn, beans, squash and sunflowers, while helping to preserve the tribe's culture.

One pillar of the emerging activist network is the Good Work Institute, which offers space for events and meetings. The Hudson Valley Current is an alternative currency that is starting to make greater headway in reinvigorating local exchange. There is even a fledgling Kingston Maker Project that seeks to nurture the local talent and enterprises for a more resilient future.

Other conveners of the Kingston event bear mention: Transition Kingston; Commonwealth Hudson Valley, which aims to energize the cooperative economy regionally; Rise Up Kingston, a grassroots group focused on “dismantling the structures of racism and oppression”; and the NoVo Foundation.

As the author of the Guardian piece, Alexandra Marvar, put it, “Kingston is piecing together the infrastructure for a self-sufficient community.” That will clearly take some time, but surely a great threshold has been reached when people have the resolve to imagine a new and better future, and the confidence to rely on their own collective agency. Wow.

I left Kingston with a new spring in my step and fantasies about trans-local dialogues among vanguard cities like Kingston. But of course, first things first.

Florida Council for the Social Studies Establishes New Student Civic Engagement Award!

Posted on November 5, 2019 by stevemasy

Dr. Doug Dobson receives a plaque recognizing the student civic engagement award in his honor from incoming FCSS president Peggy Renihan

It is with great excitement and appreciation that UCF’s Lou Frey Institute and its Florida Joint Center for Citizenship subsidiary shares some wonderful news from the Florida Council for the Social Studies (FCSS) recent annual conference, held the weekend of October 18,2019 in Orlando. FJCC’s director of professional development, Ms. Peggy Renihan, was installed as the president of FCSS, the state’s leading association of professional social studies educators.

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At the same time, LFI’s interim executive director, Dr. Steve Masyada, was the recipient of the Dr. B.J. Allen Outstanding Leadership Award. This award honors an outstanding FCSS educator who has served the professional organization in a comprehensive way. It emphasizes service to FCSS and to social studies during the year or years immediately past.

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Both Renihan and Masyada, as well as other LFI staff, have played a significant role in both FCSS and social studies and civics education in the state of Florida and nationally, and we at LFI are so pleased to see them recognized.

More excitingly, recently retired Lou Frey Institute Executive Director and now LFI Senior Fellow Dr. Doug Dobson was surprised and honored by FCSS creating a permanent student award in his honor. The Dr. L. Douglas Dobson Student Civic Engagement Award is the Florida Council for the Social Studies’ first student-centered award, and is intended to recognize a K-12 student or students who demonstrated outstanding civic engagement and leadership. Dr. Dobson has long been one of the driving forces behind civic education in Florida, culminating in the passage of the Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Civic Education Act. This act is the reason that Florida is now recognized as a national leader in civics education, and Dr. Dobson’s work, vision, and leadership have helped make the Lou Frey Institute one of the state’s (and the nation’s!) leading civic education organizations. Congratulations to Dr. Dobson for a well-deserved recognition and a legacy that shall live forever through the Florida Council for the Social Studies.

For more information on UCF’s Lou Frey Institute, please be sure to visit their homepage at http://loufreyinstitute.org/.

Take EPE 628, Ethics & Educational Decision Making, S’20

Posted on November 5, 2019 by etweber@gmail.com

In the spring of 2020, I’ll be teaching Ethics and Educational Decision Making, EPE 628, with both face-to-face AND synchronously online sections! The class meets on Tuesday from 4-6:30pm. Consider signing up or tell your friends who might.

Why study Ethics and Educational Decision Making?

Ethics is essential for leadership in the educational policy context;
The course fulfills an elective requirement for the Graduate Certificate in College Teaching and Learning;
The course includes options for customizing assignments for conference and journal submissions;
Two students from last semester had their papers accepted for presentation at the 2019 Midwest Educational Research Association conference;
It’s really fun.

