CivicSolve

For about two years, CivicSolve has been working with the Children's Disability Information Coalition out of El Paso. We began with civic engagement training, moved to planning a civic action and have brought everything together with a proclamation from the City of El Paso, honoring Disability Employment Awareness Month (which is in October) and the city winning a grant to create paid internships with the city for some of the young people who took part in our work together. For some of the people, it will be the first paid opportunity to work that they've ever had.

Being with them as they got to speak directly with the El Paso City Council and having an opportunity to speak myself, really hit home just how far the group had come from not being sure how many would even participate in the civic engagement training to wondering if they would ever say something during the training to watching them publicly stand up for their full humanity as El Paso citizens.

I created CivicSolve in 2013 to help connect communities with their own power and resources to build community through civic engagement. Moments like this is why I do the work. If you're looking to empower your community, check out http://www.civicsolve.com and see how partnering with CivicSolve can help you do more.

This Week's Civic Meditation - Is it time for another "Freedom Summer"? Would that even possible?https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/civic-meditation-11524-another-freedom-summer-cornell-woolridge-m-s--rjfsc

Civic Meditation 12523: 10 Ways to Be a Better Citizen

As we reach 2023’s end, I find myself in reflection about what has been, what is now, and what could be. Many anticipate 2024 as a pivotal year for the direction of democracy in the United States, but the direction and health of democracy all over the world. While the direction of democracy is a lot to consider, in the end, there is only so much that we can do about that. That being the case, I choose to look at what we as every day citizens can affect and control when it comes to the direction of democracy.

I did some research and found a wonderful list from the Brookings Institute of what they call the Democracy 76 Checklist. 76 things that active (or aspiring to become active) citizens can do to improve democracy, see list here: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-bucket-list-for-involved-citizens-76-things-you-can-do-to-boost-civic-engagement/

For the purposes of this civic meditation, I am going to offer my list of top selections from the Democracy 76 and call it the Civic 10. The Democracy 76 is split up in five categories, so I’m picking my top two from each category to give you a wide range of ways to put your mark on democracy and grow as a citizen, because democracy can only grow as we, the stewards of democracy, grow. I would highly recommend you take a look at Brookings’ full list (as it will include helpful links to activities on this list). Every great journey begins with a first step, and I hope you’ll let my Civic 10 help you put your best first foot forward.

This will be my last civic meditation of 2023 as I prepare to spend time with friends, family and gear up for what will surely be a very civically full 2024. I hope the holiday season gives you plenty to be thankful, reflective and hopeful about and until 2024, be well.

Cornell’s Civic 10

1. Host a Purple Conversation with family, friends, or in your school or community to discuss ways to foster civic engagement. Use the tips on facilitating open dialogue from Living Room Conversations.
2. Use your social media accounts to post uplifting information relevant to making our society more civil. The University of Virginia has a helpful guide on civil discourse when talking about politics.
3. Advocate for civic education in schools. Not all states require it, and you can join the CivXNow campaign to push for it.
4. Get involved with the local school board. The National School Boards Association has good tips on how to engage.
5. Volunteer to work at a polling place. To find out how, go to the Election Assistance Commission’s website or contact your local registrar.
6. Make a voting pact with your friends or family. Collectively commit to register and vote. Remind each other regularly. Make a plan to go to the polls together!
7. Read and subscribe to daily local, regional, or national newspapers. Check out Allsides.com for news from conservative, liberal, and centrist points of view.
8. Deep dive into the constitution. The National Constitution Center has an interactive line-by-line breakdown.
9. Volunteer to serve as an officer or member of a group in your community. Volunteer Match can help you connect to groups in your area.
10. Support the teachers at your local school. Ask how you can help and consider starting with supporting classroom projects through DonorsChoose.org.

The bucket list for involved citizens: 76 things you can do to boost civic engagement | Brookings Rebecca Winthrop and Meg Huebeck outline a “Democracy 76” list to provide specific and practical actions that we all can take to be an involved citizen.

