Monthly Archives: August 2013

young people on guns and gun control

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A Black Youth project study entitled “Gun Violence and Public Opinion on Gun Control among America’s Young People” presents data that should be basic to the national debate, along with some relatively surprising findings. First, almost half of White youth (18-29) recently carried a gun or know someone who did. Less than one in four Black and Latino youth report that experience. Yet Black and Latino youth are much more supportive of gun control. Given a choice between protecting the rights of gun owners versus controlling gun ownership, Black youth favor control by a three-to-one margin, but a majority of White youth prefer gun owners’ rights. Two-thirds of Black and Latino youth would ban assault weapons, versus just over half of White youth. Perhaps more interesting is the finding that two thirds of Black youth support having “More police/armed guards in public places like schools and malls.” Considering the frequent tensions and complaints involving those guards, that is interesting. It may reflect something of a Hobson’s choice: more guns or more armed guards. After all, almost one quarter of Black youth say that they or someone they know “experienced gun violence in the last year,” versus just 8.3% of White youth.

 

 

having one conversation for 26 years

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(Salem, MA) I am here for a retreat of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, where I work. In the summer of 1987, I came here for a retreat of the Charles M. Kettering Foundation, where I served as an intern between my sophomore and junior years in college. I’ve been back to Salem since then–we don’t live very far away now–but I recollect the first retreat forcefully. Early impressions bite deeply; later experiences just leave surface scratches.

The 1987 retreat was my first business trip: we could charge meals and get reimbursed for them. It was one of my first times sitting around open tables with water pitchers and notepads, talking about what an organization should do. (How many hundreds of such meetings have I attended since?) It was not my first time in an old city, because I had been privileged to spend years of my childhood in Europe, but it was my first time in an old American town. I remember thinking that Salem’s crooked, narrow streets and houses with historic placards were exotic. And it was one of my first discussions about civic engagement: why do Americans not participate as much as we would like in civil society and politics, and what should we do about that?

Now I am grey and “experienced,” a board member of the Kettering Foundation instead of an intern. We’ve seen Prague Spring, Bowling Alone, Points of Light and AmeriCorps, the Tea Party, Occupy. I can’t remember the conversation in 1987 well enough to be sure, but I would bet our analysis is more sophisticated now. People at the 1987 retreat–and many of their colleagues–have done important and valuable things in the past quarter-century. The large-scale trends, however, have mostly been for the worse.

indicators of civic engagement (DDB = DDB Needham Life Styles Survey. GSS = General Social Survey)

If I’m fortunate still to be having these conversations in 2039, I hope we will be able to point to upward trends, not necessarily in the measures depicted above (for instance, newspapers will probably be defunct), but in their functional equivalents.

keeping the state close or at a distance

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(Salem, MA) This is a table from a chapter of mine entitled “Social Accountability as Public Work.”* (You can click to expand it.)

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The table refers to two examples from the same volume. In his chapter, Samuel Paul describes how nongovernmental organizations in Bangalore surveyed representative citizens to develop “report cards” for municipal agencies. When the press publicized the results of the surveys, government officials took action to remedy the problems that the citizens had identified. Sometimes, processes like these are actually launched by governments to fight corruption. The Obama Administration’s transparency initiatives (now forgotten because of the NSA surveillance story, but actually quite significant in their own way) reflect a similar model–information is supposed to activate and inform citizens to improve government.

In her chapter, Lily Tsai describes Chinese village temple community councils that organize religious and communal activities. Members directly produce public goods through their own hands-on work. Local governmental officials are discouraged from leading the councils, which are religious bodies, “but as ordinary members of the temple group, they diligently fulfill their obligations to contribute to the good of the group.” Tsai also describes government officials involved in a similar group who “used their personal connections with higher level officials to secure a bank loan” for the organization.

In both stories, citizens influence the state. But the relationship is very different: detached in one case, highly cooperative in the other. I think persuasive arguments can be made for both kinds of relationship, and both have perils (alienation on one hand, corruption and bias on the other). The two stories also represent divergent models of citizens, who are seen as monitors in the Bangalore case and as producers of public goods in the Chinese temples. Ultimately, I think we need a bit of both; I doubt that transparency measures will make much difference  unless people are also organized and active in groups that provide direct services.

*in Sina Odugbemi and Taeku Lee, eds, Accountability through Public Opinion: From Inertia to Public Action (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2011), pp. 291-306

nonprofits that serve low-income citizens can boost their turnout

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My colleagues and I played a role in the latest report from Nonprofit Vote. I’ve offered the following summary: “Political participation is highly unequal in the United States, and efforts to engage the lowest-income Americans are scattered and under-resourced. One highly promising strategy is to integrate nonpartisan voter registration and outreach into the activities of nonprofits that serve the poorest Americans. The new report from Nonprofit VOTE shows that this approach worked in 2012 and should be strengthened for 2014 and beyond.”

first review of We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for

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“Political philosopher and activist Levine (The Future of Democracy) argues that global problems can best be addressed by a targeted increase in deliberative democracy and citizen action. But the U.S. is currently marked by a decline in civic engagement, Levine notes, resulting largely from structural changes since the mid-20th century that have eroded many working-class organizations. Wielding an impressive command of research and statistics, as well as finer points of moral and political philosophy, Levine’s discussion of the benefits and contours of public engagement draw on lucid analogies and real-world examples (like the annual budget summits convened by Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams, which empowered groups of citizens to deliberate on an area of central import to the whole community). Throughout, the message is that deliberative action among diverse networks of citizens goes beyond injecting public influence into the formal policy apparatus. The necessary goal, Levine writes, “is to democratize the whole process of shaping our common world.” Free market libertarians and others wary of civic engagement–especially where it impinges on market forces or the operation of business–will raise objections, although Levine anticipates these arguments to some degree. Broad in scope yet eminently practical, this book should be an enduring contribution to the study of democratic theory and social action.” –Publishers Weekly