Monthly Archives: April 2017
The Future of Family (IF Discussion Guide)
The 48-page discussion guide, The Future of Family, was edited by Jeff Prudhomme and Jack Byrd, and published from Interactivity Foundation in the fall 2013. This guide explores the evolving ways in which families are shaped, and takes into consideration how to shape policy with the varying ways in which family is defined. In this guide are nine contrasting public policy options concerning the family unit for participants to explore regarding how policy questions and concerns.
You can view the discussion guide in full on IF’s site and it can also be downloaded as a PDF for free here.
What makes a family a family? Who should get to decide the answer to this question? What does family mean to us as a society? When does the notion of family become a matter of public concern? What might the future hold in store? These are the kinds of questions at the root of the following exploration of the future of the family.
Our idea of family continues to shift with changes in cultural norms and in demographics. In a culturally diverse society, what roles should cultural heritage play in policy decisions about the family? Different cultures have different ideas about how families are formed, how big they should be, and the roles people have within them. Speaking of different family roles, what about changing our ideas about gender roles and of human sexuality? How might public policy for the family take these into account?
Other social changes will impact our family policies. If we face an increasingly aging or mobile population, what concerns might arise for families? What about the economic concerns facing families? How might public policy respond to each and all of these concerns? What are the values or moral considerations that might shape these policies? What are the rights and responsibilities in regard to the family that public policy should take into account? How should we approach the relationship between political power and the family? What are other moral, legal, or political concerns that our family policies might need to address?
A group of 12 of your fellow citizens worked together to think through questions such as these as they explored the future of the family. This discussion project was unique in that it involved the participation of Interactivity Foundation fellows and staff as a way to provide them with direct experience as participants in our discussion process. Still, as with all of our reports, the ideas presented for discussion do not represent the opinions or policy recommendations of the participants or of the Interactivity Foundation itself. The goal of the participants was to think broadly about various concerns about the family as a public matter. Participants went on the generate contrasting ways that our society could address these concerns. These contrasting approaches are captured here as nine conceptual policy possibilities.
In what follows, you’ll find a brief description of the policy approaches our society might take as it seeks to address policy questions and concerns regarding the family unit. What the panelists have to offer are ideas that could be useful for you to discuss as your consider the future of the family in a democratic society such as our own.
The PDF version of this report is available for download here.
About the Interactivity Foundation
The Interactivity Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that works to enhance the process and expand the scope of our public discussions through facilitated small-group discussion of multiple and contrasting possibilities. The Foundation does not engage in political advocacy for itself, any other organization or group, or on behalf of any of the policy possibilities described in its discussion guidebooks. For more information, see the Foundation’s website at www.interactivityfoundation.org.
Follow on Twitter: @IFTalks.
Resource Link: www.interactivityfoundation.org/new-discussion-guidebook-future-family/
Participatory Rural Appraisal
Method: Participatory Rural Appraisal
Shifting Problems Is The First Rule For Safe And Pleasant Life
Using Data Mapping to Help Reclaim Urban Commons
Big Tech understands the power of data to advance its interests. It’s time for commoners to do the same, especially in urban settings.
A pioneer in this style of high-tech activism is the Brooklyn-based group 596 Acres, whose name comes from apparent number of acres of vacant public land in Brooklyn in 2011 as determined by the NYC Department of City Planning. Since its founding that year, 596 Acres has ingeniously used various databases to identify vacant lots throughout the City that could be re-purposed into public gardens, farms parks, and community meeting spaces.
Paula Z. Segal, an attorney who works with the Urban Justice Center in New York City, explained in a blog post that shortly after its founding in 2011, “the 596 Acres team started hunting down all available data about city-owned land. Once we got the data, we worked to translate it into usable information. For each publicly owned ‘vacant’ lot we found, we asked two questions: 1) ‘Is this lot in use already?’ and 2) ‘Can you reach this lot from the street?’”