Civic Meditation 112723: When Did You Fall in Love with Democracy?

I love movies. I mean, I LOVE movies. I could spend an entire day, an entire weekend, watching nothing but movies. I enjoy many genres of movies/cinema, but one of my top genres is Romantic Comedy. One of my favorite romantic comedies is a movie called “Brown Sugar”, directed by Rick Fukiyama, starring Sanaa Lathan & Taye Diggs. It chronicles a music writer/editor (Lathan) as she navigates the evolution of her life along with the evolution of hip hop. In it, she starts each interview with the question, “So when did you fall in love with Hip-Hop?”

This made me think about this question, but instead of Hip-Hop, in relation to democracy. Democracy is hard work, damn hard work. It requires vigilance, awareness, education, cooperation, collaboration, compromise and constant effort from citizens, administrators, and elected officials, for it to work. All of this is required, while in competition with everything else that life requires from us and all that we require from life. I dare you to consider anything else in your life that asks SO much from you, that you willingly give SO much to, that you don’t also love. You’ll be hard pressed to do it, I promise.

That said, as someone who practices being an example of what I want to see in the world, I’ll answer this question first. I first fell in love with democracy in 1992. I the Spring of that year, my mother, a civic leader who always kept tabs on political goings on, told me about this person running for the Democratic Party nomination for President who I’d never heard off at the time, named Bill Clinton. She thought he had quite a bit to offer as a candidate, but feared he didn’t stand a chance because he was a relatively unknown governor of Arkansas, a small southern state without much to offer electorally. As months went by, Governor Clinton continued to confound expectation and eventually won the Democratic nomination, facing incumbent President George H.W. Bush and eccentric billionaire turned independent candidate Ross Perot in the general election.

In the final week of the campaign, Governor Clinton travelled all over the country, even making a campaign rally stop at a small airport in Fort Worth TX, near my hometown of Arlington. My mother took me to that rally, which was supposed to happen around 8 pm but didn’t end up starting until closer to midnight. I don’t remember what he said, but I remember it was cold, windy and standing in the midst of those people, I’d never felt so seen, so heard, and so united with people who I didn’t know. I knew then and there that I wanted to be a part of bringing people together like Bill Clinton did that night, and the way I wanted to do that was through democracy. There are few things outside of religion that has the power to bring such diverse collections of people together like democracy and that's why I love it.

So...when did you fall in love with democracy?

Civic Meditation 112023: Grateful For Democracy

I was born in Oklahoma (aka Native America) proud of being of Black and indigenous descent. I also grew up loving Thanksgiving, because of the stories taught to me as a kid of cooperation and harmony between pilgrims and “Indians” after the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock and were saved by the “Indians”, unable to survive their first harsh winter. My pride in my indigenous heritage led me to have a very challenged relationship with Thanksgiving after discovering the truth about the relationship between the colonists and indigenous tribes in this country.

My pride in my indigenous heritage became confused upon finding out that the two tribes in my blood line, Choctaw and Cherokee, were part of the “Five Civilized Tribes” and finding out later what it meant to be “civilized”. Being “civilized”, as a tribe, back in the 1800s meant to practice slavery. So, there is a strong likelihood that my Black ancestors blended with indigenous tribes after being sold to them by their original white owners. The history that came together to bring me into being, is rather complicated to say the least (don’t get me started on my white heritage – oof). Complicated as it is, if even one thing happens differently, I might not be here typing these words to you. This is all to say that I am grateful, tragedy and all, that my complicated heritage exists.

I feel the same way about the Federal Democratic Republic (FDR) that currently exists in the U.S. today. The history of our FDR is also complicated. Our FDR was born out of bloody revolution. Our FDR was created to the exclusion of anyone who wasn’t a protestant, land owning, white man. Our FDR’s founding document, the U.S. Constitution, is dangerously vague about some of our most important rights as citizens, including not exclusively securing the right to vote for all citizens. All of those issues are just about its creation and not even touching its current existence. Still, without our FDR, many of the things we take for granted, like freedom of speech and equal protection under the law, to name a few, would not be protected.

