Civics

Civic Diary: Everyday Stuff

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First up, my monthly civic geek roundup. Where am I?

  • First, still doing the local political group. Trying to do more, frankly, but we’ve had trouble coordinating. I do have my posting down to a system.
  • My usual calling and annoying my elected officials of course. Been a bit off on that, but overall keeping at it.
  • I’ve vaguely scheduled a plan to get more into doing Op-Eds and writing newspapers/news sites. There’s a class I can take and a book I found.

Now this month’s thought is on the fact that one big contribution you can make beyond your activism is keeping Shit Running.

This is a massive, MASSIVE, missed part of politics and society in general. Society requires the actions of so many of us, every day, to keep going. It requires driving your kid to school, helping a friend with a resume, cleaning up at your apartment complex, giving a friend a ride. A huge amount of a functional society is Everyday Stuff.

Do not shit on everyday stuff. Everyday stuff keeps things running. Everyday stuff creates ties between people. Everyday stuff is the foundation of so much that we can forget it. Doing it can remind us as well as keeping the whole shebang of society running.

One of the greatest failures in America, of our current crazy, conspiracy-theory-soaked, hating-our-fellow-Americans politics is people forget everday stuff. People are disconnected from action and reaction, from their neighbors, from real human concerns – and their politics are often a mixture of paranoia and abstraction and unawareness. There’s no visceral element except, perhaps, anger.

Ever have one of those friends or family members that seems spun off into their own world? You get the idea. They’re not only lost, they’re often not Getting Stuff Done (or as a much Stuff). They’re abstracted, disconnected – and easily manipulated.

One of my recent experiences – among many – has been having a friend in Puerto Rico. Trying to figure how to help them. Trying to keep in touch. You want hard reality, it’s right there.

So it’s up to all of us to Get Shit Done and keep society going. On top of all our other involvements.

  • Steve

 

Civic Geek: Grinding On

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Keeping up on the Civic Geekery here – or what I’m doing to be more of a citizen.  Posting this, of course, to inspire people.

One thing I found is that you can get “Samey” with what you do – I noted last time I got a bit disconnected.  So what I’ve done here is take a look at one group I’m helping and say “we’re kinda in a rut, what can I do?”  To get a meeting together.  Remember when being active, you can engage and improve – it is being civicly engaged, it’s being activist.

I also mentioned my disengagement and I found some of that is me.  Do not automate your political involvement and take your heart out of it, learn to connect with people.  I was feeling poorly but dragged myself to a political meeting, and it felt great.  To stay civic stay in touch with people.

Another thing I’ve done is worked to deliver news to my different political organizations – which is a bit challenging as you don’t want to be “that person” who just posts stuff.  So I set a limit of one a day or so maximum, if it promotes activism.

Finally, one big thing I’ve done is follow the news of activism more closely – don’t just do your thing, see what others are doing.  Post-Trump I’m amazed to see how many people got active but also how many people were active – you really never see the huge network that supports our society until you look.

I have fell off of my news following and really need to fix that – focused more nationally and missed a lot of local stuff.  It’s always important to stay local.

Still don’t quite feel I’ve got my civic mojo working, but I think it’s because I’m being pulled in many directions – and doing a lot.  Is my convention speaking civic engagement?  My work to have cross-club dinners?  It is, but I think figuring what’s important is hard.  However as I’m big on building community these things do matter.

Now a few resources to help you:

 

– Steve

Civic Diary 3/8/2017

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Hello everyone, time for another civic update!

What am I up to?  Well less than I’d like due to some craziness (friends in assorted crises).

Helping with a political group’s social media: Still at that, and that one is getting challenging as noted, since there’s so many ways to take it – and ways to do it wrong.  What are the right news sites?  Right groups to post?  It’s quite a lot to learn and I’ve got a meeting on it coming up.

This taught me to be a lot more careful of information sources and to better understand more subtle political landscapes.  Some activist groups are at odds with each other.  People debate over the value of news aggregators.

A big thing I’m finding is social media has truly changed politics – there’s many ways to interacts and it vastly speeds how things move.  It’s also more multiordinal than expected – spread across many media.  Which is important in this charged political environment and our reliance on certain communications.

Lesson: Admit you have a lot to learn as you get civicly involved, and really learn to dig into the news and groups you follow, there’s probably some things you’re missing.

Getting Involved In New/Informal Groups: A lot have sprung up lately and I’m finding there’s something for everyone.  These seem to act as a kind of social nexus for getting people involved, and I think there’s something to that.  People involved in one of these more informal groups are also involved in other social groups – so this acts as a kind of connecting ground.

A lot of this is people taking a stab and doing it – and it seems to work.

Lesson: I think the new informal groups springing up are going to be really important as people are looking for new ways to get involved.  Also some politicians are really underestimating the organizing going on out there.

Getting Into District Flipping: This has gotten really big lately, and it’s important to find districts to flip, districts to maintain – and who you want to primary as they kinda suck at their jobs.  I think we’re going to see a lot of this in 2018.

Lesson: 2018 will be interesting.

Continuing Economic Activism: Calling companies about who they support, etc.  This one I’ve been intermittent on, but I think it’s important to keep at this.  Not boycotts per se (though I’m fine with those) but letting companies know their actions matter.  Believe me, some people listen.

Lesson: Not sure if there’s a lesson, yet, except this has been kinda ramped up to 11.

Regular Representative Contacts: Calling my reps all the time on issues.  They do listen, believe me (and one office has people who know me).  This also means follow your reps on issues – because you may be surprised.  Without naming names, one of my congresspeople had disappointed me – then pulled off an amazing town hall where it seems I’d sort of misunderstood their strategy.

What I do as noted is set up a Google alert to see who to call my state or federal reps on.  If you’re not sure what to annoy them on, let me recommend https://5calls.org/ – plus I find the more informal groups often have great advice.

Lesson: Keep doing this.  Daily.

I admit I’ve not done as much as I’d like.  I’ve got a civic guide I’ve worked on I need to return to, I’ve not been able to make my city council meetings that I wanted, I want to do more with CivicGeek.com.  But if you stay active you’ll do something.

One thing I find myself thinking over is that those everyday things we do to keep society running matter a lot.  Help a friend out with their needs.  Give someone a ride.  That stuff is more valuable than we realize.  I’ve had friends go through some awful crises and the fact people helped them, even a bit, made a difference.

– Steve