Democracy 2.0

Bumped. A good opportunity to get some grant money for those working on election year projects. --Mike

I'm excited, and I hope you will be, about the first Democracy 2.0 Grant Summit, launched this week. The first summit is on the impact of money in politics, sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation - so it's free to attend - in partnership with Mobilize.org.

Of course, I work for Mobilize.org but I'm also a Millennial who's experienced the deliberative dialogue process that Mobilize has been working on for the last year - I joined Mobilize in July. This is a major part of why I decided to work for Mobilize.org. I wanted to help build the infrastructure for Millennials to implement the solutions they create to problems that we all face, using peer to peer communications and web 2.0 tools. The success of our democracy in addressing the big, and small, issues of today and the future depends on the creativity and action of our fellow citizens.

After months of information gathering on their website and in the field, and after a conference in which 50 youth leaders worked collaboratively to craft a statement based on their personal experience and the collected data, Mobilize.org has released their first draft of Democracy 2.0: A Declaration of Our Generation. The text, which is not yet available online, is as follows:

Democracy is an unfinished project. It’s time we upgrade.

We, the Millennial Generation, are uniquely positioned to call attention to today’s issues and shape the future based on the great legacy we have inherited. Our founding fathers intended for every generation to build, indeed to innovate, on the American experience. We realize that as young people we are expected to be the leaders of tomorrow, but we understand that as citizens we are called to be the leaders of today.

We are compelled by the critical state of our present democracy to establish a new vision.

In a world often damaged by conflict and intolerance, we must commit to develop common ground through equality and open mindedness.

In a world often damaged by social isolation and materialism, we must commit to community at the family, local, national and global levels.

In a world often damaged by instant gratification, we must commit to creating sustainable solutions.

In a world often damaged by apathy and disillusionment, we must commit to civic participation and inclusion of all voices.

The present state of our democracy impedes opportunity for real change. We must connect the specific issues failing our population with their underlying systemic causes.

Our government seems unable or unwilling to adequately address our broadest problems, including economic inequality, America’s role in the world, and the effect of money on the democratic process. But we must remember, our government is only as effective as the sum of its citizens. Low civic participation means the most disadvantaged people in society are neglected and we overlook many potential solutions to our problems.

Our generation is telling a different story. We are uniquely positioned to foster community engagement through social networks of all kinds. It is our responsibility to use information and technology to upgrade democracy, transform communication and advance political engagement and civic participation.

We are social networkers, we are multi-taskers, we are communicators and we are opinionated. The informality of our generation breaks down traditional barriers and opens doors for inclusiveness and equality. Most importantly, we are leaders in a society that yearns for leadership.

It’s our democracy, it’s time to act.

In my previous coverage of this project, I noted that attempts at creating generational statements of purpose seemed to happen once or twice every decade in politcs, and that Mobilize.org would need to clear a number of hurdles if their project was to be both useful and effective at provoking change in our political system. First, it would need to be inclusive of many different groups - something frequently not the case in the past, since manifestos seem to get written by a small cadre of like-minded individuals working in private.

In response to the first issue, Mobilize.org seems to be on their way to success. The current document was written collaboratively by a diverse group of 50 individuals who, with the help of a discussion moderator and electronic voting tools, synthesized responses of over 1000 individuals to an initial survey posted on the Mobilize.org website. These individuals were a mix of Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Greens, and spanned all race/ethnicities except for Native American.

The resulting document (above), is itself only a draft. Mobilize.org will soon be posting it on their website along with a wiki and inviting anyone to comment and suggest edits. In December, 435 individuals, one from each Congressional District, will convene to further refine the document, which they will then bring back to their districts.

The second obstacle that I identified was was that of utility. Will those 435 organizers use the document and push it out in their districts? And If so, will the document actually increase the effectiveness of youth organizations or bring about a change in the attitudes or understanding of our issues among politicians?

