tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1 2010-03-19T15:41:15Z A blog for civic renewal Movable Type 3.33 tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1804 2010-03-19T14:46:22Z 2010-03-19T15:41:15Z

Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman recently introduced the "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2011" (PDF). This legislation would allow the executive branch to name any person (citizen or non-citizen, whether in the US or overseas) as...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt PDF). This legislation would allow the executive branch to name any person (citizen or non-citizen, whether in the US or overseas) as a "high-value detainee" who can be held in military custody and interrogated without appeal and without Miranda rights. The act applies to anyone who "is suspected of engaging in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means in violation of the laws of war, or of purposely and materially supporting such hostilities ..." Criteria to be considered in deciding whether to throw someone in the brig include "potential threat," "potential intelligence value," and "such other matters as the President considers appropriate." The Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General make the ultimate decision-- except when they disagree, in which case the President decides. I hope it goes without saying that this is execrable legislation, monarchical or even dictatorial in its essence, and an insult to the core principles of the United States Constitution. But what interests me is the politics. Until 2008, only civil libertarians would have been alarmed by such a bill. They were a subset of the Democratic base, and their party did not control the executive branch. Right-wing anti-government libertarians were terrified of terrorists and highly trusting of the Bush administration; thus many (not all) of them would have supported the bill. And the mainstream voter didn't care much about civil liberties. The political alignment favored legislation like this, although nothing as bad actually passed under George W. Bush. Now we have a Tea Party movement composed of libertarian-leaning conservatives who are almost as afraid of the president as they are of terrorists. I think it would be easy to line them up against this bill. I'd use this line: "When President Obama and his Attorney General get really fed up with Glenn Beck, under this law, they can throw him in jail and there's no appeal." I know that President Obama would do no such thing. (And I know, just to be clear, that Glenn Beck is no terrorist.) But the Tea Partiers' fear is real, and in this situation, it should create a majority coalition against arbitrary executive power.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1803 2010-03-18T17:41:50Z 2010-03-18T18:04:40Z

I'm taking a training course for managers at Tufts, in which I learn techniques for assessing staff performance, mentoring, and so on. The idea is that Tufts University is a single entity that succeeds or fails as a whole. The...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt is an entity--a nonprofit corporation--that charges nearly $50,000/year for its main service (undergraduate education) and is heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Those of us who receive Tufts paychecks need to promote the valid goals of the university in an efficient way. We could call Tufts a "bureaucracy," but that isn't a term of abuse. Bureaucracies arise to reduce slack and get things done. At the same time, Tufts is several other things: It can be a seen as a partially democratic community, in which autonomous agents (especially faculty and students) make collective decisions after giving reasons in public. Hence the faculty "senate," the student government, the newspaper, and the right of tenure, meant to protect freedom of speech. The Tufts community does not stand alone; faculty, in particular, also belong to disciplinary associations that are self-governing and quite powerful. It can be seen as a zone of individual autonomy. An academic doesn't want to be The Man (or Woman) in a Gray Flannel Suit. Academics set a high value on doing what they think is right in relation to their own readers, students, colleagues, and The Truth. Autonomy trades off against bureaucracy and also against democracy, since one's colleagues may not know what is right. It can be seen as a market competitor. Tufts is like a firm, competing with other universities (and some private companies) for faculty, students, grants, and contracts. Insofar as Tufts is a competitor, it must operate internally like a bureaucracy in order to ensure that its "agents"--faculty and staff--promote Tufts' interests and not their own. But it is not autonomous. The market, not the Tufts administration, decides what to value. If, for example, a senior professor gets an offer from Brown, we must match it to hold onto her. So Brown has made a decision about our personnel. Finally, Tufts can be seen as a collection of individual entrepreneurs who are maximizing their own salary, security, status, fame, and quality of life in a marketplace. They are expected to seek external offers, publish for international audiences, form teams with colleagues at other universities, and otherwise pursue their own market position. I don't actually believe that the ideals of democracy or autonomy can prevail, although they have some actual force and deserve moral respect. I think a university must be something of a bureaucracy and something of a platform for individual entrepreneurs. The hard part, for me, is when these competing values clash in borderline cases. For example, there may be a single process for evaluating, supporting, and disciplining all employees. But if the tenured faculty cannot actually be disciplined, the process is merely formal for them while it is highly consequential for receptionists and food workers. It is important to be clear about when we are each kind of institution, and why.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1802 2010-03-17T13:26:38Z 2010-03-17T13:35:16Z

