I?m still at meetings of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, but we?ve now been joined by a diverse group of activists from developing countries (members of the LogoLink network). We?ve gone on a ?field trip? to the Southeast quadrant of my own city, Washington, DC. We?re sitting in a cheerful, well-equipped, modern building in a diverse but basically very poor district. In the city?s Seventh Ward, there?s a low median income, high crime, and a disproportionate number of children and senior citizens, although there is also a high rate (40%) of home-ownership.

We are observing a public meeting of officials representing nineteen municipal departments. Their job is to develop comprehensive solutions to ?persistent problem areas,? such as outdoor drug markets at specific locations. A solution might involve the police (who would make arrests), the department of Public Works (which would tow away abandoned cars), housing agencies (which would build infill housing in abandoned lots), the Fire Marshal (who would fine landlords), the park service (which would cut down overgrowth), and others. Each neighborhood in the city has a similar team to coordinate municipal departments and to encourage citizen population.

The work that we are witnessing today is nested within an ambitious and impressive process for public participation. The City of Washington now convenes regular Citizen Summits at which thousands of residents deliberate about the Mayor?s proposed budget and strategic plan. Demographically representative samples of the city?s population meet for a day in the city?s huge Convention Center and use electronic technology to pool their ideas (a process developed by America Speaks). This discussion has a substantial impact on Washington?s priorities. Specifically, it has caused some redistribution of funds and priorities. As they deliberate, people from wealthy districts realize that the needs are greater in the city?s poor areas, and they come to support redistribution.

The Mayor then develops a contract with each city agency to implement the strategic plan. Performance can be monitored easily online, because agencies commit to tangible targets: e.g., ?put 200 more officers on the street.? Finally, a team is convened in each neighborhood to develop a strategic plan for their more local area. City departments send representatives who are experts on the particular neighborhood and empowered to make decisions on their departments? behalf. We are witnessing a weekly meeting of one such team.

This meeting is interesting to me because I was recently at a libertarian conference at which government was described as inefficient, corrupt, and unresponsive. There were calls for radical decentralization. The main approach that we discussed was to allow private individuals to band together into voluntary groups and purchase services on the market (i.e., privatization). Libertarians argue that they are not anti-political or anti-democratic; in fact, they want more intense and meaningful public participation, and they believe that voluntary associations are most hospitable to democracy. They blame central planners and other government experts for squelching public participation, localism, and pluralism.

Today I am witnessing decentralization and participation within the public sector, as ordered by a big-city mayor. I don?t have enough information to be able to say which approach works better, but I would recommend a certain amount of openness and pragmatism. There may not be a fundamental difference between libertarian and left-liberal approaches to participation. We happen to be meeting in the offices of a Community Development Corporation (a private nonprofit), which operates with government funding but is thinking of selling its services for fees. It has convened city employees to discuss how to coordinate their powers to make arrests, condemn buildings, and otherwise act as Leviathan.

In short, this is a public-private hybrid, in the great American tradition. Strong democrats might see it as an example of creeping privatization and the imperialistic market; libertarians might see the heavy hand of the government and the taxman. I think we?re witnessing participation, accountability, and pluralism.

Some observations about the meeting itself:

I don’t usually list links; that seems a poor substitute for actually writing something here. However, I’m on my way to Montreal later this morning, with little time for blogging. Therefore, let me recommend …

I’m only 37. Almost half the population is older than me. Nevertheless, it’s beginning to seem urgent to preserve certain generic memories before they slip away. For example, a hundred million or more Americans can remember as much of the 1970s as I can, but how many can remember being an American kid in London in that era? Sitting on stacks of old volumes in dusty antiquarian bookshops, reading Horatio Hornblower or Enid Blyton under the skeptical eye of the proprietor; wax paper sheets for toilet paper in the icy “gents” rooms–“Property of Her Majesty the Queen” printed on each sheet. On the streets: businessmen still in pinstripes and bowler hats, children in school uniforms, punks with spikes on their scalps, Indian refugees from Uganda, Saudis in white robes.

