The ‘There’ There

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In 1933, after visiting her hometown of Oakland, CA, Gertrude Stein remarked that “there is no there there.”

Among many in the much maligned city, accustomed to defending themselves against such abrasive attacks, the remark has often been taken as a slight: as if Oakland were such a wasteland as to be little more than a desolate limbo.

Our more privileged neighbors across the bay have certainly said worse.

But this reading misrepresents the sentiment.

Stein had moved to Paris in 1903. She returned to her hometown thirty years later to find the city developed and her childhood home destroyed.

She wrote:

…anyway what was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there. …but not there, there is no there there. … Ah Thirteenth Avenue was the same it was shabby and overgrown. … Not of course the house, the house the big house and the big garden and the eucalyptus trees and the rose hedge naturally were not there any longer existing, what was the use …

Stein lived in Oakland from six to seventeen. When she returned she found it was not the city she had left behind – and she was not the person who had left it.

There was no there there. 

Stein writes of the loss of place as the loss of of something more – the loss of memory, the loss of identity, a meaningful loss of self.

“When you live there you know it so well that it is like an identity a thing that is so much a thing that it could not ever be any other thing,” Stein writes.

And then, one day, you return to find that this thing which you knew so well has become another thing.

You don’t recognize it; and, surprisingly, it doesn’t recognize you.

Or, perhaps worse yet, you do recognize it. You know every corner, every nuanced shade. You are intimately acquainted with the place, yet find yourself a stranger. You find that you know these details not at they are, but only as they were. Every sight becomes a haunting memory of the past. A faded ghost just beyond reach.

This is how I read Stein when she writes that there’s no there there.

Oakland as a place is really just an aside. Surely lacking in the luster of Paris, perhaps shabby and overgrown (I say with great love), but really just a place that was not the place she expected.

It was not natural – how could she have come from this place which was not her place? Where was that big house? Those Eucalyptus trees? The rose hedge and the big garden? Where was that life she had left behind?

And who was she, this strange person visiting this strange place?

The dissonance in place led to a dissonance in self.

Oh, how time goes by.

But there is a there there. Stein had become a new person, just as Oakland had become a new city. The confluence of the new can be unsettling; can be distressing; but ultimately – it is just the growth of life.

The there you remember is replaced by a new there – cherished by new generations and new  children who will grow up, travel, and return home to find their there no longer there.

No there there, and yet – still there.

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What Does it Mean to Transform Governance?

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Back in February, NCDD member and Public Agenda staffer Matt Leighninger penned the article below on his trip to a democracy conference in Manila, and we wanted to share it here. In it, Matt shares some great insights on what it means to “transform governance” and improve democracy that really get at the heart of what many in our field are seeking to do. We encourage you to read his article from the PA blog below or find the original post here.

One Week in Manila: Democracy, Development, and “Transforming Governance”

PublicAgenda-logoThis week, I will join a group of people from around the world meeting in Manila to talk about how to make democracy work in newer, better ways. Convened by Making All Voices Count, a collaborative of the Omidyar Network, the US Agency for International Development, the UK Department for International Development and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the group will include Asian and African democracy advocates, civic technologists and researchers.

In the Manila meeting, the participants will be using the term “transforming governance” to describe the changes they seek. The central question of the gathering is: If we want to ensure that citizens have meaningful roles in shaping public decisions and solving public problems, can technologies play a role in helping them do so?

They are asking a very old question, but with new hypotheses, new tools and new principles in mind. It is increasingly clear that the older democracies of the Global North do not have all the answers: citizens of those countries have increasingly lost faith in their political institutions. Northerners cherish their human rights and free elections, but are clearly looking for something more. Meanwhile, in the Global South, new regimes based on a similar formula of rights and elections have proven fragile and difficult to sustain. And in Brazil, India and other Southern countries, participatory budgeting and other democratic innovations have emerged.

How can our democratic formulas be adjusted so that they are more sustainable, powerful, fulfilling – and, well, democratic? Some of the new answers come from the development of online tools and platforms that help people to engage with their governments, with organizations and institutions, and with each other. Often referred to collectively as “civic technology,” these tools can help us map public problems, help citizens generate solutions, gather input for government, coordinate volunteer efforts and help neighbors remain connected.

Despite the rapid growth of these forums and tools around the world, in most cases they are not fully satisfying expectations. One reason is that they are usually disconnected from one another, and from other civic engagement opportunities, so are not reaching their full civic potential. Another is that some are designed mainly to gather small scraps of feedback from citizens on a government service, with no guarantee that government will be willing or able to use the input, so they only have limited civic potential.

But while it is unfair to expect any new technology to automatically change our systems of governance, we should certainly have these tools in mind – along with the many processes for productive public engagement that do not rely on technology – when we think about how to redesign democratic systems.

In that conversation, “transforming governance” can be a helpful term because it urges us to think more broadly about democracy, and about the power of democratic systems to improve our lives. There are at least three ways in which these positive transformations can occur:

  • Changing how people think and act in democracies, by giving them the information they need, the chance to connect with other citizens, the opportunity to provide ideas and recommendations to public officials and public employees, the confidence that government is accountable to citizens’ needs and desires, and the encouragement to devote some of their own time and energy to improving their communities.
  • Changing how governments work, so that public officials and employees can interact effectively with large numbers of people, bridge divides between different groups of citizens, provide information that people can use, gather and use public input, and support citizens to become better public problem-solvers.
  • Changing how civil society organizations (‘intermediaries’) and information mediators (‘info-mediaries’) work, so that they are better able to facilitate the interaction between citizens and government, monitor and report on how decisions are being made and problems are being solved, and provide training and support to new leaders.

These changes can add up, in many different combinations, to democracies that are more participatory, energetic, efficient and equitable. In Manila and elsewhere, we should face the old questions with new tools, new visions and new hope.

You can find the original version of this Public Agenda piece at www.publicagenda.org/blogs/one-week-in-manila-democracy-development-and-transforming-governance#sthash.OzbfQ9g9.dpuf.

Human Trafficking: How Can Our Community Respond to This Growing Problem? (NIFI Issue Guide)

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The 8-page issue guide on National, Human Trafficking: How Can Our Community Respond to This Growing Problem? was posted on National Issues Forums Institute website and it was collective effort of a few groups. The guide was created in 2016 by the Maricopa Community Colleges Center for Civic Participation, Spot 127 Youth Media Center, the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research, Arizona State University School of Social Work. The issue guide can be downloaded for free from NIFI’s site here, and also available is a moderator’s guide and information on Human Trafficking to inform deliberation participants.

From the guide…NIFI_HumanTrafficking_guide

Many Americans are unaware of the extent to which human trafficking is an issue in their communities. Others may be aware of some aspects of the problem, but may feel powerless to do anything about it. But as law enforcement and others document a growing industry in human trafficking across the country, what can and should our community do to combat the problem?…

This discussion guide was compiled by the Maricopa Community Colleges Center for Civic Participation, with support and guidance from Dr. Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, Director of the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research, Arizona State University School of Social Work; and with input from the youth journalists at the Spot 127 Youth Media Center.

This issue guide presents three options for deliberation:

Approach One: “Focus on Families’ and the Community’s Roles”
According to this approach, many minors end up being trafficked after experiencing problems at home. This approach says we need to do more to help parents and families to be successful in providing safe and supportive homes. It also argues that community members in general need to do more to be informed about trafficking issues and engaged in looking for and reporting suspected trafficking situations.

Approach Two: “Focus on Schools, First Responders and Other Professionals”
This view says that professionals working in schools, medical and mental health professions, and emergency first responders are best suited to identify and respond to instances of human trafficking. It suggests having these professionals all be held accountable and provided support to more actively combat human trafficking.

Approach Three: “Reform Laws and Policies”
This approach says that we need to reevaluate how we arrest and prosecute crimes related to prostitution and gang activity in order to identify victims of human trafficking and get to the leaders and organizers of these criminal enterprises. Law enforcement reform should treat trafficking victims as victims in need of support, rather than criminals.

Below is a video produced by students at the KJZZ Spot 127 Youth Media Center for the Maricopa Community Colleges Center for Civic Participation:

NIF-Logo2014About 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.

Follow on Twitter: @NIForums

Resource Link: www.nifi.org/en/groups/human-trafficking-how-can-our-community-respond-growing-problem-issue-guide-maricopa

Civic Death and the Afterlife of Imprisonment

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It’s primary season, and once again I am reminded at just how little the rest of the country cares about the disenfranchisement of the District of Columbia. I usually salve my irritation with the knowledge that individual votes are unlikely to sway an election, so I am largely unharmed personally. The problem, of course, is that the disenfranchisement of a large group of people who share some interests does seem likely to have serious policy effects, as those interests are systematically ignored. (Perhaps a more powerful argument defending the loss of DC’s voting rights in federal matters is that it might force us to attend to local politics where decisions are both consequential and close enough to our lives to be noticed. So far, though, I am unimpressed.)