In lieu of a substantive post on this busy day, some links about public deliberation ... A new CIRCLE study finds that reorganizing a high school to encourage daily meetings about school policy boosted voluntary service. ... The deliberative democracy...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt CIRCLE study finds that reorganizing a high school to encourage daily meetings about school policy boosted voluntary service. ... The deliberative democracy field responds to the Coffee Party movement. ... Detroit has a new plan for school reform that was developed in a highly deliberative way.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1801 2010-03-16T15:28:30Z 2010-03-16T15:19:11Z

(Phoenix, AZ) I'm here for the final stages of administering a federal educational test. That's an immensely complicated business, with more steps and people involved than I would ever have imagined. To mention just one glimpse into the whole operation:...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt them standardized tests) and then trained. The training requires a detailed scoring guide for each test item, with many examples of real students' work. The training also requires trainers, who must be selected and trained. The trainers of the trainers, in turn, must be selected and trained. They all need guides and materials. As each group does its work, their performance is monitored by computers, and discrepancies are identified and rectified. The guiding principles are consistency, standardization, reliability, and transparency. This is all very Weberian--it is a highly refined bureaucracy. And so it must be: test-takers and the public deserve consistency and transparency, and therefore everything must be recorded, disclosed, standardized, and tracked. Fittingly, we meet in a windowless room off a highway in suburban Arizona, surrounded by vast banks of computers. (More than 1 million individual essays will soon be scored at this center.) The contemporary philosopher Jürgen Habermas distinguishes "system" from "lifeworld." The system must be organized and structured along Weberian principles. The lifeworld is authentic and human, but disorganized. As my colleagues and I review real samples of student work for the purpose of creating general "system" policies, the lifeworld emerges. The scanned copies of handwritten essays contain idiosyncratic outbursts, cute misunderstandings, and wild misspellings--evidence of life that it's our job to codify. Habermas argues that system and lifeworld should be mediated by the "public sphere," by open and fair discussion of values. The design and implementation of federal tests involves countless value-judgments--for example, whether and how to define students' race. We on the federal advisory panel discuss such issues, but we have limited discretion, because legitimate decision-making power lies with the Congress and the public, not with any so-called experts. To the greatest extent possible, I would like to see educational standards, assessments, and statistics be topics of public inquiry and debate. None of it is secret, but the public debate is frustrated by an excessive deference to experts, superficial media, and a narrow focus on a few hot-button issues.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1800 2010-03-15T14:51:50Z 2010-03-15T14:52:43Z

(Phoenix, AZ) In my forays into social science (I am trained as a philosopher), I tend to read and write about variables that can be attributed to individual human beings. Individuals vote or don't, they graduate from high school or...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt Dynamics of Contention by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly (2001) helpfully reminds me that there is more to life than that. These authors are concerned with the causes and courses of "contentious politics": social movements, revolutions and revolts, secession, communal violence, and waves of strikes. They analyze mechanisms, processes, and episodes. Episodes are large historical events like the collapse of the Soviet Union or the achievement of political rights by African Americans. Mechanisms are specific phenomena that occur during episodes, such as competition among factions, repression by authorities, radicalization, or the diffusion of unrest from one community to another. A specific example (as an illustration) would be "cultural appropriation." When the French revolutionaries beheaded aristocrats and displayed their heads on pikes, they were appropriating the ancient ritual of execution used for treasonous nobles. When African American pastors began calling volunteers to the front of the church for civil disobedience, they were appropriating the traditional "invitation" period at the end of a revival meeting. These acts of appropriation were mechanisms within episodes. In between mechanisms and episodes are processes, which are concatanations of mechanisms. For example, the Civil Rights struggle in the American South between 1955 and 1964 was a complex process that included many mechanisms (diffusion, violent repression, recruitment, brokering among groups, etc.). McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly emphasize that mechanisms combine in various unpredictable ways to create processes, whose outcomes are also unpredictable. There is no general pattern, such as rise-and-fall or radicalization-followed-by-collapse. But the mechanisms have general properties and logics. For students of social change, the lesson is to look not only at individual attributes but also at group-level phenomena. A survey might never identify a historically momentous process, because only a small number of people may be involved, and even they may not know what they are doing until it is all over. The Patriots at Lexington and Concord knew they were defending some weapons; they had no idea they were creating a new nation. A survey taken in 1775 would have missed the process entirely. For activists who want to change the world, the lesson is not only to promote changes in populations or in members of specific groups and programs. We must also use the best available and practicable mechanisms in the best combinations to achieve good outcomes. Learning to identify appropriate recipes seems an essential task for both research and practice.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1799 2010-03-12T15:20:54Z 2010-03-12T15:29:46Z