On this account there is still much doubt about the ultimate effect this document and the Democracy 2.0 project will have in changing our politics. The document contains numerous statements of intent and purpose, yet many of these could be twisted towards the purposes of either Democrats or Republicans. Committing to the family at the local state and national level doesn't say how government should proceed on issues like Choice or abstinence only education. Advocating for sustainable solutions could equally mean less-effective mechanisms that "protect" the economy (read fossil fuel companies), just as much as it could mean Apollo-program size investments in a new energy economy.

This is itself, a feature, not a bug, in the eyes of Mobilize.org and the Democracy 2.0 team, who strive to be "all-partisan," yet without more specificity, it's hard to see how the document could be an effective roadmap leading a generation toward a concrete resolution of the problems it identifies. Rather it provides cover for all sides to stake a claim as addressing the concerns of the younger generation without guaranteeing a break in the partisan gridlock we now face.

I continue to find this odd, because we know that young people have ideas about these issues. A declaration that makes no firm commitments cannot be said to represent the voice of a generation that has shown allegience towards certain solutions to our society's problems.

A final thought. The statement encourages its readers to act, yet makes no mention of the fact that young people are acting. The climate change movement has received a huge burst of energy from young people looking to get involved. Voter turnout is rising dramatically, and dozens of new political and civic organizations founded by young people have started in recent years. Generational change has long been afoot, and it seems anachronistic and out of touch for the Declaration of our Generation to be so unaware of the environment in which it exists.

I'm not giving up on this project - far from it. I'll reserve my final judgment until I see the document that comes out of December's Party for the Presidency and those 435 representatives begin to move from documentation to implementation of these ideas.

So here's a question: Does the Millennial Generation needs a political manifesto?  Would there be value in a new Port Huron statement?  And is such a thing even possible in today's political, technological and cultural environments, which are all substantially different than the time during which P.H. Statement was written?

I ask these questions because this week I received a message on my FaceBook account from a group called Mobilize.org, an "all-partisan" organization that is intent on creating a new document, called Democracy 2.0, A Declaration of Our Generation, and use it as a jumping off point to engage Millennials in a campaign to "change our government" (whatever that ends up meaning).

This is something that tends to happen every decade or so in American youth politics.  I'm by no means a scholar of these manifestos, but off the top of my head I can think of two recent attempts - Third Millennium in the early and mid 90s, and more recently the Principles Project in 2005.  From what I can tell, Third Millennium took the fiscal conservatism of Gen Xers (balanced budget, fix social security), which was made safe by Clinton's economic policies, and tried to craft a statement that would drive a youth political movement around those issues.  Comprised mostly of young white guys, with a statement of principles written by a smaller group of said white guys, it was not very representative of Late Gen-Xers or early Millennials.  It didn't gain much traction in the cultural zeitgeist, and most people don't even know about it today.  The Principles Project - an offshoot of the now defunct 2020 Democrats - tried something similar, though all drafts beyond the first draft were part of a group wiki, allowing a more collaborative, open creation process.  Even with a more open process, and buy-in from a fairly diverse set (cultural and political) of the [dot]Org Boom youth organizations that were created in 2004, that too gained little traction.

As far as I can tell, Mobilize.org's plan runs something like this.  For the next four months, they will propose a series of questions on their website, the answers to which will be incorporated into a draft statement.  Sample questions include:

1. What currently works and what doesn't work in our democracy, and specifically, what should the role of government be?
2. What characteristics define our generation and how can these traits help us redefine our democratic process?
3. What should Democracy 2.0 look like and what action items must we take now to help create a more citizen-centered approach to democracy?

Added to this statement will be some quantitative research obtained through an online survey.  This document will be considered a first draft, which will then be used to provoke discussions at a number of conferences, the final of which will be The Party for the Presidency - a gathering of 435 local activists, one from each Congressional District.  As part of the Democracy 2.0 distribution strategy, it will be the job of these activists to produce some sort of final consensus which they will then push to other local activists and apolitical folks in their district.  

I think the problems with these types of statements come down to this: