Peter Levine

Peter Levine asks this question in tracing the evaporation of the active citizenship theme from the campaign to the White House.

Service and transparency are not nearly "edgy" enough; there is no fight in them. People are angry - from the Tea Partiers to MoveOn. When citizens try to solve serious social problems, they identify enemies. They do not just hold hands and serve together; they strike back at those whom they perceive as threats. "Active citizenship" reduced to non-controversial "service" or downloading government data completely loses touch with the legitimate anger of the American people.

The White House chose to make health care its major focus and included no aspects of civic engagement in the deliberations about the bill, in its advocacy for the legislation, or in the design of the statute. There could have been real public discussions, instead of sham "Town Meetings" that were really speeches by politicians with time for Q&A. Progressive volunteers could have been encouraged to conduct face-to-face dialogues in their communities and to form relationships with one another (instead of merely finding themselves on the receiving end of an email list). The legislation could have included health co-ops as an experiment in engaging citizens in policy.

As Levine notes to close out his piece, the climate legislation, currently "stuck in the Senate," makes for a good starter kit for this new, authentic political dialogue, in which the grassroots is mobilized and the American people are asked to participate. It's audacious in that it could shift the debate away from special interests (or at least make their involvement more transparent), and it could restore more faith in our government. An addendum might be asking C-SPAN to cover these dialogues across America and any administrative meetings in Washington. Obama has already admitted he messed up by not involving C-SPAN in health care discussions.

Last weekend, our friend Thomas Friedman argued that while things are looking up for China these days, America still holds on to the title of "World's Greatest Dream Machine." Unfortunately, Friedman writes, imagination does not translate into good governance. Friedman argues that the increased fragmentation of American society has rendered it incapable of producing optimal solutions to its problems. Friedman's answer?

The standard answer is that we need better leaders. The real answer is that we need better citizens. We need citizens who will convey to their leaders that they are ready to sacrifice, even pay, yes, higher taxes, and will not punish politicians who ask them to do the hard things. Otherwise, folks, we’re in trouble. A great power that can only produce suboptimal responses to its biggest challenges will, in time, fade from being a great power — no matter how much imagination it generates.

Okay, we can work with that. The generic call for more citizenship is a good step for Friedman. But as Peter Levine notes, Friedman stops at generalities when we need something more.

I agree with [the notion that we need better citizens] and have staked my whole career on this premise. But how do you get 'better citizens'? ... I welcome Friedman's conclusion but wish he would get behind concrete solutions.

Levine asserts that any plan to reform the nation's media to encourage better citizenship skills is ill-fated; the increased fragmentation of interests, opinions, and messages prevents even our most charismatic of messengers (Barack Obama) from clearly communicating to the rest of society. Instead, Levine suggests that the development of better citizens can be found in two strategies.

1. Get them while they're young, receptive, and a captive audience. Build really engaging, unbiased, motivating, and informative civic education into the school curriculum. My blog posts categorized as advocating civic education and a high school civic curriculum are about that.

2. Reform institutions so that hands-on participation by ordinary adults is welcomed and rewarding. The theory is that people who see tangible impact from their own civic engagement (mainly at the local level) will want to be informed and to exchange ideas and perspectives with people different from themselves. My blog posts about deliberation and civic reform are about that.

I wholeheartedly agree with Levine's approach and felt it was important to echo this here. We should be doing everything possible, working with organizations like the National Center for Learning and Citizenship (NCLC), to infuse civics education into K-12 education as much as possible. Levine's second strategy is particularly apt in discussions regarding youth involvement in political parties. In 2008, for example, youth were still struggling for representation near the top of the Democratic Party. To create better citizens, targeting education to the young and increasing access to opportunities are far and away better solutions than simply restating the problem.

20-29 year olds with no college experience are half as likely to volunteer as those in the same age group who do attend college, according to a report by CIRCLE and jointly released with the National Conference on Citizenship.