Here’s a flyer for the course, and here’s a short bio about the instructor:

Dr. Eric Thomas Weber is Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation. He also serves as Executive Director of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA) and co-host of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, and is the author of Uniting Mississippi and Democracy and Leadership.

Consider joining the class or sharing this post with your networks!

The post Take EPE 628, Ethics & Educational Decision Making, S’20 first appeared on Eric Thomas Weber.

the New Institutionalism, deliberative democracy, and the rise of the New Right

Posted on November 4, 2019 by Peter

In public debates about issues and problems, we typically consider institutions in two ways. On the one hand, we discuss their explicit purposes and missions, as reflected in the laws that create and govern them or (if they are autonomous) their mission statements and express goals. We ask whether these purposes are good and, if not, how we should change them. On the other hand, we discuss the institutions’ outcomes: what they actually achieve.

For instance, in public debates about public schools, we debate what they explicitly strive for (producing citizens? boosting the economy?) and what they really accomplish in terms of outcomes for students.

We are then frustrated because institutions do not seem to produce their intended outcomes, nor do reforms move them in the intended directions. This may be because of a set of well-known phenomena:

Path-dependence: Once an institution has developed in a certain way, shifting it is expensive and difficult.
Principal/agent problems: People in institutions have their own interests and agendas (which need not always be selfish); and there is a gap between their assigned roles and their actual goals.
Institutional isomorphism: Even when institutions are set up to be self-governing, they come to resemble each other. Witness the striking similarities among America’s 50 state governments or more than 5,000 colleges and universities.
Rent-seeking: People within existing institutions often extract goods from others just by virtue of their positions. Economists call these payments “rents.”
Bounded rationality: The individuals who operate within institutions have limited information about relevant topics, including the rest of their own institution. Information is costly, and it’s rational not to collect too much.
Voting paradoxes: No system for aggregating individual choices by voting yields consistently defensible results.
The Iron Law of Oligarchy: Even in organizations explicitly devoted to egalitarian democracy (the classic examples are socialist parties), a few highly-committed and tightly networked leaders almost always rule.
Epistemic Injustice: Knowledge is produced by institutions–not (for the most part) by individuals–and institutions favor knowledge that is in their own interests.

New Institutionalists emphasize and explore these phenomena. Their findings suggest either that citizens (meaning everyone who deliberates about how to improve the social world) should become much more attentive to these features of institutions, or else that we are incapable of social analysis because it is just too hard for millions of people to deconstruct millions of institutions. In the latter case, we should abandon ambitious theories of public deliberation and democracy.

New Institutionalism is heterogeneous. For one thing, it is ideologically diverse. Scholars who write about rent-seeking and voting paradoxes are often coded as right-wing, and sometimes they attribute rents mainly to governmental entities as opposed to markets. (Still, those of us on the left should take this issue seriously if we want to design governments that work for people). Scholars who write about Epistemic Injustice are often coded as left-wing; this idea emerged in feminism. The Iron Law of Oligarchy originated on the left, too, with Robert Michels.

New Institutionalism is diverse in other ways apart from ideology. For instance, the version that emerged from Rational Choice Theory is methodologically individualist. It models institutions as the result of interactions among individuals who have distinct goals and limited information. Some other versions of New Institutionalism are explicitly critical of methodological individualism. They attribute causal roles to institutions as opposed to individuals.

There is also a debate about determinism versus chance and choice. Historical institutionalists often emphasize the contingency of outcomes. Due to a random confluence of circumstances at a pivotal moment, an institution gets on a “path” that persists. In contrast, institutionalists who use rational-choice analysis often try to demonstrate that a given institution is in equilibrium, which implies that it almost had to take the form that it does.

Given this heterogeneity, we might begin to wonder whether New Institutionalism is a thing at all. Here is an alternative view: Institutions matter, but so do ideas, values, climates of opinion, identities, technologies, demographic changes, and biophysical feedback (e.g., climate change). Because many factors are relevant, there is often a moment when someone needs to say, “We have been neglecting institutions!” This person usually fails to find adequate resources in the “old” institutionalist authors: Weber, Veblen, Michels, et al. So she naturally calls herself a “New Institutionalist.”

