Up to 65% Off on EvDem Resources til May 15!
We encourage NCDD members to take advantage of a great sale on discussion resources that Everyday Democracy – an NCDD organizational member – is having before they move to a new office space. Check out the announcement of the sale and the move below, or find the original here.
We’re downsizing our office space, and we can’t take everything with us! Now through May 15, some of our most popular discussion guides are up to 65% off:
- Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation (English)
- Thriving Communities (English)
- Thriving Communities (Spanish)
- Strong Starts for Children (English)
- Strong Starts for Children (Spanish)
Don’t delay! Supplies are limited, and orders will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.
Why the move?
Our lease is up at our current location so we’re moving to a new location with a smaller office footprint than we have now. Decreasing our office footprint allows us to stretch our resources to serve communities across the country.
Where to?
We’re moving to the CT Nonprofit Center in Hartford, Conn., which is a collaborative of non-profit organizations. The anchor non-profit is the Connecticut Association of Nonprofits. Our new address will be:
75 Hartford Square West
Hartford, CT 06106
“We are delighted to move to a nonprofit collaborative space in downtown Hartford, where we will be even closer to many of our local and state partners.” –Martha McCoy, Executive Director
When?
May 29, 2015 is our official move date. Until then, we’re very busy packing!
A brief history of Everyday Democracy’s office moves
The original home of Everyday Democracy, then the Study Circles Resource Center, was in Pomfret, Conn., – a small rural town in the northeastern part of the state. Our founder, Paul Aicher, lived there and owned the property where he located our offices.
Seven years ago, we moved from Pomfret to East Hartford, Conn. This move allowed us to focus on our goal of more intentionally incorporating racial equity into our work, to increase the diversity of our staff, and to work closer to an urban area where many of the issues we work with manifest most intensely. Since the move, we have brought eight new staff members on board who are still with us today, and have worked on several initiatives with the local community on issues such as racial equity, food security, immigration, education, community police relations, and others.
Carolyne Abdullah, Director of Community Assistance, said that the move was a big change in office environment: “I experienced a sense of ‘hey, there are other people in the world’ when I first came to work in a 19-story building occupied by many businesses and all kinds of people as opposed to working on one floor with six people in Pomfret.”
Over these past seven years much as affected how we work: Cloud computing allows us to have more robust online filing systems, technology has allowed us to incorporate telecommuting for staff to do their work from home, and the use of digital materials has allowed us to minimize what we keep as inventory on our shelves. All of the above offers us the opportunity to downsize our footprint by using less office space. This means we’ll be able to put more resources into community programs and building partnerships.
You can find the original version of this Everyday Democracy post at http://everyday-democracy.org/news/moving-sale#.VUbQtSFVikq.
Rebellion Against the Authority of the Government
It seems that every time people are galvanized against injustice it comes as a surprise. As if nothing like this has ever happened before.
Daily Show host Jon Stewart recently called out Wolf Blitzer for claiming surprise at the protests and riots in Baltimore.
I can’t believe this is happening in an American city, Blitzer kept saying – despite having uttered the same response as events unfolded in Ferguson just a few months ago.
And, of course, if media’s memory is so bad it can’t even recall events within the past year, one can hardly expect the media – or the public at large – to connect current events to anything that could be considered historical.
But what’s more remarkable to me is not that people keep rising up – its that our own government keeps intervening to quell these uprisings.
In 1894, for instance, thousands of United States Marshals and some 12,000 United States Army troops were called to suppress American citizens boycotting in the Pullman Strike. Twenty-six civilians were killed.
In 1912, Lawrence, Massachusetts Mayor Michael Scanlon requested the aid of the state militia in confronting a textile strike. “A tumult is threatened,” Mayor Scanlon wrote. “A body of men are acting together and threaten by force to violate and resist the laws of the Commonwealth.”
Once called in, the militia took such brave and lawful steps as preventing striking parents from sending their children to safety in Philadelphia. Ordered to detain the children and arrest their parents, the police began clubbing both the children and their mothers while dragging them off.
Of course, with a well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the National Guard can trace its roots to 1628, when the Bay Colony – Massachusetts – received its charter, including total control over internal military and political organization.
However, the 1903 Dick Act – aptly named after Congressman Charles Dick – was really the beginning of the modern National Guard. This act resolved the issue of state vs. federal control when it came to deploying state militias. (In the war of 1812, for example, the New York militia refused to march to the aid of U.S. troops in Canada.)
The Dick Act empowered the President to deploy this state militias:
…whenever the United States is invaded, or in danger invasion, from any foreign nation or of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States, or the President is unable, with the other forces at his command, to execute the laws of the Union in any part thereof, it shall be lawful for the President to call forth, for a period not exceeding nine months, such number of the militia of the State or of the States or Territories or of the District of Columbia as he may deem necessary to repel such invasion, suppress such rebellion, or to enable him to execute such laws, and to issue his orders for that purpose to such officers of the militia as he may think proper.
The act was partially a response to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which limited the power of the federal government to deploy military troops on U.S. soil. The National Guard is, importantly, an exception.