Conducted by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University’s Tisch College and released jointly with the National Conference on Citizenship, the report found that 25 percent of young adults who have attended college volunteered in 2007 while only 11 percent of those with no college experience volunteered. This gap has remained constant since 2002.

Peter Levine, director of CIRCLE, said young people without college experience are underutilized and underestimated: “Studies show all young people want to get involved in their communities, and lack of college experience should not be the deciding factor,” Levine said. “Schools, communities and government need to create more opportunities for all young people, not just the ones with a college education. Volunteering and participation in civic life is an important part of society, and no one should be excluded from an opportunity to do so.”

This activism gap between those youth attending college and non-college youth is something we've written about before here, and as you can see, it continues to exist. While colleges should be doing all they can to develop civic skills in their students, there should also be more focus on those not in college.

Some more information:

Eight in 10 young volunteers became involved by approaching the organization or being asked to become involved. Youth with college experience were more likely to have started volunteering through a pre-existing connection with that organization (33 percent) compared with 21 percent of non-college youth. Of those who started volunteering in some other way, youth without college experience were more likely to have started volunteering through a relative than college youth.

When asked for which type of organization they volunteered, “religious” organizations were the top choice for young people regardless of college experience. Most spend their time mentoring youth and teaching/tutoring, although young people with college experience were slightly more likely to provide professional or management assistance including serving on a board or committee.

Check out CIRCLE's fact sheet from the release here.

GOP duckspeakers continue to allude to the heart of this country being center-right, when in fact this country is neither center-right nor center-left. I say that because right-left notions are tied-up with political rhetoric, not always governing philosophies. The left has got into the game, as well, citing surveys that today's youth are the most progressive generation in modern American history. Regardless if there are facts or not, both are trying to mainstream their ideas on the center/moderate public. The political reality may be that the center-left coalitions are winning today, but as with many things when you take the long view, there are cycles.

The choice isn't between having a left or right cycle, but instead industrialism versus nature and tradition. We are finding out that the actuary systems that govern a lot of our fiscal choices are not all together accurate. And, in fact, given so much weight, in order to maximize profits, that it discounts the human factor. But that's what we're bring back!

In Peter Levine's post, a darker As You Like It, he conjures up Polanyi and overlays what we know about the transformation to a market economy:

In As You Like It, Celia and Rosalind are disinherited. So is Orlando, forced to flee by his rapacious landowning brother Oliver. Oliver also dismisses the old retainer Adam, treating his labor as a commodity and ignoring his family tie. The Old Duke is in Arden because he has been cast off his land. Even Corin the shepherd has lost his ancestral rights. He succinctly describes Karl Polanyi's "Great Tansformation" from the old economy based on family bonds, inherited status, and gifts, to the new one based on private property, contracts, profits, and exchange...

I don't think we can or necessarily would want to return to the "old economy", but that doesn't mean we have to accept the status quo of the modern industrial economy. For one, I think we need to elevate the status of other factors so that they are equally, and sometimes given precedence over other values.

We could put the earth first; a crazy concept I know, but let's think about how King County in the state of Washington puts this into practice. Their motto says it all, "Providing efficient, effective and innovative service." King Country is smart about city planning; in a way, they give nature ultimate rights over country property, because they need to protect their communities' watersheds, which all need to survive. This isn't anything new, however. Other countries, such as Sweden, have been developing new city planning models, which rely heavily on living within the means that nature provides for them. It's as if your mother told you to turn off the lights when you exited a room, it's not so much that it wastes money as it wastes energy.

On the other side of the Pacific ocean, Japanese anime has started to spread to young audiences worldwide. Some of the most popular animes include a theme about the conflicts between the old ways of doing things and the new ways. Many times, this theme is played out theatrically as nature versus industrialization in various fighting sequences. And what a fight it is.