In that case, New Institutionalism is not a movement or a phase in intellectual history. It is a recurrent stance or trope in debates since ca. 1900. As Elizabeth Sanders writes:

Attention to the development of institutions has fluctuated widely across disciplines, and over time. Its popularity has waxed and waned in response to events in the social/economic/political world and to the normal intradisciplinary conflicts of ideas and career paths. … Some classic works that analyze institutions in historical perspective have enjoyed a more or less continuous life on political science syllabi. Books by Max Weber, Maurice Duverger, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Locke, Woodrow Wilson, Robert McCloskey, and Samuel Beer are prominent examples.
Elizabeth Sanders, “Historical Institutionalism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (2008)

Still, a case can be made that we are in the midst (or perhaps the wake) of a New Institutionalist Movement. Sanders observes that classic theories of institutions were “increasingly sidelined … with the rise of behaviorism after the Second World War, particularly with the emergence of survey research and computer technology. …. However, after a hiatus of several decades, the study of institutions in historical perspective reemerged in political science in the 1970s, took on new, more analytical, epistemological characteristics, and flowered in the 1980s and 1990s. Why this reemergence?”

I’d give a slightly different answer from hers. I would note that several ideologies were influential from ca. 1945-1980. Here I don’t define an “ideology” as a form of invidious bias, nor as a mere basket of ideals. It is a more-or-less harmonious combination of ideals, causal theories, grand narratives, exemplary cases and models, and favored institutions. It makes sense of the world and motivates change, including positive change.

By that definition, liberalism, wealth-maximizing utilitarianism, democratic socialism, deliberative or participatory democracy, and Leninism were all ideologies. But none took sufficient account of the phenomena listed above. None was Institutionalist, in that sense. And all have been set back on their heels by the increasing strength and plausibility of Institutionalist research.

This my basis for claiming that New Institutionalism is a movement with consequences. Almost all of the ideological options available in 1968 or 1980 are less confident, less coherent, and less prominent today, thanks in significant measure to Institutionalist analysis conducted since then.

This account applies strongly to the stance that I grew up with: deliberative democracy. It originated in normative political philosophy plus small-scale voluntary experiments that succeeded in their own terms. It never attended enough to Institutionalism, and it now looks increasingly naive.

The main exception is classical liberalism/libertarianism. In the political domain, this ideology faces at least as much trouble as the others do. The libertarian-leaning (but never consistent) Republican Party has been taken over by authoritarian nationalists. However, in the intellectual domain–in the classroom–libertarianism has offered a coherent answer to New Institutionalism. It holds that all the flaws of institutions are worse in monopolistic state organizations than in markets. It can even explain why this insight is not more broadly understood: state schools and nonprofit colleges are run by rent-seekers who oppose libertarian ideas.

I dissent on several grounds (as do thoughtful classical liberals), but I’d still venture that classical liberals weathered New Institutionalism better than their rivals did, which explains a certain confidence in their ranks from ca. 1980-2008.

But now classical liberalism faces the same threat as all the other ideologies. The movement that is being called Populism (although I’d apply that word to other traditions, too) is perfectly calibrated for a world explained by New Institutionalism. Populism begins by denouncing all the institutions around us as corrupt because they unaccountably fail to generate their promised outcomes. It attributes this failure to the treason of elites: people well situated within existing institutions. It describes a homogeneous “us” (usually a racial or national group) that has been betrayed by “them,” the elites and foreigners. And it endorses a strong leader who fights for us against them. It dismisses specific institutional analyses as mere excuses and envisions a simple system that avoids all such Institutionalist problems. In this system, the authentic citizens constitute a unified majority; they select a leader in an occasional vote; and the leader rules.

In the face of this challenge, what are our options?

We could embrace the right-wing authoritarian populism. That is morally repugnant. Also, it won’t actually work over the long run.
We could ignore the findings of New Institutionalism and barrel ahead with an ideology like deliberative democracy or social democracy. I don’t think that’s smart.
We could count on elites to address the flaws of the institutions they lead. I don’t think that will happen, not only because elites are untrustworthy but also because these flaws are hard to fix.
We could beat the right-wing populists in other ways: by revealing their corruption, seizing on their missteps, or just running better candidates. This is important, but what happens after a Putin, an Orban, or a Trump?
We could re-engineer the institutions we care about by giving more attention to New Institutionalist insights. I think European social democrats have done so, to a degree. Social welfare programs in the Eurozone reflect concerns about path-dependence, feedback loops, principal/agent issues, etc. Deliberative democrats could, likewise, build deliberative institutions that take more account of such problems. This is a worthy approach but it requires compromises. For instance, social democratic systems may have to be less egalitarian to enlist the support of wealthy constituencies. And deliberative democratic forums may have to be made less democratic, for similar reasons.
We could enlist a wider range of people than just “elites” to work on the problems of specific institutions. We could make the solutions democratic. That is valuable but a long and slow process.
We could educate the public about the inner workings of institutions, their pathologies and solutions. That is important but hard.

I see our work in Civic Studies as a combination of the last two responses.

Announcing NCDD’s November Confab: Evaluating Community Engagement with Everyday Democracy

Posted on November 4, 2019 by Courtney Breese

We are excited to announce our November Confab Call, featuring our good friends at Everyday Democracy. They will share with us their resources for evaluating community engagement, specifically Ripple Effects Mapping, which allows visual documentation of your work’s impacts over time.

Dialogue can lead to many positive changes in communities, but direct impacts can be tough to track over time. Yet we all know how useful data about impact is to funders and partners, and for improving our work going forward. Ripple Effects Mapping (REM) allows you and those you work with to capture longer-term impacts your work has had on individuals, institutions, and systems.

November’s Confab is a great opportunity to learn more about these free resources and the REM process!

This free call will take place on Thursday, November 14th from 2-3 pm Eastern, 11am-noon Pacific. Register today so you don’t miss out on this event!

The Ripple Effects Mapping Tip Sheet outlines the process of creating the ripple effects map through a community engagement event. It’s a two-page document which gives you all the key information on how to use this tool to assess the impacts of your work in a collaborative way. It’s a fantastic resource! If you want to dig a little deeper into ripple effects mapping, you can also read the report Communities Creating Racial Equity – Ripple Effects of Dialogue to Change, which includes five case studies from Everyday Democracy’s work, and includes the Ripple Effects Mapping for each.

In addition to the the tip sheet and report, Everyday Democracy has also developed a practical guide to Evaluating Community Engagement as well as an accompanying Toolkit. These are invaluable resources for the dialogue, deliberation and public engagement field, where many of us seek to improve our evaluation process but are limited in our resources for doing so!

On this call, we will be joined by Deloris Vaughn, Director of Evaluation and Learning for Everyday Democracy, as well as Sandy Heierbacher, Interim Communications Director (and, of course, NCDD’s Co-Founder!). Deloris will share from her years of experience in evaluation how Ripple Effects Mapping can be used as a participatory evaluation activity. They will both help us learn more about the resources available from Everyday Democracy to strengthen our evaluation efforts.

This is a great event for anyone looking to learn more about evaluation, and certainly those who want to learn more about Everyday Democracy’s work. Make sure you register today to secure your spot!

About NCDD’s Confab Calls

NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential members) of NCDD to talk with and hear from innovators in our field about the work they’re doing and to connect with fellow members around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is encouraged but not required for participation. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!

NEH and Department of Education award $650,000 to Educating for American Democracy, a collaborative project to create a roadmap for excellence in civic education

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Peter

Led by iCivics, Arizona State University, Harvard University, and Tufts University, the effort will bring together more than 100 experts in civics, history, education, and political science to outline a strategy for teaching American Democracy in the 21st century.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Nov 1, 2019) — The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education, has awarded a $650,000 cooperative agreement to a collaborative of experts who will work together to design a roadmap to prepare K-12 students for America’s constitutional democracy.

Educating for American Democracy: A Roadmap for Excellence in History and Civics Education for All Learners will bring together more than 100 leading academics and practitioners in education, civics, history, and political science to set out a foundation for understanding and teaching American history and civics. And it will issue a roadmap that will outline high-priority civics content areas and make clear and actionable recommendations for integrating the teaching of civics and history at every grade level, along with best practices and implementation strategies that teachers, schools, districts and states can use to shape their instructional programs.

The roadmap will develop the foundation from which to prepare all students to understand the value of America’s constitutional democracy as well as its past failures and present challenges. Our goal is to design a program that will secure a strong commitment to and sense of ownership of that democracy in K-12 students.

Educating for American Democracy is a cross-partisan effort led by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, the School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement and Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, and iCivics — the country’s largest civic education provider.

The group has formed a Steering Committee, as well as task forces in History, Political Science, and Pedagogy that will hold two convenings over the next year — one at Louisiana State University and one at Arizona State University. It will then issue its report, which will be authored by Danielle Allen from Harvard University, Paul Carrese from ASU, Louise Dube from iCivics, and Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg and Peter Levine from Tufts University, prior to a National Forum on September 2020 in Washington, DC, which will be co-hosted by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and the National Archives and Records Administration Foundation.

“As the United States looks toward our 250^th anniversary as a nation in 2026, it is critical that our K-12 educational system teaches the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and the democratic principles on which the country was founded,” said NEH Chairman Jon Parrish Peede. “The National Endowment for the Humanities is pleased to be working with Educating for American Democracy to identify ways to improve the teaching and learning of American history and government so that all students gain an appreciation of the workings of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.”

The Educating for American Democracy project responds to an NEH-Education Department call for proposals for a fifteen-month project that would highlight innovative approaches, learning strategies, and professional development practices in K-12 civics education, with an emphasis on activities and programs that benefit low-income and underserved populations.

Educating for American Democracy will rely on the expertise of the teams at ASU, Harvard, and Tufts and will utilize iCivics’ community of more than 100,000 teachers, as well as partner communities for field testing to ensure that the Roadmap is a practical and useful document in the classroom. It will draw upon the collective network of CivXNow, a coalition of 113 organizations and foundations dedicated to improving civic education in order to disseminate the curriculum.

“Educating for American Democracy is an effort to provide guidance for integrating history and civics so that today’s learners form a strong connection to our constitutional democracy—and take ownership of it,” said Louise Dubé, the executive director of iCivics, which was founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2009. “We are very thankful that this cooperative agreement with NEH and the Department of Education will give our team of experts, academics, and practitioners the opportunity to design a trans-partisan roadmap for excellence in history and civics education.”

The Educating for American Democracy cooperative agreement is funded through a partnership between NEH’s Division of Education Programs and the U.S. Department of Education’s American History and Civics Education-National Activities program and is part of NEH’s newly announced “More Perfect Union” initiative focused on the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.

“Our republic is at a crossroads, facing deep partisan and philosophical polarization, while understanding of and trust in America’s democratic institutions are dangerously low – especially among younger citizens. Our interdisciplinary and balanced team of scholars, teachers, and civic educators believes that the relative neglect of civics education in the past half-century is a major root cause of much civic and political dysfunction,” ASU’s Paul Carrese said. “We’re grateful to the NEH and Department of Education for marshaling the resources and attention needed to spur real reform.”

National Endowment for the Humanities: Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.

The School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University blends a liberal arts education with civic education to prepare 21^st century leaders for American and international affairs, balancing study of classic ideas with outside-the-classroom learning experiences. The School also provides civic education programs such as a podcast (Keeping It Civil), the Arizona Constitution Project, and the Civic Discourse Project – a national-caliber speakers program partnering with Arizona PBS to provide a space for civil discourse on pressing issues. https://scetl.asu.edu/

The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University seeks to strengthen teaching and research about pressing ethical issues; to foster sound norms of ethical reasoning and civic discussion; and to share the work of our community in the public interest. The Center stands at the core of a well-established movement giving ethics a prominent place in the curriculum and on research agendas at Harvard and throughout the world. The Center’s Democratic Knowledge Project is a K-16 civic education provider that seeks to identify and disseminate the bodies of knowledge, capacities, and skills that democratic citizens need in order to build and sustain healthy, thriving democracies.

Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life and Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement: The only university-wide college of its kind, the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University studies and promotes the civic and political engagement of young people at Tufts University, in our communities, and in our democracy. Peter Levine serves as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. Tisch College’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), directed by Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, is a premier research center on young people’s civic education and engagement in the United States, especially those who are marginalized or disadvantaged in political life. CIRCLE’s scholarly research informs policy and practice for healthier youth development and a better democracy. https://tischcollege.tufts.edu/iCivics: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor founded iCivics in 2009 to transform the field through innovative, free educational video games and lessons that teach students to be knowledgeable, curious, and engaged in civic life. Today, iCivics is the nation’s largest provider of civic education curriculum, with our resources used by over 108,000 educators and more than 6.7 million students each year nationwide. Visit www.icivics.org to learn more

we are lucky with our right-wing authoritarian

Posted on October 31, 2019 by Peter

(Washington, DC) At today’s Deliberative Democracy Consortium’s Research & Practice Meeting on “Deliberative Democracy and Human Cognition,” Shawn W. Rosenberg made a point that I have often considered but never expressed.

Here is the background to the point: A broad range of people in many advanced democracies are potential supporters of ethno-nationalism (which means racism in the United States), autocratic leadership, and hostility to opposition parties, a free press, and intellectual critics. In a contest with liberal democratic values, this combination has built-in advantages. It is simpler, less cognitively and emotionally demanding, and more affirming of the people who belong to the ethn0-nationalist in-group.

In the United States, the chief representative of that combination is Donald J. Trump. But he lost the popular vote in 2016 and has never surpassed 45.5% popularity in the polling average. I think this is because he combines the globally ascendant right-wing authoritarian package with: personal indiscipline and frequent incompetence, laziness, blatant small-bore corruption and nepotism, a failure to retain the loyalty of his lieutenants, ignorance of the structures of power, a superficial grasp of his own ideology, and a rhetorical style that impresses only a small minority of Americans (a subset of his own voters).

If and when we face a right-wing authoritarian “populist” who moderates his (or her?) rhetoric skillfully, deploys resources efficiently, develops and implements strategies, sacrifices some personal needs and interests for his ideology, and manages the White House competently, we will be in deep trouble.

On the other hand, we might prove lastingly fortunate if this special moment of opportunity for white nationalism in America (while the national majority is still white but perceives status threat*) is dominated by a man who happens to be very bad at his job.

*Whether status anxiety explains the 2016 election is controversial; but even if it doesn’t, the anxiety still seems palpable.

EvDem Announces New Leadership in Democracy Awardee

Posted on October 31, 2019 by Keiva Hummel

In case you missed it, our friends at Everyday Democracy, an NCDD member organization recently announced the winner of the third annual Paul and Joyce Aicher Leadership in Democracy Award! Please join us in congratulating Happy Johnson and Arthur Johnson of the Lower Ninth Ward Center for the Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED) in New Orleans, who for almost a decade has been “combining citizen engagement with environmental science to create equitable development and policy on climate resilience”. The Aicher Award Committee recognized the following finalists: Catalyst Miami, BRIDGE, Lisa Jo Epstein, and Ximena Zúñiga; and honorable mentions to Brandyn Keating, The Phoenix Association, Blontas (Winkie) Mitchell, and Roanoke Valley Points of Diversity. We encourage you to read the announcement below or on Everyday Democracy’s blog here.

3rd Annual Paul J. Aicher Leadership in Democracy Award Announced

For more than 25 years, Everyday Democracy has worked with communities across the country to foster a healthy and vibrant democracy – characterized by strong relationships across divides, leadership development, including the voices of all people, and understanding and addressing structural racism. The Aicher Award seeks to elevate community leaders who embody these values.

After considering more than 60 nominations from around the country, Everyday Democracy has announced the winner:

Happy Johnson and Arthur Johnson of New Orleans, LA

Happy Johnson and Arthur Johnson of New Orleans, La., were selected as the winners of the 2019 Paul and Joyce Aicher Leadership in Democracy Award. This team’s winning nomination was selected from 64 nominations in this third annual national contest. Everyday Democracy will present the two men (who work together but are not related) with a $10,000 award at a ceremony on December 5th in Hartford, CT.

Happy Johnson and Arthur Johnson have been working at the Lower Ninth Ward Center for the Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED) in New Orleans for almost a decade, combining citizen engagement with environmental science to create equitable development and policy on climate resilience. According to Martha McCoy, Executive Director of Everyday Democracy, “there are many others across our country and globe who are facing the inequitable effects of climate change and want to tackle it through democratic ways of working. Arthur Johnson and Happy Johnson provide inspirational models of the kind of leadership we need, so that we can address critical climate issues in inclusive, sustainable ways.”

The Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED) has been on the front lines of restoring the fragile ecosystem of the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood of New Orleans while strengthening the Ninth Ward’s civic fabric. CSED is committed to equity and social justice in an already underserved community that was completely devastated after Hurricane Katrina. Arthur Johnson and Happy Johnson have been leading the effort every step of the way.

The Lower Ninth Ward is still reeling from the effect of Hurricane Katrina. With a population that is 93% African-American, the neighborhood has been marked by an uneven recovery effort compared to other neighborhoods in New Orleans. Thirteen years after the storm there were still no supermarkets in the Lower Ninth, and residents had to fight the city to ensure that at least one school of the five that were closed after the storm would be rebuilt. A couple of months ago, one small grocery store was opened.

Arthur Johnson and Happy Johnson are leaders in and advocates for the neighborhood at the heart of CSED. They are an incredible example of steadfast and consistent leadership. They are homegrown and grassroots. In an environment where resources are drying up, they implement programs that have strengthened and restored both the ecological and civic infrastructure of their community.

Their work has elevated the voices of African American, Vietnamese, and Latino residents in conversations with state-level agencies, demonstrating that bridge building, equity, inclusion, and transparency make equitable, community-driven change possible and sustainable. Their commitment to racial and intergenerational equity is evident across all of their work. Arthur and Happy were nominated by Nicole Cabral of Public Agenda, and received several letters of support including one from the National Wildlife Federation that noted: “CSED’s sought-after expertise transcends politics and is regularly tapped for non-profit, mayoral and community appointments, panel discussions, presentations and public policy recommendations.”

“Community engagement is who we are.” – Arthur Johnson

Happy Johnson served as one of the youngest African Americans to drive an Emergency Response Vehicle in New Orleans post-Katrina and has dedicated his life to building cultural and environmental resilience. Additionally, his series of children’s picture books about wetlands restoration and disaster preparedness have been taught to thousands of students throughout the American South. Arthur Johnson noted, “We are thrilled to be recognized, because it will help us move the mission of equity and democracy in the Lower Ninth Ward in the face of many challenges.” He went on to say that “Having two black men being recognized for something like this is unusual and also a powerful symbol…. The kind of recognition your foundation gives doesn’t happen a lot in our country.”