(Philadelphia) In preparation for his visit to Tufts on March 17 (which you should attend if you are in the area), I have been re-reading Doug McAdam's book Freedom Summer. It is one of my favorite works of social science,...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt his visit to Tufts on March 17 (which you should attend if you are in the area), I have been re-reading Doug McAdam's book Freedom Summer. It is one of my favorite works of social science, combining sensitive and moving narrative history with a persuasive quantitative method to generate numerous important insights. One of McAdam's significant themes is the role of the roughly 1,000 Freedom Summer volunteers in creating the New Left and the Counterculture of the late 1960s. In 1964, the volunteers were deliberately recruited from high-status universities and well-connected, rich or comfortable families. (The goal was to bring media attention and federal assistance when such elite students were arrested and beaten.) They arrived in Mississipi in chinos and short hair, often motivated by mainstream religious doctrines, and believing in the essential soundness of national institutions. They left radicalized, not only in their political opinions and diagnoses, but also in their career commitments and their ways of life. They literally left Mississipi in blue jeans, ready to form communes on their home campuses, where they were received as heroes and leaders. Take the blue jeans: McAdam explains that seasoned SNCC staff wore denim in Mississippi to fit in with the agricultural workers whom they were trying to register. There was nothing cool about jeans in mainstream youth culture in 1964. But the SNCC staff seemed enormously cool to the 1,000 Freedom Summer volunteers, who imitated their clothes and idioms. Pretty soon they were back at Harvard and Berkeley, wearing denim and saying "dig it." And the communes: McAdam writes that the original plan was to place the volunteers in African Americans' homes. That worked in some cases, but because of the violence or threats that host families suffered, it became necessary to house some volunteers together in group homes. Under conditions of exhilaration, terror, anger, and constant internal struggles among volunteers and staff, these homes became hotbeds of conversation and exploration. From cans of shared food money, to midnight meetings, to sexual experimentation, the Counterculture was born. McAdam received attention recently for his study of Teach for America, which found disappointing effects on the participants. Comparing TFA and Freedom Summer only goes so far: nothing can (or should) rival the impact of joining a mass political movement that is the major national news story of the season and that--following the murder of three participants--changes American politics. I am struck, however, by the differences between being young in 1964 and 2008. No recent event compares to the intensity of experience, the deep generational fault-lines and generational identities, or the comprehensiveness of the changes that young people led in the mid-1960s. Many Millennials' parents weren't even born in 1964, yet I think the hangover lingers even today.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1798 2010-03-11T16:34:53Z 2010-03-11T21:24:21Z