Back in the U.S., we let the cowboy, frontier mindset carry us up into the dizzying heights of the economic stratosphere, only to let us fall plunging back down, without a plan to protect our fall and in complete dissary as to what has just happened. At the individual level the culprit is reckless self-interest. But what happened on a larger level is even more sinister and very correctable; we put more value on financial stocks and bonds and manufacturing products, than we did on raising healthy families and communities and managing our finite resources. Traditional values such as these are back on the rise among America's youth, which should translate into another great transformation. Remember, nothing lasts forever, and that includes our current economic assumptions.

(Then again, energy seems to always be part any human endeavor and perhaps the new economy could value energy, both for efficiency and quality, as the tangible commodity we can use to barter and trade. Just a thought.)

Youth voting was up in 2008, but volunteering was down in 2007 ('08 data will be available later this year). Yet, it's not all bad news, as Peter Levine notes, "They're still volunteering at higher rates than their parents did." Additionally, some of us - depending on when your parents were born - are voting at higher rates, too. (So, stop calling Millennials 'lazy'.)

This news of a drop in high school volunteering may come as a surprise, especially as other stories report increasing service in 2009, which is partly due to the flagging economy and the growing number of under- and unemployed young Americans. CIRCLE's research uses data from the Current Population Survey, the largest public data set gauging the country's volunteerism, which is fielded annually in September. So, 2009 volunteer data still has some time to be recorded, and it's likely (when the data is released in 2010) given recent anecdotal evidence, and the signing of the GIVE/Serve America Act last Tuesday, that data will confirm a rise in volunteering this year.

While the AP story focused on 16-18 year olds, the overall pictures of youth volunteering has changed somewhat, too.

The data for 2007 show some decline in volunteering among young people, particularly high school students and college freshmen. The rate of volunteering for 16-to-18 year-olds peaked in 2005, at 33%, but has since declined by six percentage points. Traditionally, the 16-to-18 year-old cluster volunteered at a slightly higher rate than other age groups, but in 2007, people 25 or older volunteered at a slightly higher rate than 16-to-18 year-olds. The volunteer rate for the population aged 25 years and older has changed very little (2% or less) since 2002, and was 28% in 2007. (PDF)

Some trends did not change. The plurality (21%) of young volunteers got involved through religious organizations, but that varies by location, naturally.

While many factors are related to volunteering rates, perhaps the most notable feature of Salt Lake City volunteers is their affiliation with religious organizations...about half of 19-to-24 year-old SLC volunteers did [sic] performed their services at or though religious organizations. This is especially notable in contrast to their peers in the Boston area, where only 21% of volunteers donated their time at religious organizations.

President Obama has encouraged us a few times now to view our economic challenges as opportunities. In the midst of our financial crisis, our communities now have opportunities to revisit how we do things in the name of conserving resources while making our nation stronger. Sec. of Education Arne Duncan appeared on the Charlie Rose show a couple weeks ago discussing how rethinking the use of our nation's schools could open up several doors to our communities.

Secretary Duncan outlines his vision of schools serving as "community centers," in which facilities are not limited to educating children during the day, but also holding functions at night to improve the community. Duncan points out that schools are one institution in our society that has a plethora of resources -- "classrooms, computer labs, libraries, gyms, and pools" -- and they're all the taxpayers'. Duncan also sees this effort not falling solely on educators' plates, but instead being pursued by a partnership of school officials and non-profits, especially the YMCAs and Boys and Girls Clubs. School officials would have class from 9-3 (or thereabouts, depending on the school system's schedule), with the partnership of non-profits coming in and running "academic, social, enrichment, and even medical services" from 3-9.

There's no doubt that Duncan thinks outside the box. But what I really like is his focus toward the end of the clip on the foundational aspects of education and ensuring that we provide enough there to combat negative forces outside of the classroom affecting the students' ability to learn. In the clip above, Duncan explains that, while working in Chicago, he made sure that students had breakfast, lunch, and dinner, because if they're hungry, it's hard to concentrate in the classroom. Duncan discusses giving out tens of thousands of glasses each year to ensure that students can see the blackboard. And he also made sure that students had a safe atmosphere in which they could learn, otherwise they might be thinking about their walk home instead of their education. Talk about a student-centered approach...