Happy added that “the work is difficult, and recognition doesn’t happen often. This award is a great boost to our morale.” Happy Johnson was excited that he and Arthur were being recognized together, noting that this is the first time this has happened. Arthur reflected that people don’t work together across generations often enough, and that seasoned leaders and younger people should work together all the time. This thought aligns directly with the intergenerational equity work Everyday Democracy is focusing on, to complement its focus on racial equity through community dialogue to change.

This year, the Acher Award Committee also recognized these strong finalists for the award:

Catalyst Miami, FL; BRIDGE, Lee, MA; Lisa Jo Epstein, Philadelphia, PA; and, Ximena Zúñiga, Amherst, MA

There were also four honorable mentions:

Brandyn Keating, West Bridgewater, MA; Blontas (Winkie) Mitchell, Springfield, OH; The Phoenix Association, CT; and Roanoke Valley Points of Diversity, Roanoke, VA.

Paul J. Aicher and his wife Joyce were known for their generosity and creative genius. A discussion course at Penn State helped Paul find his own voice in civic life early on, and sparked his lifelong interest in helping others find theirs.

Paul founded the Topsfield Foundation and the Study Circles Resource Center, now called Everyday Democracy, in 1989. The organization has now worked with more than 600 communities throughout the country, helping bring together diverse people to understand and make progress on difficult issues, incorporating lessons learned into discussion guides and other resources, and offering training and resources to help develop the field and practice of deliberative democracy.

Learn more about Paul’s journey and the origins of Everyday Democracy.

The Paul and Joyce Aicher Leadership in Democracy Award honors work that creates opportunities for meaningful civic participation for all people, addresses racial inequities through dialogue and collective action, and shows the power of bridging all kinds of divides by making dialogue a regular part of how a community works.

The award winner will be celebrated in Hartford, CT on December 5th. More information to follow.

You can read the original version of this announcement on Everyday Democracy’s blog at www.everyday-democracy.org/news/3rd-annual-paul-j-aicher-leadership-democracy-award-announced.

Congressman Lou Frey Celebration of Life Nov 1 2019

Posted on October 30, 2019 by stevemasy

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Good morning friends. We just wanted to let you know that Congressman Lou Frey’s Celebration of Life is open to the public, and we hope to see you join us, as Lou so loved civic education and how it could shape our young people and our state. It will be held this Friday, 10 a.m. at St. John Lutheran Church, 1600 S. Orlando Avenue, Winter Park, 32789. Overflow parking is available at Mead Botanical Garden which is a couple of blocks from the church. Mead Gardens will have a golf cart to transport those who can’t make the walk to the church.

Memorial contributions can be made to: The Lou Frey Institute at UCF, 12443 Research Parkway, Suite 406, Orlando, FL 32826-3297

And if you have a few minutes, please take a read of Representative Stephanie Murphy’s remembrance of Lou on the floor of the House.

View the Affordable Housing Discussion at UCF, Hosted by the Lou Frey Institute

Posted on October 30, 2019 by stevemasy

On October 29, the Lou Frey Institute was thrilled to host a discussion of affordable housing in central Florida, with a particular attention to college students. We were joined at this discussion by Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (District 49),
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Orange County Commissioner Emily Bonilla (District 5),
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Rep Anna Eskamani (District 47),
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AJ Range (UCF Assistant VP, Neighborhood Relations & Safety Education),

and Oren Henry (City of Orlando Director of Housing & Community Development).

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It was wonderfully moderated by LFI’s own Dr. Terri Susan Fine.
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The talk addressed questions of rental and housing stock, transportation, homelessness, and of course affordable housing and housing/rental development. We are grateful for all that chose to attend, and for everyone involved in the planning and implementation, especially LFI’s Shena Parks, who was a driving force in putting this wonderful event together. Thank you to to the panelists, who were honest, open, and frank in the discussion on this issue. You can view the entire discussion in the videos below!