Educational "standards" are general guidelines for what should be taught and assessed. They can have the force of law, and policymakers can be held publicly accountable for them. I think the general concept of explicit educational standards is good, because...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt course to rewrite its social studies standards, Texas children would be better off with none. A related question is who should set standards, and for whose kids? Most of the nation's governors and state school superintendents are now proposing a set of uniform state standards that would be voluntarily--but widely--adopted. The goal is to provide one set of good standards (streamlined, thoughtful, and ambitious but not onerous). This effort threatens local autonomy and citizen participation, but also promises to improve existing standards in many states. And the authors have tried to reduce the damage by proposing truly "core" standards in only two disciplines--English/language arts and science math--while leaving much to be decided at the state and local level. My professional concern is democratic education or education for active citizenship. From that perspective, it could be problematic that the proposed standards are not for social studies or civics. National standards for only English and math could narrow the curriculum even further. On the other hand, streamlining standards in those two disciplines could actually increase space and time for civics. Besides, English skills are civic skills, if they are well designed. I have read the proposed standards for English/language arts and see many openings for improving civic education. That seems to be an intention. On p. 2, the document says, "Students who meet the Standards ... reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic." Some specific objectives seem especially useful for civic purposes. For example, students in grades 11 and 12 are supposed to "Analyze how various authors express different points of view on similar events or issues, assessing the authors’ assumptions, use of evidence, and reasoning, including analyzing seminal U.S. documents (e.g., The Federalist, landmark U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions and dissents)." Another example is the standard that says, "Present claims and findings with relevant evidence that is accessible and verifiable to listeners, and use appropriate eye contact, adequate volume, and clear pronunciation." That is a very important skill for civic participation. By 11th grade, students are also supposed to "Cooperate with peers to set clear goals and deadlines, establish roles, and determine ground rules for decision making (e.g., informal consensus, taking votes on key issues, presentation of alternate views)." The general thrust of the proposed Standards is to define outcomes, not methods or approaches, which are left to schools. But sidebars provide advice about methods, and sometimes that advice would be favorable to civic learning. For instance: "To become college and career ready, students must have ample opportunities to take part in a variety of rich, structured conversations—whole class, small group, and with a partner—built around important content in various domains." The standards do not mandate a curriculum or syllabus, but they suggest readings, including "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964) and America’s Constitution: A Biography by Akhil Reed Amar (2005)--good choices. I wish education reform today emphasized constructive ways to get communities involved in education, and this effort is very different: top-down. Yet I would acknowledge that the ideas in the document are thoughtful, not burdensome, and sensitive to democratic values,]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1797 2010-03-10T21:23:50Z 2010-03-10T21:43:56Z

The Administration has sought the help of Edward Tufte in designing Recovery.gov. Tufte is the genius expert on how to present information visually. His books are visually stunning and persuasive. As a result of his guidance, Andrew Romano writes in...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt Recovery.gov. Tufte is the genius expert on how to present information visually. His books are visually stunning and persuasive. As a result of his guidance, Andrew Romano writes in Newsweek, Recovery.gov is "perhaps the clearest, richest interactive database ever produced by the American bureaucracy." It quickly tells you, for example, that very little of the money has been spent so far and that tax cuts are a bigger component than "contracts, grants, and loans." It seems important for Americans to know these things, so that they can properly judge the use of their $787 billion and the Administration's stewardship--and perhaps also improve the performance of government through their advocacy. But in general, we are asking ever more of citizens and expecting them to be able to absorb ever more information. Disclosure of stimulus funding is one example; another is the Supreme Court's assumption that shareholders can discover the political positions of companies and withdraw their investments when displeased. (Apart from other problems with this decision, the duty to survey companies' political positions will impose steep new cognitive demands on citizens.) I think better displays of information are promising and should be saluted. But using public information also requires skills and motivations (no matter how clear and attractive the graphs may be). Civic skills are very unequal and inadequate in the United States, and motivation is uneven. Although some individuals just happen to enjoy using public data, most people are motivated only when they are recruited into organizations or movements that have political or public agendas. Such movements are scattered and relatively weak today. So the paradox is better information, presented better, to a smaller number of interested people.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1796 2010-03-09T15:52:55Z 2010-03-09T17:41:35Z