And since then National Guard has been regularly deployed to quell “rebellion against the authority of the Government.”
Governors, as primary commanders of their state’s National Guard, may also deploy these troops in “response to natural or man-made disasters or Homeland Defense missions.”
And not only as recently as Baltimore and Ferguson, the National Guard has been deployed in Los Angeles following the 1992 Rodney King beating; in Selma, Alabama; in Little Rock, Arkansas; and in several other cities.
So, it should be no surprise that people are protesting, and, unfortunately, it should be no surprise that National Guard troops are called in to stop them.
That is, after all, the history of this great country.
And the protests go on.
community organizing, community-engaged research, and the problem of scale
“I have yet to see something big that’s good.” So said a friend and esteemed colleague at a conference that I have been attending for the past two days. The conference is on “Collaboration Research for Action and Equity in Education,” and most of the participants practice either community-engaged research or community organizing. They build or participate in rather small, participatory projects, but they also care about large forces and structures. So the problem that my friend posed is a fundamental one for them.
I actually don’t believe that the precise issue that matters is scale. In the 21st century, things that used to be limited to small scales (such as friendship networks and discussions) can now be very big. The difference that interests me is between relational politics and impersonal politics.
In relational politics, you know the other people you are affecting directly. You know their names and locations and something about what they want. There is at least a possibility that you can work together. In impersonal politics, you affect people you have never heard of or met. Impersonal politics includes such structures as votes, laws, rights, policies, large firms, and markets.
The two categories certainly come together. In fact, the street-level impact of impersonal politics is almost always relational. For instance, the edge of the policies that produce mass incarceration in the United States is the back of a police van in Baltimore. The police officers there knew Freddie Gray.
That example reminds us that relational politics isn’t preferable to impersonal politics. You can’t be truly cruel without being in a relationship with the victim. From office politics–or the activities of “street-level bureaucrats” (like police officers)–to torture, some of the most problematic human interactions are relational. And impersonal structures include such excellent creations as legal rights.
But we do need relational politics, because only in relationships can we learn from other people, build networks that are sources of power and capacity, and act with agency. It is only in relational politics that we can seriously ask the question “What should we do?” A difference between the conference I am attending and a more standard conference on urban America is not that this one has been more critical. There is a vast scholarly literature that documents and analyzes inequality and oppression. You can walk up and down the halls of a hotel during a sociology, public health, or education conference, and in every room they will be talking about oppression. But they are addressing the question “What should be done?”, not “What should we do?” Agency is lost when politics and research are impersonal rather than relational.
And yet practitioners of community-engaged research and community organizing are also deeply concerned about impersonal politics. One of the most frequently-used words at this conference was “neoliberalism,” understand as some kind of mass-scale and impersonal system. (But note that a social democracy would also be highly impersonal.)
So how can we make the relational improve the impersonal? I think the most common strategy is to create or support relational projects, connect them together in networks, recruit others to join the networks, and advocate for policies in institutions like universities that will directly support these projects. (For instance, we might advocate changes in the kinds of research that help scholars win tenure.) This strategy has been implicit in a lot of my own work. But I must admit that I don’t really believe in it, because I don’t believe that networks of relational projects will seriously trouble existing impersonal systems. Finding a better connection between the relational and the impersonal seems to me the most pressing issue of our time.
See also beyond small is beautiful; leverage as a moral issue; and civic relationships (what they are and why they matter).
The post community organizing, community-engaged research, and the problem of scale appeared first on Peter Levine.
Retrofitting Homes for Energy Efficiency in Portland
This four-page case study (2014) from The Intersector Project outlines how Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability used cross-sector collaboration to address the need to retrofit homes for increased energy efficiency.
From the Intersector Project
An estimated 40 percent of carbon dioxide pollution in the United States comes from energy used in homes. In Portland, Oregon, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability wanted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city while bettering the economic and social development of local residents and businesses. In 2009, stakeholders came together to draft a plan designed to provide energy upgrades to 500 Portland homes and cut energy consumption by 10 to 30 percent using an innovating financing model to eliminate the upfront costs that deterred homeowners from pursuing environmentally-friendly energy retrofits. Led by Derek Smith, a sustainability expert with a record of working in the private, public, and non-profit sectors, collaborators came together to create Clean Energy Works Portland (CEWP), an innovative program that used a revolving loan to finance upgrades, working with local contractors to add high-quality jobs to the economy which resulted in a reduction of twenty percent or greater energy consumption in most participating homes.
“Cross-sector collaborations are the most practical and effective way to make progress in this era of massive resource constraints and necessary economic realignment.”— Derek Smith, CEO, Clean Energy Works Oregon
This case study, authored by The Intersector Project, tells the story of this initiative.
More about The Intersector Project
The Intersector Project is a New York-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that seeks to empower practitioners in the government, business, and non-profit sectors to collaborate to solve problems that cannot be solved by one sector alone. We provide free, publicly available resources for practitioners from every sector to implement collaborative solutions to complex problems. We take forward several years of research in collaborative governance done at the Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School and expand on that research to create practical, accessible resources for practitioners.