The ability for citizens to come together and fight for their equitable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, like the disability group out of El Paso, TX (Children’s Disabilities Information Council) that I’m consulting with as a civic engagement trainer, isn’t possible outside of a democracy like ours. The passionate dialogue currently going on all over the U.S. about our country’s role in the Israel/Palestine conflict, wouldn’t be possible outside of our FDR. Honoring marginalized communities like the transgendered with today’s Transgender Day of Remembrance, isn’t possible without our FDR. With all that is wrong in the world right now, I choose to take this time, during a complicated holiday, to be grateful for the gifts that come from our complicated democracy.

Dear reader, I am also grateful for you. Thanks for reading.

Civic Meditation 111323: Next Level Democracy

I’ve spent most of my civic meditations focusing on everything from citizenship as rebellion to unlocking democracy 30 minutes at a time. All of this has been with a focus on engagement and democracy, because I believe as former Great Britain Prime Minister, Winston Churchill famously said,

“No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I am a champion of democracy because it’s the best we have…for now. I champion civic engagement because civic engagement gives us opportunities to unlock our potential as humans and as citizens and practicing such engagement benefits us both individually and collectively. But what exists beyond our current form of democracy? What’s next? As Churchill said, “…except for all other forms that have been tried from time to time.” In the grand scheme of societal systems, democracy is relatively new and untested.

The United States has the longest lasting democracy in the history of the world at 236 years (1787 [ratification of the constitution] – 2023), outpacing Norway (started in 1814) by 27 years and the Netherlands (started in 1815) by 26 years. Earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old, and democracy, beginning in Athens in 805 BCE, is only 2531 years old. So, to say that the experiment of democracy is young, would be a severe understatement. That’s the bad news. Here's the good news, young things still have a chance to grow into phenomenal things that are different in all the right ways, than their younger version.

As the world’s longest, continuous democracy, it is on the U.S. to innovate and push democracy to its next level of development. I’ve already mentioned, the most recent innovation to U.S. democracy, Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), which asks voters to rank their candidates, making run-off elections obsolete and gives candidates incentive to have substantive campaigns that attract voters instead of politically violent campaigns that detract voters. Most innovation like RCV, motor voter, same day registration, tend to be on the technical, election side of democracy, but what about the education and engagement piece?

What if civic engagement was tax deductible? A more civically engaged community will provide community benefits including economically, so why not give it economic value? What if we treated domestic civic service in a similar way as we do military service? People could be recruited into civic service, commit to a length of service, be trained and taken care of, and receive similar benefits and opportunities for growth and advancement?

Democracy is still very much a child in the world and will only grow up if we challenge its boundaries and encourage development. It’s time that we let democracy grow up and it’s time that we grow up as citizens.

Civic Meditation 11723: War or Peace Time Civic Engagement

I was talking with a good friend of mine yesterday. She brought up concerns around polling numbers showing weakness in support for President Biden as presumptive Democratic Nomination for President in 2024. The specifics of our conversation are not important, but what is important is the foundational question at play in our conversation. Should our current conditions dictate how and where we engage as citizens in the political process?

My friend contends progressives have had to hold their nose too many times and vote for the lesser of two evils when it comes to Democratic politics and at some point, must take a stand for what they believe in and force the issue. Taking a stand might look something like dumping Biden as nominee and replacing him with someone more dedicated to ensuring the passage of a strongly progressive agenda. I share my friend’s frustration and disappointment in what feels like incremental movement of progressive principals by the Democratic Party at the federal level, especially when compared to the seeming rampage from the right during any instance that it gains power.

I’d love to snap my fingers and have universal healthcare, universal basic income and mandatory municipal, county, state, and federal civic education for K-12 students. Unfortunately, I have the knowledge that as I type and you read these words, there are people attempting to instill their interpretation of Christian nationalism at every level of electoral politics from school board trustees to governors to Presidents. The GOP leader, currently in court facing 91 separate indictments, has been reported as trying to figure out how best to weaponize the White House against his political enemies and anyone who dares push back against his will, upon re-election.

