This morning, I was on “Radio Times” with Marty Moss-Coane. That’s a call-in program of WHYY-FM in Pennsylania. The MP3 file is here, for those who like to listen online or download podcasts.

My fellow guest was Martin Carcasson from Colorado State, a great proponent and practitioner of deliberative democracy at the grassroots level. I think we agreed that the protesters are exercising free speech, expressing views that belong in the political debate, and should be treated respectfully as citizens (not as robots operated remotely by special interests). On the other hand, a format for discussion that encourages angry individual speeches is pretty alienating for most citizens and is a poor source of information or enlightenment. We could do better–although both Martin and I noted that the political and media environment work against deliberative politics; and even good forums might be vulnerable to hostile takeovers.

One great model is Oregon Health Decisions, an elaborate series of public discussions that created the Oregon Health Plan. Citizens were able to make difficult tradeoffs–for example, between preventive and palliative care–and produce a durable policy. The question is whether that would be possible under the harsh and competitive conditions of national politics today.

After the show, we got a long email response from a listener who wanted to document (with 17 links to stories on TPM and Huffington Post, among other sources), that “these disruptive and anti-democratic tactics were designed and spread by right wing organizations and vested industry and Republican interests.” I think some angry speakers have been mobilized by interest groups. (By the way, mobilization is a legitimate democratic technique, as is the technique of arguing that one’s opponents have been manipulated.) At the same time, I believe that deep and broad skepticism about government is another major cause of these protests. It isn’t all manufactured, even if some of it is. We progressives ignore that skepticism at our peril.

At last week’s meetings in Washington, about 100 proponents of democratic reform, representing several different traditions and flavors, came together to develop a common agenda that was welcomed by the White House as advice. I was one of a fairly substantial minority that put the development of civic skills on the agenda. It occurs to me that civic skill-development is the defining goal of my own work and of the main organizations I work for, CIRCLE and the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service.

Skill- or capacity-development is always a central purpose and outcome of admirable popular movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement in the US, the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, or the Labor Party in Brazil. The need for skills–as well as confidence and knowledge–is very obvious when one works with disadvantaged people. In contrast, good-government reformers tend to focus on procedural changes and may overlook the need for people to change in their minds and hearts.

I worked for two years for Common Cause and remain a strong supporter of theirs (and of the League of Women Voters, of which I am a member). I agree with them that it’s essential to reform the rules of campaign finance, legislative districting, and the Senate. But there is a reason this is a middle-class agenda. Although procedural reforms would disproportionately benefit low-income people, low-income people are not likely to fight for such reforms or use the new rules to their advantage. These matters are too abstract and distant to engage without specialized skills. (But working-class people have other skills that they can use effectively in social movements.)

At CIRCLE, we study how young people develop the skills they need to be effective citizens. At Tisch College, we teach such skills and are becoming increasingly deliberate about selecting the important skills and developing appropriate curricula. These are just two examples of initiatives underway in civil society.

For the government, I would recommend the following agenda:

• As AmeriCorps is tripled in size, make it an essential goal to develop the civic skills of participants.
• As the Administration implements the remarkable presidential memorandum on transparency, participation, and collaboration, make sure that each project and program that involves civic engagement includes an element of skill-building for the public and for federal managers.
• Make civic education a high priority in federal education law.
• Invest in federal programs that provide trainings, conferences, toolkits, etc. for civic groups that collaborate with the government.

My family and I are taking a short New England vacation until Friday, when I’ll fly to San Francisco for the American Sociological Association’s annual conference. On Saturday, I’ll speak at a presidential plenary session of the ASA, entitled “Why Obama Won (and What that Says about Democracy and Change in America).” Until then, I’m planning to go offline and avoid both the consumption and the production of blogs.

(Washington, DC): I’m at Strengthening Our Nation’s Democracy II, a conference organized by Demos and by two organizations on whose boards I serve, AmericaSpeaks and Everyday Democracy. About 100 proponents of democratic reform have convened to develop a common agenda. One goal is to interact with the White House, which has sent four high-level officials to speak and some others to participate in discussions. Their remarks are “off the record,” to permit candor. For that reason, and also because of the complexity and richness of the conversation, I will not attempt to summarize the way they think about civic renewal and democracy.