In any case, my neighbors and I are not alone. Vann Newkirk has a piece in the Atlantic challenging felon and prisoner disenfranchisement:

The origins of disenfranchisement as a vehicle of American punishment are likely traceable to some form of the classical notion of a “civil death.” For the Greeks, the punishment of civil death was akin to capital punishment—a complete extinguishing of the civil rights that Greeks believed constituted personhood, including suffrage, landownership, and the right to file lawsuits. English common law borrowed the Greek concept, and civil death was long viewed as a suitable punishment for felony offenses.

But civil death as a formal punishment in the American colonies differed from the English system on which it was based, and from the punishments that would later evolve. Civil death was initially only adopted in America for a very small number of felonies, the most common of which were violations directly connected to voting—for example, fraud or bribery. This paralleled both an expansion of crimes considered felonies and a decoupling of felony punishment from capital punishment. The use of long-term imprisonment, instead of corporal or capital punishment, only came about in fits and starts.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In Maryland, former felons are regaining their voting rights this year, and that affects some of the graduates of the JCI Prison Scholars Program! It’s pretty great.

For too long, we have begun to imagine that violators of the social contract are somehow unable to participate in its revision. In a world without ungoverned spaces, it’s no longer possible to exile our trangressors into the wastes. But what we do instead is significantly more cruel: exiled to social and civil death, prisoners are meant to continue to live in our midst while occupying as little of our time and energy as possible. They’re invisible men whose future is supposed to hold no future except to be ignored.

Yet the fantasies of social death are pernicious precisely because they imagine no return. The reality is that most of these men must someday rejoin the communities from which they have been exiled. People come back. What’s more, they’re never really that far away.

Their lives and ours are still bound together: at the very least we still pay to keep our fellow citizens incarcerated, we still send some of our fellow citizens inside to guard and “correct” them. But it’s also worth remembering that the prison’s walls are remarkably permeable. Guards and visiting family stream in and out. Gang members inside help their outside colleagues agree to cessation of hostilities.

If we were still able to punish our criminals with exile or death, it would be much easier. Instead ghosts still haunt us long after their social death. Fathers and mothers still parent their daughters and sons from within the prison’s walls. Husbands have long arguments and tender reconciliations with their wives as phone calls and letters go back and forth at great expense. And in most cases, the men and women who go off to prison must eventually shamble back from the social death we’ve wished upon them.

I still don’t know if there’s room for prisons in a just society. Our vengeful impulses seem to require some sort of satisfaction, and imprisonment might just be the fairest one remaining. But I do feel confident that those prisons cannot be premised on social death any longer.

the question each citizen must ask

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(New York City) “The Question Each Citizen Must Ask” is my new piece in Educational Leadership, the magazine for k-12 school administrators (vol. 73, no. 6, March 2016, pp. 30-34. It begins:

When universal public education was invented in the United States, visionary proponents like Horace Mann believed they were building the first large-scale democracy in the history of the world. They realized that citizens would have to be educated to play their parts in a system that depended on millions of wise and active participants. They made a courageous bet that children could be taught to make democracy work.

I argue that civic education must equip students to ask the citizen’s core question, and I explain what that is and what pedagogies are most promising. (The article is also available via academia.edu).

Fighting Autocracy with Democracy

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We need to name and advance resources for democracy these days. Deborah Meier, in our blog conversation in Education Week about democracy in schools ("How Useful Is 'Academia'?" March 3), draws attention to young people's intelligence, and also the way education often squashes kids' spirit by policing the way they talk and think with concepts like "academic." This is how she puts it,

"I've always hated it when visitors to kindergartens ooh and aah over what 'cute' things the students say. They ignore, in this way, the children's genuine insights. In fact, these 5-year-olds are genuinely expressing interesting ideas, not trying to be cute at all. And if we listened with respect we'd realize that democracy is not a utopian idea--that virtually all 5-year-olds are capable of tackling important ideas and expressing them well until we discourage their intellectual curiosity with [terms like] 'academics.''

I love her blog. For many years, I have seen young people's intelligence, seriousness, and potential for doing substantial democracy work, what we call public work, through the youth empowerment initiative Public Achievement, now active in more than 20 countries. I also know from such experiences that young people's intelligence and capacity are vastly undervalued in society and education. Videos on Public Achievement like "We the (Young) People" and "Public Achievement in Fridley - Transforming Special Education" make the point.