To say these are difficult political times would be a tragic understatement. Trust in government is at a modern time low, but worse, we have people who are feeding on our distrust and apathy, all to bring about an autocracy in democracy’s clothing. This 8/18/23 WaPo article lays out some of what we’re up against, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/18/american-democracy-political-system-failures/. We are currently at war with ourselves about who we are, where we’re going, and how we’re going to get there. For several elections now, you’ve probably heard someone say, “Democracy is on the ballot!”. Well, they’re probably underselling the stakes a little.

War does not allow for luxuries, only necessities. In a war for our nation’s very identity as a bastion of self-governance and freedom, we don’t have the luxury of trying to find the “ideal” candidate. We must stand behind those who stand behind nation’s foundational values and make them the best leaders we can, until we enter a time of peace and can afford the luxury of choosing between good and better, instead of having to choose between good and evil.

Civic Meditation 103023: Unlocking Democracy, 30 Minutes at a Time

Today, I went to my local polling place to fulfill the most basic part of my responsibility as a U.S. citizen, I voted. I had to get dressed, get in my car, and drive about four miles, which took about a combined 20 minutes. The polling place is a sub-courthouse, serving several functions along with being a voting location, so I had to look around a find the actual place with the voting booths. When I walked up and greeted the election administrators, I heard “Number three!”. I’ll assume the person who made the declaration noticed the puzzled look on my face and clarified, “You’re the third person to vote here today.” Another fellow election admin chimed in, looking rather sad, saying “We had 42 yesterday.”

From getting dressed to walking out of the voting location after voting, took about 30 minutes. 30 minutes. Now, stop for a moment and think about how many mundane everyday things you do that take you 30 minutes or more? If you’re life is anything like mine, that list is probably at least 5 – 10 things long. Now, look at that list and consider how of those things have the ability to make a difference like help retired teachers get a much-needed raise in retirement benefits, help communities be able to create new parks, help reduce property taxes for homeowners and help ensure reliably clean water for people all over your state? These are just a few of the propositions on the ballot for the constitutional election I just voted in.

This is the difference that, as of the time I went to vote, only three people before me (with the voting location already opened three hours) and only 45 people the day before, had decided was important enough to take time out of their day to do. Now, I get that depending on your circumstances (access to vehicle, physical ability, work/childcare, location, etc.) the act of voting is not nearly as convenient for others as it was for me. AND, living in Texas, where sports are on par with faith and family, I also know there are plenty of people who make time to watch their beloved sports team(s) play every week, but can’t be bothered to give some of that time to help others and maybe even themselves live a better life.

Before voting, I debated online with a longtime friend of mine about a professional athlete, I saw as using his platform to say some dangerous and ignorant things. My friend defended his right to say such things under 1st Amendment freedoms, which I whole-heartedly agree with, but I took it a step further, pointing out that 1st Amendment freedoms - like all other freedoms -come with responsibility when living in a civil society. It is detrimental to all freedoms we take for granted, when we only embrace the freedom, but not the responsibility. We each and collectively, are the key that unlocks democracy, but we must take the time and energy, even when we’d rather be doing something else, to turn that key, every chance we get.

Civic Meditation 102323: Reconnecting With Civic Discourse

There was a time when people spent time discussing, exploring, debating, addressing, and forming the questions of their time. This kind of thing happened in public forums, open and informal debates in the public square, and more recently, in formally set up debates – like the Munk Debates (https://munkdebates.com).

“In today’s fast-paced world, who has time for such luxuries?” is a question you might be asking yourself and you’d be right to do so. It is all that the average person can do just to get enough sleep, enough to eat, have enough time to get in work, time for friends, family and maybe even yourself, without adding something like public conversation into the equation. This seems like an obvious dilemma as old as time, but alas…this is a fairly new problem for society. Before the industrial revolution, when we had more of an agrarian society, we made time for conversation and public discourse with other members of the community.