Duncan seems determined to do everything he can to deeply invest in our future. But he's also thinking big, observing that schools can form the backbone of our community life. There's no reason for schools to sit empty from 4:00 to 9:00, while youth are going home, eating high fructose corn syrup in bulk amounts, and watching television. Duncan's plan to create that seamless array of resources for students and families could have a huge impact on our public life. Opening the doors of these schools, filling them with collaborative non-profit organizations dedicated to improving various facets of the community, opens doors for our communities. Duncan's plan is a great example of taking advantage of our present economic situation, turning it into an opportunity for the future.

(h/t to Peter Levine.)

Craig and I have both blogged about two new reports about the Millennials Generation: The Millennial Pendulum and Yes We Can: The Emergence of the Millennials as a Political Generation. Both reports were released earlier this week at a panel hosted by the New America Foundation featuring CIRCLE director Peter Levine, author and generational scholar Neil Howe, and former Obama youth vote director Hans Reimer.

Video of the complete panel is now posted and those who (like me) couldn't make it down to DC can listen watch for themselves. The video runs almost two hours. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but from Peter Levine's description it sounds like there was an interesting and lively discussion.

I want to follow up on something I had written about last month now that we're a month and a half into the transition.

Barack Obama clearly subscribes to the premise of a "thick democracy," in which citizens form the center of the American political process. Citizens are expected to not only participate by casting a vote, but also by upholding other supplemental responsibilities, such as informing themselves, lobbying their representatives in Congress, (or in their state legislature or city/town council), working for a candidate who represents their views or volunteering for their local board of elections. A government based on an active citizen model also relies on people to to publicly serve through the government itself. Peter Levine wrote about the core principle of previous presidencies last month, and he addressed the incoming Obama presidency:

Barack Obama launched his campaign by addressing citizens' relationship with government and he never stopped talking about it. It even came up in his 30-minute TV ad. I thought this theme was under-reported, even though it is always the most important question about a presidential candidate, and Obama has a distinctive view.

Obama's core idea is that citizens are at the center of politics. Not private individuals, not the government, not politicians, but people working together in public, on public matters. Campaigning in New Hampshire in 2006, he said, "There's a wonderful saying by Justice Louis Brandeis once, that the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen. ... All of us have a stake in this government, all of us have responsibilities, all of us have to step up to the plate."

"All of us have a stake in this government ... all of us have to step up to the plate." Obama's approach here, though not as obvious, takes on the form of his "team of rivals" approach to Cabinet-nominating. His rivals in this case are those Americans -- many Reagan Democrats -- who saw the bloated bureaucracy paralyze America in the 1970s. These citizens decided in 1980 that government should exist in the smallest form possible. Obama knew he needed to secure the investment of these cynics, understanding that it's much harder to criticize something when you've been a part of it. On November 4, millions of new voters took the first step in enlisting in Obama's effort. And since then, Obama's message of responsibility and the need to take ownership seems to have worked, albeit an assist from the putrid economy helped:

For those of us finishing school in the next few years, there’s no denying that the U.S. job market has slimmed down–it shed a massive quarter-million private-sector jobs in November. But there is one sector that is beginning to fatten up–and young people are starting to take notice. You can see that the federal goverment is growing by taking a look at the size of the Plum Book, an inventory of positions soon to be vacated by the Bush administration and open for hire. This year, it is about 1,000 jobs heavier than it was in 2004.

Over the past eight years, the government, neither welcoming nor respected among progressive young people, hasn’t been a very attractive prospective employer for them. Understandably, when I’ve asked my friends about where they want to work after graduation, I get the typical responses: an investment firm, a hospital, a university, a small business, etc. Only a few have said they want to be a politician, and fewer still have said they want to be a government agency employee or a committee staffer. Just like my progressive friends, I ran from government as if it were a toxic asset.