In China, the Communist Party has held supreme power since 1949. Its original ideology was Marxist and anti-capitalist. Today, the Communist Party is strongly opposed to independent trade unions and favorable to corporate interests. The Communists appoint a leader for...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt work 84 hours/week for $6/month, and the junta has jailed at least 30 trade unionists as political prisoners. The junta is now selling national assets to allies in the private sector. In Vietnam, the only legal party is Communist, and its official ideology is Marxist-Leninist. Yet the country saw the second-fastest GDP growth in the world through much of the 1990s and 2000s, due to heavy foreign private investment and privatization. All workers are enrolled in state labor unions, and the government decides when strikes are legal. The poorest 20 percent of the population gets 7% of income, and almost all of that group are below the poverty line of $1.25/day. These cases reinforce a general and important lesson. It doesn't matter what the original leaders of a political movement say. It doesn't even matter what those leaders privately think and want. What matters is the incentive structure that they create. The communist revolutions monopolized power, and monopoly creates incentives for private exploitation. Justice requires pluralism. That lesson can be hard for people to swallow because we align with the explicit values of one institution (such as the state, the market, or the law), and we don't fully accept the legitimacy of the others. But balance is essential even if that means preserving the power of sectors you don't much like.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1795 2010-03-08T13:22:47Z 2010-03-08T13:54:11Z

I spent Friday and Saturday at an excellent conference on "Barack Obama and American Democracy." It was organized by Tufts historian Peniel Joseph and drew a diverse group of scholars and students, predominantly experts on African American history, politics, and...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt Barack Obama and American Democracy." It was organized by Tufts historian Peniel Joseph and drew a diverse group of scholars and students, predominantly experts on African American history, politics, and culture. The discussion was rich and complex: this Twitter feed offers a feel for it. The question for the final panel was simply: What does Barack Obama mean for American democracy? I said it was too early to tell, but I would break the assessment into three parts. 1. Obama as policymaker will strengthen democracy if he makes government work better and more equitably. Compared to some of the other speakers who explicitly addressed his policymaking, I was more supportive. I think passing a health bill like the one now before Congress would be quite a remarkable achievement, relative to my expectations about what is possible. 2. Obama as political reformer would help fix some of the grievous structural and procedural problems with our democracy, such as campaign finance abuses and the indefensible misuse of the filibuster. Such issues did not figure much in the 2008 campaign, presumably because they were not popular causes then. Thus Obama has no mandate for procedural reforms. Besides, the executive branch has relatively little leverage over these matters (as compared to its leverage in appropriations and foreign policy). Yet demand for deep procedural reform could build in response to the deepening crisis of our institutions, in which case the Obama years may be an era of reform, even if that doesn't originate in the White House. 3. "Democracy" also means the whole repertoire of civic and political acts undertaken by citizens. In many Americans' minds, that repertoire has shrunk to occasional voting and noncontroversial service, and wealthier Americans dominate even those acts. Barack Obama understands the full range of civic action better than any occupant of the Oval Office: he has a record of practicing, teaching, and studying robust and innovative forms of citizenship. His campaign was notable for its creativity in promoting active citizenship. His administration so far has not advanced that cause, but it will be difficult to do so from the White House and I am happy to give the Obama team some time to find its way. Finally, strengthening democracy means tackling the specific crises facing the African American community. After this weekend's conference, I am more sensitive to the dilemmas of Black politics under the administration of the First Black President. African Americans in general are extremely supportive of Barack Obama and want to minimize criticism of him. That means that many are leery of directly advocating issues that disproportionately affect African Americans, lest they put the president in the position of having to pick between Black opinion and White opinion. Yet all other constituencies and interest groups feel free to make explicit demands. Take health reform, for example. The best estimate (albeit with various caveats) finds that a lack of insurance causes 45,000 deaths in the United States each year. Twenty-five percent of adult African Americans lack health insurance, as compared to 15% of whites (source). Thus, in a sense, health reform is an "African American issue." A moderately disproportionate share of the lives saved will be Black people's lives. On the other hand, if any individual or group seriously assessed the highest priorities for African Americans, I don't think health insurance reform would make the top three. Sentencing reform, educational equity, and youth unemployment would top my list. But all of these issues are more divisive and more difficult for a Democratic president to address than health care is. If the president were White, African Americans and others concerned with Black issues would be pressing for reforms on those fronts. With Barack Obama in the White House, the pressure is muted, and that's a problem.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1792 2010-03-05T19:47:40Z 2010-03-05T19:50:10Z

President Obama took office during a terrible recession whose main scourge has been unemployment. He signed a $787 billion stimulus package, billed as a strategy for creating jobs. One year later, the unemployment rate is still almost 10%. According to...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt PDF are here. And according to Gallup, Americans believe that 50 cents of each dollar of federal spending is wasted. Since the federal government spends $3.7 trillion per year, that implies $1.85 trillion in total annual waste, or more than $6,000 of waste per person (adult or child). You would think that a president who presided over a federal government that was understood to have spent three quarters of a billion dollars to create no jobs--a government that annually wastes $24,000 per family of four--would be profoundly unpopular. Yet the president's average favorability rating remains at 52.5%, with 40.5% unfavorable. How can this be? » Barack Obama's personal style evidently appeals strongly to people. They are blaming Congress, not the president. » They may show some tolerance for government waste because they also think that other sectors are profligate. (I would like to see a poll that asked what percentage of your power bill, your bank fees, your kid's tuition, or your car's sticker price was wasted.) » Since the tax code is progressive, the median American is not spending $12,000 on federal taxes. The rich spend much more and pull the mean up. Perhaps people feel that they are wasting a few hundred dollars on ineffective new federal initiatives during the Obama years, and the president is not fully responsible for that cost. Still, the fact that they observe all this waste explains the headwinds the Administration has encountered. No critique of their strategy or tactics is necessary. (When I consider how I would answer these poll questions, I come up with the following responses. The stimulus has created jobs, as many as 2 million so far, but other trends are so bad as to leave us near 10% unemployment. The government wastes money. Interest payments are basically waste, and that eats up 5% of federal spending. The government does not directly waste much money on health care, but it funds a wasteful private health care system to the tune of $829 billion, or 22% of the federal budget. If you assume some waste in other areas (such as defense, which consumes 24% of the budget), you can get to 25 cents of waste on the dollar. Fifty cents seems too high, however, since 26% of the federal budget is simply written as checks for Social Security and Unemployment benefits--and at least some federal medical and defense spending must be valuable. Popular areas like education are so small that they can hardly affect the level of waste.)]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1794 2010-03-04T13:50:05Z 2010-03-04T13:52:07Z

Emerson begins his poem "Hamatreya" with a list of names: Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, and the other founders of Concord, Mass. They speak, telling how they made the land theirs, divided it into parcels, and left it to their heirs. In...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt "Hamatreya" with a list of names: Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, and the other founders of Concord, Mass. They speak, telling how they made the land theirs, divided it into parcels, and left it to their heirs. In the second stanza, the earth laughs as these men try to transform her. The narrator says, "The hot owner sees not Death, who adds / Him to his land, a lump of mould the more." The earth then sings in her own voice: "Mine and yours; / Mine, not yours, Earth endures." When her song is done, the narrator remarks, "I was no longer brave; / My avarice cooled / Like lust in the chill of the grave." That is how Emerson ends. Sixteen decades later, we live not far from Concord. The earth says, Ralph Waldo is dead, turned to grit and mud. Eight more generations have wriggled out, Cried, drunk, grown, worked, shrunk, died since his voice stopped. To me: a few smooth circuits round the sun. I'll still be turning when they all are gone, When something new crawls on my skin, and then When nothing stirs, and dawn means plain white light On silent stone.             But they do swarm on me. Their houses are like dust, but thick dust now. My hills are hard to notice from their car Windows as they fly down tarmac ribbons, Burning carbon they draw from inside me. I whose motion is endless, effortless Salute their grim, relentless harvesting. What are they to me? Just some of my mass, Quivering briefly on my dry surface. Yet when I ask what they are, what I am, What each is for, I find I use their words. They taught me my Concord was beautiful, Its misty lowlands and its pale green hills. If they asphixiate or cook themselves, Who will remember the Concord they found? I am no longer brave.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1793 2010-03-03T11:39:01Z 2010-03-03T11:40:47Z

I will spend today in a meeting with representatives of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, the White House Office of Public Engagement, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the Corporation for National...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt longer version; the Huff Post summary; and a relevant C-SPAN broadcast from last summer. But of course I will be listening with an open mind, learning, and trying to be helpful in the meeting today.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1791 2010-03-02T13:25:34Z 2010-03-02T13:53:35Z

