Last March 30, I gave a keynote address entitled “Civic Renewal: Theory and Practice,” at “Generations: Age and Citizenship,” the 9th Annual Conference in Citizenship Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit. Here it is. I launch into the actual content just after minute 9.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/GbDS8UZCyE8[/youtube]
At the discussion I moderated yesterday, Ralph Nader said that the AFL-CIO’s leadership once asked him to get the Occupy movement to press for a raise in the minimum wage. He replied: You mean to tell me that organized labor needs a bunch of 20-somethings in flip-flops to lobby for a living wage? Theda Skocpol explained why: unions represent just 9% of private sector workers.
As we were talking in DC, Wisconsites were voting to retain a governor who had broken the public sector unions. Walker got 37% of voters from union households and more than half of the voters with only high school degrees.
The most obvious interpretation is that labor is dead and we need some kind of functional alternative. I’d qualify that by noting that Walker broke the public employee unions (minus the police and firefighters). Those aren’t blue-collar workers. Many hold masters degrees–and Barrett, the Democrat, won 60% of voters with postgraduate degrees. This wasn’t really a neoliberal attacking the blue-collar unions and the traditional working class. They are split by race and don’t form a coherent political force. (“Non-Whites/No College” voted overwhelming for Barrett, whereas “Whites with No College went” 61% for Walker). This was rather a neoliberal attacking the public-sector professional class.
I’m not a big fan of public sector unions, who are often at odds with the people they serve, but the Wisconsin fight was about political pluralism and countervailing force. As Franklin Roosevelt told Congress in an April 29, 1938 Message:
liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
(Washington, DC) Later today, I will moderate a discussion on the state of US democracy at a Kettering Foundation Trustees’ meeting, involving:
… and the Kettering Trustees. One of the Trustees, Dr. Sandral Hullett from Birmingham, AL, will begin by describing the state of politics in her currently dysfunctional city. I hope to use that example to elicit useful perspectives from our guests, who differ in their basic diagnoses and prescriptions. Some are concerned that the political center isn’t holding; others call for a radical populist movement. Some argue that periodical elections are insufficient instruments of citizen control; others believe that we suffer from too much citizen influence. They direct their reformist energies, variously, at campaigns and elections, the federal civil service, educational institutions, Fox News and other media organizations, and citizens themselves.
The discussion will be audiotaped and ultimately turned into a public program. I am hoping for light as well as heat.
Some conservative critics have argued that AmeriCorps encourages young people to take political action in favor of liberal causes or Democratic candidates. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) once predicted it would turn into “re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go work in some of these politically correct forums.”
From the left, critics have worried that the program, which promotes volunteering and has strict rules against political activity, may divert young people toward uncontroversial service and away from electoral politics.
According to a new CIRCLE fact sheet, young adults tend to become more civically engaged during their twenties, regardless of whether or not they served in AmeriCorps. The report shows that AmeriCorps has no independent effect on the chances that disengaged youth will start voting, but it substantially broadens the civic engagement of those who do vote. They also become involved in their communities in non-political ways.
Please see The Impact of AmeriCorps on Voting by Andrea K. Finlay, Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University; Constance Flanagan, Dept. of Interdisciplinary Studies, School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Laura Wray-Lake, School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences, Claremont Graduate University.
The authors used data from a nationally representative, eight-year longitudinal study of more than 3,000 people, comparing those who enrolled in AmeriCorps with those who indicated interest in the program but did not enroll.
As I shuttle among meetings this week, I am looking for common themes.
Tuesday: a gathering of the colleges and universities that have grants from Bringing Theory to Practice (BTtoP). That is a project that aims to enhance: (1) college students’ civic engagement, (2) their psychosocial well-being, and (3) their academic engagement and success. The project and its grantees investigate the empirical links among these three concerns while also trying to improve their own students’ educations.
Wednesday: a board meeting of AmericaSPEAKS, a nonprofit whose most famous product is the 21st Century Town Meeting, a deliberative session for thousands of citizens who are recruited to represent their community and who make collective decisions or recommendations. AmericaSPEAKS also offers other processes that reflect the values of deliberative democracy.
Thursday: an important staff meeting of my own organization, CIRCLE, which tries to enhance the quality, quantity, and equality of youth civic engagement in the United States by providing valuable and relevant research.
Thursday evening-Friday, the Knight Foundation’s Tech for Engagement Summit at MIT’s Media Lab, a gathering of people who develop, study, or promote digital tools for civic engagement.
not to mention …
Monday: a Memorial Day parade through our town, featuring my own kid, who, like her peers, is being raised to make music, learn the tools of success, and become a loyal member of both the local community and the Nation State whose flags and songs surrounded them. (A cynical reflection on the same event from two years ago, here)
What are the common themes? Psychological health requires engagement with other people. Individuals need supportive contexts to develop as citizens.