But things have changed since Obama’s election and the financial meltdown. Now, it’s private jobs that look poisonous, and public employment that smells sweet.

Just look at all the applications the Obama administration is receiving. Granted, any change in administration is bound to bring in new blood, but this time it is different, no doubt. As of this week, the Obama transition web site, change.gov, has received 331,000 job applications for about 3,000 positions. Compare this to the mere 44,000 political job requests Bush received before he took office in 2001, and the 125,000 Clinton received before he entered the White House in 1993.

Obama's new "core principle" found within his approaching presidency combined with the slumping private sector means that we're going to see a kind of participatory politics Millennial activists like us can only dream of. The next few years (and hopefully decades) will see Americans engaged in rebuilding efforts, sometimes literally through projects like Habitat for Humanity and other service opportunities, and sometimes figuratively, by running for office and staffing local, state, and federal government. This new spirit of civic activism meets its match in the Millennial Generation, which is coming of age at just the right time to lead it.

If the media's looking for a story, they'd be well-served to ignore this Blagojevich mess. The story of the next few decades is found in the approaching perfect storm that's poised to transform our politics, government, and civic health.

Peter Levine notes that youth unemployment (16 - 19) has hit a shocking 20%.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for ages 16-19 was over 20% in October. For ages 20 and older, the rate was 5.9%.

Youth unemployment, seasonally adjusted

The great thing about Levine's post is that he offers a fairly simple policy prescription to - if not solve this problem - cut down on youth unemployment.

Unemployed youth are not only missing income and benefits. They are also losing crucial opportunities to develop skills, networks, habits, and experience. The Kennedy-Hatch Serve America Act is certainly not the whole solution, but I think it should be passed quickly as an element of the economic recovery plan. It is an efficient way to give as many as 250,000 young people highly educational work experiences. They will also exemplify public work for Americans of all ages.

Maybe that's something to look at as part of a 100 Days Agenda . . .

It would not be shocking to know that I'm thrilled that Obama won; my friends know me as a big Democrat (figuratively, but also literally, as I'm a 6'6" 290 lb. guy), and my very liberal politics bleeds into my writing. But what might shock some of my friends (and probably none of you, given the topics of my recent posts) is the reason I'm happy he won. It's not just that Obama is the first Democrat to win the presidency since my political awakening; it's not just that he's the first black president (sorry Bill); and it's not just that he is a Millennial-friendly president. For me, the excitement is rooted in his views on the relationship between Americans and their government.

On Thursday Peter Levine wrote a blog post about this relationship in the context of other presidents' views.

Obama's core idea is that citizens are at the center of politics. Not private individuals, not the government, not politicians, but people working together in public, on public matters. Campaigning in New Hampshire in 2006, he said, "There's a wonderful saying by Justice Louis Brandeis once, that the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen. ... All of us have a stake in this government, all of us have responsibilities, all of us have to step up to the plate."

Obama broke away from the helping model that still guided Hilary (sic) Clinton and from the privatism that was the main theme of modern conservatism. On the campaign trail, he modeled his new conception in two important ways--by making his campaign maximally participatory (pushing power out to the network) and by lowering the partisan temperature a notch. He is a Democrat and he was willing to debate and compete with Republicans. But he never seemed to relish this difference. The reason is that citizens are both liberal and conservative, and they need to work together to solve any serious problems. Competition is appropriate in a campaign, but campaigning is a role for politicians, and they are not the heart of politics.

Obama believes the epicenter of American politics is the people, Levine notes. And Obama's campaign certainly reflected this belief. Obama had the largest grassroots operation in history, and created my.barackobama.com, the internet-based propellant for the movement. Obama inspired legions of supporters, building a new coalition of Americans that would lead him to victory Tuesday night.