The group used a combination of automated script, Google Maps, the interactive community maps at OASISNYC.net, and gardener surveys done by a NYC nonprofit, to identify the unused lots accessible from the street. It discovered that there were approximately 660 acres of vacant public land in New York City, distributed across 1,800 sites. But putting this land to better, public uses required commoners to organize and pressure elected officials and city bureaucrats to transfer ownership and allow the creation of new green spaces.
There is a backstory to 596 Acres’ activism: In the 1990s, many New Yorkers converged on trashed-out parcels of city land, converting them into hundreds of community gardens. This amazing surge of commoning helped to humanize the cityscape while, as a byproduct, raising property values for adjacent buildings in the neighborhood. People could undertake this work only because the vacant lots were open and accessible. (In the era of Mayors Guiliani and Bloomberg, by contrast, any vacant lots are fenced, effectively thwarting the reclaiming of vacant lots and abandoned buildings for commoners.) Guiliani sought to sell off the land that commoners had reclaimed, provoking a fierce backlash that resulted in the creation of scores of community land trusts to manage the gardens.
Now that vacant lots are fenced, 596 Acres post signs on the fences informing neighbors that the land is actually publicly owned (i.e., government, not commoners, has title to the land). The signs invite people to organize to try to convert the unused lots into gardens or parks. To help move this process along, 596 Acres has created online maps giving detailed information about each vacant lot – who is the registered owner, the land's legal status, city departments and politicians who should be contacted, etc.
Living Lots NYC now serves as “a clearinghouse of information that New Yorkers can use to find, unlock and protect our shared resources.” The site features a searchable database and map of 899 “acres of opportunity” on 1,337 sites, and 1,186 acres of community projects on 584 sites. The map also includes colored dots showing where people have access and where people are organizing to liberate land. A primary goal of the site is to “broadcast what is know-able [about vacant city land parcels] and to help people find one another on a property-by-property basis.”
Paula Segal explains that:
Wherever possible, the goal is a permanent transfer of public land to the NYC Parks Department, or private land to a community land trust. But sometimes creating a temporary space for a few years until other planned development moves forward—arranged via an interim use agreement—is the only achievable outcome.
In each instance, residents must navigate a unique bureaucratic maze: applying for approval from their Community Board, winning endorsement from local elected officials, and negotiating with whichever agency holds title to the land. Along the way, 596 Acres provides legal advice, technical assistance, and a network for sharing best practices from successful campaigns.
Some of the benefits of building power this way have been unexpected. In January 2015, when NYC’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) published a list of 181 “hard to develop” properties that they would sell for $1 to developers willing to build affordable housing, we were able to quickly analyze the list and find out that it included 20 community garden lots. Six of those were gardens that had been formed with our support.
Within three weeks of the list’s publication, over 150 New Yorkers, including four City Council members, were rallying on the steps of City Hall. By the end of that year, the administration had transformed 36 formerly “interim use” spaces to permanently preserved NYC Parks Department gardens, including fifteen of the gardens on the January list. Using our network, community gardeners had preempted a major threat, ensuring that the largest wave of garden preservation in NYC history would happen without a legal battle.
596 Acres has now moved beyond vacant lots, focusing on how inaccessible and neglected NYC parks, buildings and post offices could be put to better use.
In collaboration with the Urban Justice Center and Common Cause/NY, 596 Acres also operates a website called NYCommons that helps people learn more about New York City’s public spaces. Some 3,243 properties are listed, with colored dots indicating whether the property is a library, post office, waterfront facility, public housing, garden, vacant lot, whether “development is pending” and if organizing [against “development”] is underway.
“Some are opportunities to organize new spaces for integrated community services,” writes Segal. “Others we hope to preserve in the face of a real estate market hungry for places it can transform into luxury development.” Many of of the neglected land parcels, parks, community centers, public baths, rest rooms and buildings are in low-income communities of color -- victims of the city’s fiscal crisis and class-driven policy choices in the 1970s.