Detroit's population is about half what it was in 1950, the exodus compelled by a permanent closing of factories. Its official unemployment rate is currently 14%, highest of any large city. Its high school dropout rate is 75%. Michigan incarcerates...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt Detroit's population is about half what it was in 1950, the exodus compelled by a permanent closing of factories. Its official unemployment rate is currently 14%, highest of any large city. Its high school dropout rate is 75%. Michigan incarcerates five times as many people as it did in 1973 and spends 20% of its state’s general fund revenue on prisons. But Detroit Declaration seizes the highest ground: "Cities are the greatest expression of civilization. Great cities are filled with people who exercise their talent and creativity as the catalytic risk-takers, doers, and leaders who forge the dynamic marketplace of ideas that grow places into prosperity. We are the people who believe in cities and pledge to align our energies for the benefit of Michigan’s largest and most storied city, Detroit." The declaration proceeds to list 12 principles that are general and abstract, yet carefully constructed to acknowledge Detroit's assets and uniqueness as well as the need to move forward. According to USA Today, 20,000 people have visited the website and 8,000 people have become "friends" of the Declaration's Facebook page. Providence, RI is a handsome and sophisticated city, but it has experienced deep corruption; its unemployment rate is the highest in New England; and its local news media--badly hit by budget cuts--can no longer create a common space for discussion and debate or hold politicians accountable. Enter the UNCaucus, a group of Providence residents who aim to "hire" the next mayor by creating a new unofficial job description, stimulating debate and discussion, covering the candidates, and promoting civic engagement. Like the Detroit Declaration, UNCaucus makes heavy use of Facebook. The Tea Party consists of fellow citizens whose participation is welcome. I reject treating them as dupes of shadowy corporate lobbies or as racists. (Since racism is intermingled with ideology and economics in the United States, no movement is simply innocent--but I would need a lot more evidence before I would uniquely indict the Tea Partiers on that score.) All that said, their brand of politics seems the opposite of what we need. They interpret standard economic policies--like a stimulus during a recession--as signs of immanent tyranny, thus turning our mainstream debate into a struggle for our national survival. That creates a very difficult environment for governance and problem-solving--even if one happens to favor a smaller role for government. The Coffee Party responds in just the right way, it seems to me. Their manifesto starts: "The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them." According to Katie Zernike in today's Times, the "organizers said they would invite Tea Party members to join their Coffee counterparts in discussions. 'We need to roll up our sleeves, put our heads together and work it out,' [a leader said]. 'That's, to me, an American way of doing this.'" Thanks to Facebook, the Coffee Party is now 40,000 strong and growing fast.]]> tag:www.peterlevine.ws,2010:/mt//1.1790 2010-03-01T11:55:02Z 2010-03-02T13:54:29Z

A little more than a week ago, we were in Toledo, that ancient city where Muslim, Catholic, and Jewish faiths and cultures flourished and intermingled between the years 1000 and 1500. We spent the day wandering into cathedrals, mosques,...

http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt A little more than a week ago, we were in Toledo, that ancient city where Muslim, Catholic, and Jewish faiths and cultures flourished and intermingled between the years 1000 and 1500. We spent the day wandering into cathedrals, mosques, and synagogues and along winding alleys that concealed lush patios. The driving wind carried wet snow. My endurance for this kind of thing can be a bit greater than my family's, so at dusk, I proceeded alone to the Hospital de San Juan Batista, a vast Renaissance structure on the outskirts of town. I turned out to be the hospital's sole visitor. I found my way to the chapel and then down into the crypt. Here, several stories underground, are buried grandees from the Spanish ducal house of Medinaceli, one of the most ancient in Europe. They include a duke who was shot by Republican forces in Madrid in the 1930s and his widow who lived alone in the Hospital--in grim splendor--for many postwar decades. I took three steps toward the marble sarcophagi. Someone else took three steps behind me. I turned, expecting to see a guard: no one. I took two more steps, and two more sounded as clearly behind. You know that it was an echo. I knew it, too, but it was quite hard to believe it, hundreds of feet beneath this city of inquisitors, heretics, martyrs, and ghosts. The hair stood on the back of my neck, and I retreated before I could read the names on those tombs.]]>