Follow on Twitter @theintersector.
Resource Link: http://intersector.com/case/cewp_oregon/ (Download the case study PDF here.)
This resource was submitted by Neil Britto, the Executive Director at The Intersector Project via the Add-a-Resource form.
XML to CSV
With my Ph.D. program starting this fall, I expect I’ll be doing a lot more programming. I used to program a lot as an undergraduate, but, well, that was a long time ago.
I’ve been teaching myself Python, so I was excited when I learned a colleague was looking for a way to convert an .xml file to a .csv file. There was just one specific variable they were looking to export into .csv format, so the code is specific to that.
Since I’ll probably be coding a lot more, I figured I’d post this bit of code here.
_____
import csv
from xml.etree import ElementTree
infile = raw_input(“Name of xml file: “) # ask user for file to convert
# create name output file, same as input file replacing .xml with .csv
out = ” ”
for letter in infile:
if letter != “.”:
out += letter
else:
break
out += “.csv”
# parse input file
with open(infile, ‘rt’) as f:
tree = ElementTree.parse(f)
#identify data to export to .csv
out_data = []
out_data.append(‘beta’) # header column: variable we’re interested in
out_data.append(‘source’) # header column: name of file being converted
for node in tree.iter(): #iterate through .xml file
if node.tag == “{http://www.dmg.org/PMML-4_1}PCell”: #look for the tag holding the variable we’re interested in
beta = node.attrib.get(‘beta’) #grab data from variable we’re interested in
out_data.append(beta) # add data to output
out_data.append(infile) # add name of converted file to output
# write .csv file
out_file = open(out, “wb”)
csv_writer = csv.writer(out_file, quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE)
count = 0
for row in out_data: #iterate through output data putting commas and line breaks in correct places
count += 1
out_file.write(row) # write data to .csv file
if count%2 == 0:
csv_writer.writerow(” “) # we’re outputing two columns of data, so add a line break if two columns have been added
else:
out_file.write(“,”) #else, add a “,” to seperate data elements on the same row
out_file.close() # close file
print “wrote %s” % out
media literacy education article
This is just out today: Levine, P. (2014). Media Literacy for the 21st Century. A Response to “The Need for Media Education in Democratic Education.” Democracy and Education, 23 (1), Article 15. It’s an invited response to Jeremy Stoddard’s fine piece “The Need for Media Education in Democratic Education.” My response is not a critique but just a complementary perspective. The abstract:
We cannot pretend to educate young people for citizenship and political participation without teaching them to understand and use the new media, which are essential means of expressing ideas, forming public opinions, and building institutions and movements. But the challenge of media literacy education is serious. Students need advanced and constantly changing skills to be effective online. They must understand the relationship between the new media and social and political institutions, a topic that is little understood by even the most advanced social theorists. And they must develop motivations to use digital media for civic purposes, when no major institutions have incentives to motivate them. Until we address those challenges, students will struggle to make sense of the new media environment, let alone take constructive action.
The post media literacy education article appeared first on Peter Levine.
Don’t Miss Our Tech Tuesday Call with Consider.it on 5/5
As we recently announced, NCDD is hosting another one of our Tech Tuesday events next Tuesday, May 5th from 2-3pm EST. We have had many folks already register to join us, but there is still room, so make sure to sign up today!
During the call, we will hear from Kevin Miniter, the co-founder of Consider.it – an innovative dialogue software that helps regular people participate in a facilitated conversation where they identify their common ground, sticking points, and misconceptions as they build toward consensus on a topic. Consider.it also powers the Living Voter’s Guide that informs tens of thousands of Washington voters every year.
This talk with Kevin promises to be a very informative, especially for those of us who have been looking for or are interested in ways to integrate more technology our dialogue work.
Don’t miss this great opportunity! Register today by clicking here!
The Past is Public
Earlier this week, I attended the final “Tisch Talk in the Humanities” of the semester. This new series was launched by Tisch College to explore the intersections of humanities and civic work.
The final talk was on “neighboring,” a concept that was here taken to mean – essentially the opposite of “othering.”
When we “other” somebody we set them apart from ourselves. We emphasize difference and reinforce an “us” versus “them” dynamic.
Neighboring doesn’t mean abolishing differences, but rather embracing the broader commonalities of proximity.
We are all people. We are all in the same boat.
These are the declarations of neighboring.
An interesting point emerged from this conversation. Peter Probst, a professor of Art & Art History at Tufts, started discussing neighboring not only in the present tense, but in the context of history – in the context of preservation.
The past is public, he argued.
What we think of as history is actually a collection of individual stories brought into a collective whole.
That collective whole is jointly owned as “history,” but individual stories still have the right to resist the dominant narrative.
Thus preservation can be an act of neighboring, as historians seek to honor individual stories and include diverse narrative as part of the public whole.
If the past is public, then we all must be good stewards – not only of history but of our neighbor’s truths.