I’m impressed with how database-driven maps can be used to galvanize and assist citizen campaigns to reclaim the city. It suggests that commoners should convene more “inter-mapping” confabs to trade insights and develop database activism.
Using Data Mapping to Help Reclaim Urban Commons
Big Tech understands the power of data to advance its interests. It’s time for commoners to do the same, especially in urban settings.
A pioneer in this style of high-tech activism is the Brooklyn-based group 596 Acres, whose name comes from apparent number of acres of vacant public land in Brooklyn in 2011 as determined by the NYC Department of City Planning. Since its founding that year, 596 Acres has ingeniously used various databases to identify vacant lots throughout the City that could be re-purposed into public gardens, farms parks, and community meeting spaces.
Paula Z. Segal, an attorney who works with the Urban Justice Center in New York City, explained in a blog post that shortly after its founding in 2011, “the 596 Acres team started hunting down all available data about city-owned land. Once we got the data, we worked to translate it into usable information. For each publicly owned ‘vacant’ lot we found, we asked two questions: 1) ‘Is this lot in use already?’ and 2) ‘Can you reach this lot from the street?’”
The group used a combination of automated script, Google Maps, the interactive community maps at OASISNYC.net, and gardener surveys done by a NYC nonprofit, to identify the unused lots accessible from the street. It discovered that there were approximately 660 acres of vacant public land in New York City, distributed across 1,800 sites. But putting this land to better, public uses required commoners to organize and pressure elected officials and city bureaucrats to transfer ownership and allow the creation of new green spaces.
There is a backstory to 596 Acres’ activism: In the 1990s, many New Yorkers converged on trashed-out parcels of city land, converting them into hundreds of community gardens. This amazing surge of commoning helped to humanize the cityscape while, as a byproduct, raising property values for adjacent buildings in the neighborhood. People could undertake this work only because the vacant lots were open and accessible. (In the era of Mayors Guiliani and Bloomberg, by contrast, any vacant lots are fenced, effectively thwarting the reclaiming of vacant lots and abandoned buildings for commoners.) Guiliani sought to sell off the land that commoners had reclaimed, provoking a fierce backlash that resulted in the creation of scores of community land trusts to manage the gardens.
A new resource from CIRCLE: Reaching All Youth Strengthens Engagement (RAYSE)
(San Antonio) My CIRCLE colleagues have produced a user-friendly online tool called Reaching All Youth Strengthens Engagement (RAYSE). It provides information about youth voters (and potential voters) in every county of the US. It’s meant to help organizations and movements allocate their resources effectively. It’s designed to inform a range of agendas. You could use it to identify counties where an additional youth voter is most likely to affect the outcome of the 2018 election, or where highly disadvantaged youth are most prevalent, or to learn more about the counties where you already know you want to work.
In early 2016, CIRCLE launched the Youth Electoral Significance Index (YESI), which ranked states and congressional districts that showed high levels of youth engagement (and factors that correlate with engagement) and that were expected to be politically competitive in 2016. The RAYSE Index complements YESI. Whereas the YESI ranked states and congressional districts by the potential impact of youth on voting results in 2016, RAYSE looks at counties, provides data on forms of civic engagement beyond voting, and allows the user to choose priorities instead of providing a single ranking.
More Than a Seat at the Table: A Resource for Authentic and Equitable Youth Engagement
The article, More Than a Seat at the Table: A Resource for Authentic and Equitable Youth Engagement (2016), was written by Rebecca Reyes and Malana Rogers-Bursen, and published on Everyday Democracy. This article explores several challenges when it comes to youth engagement and offers solutions to more effectively engage young people. It is important to engage young people in meaningful ways and for them to be a part of the key decision-making processes. Use this article as a way to gauge if your processes are inclusive of young people and how to improve those processes to better engage youth. Below is an excerpt of the article from Everyday Democracy, and can find the full article with all the examples of the specific challenges and solutions here.
From Everyday Democracy…
If you’re working on creating change in your community, it’s important to include all kinds of people in decision-making, including young people. The insight and talents of young people can bring value to any community change effort, yet community groups led by older adults sometimes find it hard to involve younger people, or keep them engaged.