But Levine emphasizes that politics is not limited to elections in Obama's eyes. And so the election itself is not about merely winning; the election is about getting the chance to solve problems. Such an approach necessitates a responsible, civil, supporter-focused campaign, one focused on the issues that yields the fewest number of barriers possible to effective problem-solving, and one that empowers the problem-solvers, energizing us to do the post-election work.

So what about that work? And how does it fit into our discussion about the relationship between the people and their government?

On July 2nd of this year, Obama touched on his expectations for Americans in an address on active citizenship and service in Colorado Springs, CO.

The thesis of the speech (and his campaign):

I am running for President, right now, because of what Dr. King called the fierce urgency of now. This moment is too important to sit on the sidelines. Our country faces determined enemies abroad, and definitive challenges at home. But I have no doubt that in the face of these odds, people who love their country can change it. That is why I am running for President. That is why I’m determined to reach out - not just to Democrats, but to Independents and Republicans who want to move in a new direction. And that is why I won’t just ask for your vote as a candidate - I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States.

This will not be a call issued in one speech or one program - this will be a central cause of my presidency. We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing national challenges.

[...]

...Make no mistake: our destiny as Americans is tied up with one another. If we are less respected in the world, then you will be less safe. If we keep paying dictators for foreign oil, gas prices are going to keep rising, and so are the oceans. If we can’t give all of our kids a world-class education, then our economy is going to fall behind.

And that’s how it should be. That’s the bet our Founding Fathers were making all of those years ago - that our individual destinies could be tied together in the common destiny of democracy; that government depends not just on the consent of the governed, but on the service of citizens. That’s what history calls us to do. Because loving your country shouldn’t just mean watching fireworks on the 4th of July. Loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it. If you do, your life will be richer, and our country will be stronger.

We need your service, right now, at this moment - our moment - in history. I’m not going to tell you what your role should be; that’s for you to discover. But I am going to ask you to play your part; ask you to stand up; ask you to put your foot firmly into the current of history. I am asking you to change history’s course. And if I have the fortune to be your President, decades from now - when the memory of this or that policy has faded, and when the words that we will speak in the next few years are long forgotten - I hope you remember this as a moment when your own story and the American story came together, and - in the words of Dr. King - the arch of history bent once more towards justice.

This speech certainly defines the citizen and his/her responsibilities as the center of American politics. It calls on citizens to serve each other based on the common purpose shared with their American brothers and sisters. But even more importantly, Obama doesn't stop at the end of the election. Obama is clearly not limiting this discussion to campaign workers doing their part in a campaign, and he's clearly not stopping with the request for votes. He's asking for Americans to take ownership of their country by hitching their individual hopes and dreams to the greater American saga. He's asking for Americans to invest in a country that's already given them so much. Service is symbiotic, as Obama noted: "Loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it. If you do, your life will be richer, and our country will be stronger."

One visit to change.gov demonstrates his commitment to this philosophy. Under "America Serves," Obama broadens the opportunity to serve, tripling the number of service-oriented "corps" in the government.

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps.

The message is clear: Americans can serve [and should be serving] their country no matter what their background is, no matter what their skills are; everyone has something to offer everyone else.

Frances Moore Lappe wrote about citizenship in her book Hope's Edge (2002).

To me, democracy is an exciting, living practice, what we do every day. But to most, democracy still means something done "to us" or "for us" -- it doesn't relate to our daily lives, and it sure isn't much fun. I now see that to engage in democracy, to jump into this living practice, we all need something tangible to act on. (p. 31)

Obama's victory excited me because he empowered me. He asked me to do something. He welcomed me to the table, asking me to bring my gifts so they could mesh with the gifts of other Americans. He wants me to be involved -- not just to get him elected, but to make our country better. He's not interested in a paper-thin democracy that only asks citizens to get involved when his career's at stake; he wants to thicken democracy, forging connections between the "Great Experiment" itself and the millions of lives it benefits.