For Hamilton fans, the song, “Farmer Refuted” where the titular character really gets to show his stuff, in public debate with a citizen speaking out against the Continental Congress who had decided to revolt against King George’s taxes. While entertaining, the song serves as an example of the kind of public debate that regularly occurred when significant issues bubbled to the public consciousness. There was still plenty of work to do, but that work had its seasons and there was still time for civic discourse.

Civic discourse is how we check in with each other about what matters to us, what’s going on, what needs to happen, and where we go from here. At best, we might have this kind of forced and directed discourse at a town hall for an election candidate or if you’re really fortunate, an actual elected official. At worst, the closest thing you get to this is a broadcast or cable TV show where formatted segments of limited debate are offered between talking heads who pretty much agree on everything or will never agree on anything.

We talk about voting, holding elected officials accountable, protesting ,and taking action locally, but before any of that happens, we have to talk. We have to practice talking with others in our community about what matters to us and seek to understand what matters to them. We’ll find plenty of places of agreement and disagreement, but most importantly, we’ll find out who we are as a community and only by knowing that, are we able to fulfill our responsibilities as citizens of self-governance. If you can’t find outlets for civic discourse in your community, there are online communities like Civics For Life (https://civicsforlife.org/public-square/), who provide opportunities to engage with others seeking a public square to debate, explore, question and address the issues of our time. While local discourse may be best, we must seek out discourse wherever we can find it.

Civic Meditation 101623: Citizenship As Rebellion

55 years ago, two U.S. Olympic runners on the national stage at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City, each with a raised fist wrapped in black leather – made a statement that reverberated throughout the world and shook the United States to its core. A lot of people then and now, call what Tommy Smith and John Carlos did on October 16th, 1968, an act of protest. I can’t disagree with this idea, but what if their act was something else, something more? What if, their act was a rare, and important act of citizenship?

The U.S. version of Democracy (a Federal Democratic Republic) was born out of protest and rebellion. Protesting King George’s raising taxes on tea, a precious commodity at the time, several colonialists participated in what we now know as the Boston Tea Party. In this now historical act of protest, the men declared “no taxation without representation”. Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos’s act of protest declared that U.S. Black citizens deserved equal access to those rights which Thomas Jefferson said were unalienable and given to each citizen by their creator, namely, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

Two acts of significant protest. Two acts of significant citizenship. So often we separate protest and rebellion from citizenship when, in reality, citizenship requires each of us to be vigilant of those with whom we endow with our power through free elections. Once again quoting Jefferson here, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” Our founders, who established this nation through protests like the Boston Tea Party and revolutionary acts like the Revolutionary War, understood that even a generally well-run democracy can become stagnant and unresponsive, requiring a more disruptive form of citizenship from its citizens.

When you stop and think about it, in a world that has been filled with monarchies, patriarchies and theocracies, a system of self-governance, is in its very nature, rebellious. It says, despite the various perspectives, priorities, values and abilities within a nation we are going to depend upon that diverse collection of people to be able to balance their individual wants and needs with the wants and needs of their respective communities and the country as a whole.

Such an idea was as revolutionary in the 1700s as it is today. Acts of protest and revolution, as Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos, are both important and rare, because they come at a high price see more here (https://www.history.com/news/1968-mexico-city-olympics-black-power-protest-backlash). Alas, when democracy isn’t working or living up to its promise, this is a price that all citizens must be willing to pay, for the price of living without democracy would be much higher.

Weekly Meditation 10523: Faith in Democracy

One of the arguments that has been going on for a while now, especially in my home state of Texas, is over the First Amendment. More specifically, an argument over separation of church and state. I am all for the separation of church and state because a democracy with an official religion is soon to become a theocracy. However, there is something that lives in the heart of both religion and democracy, faith.