We’ve led workshops on youth engagement to help people explore challenges they may face and think about possible solutions. People of all ages and from many sectors contributed their ideas for successfully engaging young people in their efforts. We’ve compiled a number of challenges that you may have encountered in your work or that may come up in the future, along with ways to address these challenges in your group.
There are many barriers young people can face that prevent them from getting involved. The barrier may be logistical, such as a meeting time or location. Even when we get young people to the table, they might not feel like they have an equal voice or decision making power.
Whenever we bring young people onto a planning team or steering committee, we need to make sure they’re making a meaningful contribution. Think back to how you were involved as a young person. Would you have been satisfied if you were asked to join a sports team, but were never allowed to play? What about if you volunteered with a group, but weren’t given any specific task to do? Or if you didn’t see the impact you were making at your workplace, however small?
Ultimately, the goal is to create intergenerational work with equitable relationships. This means that young people not only have a seat at the table and contribute in a meaningful way, but they are also a key part of decision-making. Engagement is just the first step.
Before you bring young people onto the team, it’s good practice to have a conversation about why it’s important to include young people and how you envision them contributing. Make sure everyone is on board and understands young people’s value.
Another important step is setting ground rules. This can help make sure that people have equal voice in meetings and respect for each individual’s opinion regardless of age.
The challenges and solutions you’ll read about can come into play no matter which age range you’re targeting, but you should define as a group what you mean by “youth” or “young people.” We define “youth” as anyone who is middle school and high school age, typically between the ages of 12-18. We define “young adult” as anyone between the ages of 18-30, and “young people” as anyone under 30. It’s also important to recognize that there are many different experiences people may have, even within these age ranges.
Note that young people aren’t the only ones who might face some of the challenges listed below. When you address these barriers, you’re being inclusive of many groups of people.
This is an in-depth list that is meant to be used as a reference whenever issues arise. Feel free to scroll through the list of scenarios and solutions, or click one of the links below to jump to a specific challenge:
– Understand how young people can contribute
– Making meetings and events appealing to young people
– Young people may not be aware of unspoken norms and practices
– Experience barriers
– The norms and practices are set and communicated by adults
– Young people have limited voice in meetings
– Allowing young people to try something that didn’t work in the past
– One young person is asked to be the voice for their peers
– The same young people are always invited
– Microaggressions get in the way of building bridges between generations and cultural and racial identities
– Decisions made by planning teams don’t reflect the diversity of the community
About Everyday Democracy
Everyday Democracy (formerly called the Study Circles Resource Center) is a project of The Paul J. Aicher Foundation, a private operating foundation dedicated to strengthening deliberative democracy and improving the quality of public life in the United States. Since our founding in 1989, we’ve worked with hundreds of communities across the United States on issues such as: racial equity, poverty reduction and economic development, education reform, early childhood development and building strong neighborhoods. We work with national, regional and state organizations in order to leverage our resources and to expand the reach and impact of civic engagement processes and tools.
Follow on Twitter: @EvDem
Resource Link: www.everyday-democracy.org/tips/authentic-and-equitable-youth-engagement
NCDD Members Win Big in Bridge Alliance Grant Competition
In case you missed it, we wanted to highlight the fact the a total of nine different NCDD member organizations were awarded grants as part of first round of the Bridge Alliance‘s Collective Impact competition. We think having so many NCDD members win grants in a competition aimed at helping transpartisan groups “to better collaborate on ways to fix political processes on the local, state, and national levels” is a huge testament to the powerful work that our network does. We invite you to join us in congratulating Bring it to the Table, Davenport Institute, Essential Partners, Healthy Democracy, Institute for Local Government, Living Room Conversations, National Institute for Civil Discourse, Public Agenda, Village Square, and all of the other winners!
You can learn more in the Bridge Alliance’s announcement below (we’ve marked the NCDD member orgs with an asterisk) or find the original here.