Standing when a master enters the classroom (a master with the right to cane us); calling other students by their last names. Warm orange “Squash” served to minors in small glasses in the back rooms of Edwardian pubs. Feeding coins into the electric space heater in the bathroom. Wallpaper with heavy raised patterns, deliberately painted white. German Jews from Hampstead and Chalk Farm fill the seats at chamber music concerts. No fast food–only “cafes” with eggs and sausage on the menu, and “Wimpy’s” horrible English hamburger chain (the beef tastes cured), and Chinese takeouts that serve a fried egg on top of the rice; then a few Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets (“Do you ‘ave them in America, too?”); and then a flood of McDonalds.

Strong accents mark the social classes, none of the more neutral “Thames Valley” dialect that now crosses class lines. Unreconstructed communists in the offices of public utilities frown on a Yankee bourgeois child. Older gents in cloth caps are amazingly proficient–professional, you might say–at boy’s hobbies like stamp collecting, model trains, and wargaming with lead “figures.” Parochial middle-class Englishness comes face-to-face with cosmopolitan outsiders in the great train stations, airports, and museums. Concorde roars overhead, petrol flows from the North Sea, James Bond is on the big screen: Britain is modern.

Obnoxious Americans upstairs in the double-decker busses. Nothing open on Sundays or evenings–which means waiting forlornly for the bus back to London after every business has closed and all one can see are TVs flickering through lace curtains. Perhaps Carter is on the tube, the US humiliated in Iran. The empty lots of London are bomb sites, cleared by the Germans in 1940. Reinforced concrete rises out of the rubble, surrounding old St. Paul’s with brutalist office towers and apartments. Young “mums” with too many kids, chatting in the laundrette. Cadbury’s chocolate bars in the Underground. Adventure playgrounds with murals painted by teenagers on the cement walls. Labour isn’t working, Mrs. Thatcher, the Common Market, the National Front.

I’m enjoying Chicago–which is exquisite on a cool, clear May day–but I’m so fully booked that I don’t expect to be able to post anything until Friday.

I am fortunate to enjoy a lot of variety in my professional life. Yesterday was a nice example. On my way to work, I thought about a seminar from the previous day when several senior colleagues had discussed a philosophical paper of mine. That discussion was challenging, intense, and enjoyable.

When I arrived at work, I wrote yesterday’s blog about Stanley Fish, mainly so that I could send it to a group of people (all targets of Fish’s critique) who have been discussing his article by email.

After some discussion of CIRCLE’s media strategy, I participated in two long conference calls: one for the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, the other for a taskforce of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. Each group is a coalition of organizations and individuals who have banded together to advance their field. Both coalitions have won foundation grants for their core operations, but they also depend upon voluntary contributions of labor from their members. Therefore, the discussion on both calls was largely about how we can work together more productively.

Finally, three colleagues and I picked up a batch of high school kids and took them out into their community to rate grocery stores and supermarkets for the quality of their food. I had drawn up a quick scoring rubric. Students were supposed to assign a store 1/3 of a point for each type of fresh fruit or vegetable it sells, 1 point for whole-wheat bread, 1 point for yogurt, and so on. The kids took their scoring sheets into stores and jotted down notes in the aisles. Twice in a row we were thrown out by managers who said, “You can’t do that here.” (What we were doing didn’t seem to interest them.) I felt increasingly uncomfortable about putting kids in this position–especially since they’re African-American adolescents, who don’t need extra occasions to be treated rudely by store managers. We gradually developed a method for surreptitious assessment. We’d reread our scoring sheets to remind ourselves of the questions, then enter the store, split up, and act like shoppers. It worked pretty well. (The product, for those new to this blog, will be a map to be posted on a community website.)

And now I’m on my way to Chicago for an American Libraries Association meeting on the reliability of online information. I really am grateful for this breadth of daily experience.