In addition to highlighting young people's intelligence and capacity, Meier's blog has other resources for democracy in hard times. Here are five:

Democratic Deliberation

She describes discussion that is "noisy and maybe even on occasion rude, across generations, where adults and young people listen to each other and sometimes take each other seriously." This is constructive deliberation. It involves learning a set of democratic habits. This is what I was getting at in calling for "Putting the Public Back in Public Education."

Sustained deliberations can teach people to respect the intelligence and contributions of others. They counter anti-democratic trends. We also need such discussions to help reframe policy debates that are now narrow, polarized, and unproductive.

Free Spaces

Meier also identifies places where such deliberations can take place like schools community colleges, and libraries -- free spaces. Here are others. In the civil rights movement beauty parlors and barber shops were often free spaces. So were churches. In the deliberation I described earlier in the New Deal ("Against Political Saviors," January 28), with three million people discussing the future of rural America, land grant colleges and universities played roles through cooperative extension.

"Screens"

My colleague Margaret Finders, chair of the education department at Augsburg College, uses an idea developed by Kenneth Burke, called "terministic screens." These are terms which hide some realities and emphasize others. Screens can squash the democratic agency of students and teachers. She sites "teacher effectiveness," "achievement gap," "accountability," "standards."

"Academic" is such a screen. It's an individualistic, narrow idea of excellence which hides kids' intelligence and capacity for serious discussion in plain sight, in the process dampening their spirits and disempowering them.

"Democratic excellence"

We can only fight negatives with positives. Meier offers an alternative idea to "academic" which could be called "democratic excellence" -- outstanding work which contributes to democracy, giving the example of Jay Featherstone's book, Transforming Teacher Education, which suggests ways teacher educators can work "in the real world" to help change schools. "Cooperative excellence" is a related idea. Lani Guinier's book, The Tyranny of the Meritocracy, is full of stories of cooperative excellence, minority and working class kids helping each other to do well.

Citizen politics

Finally, Meier argues that "democracy assumes 'politics.'" This is the citizen politics we've been discussing - engaging "differences of opinion based on different stories and experiences." Such politics revolves around everyday citizens, not politicians, parties, or partisanship. Politicians can play helpful roles but they are not the center of the universe. Citizen politics, like deliberation, depends on and develops democratic habits.

The other day in the Republican debate Donald Trump hinted at politics by saying that to get anything done you need give and take, flexibility, negotiation rather than ideological rigidity. The problem is that everything in Trump's world revolves around Trump. He puts himself as the "top dog," as Omar Wasow tweeted.

Autocracy is the top dog taking power. There are a lot of worrisome autocratic trends not simply Trump.

Democracy is our collective power, our ability to act, our collective and ongoing work, not someone or a small group doing it for us.

We can only fight autocracy with democracy.

Register for D&D Climate Action Call using QiqoChat, 3/15

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We want to remind our NCDD members to be sure to register for the next D&D Climate Action Network (D&D CAN) conference call this Tuesday, March 15th from 5-7pm Eastern / 2-4pm Pacific. D&D CAN is being led by NCDD supporting member Linda Ellinor of the Dialogue Group and is working to build a community of practice that fosters mutual learning, sharing, and inspires collaboration around the complexities of climate change, and their monthly conference calls are a great way to connect with others in the field working to use dialogue and deliberation to address climate issues.

This month’s D&D CAN call will feature special guest Rev. Dr. Russell Meyer, the Executive Director of the Florida Council of Churches, who will be discussing the call’s theme – Reuniting Science & Spirit. You can register to save your spot by clicking here.

Here’s how D&D CAN describes the call:

We have enough climate change science. What’s out of balance are ways to talk about it and choose wise actions. To create safe places for sharing. To listen for what we don’t know. To explore together.

Russell will help us consider:

  • Why can religious frameworks make certain conversations about climate change difficult?
  • What languaging can we use in faith-based groups that is inclusive?
  • How can values and personal experience keep us together on the journey?

We are also pleased to share that D&D CAN is hosting this call using the QiqoChat platform, which is run by NCDD member Lucas Cioffi and about which we hosted a recent Tech Tuesday call (you can hear the recording of the call here). We are excited to see the combination of important dialogue and powerful technology, and this call promises to be one of D&D CAN’s best yet!

If you are interested in climate issues or if you are working with communities of faith, this call is for you. Be sure to register today or learn more about D&D CAN at http://ddclimateactionnetwork.ning.com.