The Bridge Alliance Collective Impact $500,000 Grant First-Round Projects, March 2017
Recognizing that organizations cannot effectively bridge the broad political divide alone, the Bridge Alliance is awarding up to $1 million in Collective Impact grants in 2017 to enable our member organizations to better collaborate on ways to fix political processes on the local, state and national levels. We are pleased to announce today the awarding of more than $525,000 in inaugural grants, to be shared by two dozen Bridge Alliance member organizations.
These joint projects will help members implement and test innovative approaches in our Alliance’s three core areas: expanding civic engagement and participation; improving governance; and reforming campaign and election processes. The programs are designed to generate tools, ideas and best practices for all Bridge Alliance members to use and to multiply the impact of each group’s work.
Additional grants will be awarded later this year, financed in partnership with Invest American Fund and others.
GOVERNANCE
- Improve the workings of state legislatures nationwide bybringingtogether legislators from across the country to study how to talk with others with opposing views and how to reach policy decisions without or with minimum acrimony.
Collaborating Bridge Alliance members: National Institute for Civil Discourse*; State Legislative Leaders Foundation; National Foundation of Women Legislators. Grant amount: $50,000 in two phases.
- Make local government meetings and decision making more effective by distributing a toolkit to make public meetings more productive and guide how people inside and outside of local government perceive and communicate with each other.
Collaborating Bridge Alliance members: Public Agenda*; Cities of Service; Institute of Local Government*. Grant amount: $45,000
CIVIC PARTICIPATION & ENGAGEMENT
- Help people and groups find opposing forces who are willing to talk and stimulate dialogue between those of differing viewpoints by creating an online “matchmaking site” to help divergent Bridge Association members and others find each other for open conversations on difficult issues.
Collaborating Bridge Alliance members: AllSides, Living Room Conversations*, Digital Citizen. Grant amount: $65,000
- Find out if voters can make better-informed decisions on initiatives and referenda, by expanding and testing new Citizen Initiative Review Panels’ voter information guides in a California demonstration project.
Collaborating Bridge Alliance members: Public Agenda*, Davenport Institute*, Healthy Democracy*. Grant amount: $60,000
- Enable open conversation between leaders and groups with diverging views, with a test project in Utah to train civil discourse facilitators who will lead and teach others how to find common ground for discussion.
Collaborating Bridge Alliance members: Essential Partners*, Living Room Conversations*, Village Square*. Grant amount: $45,000
- Improve government decision making and civic participation by better informing people of government procedures, successes and roadblocks, by creating, testing and distributing a new series of radio, TV and webcasts.
Collaborating Bridge Alliance members: AllSides, Living Room Conversations*, Bring it to the Table*, Coffee Party. Grant amount: $38,000
- >Harness the power of social media to showcase positive acts of governing instead of just the negative, through research, tests and the participation of social media experts and companies
Collaborating Bridge Alliance members: Civil Politics, Living Room Conversations*, Village Square*. Grant amount: $25,000
- Create a new model for Americans of different backgrounds and beliefs to come together in face-to-face conversations, with social media tools and guidelines to allow all Bridge Member groups, other organizations, and individuals to organize powerful “circles” and moderated dinners for cross-party dialogue and civil debate.
Collaborating Bridge Alliance members: 92Y, Village Square*. Grant amount: $90,000 in two phases
CAMPAIGNS AND ELECTIONS
- Educate voters where new election processes are in place or under consideration, such as open primaries and ranked choice voting.
Collaborating Bridge Alliance members: Fair Vote, Open Primaries, Reconsider Media, Independent Voter Project. Grant amount: $35,000
- Encourage and enable more people to run for public office, with social and other media outreach to potential candidates and the public at large, to foster a more representative, responsive, and functional government.
Collaborating Bridge Alliance members: Centrist Project, Independent Voting.org, Represent.Us. Grant amount: $60,000
You can find the original version of this Bridge Alliance announcement at http://www.bridgealliance.us/collective_impact1.