Faith? Really? Yes, really. Democracy translates into demos = people, cracy = system, a system of the people. A system for the people and of the people. Such a system depends upon the belief that citizens will be engaged in the process of governing and do so with concern not just for themselves, but for their fellow citizens. Consider that for a moment, a system that depends on belief in citizens’ ability to care as much for others as they do themselves. Faith is the belief in things unseen and democracy is a form of government built on the faith of citizens.

Anyone who believes in a power greater than themselves understands that faith is not easy. Anyone who compares democracy to any other form of government understands that democracy is easily the most difficult one to create and maintain. The similarities are not coincidental and are very much on purpose. The tension within a system that depends on everyone to do their part for it to work is one with potential for tremendous power and tremendous corruption.

You see, the success or failure of this whole thing rests on each citizen’s ability to reward the faith that both the system and each citizen has in everyone else. So, when one of us fails to show up for an election or fails to hold their elected official accountable for their actions, democracy weakens a little bit. As it stands now, we have A LOT of citizens failing to show up in the most basic ways that maintain democracy and helps reward the faith needed to hold things together. It’s no wonder that more and more, the confidence I elected officials and in democracy seems to be dropping exponentially every day.

But here is the great thing about both democracy and faith, the best way to increase it is to do it. To borrow a verse from Christian faith, “Act as if ye have faith and faith shall be given to ye” and to also borrow translation of this verse from one of my favorite characters (Leo McGarry) from one of my favorite shows (The West Wing), “Fake it ‘til you make it.” Even if you don’t believe in democracy, democracy believes in you, because that’s the only way that democracy can exist, as a construct of values and faith acted on by citizens in the best interest of themselves and the greater community.

Democracy just asks us to take the first step and it will meet us the rest of the way. Just, take a step.

Monday Meditation 91823: Change Above Begins Below

For those of you who watch political news what do you typically see? Talking heads stating an opinion about someone or some issue they want people to pay attention to. If you’re lucky, maybe they stumble onto a legitimate point, but even if they do, they rarely miss an opportunity to tell you who is to blame and why they can’t be trusted.

I try to stay away from advice and at best, offer thoughts for consideration, but I’m going to break that practice today. Here it is, STOP WATCHING POLITICAL NEWS. Seriously, stop watching it. I don’t care if it’s Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Newsmax or OANN. This isn’t about partisan preferences, though there’s nothing wrong with those. This is about the health of our democratic republic. Even the best shows are not created with the primary purpose of informing. They are designed to elicit emotion, which would be fine if the average viewer had sufficient civic education and awareness to appropriately direct such emotion.

According to this 2020 Brookings Report (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-need-for-civic-education-in-21st-century-schools/) 1 in 4 people can name all three branches of the federal government and only 17% of people trust elected officials in Washington D.C. to do right by the American people. It would be safe to assume that these numbers have gone down even more since 2020. So, all watching political news is likely going to do for the average viewer is make them angry or depressed and inspire them to do something they are not prepared to do or worse, something that they have no business even thinking of doing (HELLO, January 6th!!).

Instead of sitting in front of your television, devoting an hour of your precious time to political news, try this instead, go to a school board or a city council meeting. I know, it sounds CRAZY, but believe it or not, the people there and decisions they make in those meetings will affect you a lot more than ANYTHING you’ll see on Fox News or MSNBC. You can change minds and policy at the local level much more than the federal level because you’re closer to the action. You go to the same schools, grocery stores, places of worship, parks and movie theaters as your City Council/School Board Member and proximity to power is proximity to change.

Our Democratic Republic was designed with the intent that citizens would make their voices heard at the local and state levels (Democratic) and through those voices, determine who would represent communities at the state and federal levels of government (Republic), where representatives act as proxies for the will and well-being of the communities/states that they represent. Change was always meant to come from the bottom up, but somewhere along the way, we got stuck looking up and stopped looking around. If we want real change, let’s stop looking up at the TV and start looking around our communities, because that’s where change is made.