But I am struck by a problem. Some members of the administration, not including the president, are probably committed to “interest-group liberalism.” They think their job is to pass fair, just, and helpful legislation. They see a public divided into organized interest groups, whose leaders represent their rank-and-file. Unfortunately, interest groups’ power is unequal: the US Chamber of Commerce has much more power than the National Coalition for the Homeless. So a major task of a progressive administration is to inform, listen to, and mobilize organizations that represent the disadvantaged. Meanwhile, legislation is very complicated, elaborate, and fast-moving. Most Americans cannot possibly follow all the details, so the White House has both the need and the ethical responsibility to discuss pertinent aspects of each proposal with interest groups that especially care.

Most of participants at this conference, on the other hand, reject interest-group politics. The political reform groups (League of Women Voters, OpentheGovernment.org, etc.) have a progressive model, in which the “common good” means abstract and general rules that apply to all. The proponents of deliberation and dialog want open-minded and diverse citizens to discuss issues, learn from one another, and break out of interest-group categories. The popular education and civic education people want to go straight to the grassroots and empower people, without organized and professionalized intermediaries.

I suspect that when White House staffers look down from the podium at our group, they feel reinforced in some of their interest-group liberal assumptions. They see a predominantly white, upper-middle-class, professional audience with a significant sprinkling of professors and Beltway experts. They do not see representatives of the public interest, but rather a particular special interest–the “good government” lobby.

This is partly unfair, because the streams of political reform that are represented in the room have deep resonance for disadvantaged American communities and often emerged in the Civil Rights Movement or community organizing. But the impression is real and is substantially our fault. When we pull together leaders for high-level meetings, we somehow end up with a bunch of Ivy League professors and Washington lawyers.

(Madison, WI) The original starfish story, very popular among proponents of service:

Once a man was walking along a beach. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. Off in the distance he could see a person going back and forth between the surf’s edge and and the beach. Back and forth this person went. As the man approached he could see that there were hundreds of starfish stranded on the sand as the result of the natural action of the tide.

The man was stuck by the the apparent futility of the task. There were far too many starfish. Many of them were sure to perish. As he approached the person continued the task of picking up starfish one by one and throwing them into the surf.

As he came up to the person he said, “You must be crazy. There are thousands of miles of beach covered with starfish. You can’t possibly make a difference.” The person looked at the man. He then stooped down and pick up one more starfish and threw it back into the ocean. He turned back to the man and said, “It sure made a difference to that one!”

Some variants:

1. Once a man was walking along the beach, where he saw hundreds of stranded starfish. He said, “Starfish, what are you going to do to get yourselves off this beach?” The starfish replied, “There is nothing we can do. The natural action of the waves has deposited us here. It has always been thus, and thus shall it always be.” The man said, “You are the ones you have been waiting for. Organize yourselves into a chain, pull yourselves back into the water, and then figure out a way to prevent this debacle from recurring.” The starfish felt empowered, studied engineering, organized themselves into an effective construction crew, built a breakwater, and nothing as bad ever happened again.

2. Once on a beautiful day a man was walking along the beach when he saw another man going back and forth throwing simple echinoderms back into the ocean to save them. Over the course of a several hours, he saved about 3 percent of these brainless organisms, 47 percent of which were destined to die anyway due to their long exposure on the sand. Seagulls watched as this man reduced their main food source. Meanwhile, off in the distance, huge condos were being constructed on the fragile ecosystem thanks to lax environmental regulation. The first man, a developer, chuckled. It occurred to him that a good name for the massive casino he planned for this spot might be “The Starfish.”

3. A man was walking down the beach, where he noticed a whole bunch of stranded starfish. He had read that starfish have market value, so he reached down to harvest one for his own profit. “Hands off, exploitative human,” said a voice, which came from the very starfish he had touched. “We are not your property and we don’t need your help getting back to the sea. We have second stomachs that can expand to engulf prey such as yourself when we are threatened. Come on, fellow asterazoa, let’s use our hydraulic vascular systems to propel ourselves back into the watery global commons whence we came.” The man watched slack-jawed as the starfish marched into the surf chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, greedy humans have to go.”

4. A big mean shark was swimming close to the shore, eating starfish. The little creatures decided to go up onto the beach for awhile, because they can lie in the sun for a few hours without drying out, and the shark would swim away. Then a manic do-gooder started throwing them back in, one by one. Each starfish that he threw in was immediately gulped down by the ravenous leviathan. Finally, a brave little starfish reached out a foot and tripped the man, who fell face down in the surf and was immediately swallowed whole by the shark. Sated at last, it swam away to sea.