civic diary

Civic Diary 7/15/2016

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

If you’ve been following my Civic Diary for any time you know one of my goals as an engaged citizen is to get connected to politics.  My attempts to connect with local groups was pretty scattershot, much of it because people kept moving the damn meetings.  Finally I found one by going to whatever I could and visiting a local political office.

So what I went to this meeting it was a kind of polyglot of local chapter meeting, club meeting, and a meet-and-greet of various officials.  I couldn’t see everything due to work, but I managed to finally network and connect and find ways to get involved.

  1. I’ll be going to a big meetup to get involved in Election 2016.  This is a specific date at a specific place for the specific purpose of different political groups coordinating.  I will go to this and state “I want to do this, now what.”
  2. I’ve got contact with a local party member to get more advice.
  3. I found a lot of local officials are pretty accessible, and got some insights on campaigns I may want to help with.

So finally.  Being civilly engaged in local politics.  The plan is to 1) Help with the election, 2) Network and connect, so that 3) I have a long-term plan.  #3 is almost certainly communication and/or recruiting.

Now that one hour I spent? Insightful.  I’m sure the things I share won’t be new to some, but they were pretty amazing to me.

There Are People Really Into It: Politics as a calling?  Yes.  People get into this like anything else.  It’s more than say a fandom (for some) but also there’s a calling/obsession/lifestyle/hobby vibe to it.

The Network Is Real: When I started doing my Civic Geek research, I began realizing just how much of civilization is due to groups and people getting stuff done that we don’t realize.  You see it at one of these political meetups as you meet local officials, see recommendations from organizations boost a candidate’s profile, and other such things.

You See The Bigger Network: Ever think politicians are distant?  Well it’s understandable in some cases.  However at least at this meetup I suddenly saw how politics itself is a giant Network of candidates, groups, donors, workers, and more.  I’m talking to people who worked with my state’s governor casually.  Now extend that further.

There Are Careerists And That’s Good: I totally support the idea of citizen government, but some people are career (or side career) in government and that’s good.  They build expertise.  They know how things work.  They have arranged their lives to take advantage of it.

There’s Ways In – But It’s Not Apparent: One of the things I realized is that, yes, there’s ways to get involved and get into office, but a lot of people don’t know how.  Where’s the instruction manual?  Here at this meeting I had an idea of how people did it – and how people not very political connected wouldn’t know when to start.  You have to work at it.

I Can See It’s Something I’ll Like: The energy of the meeting, the chance to make a difference, the engagement was something.  It felt the same way as helping at a con.  So I’m pretty sure after all this I’ll be doing political work as part of my life.

Definitely worth going.  I saw not a different world, but more saw the world different.

So for you?  Want to get involved?  Go to a local political party meeting.  It may just give you the opportunity you needed to make a difference.

See you at the phone bank – and next column!

– Steve

Civic Diary 7/9/2016

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

What a hell of a week.  Philando Castile and Alton Sterling shot by police.  Police shot by an ex-military sniper in Dallas.  I won’t lie, it’s left me a bit numb.

But here I am writing, because this is part of my project to be better, and we could all use being better.

With the shootings first of all, there’s really two parts – the first is excessive use of police force against minorities, which is clearly an issue.  The second is both access to guns and apparently a man who should have been caught earlier.  In short, police force, gun control, and possibly mental health.  Issues I’ve covered before, hell have been covered before and we haven’t done a lot about them.

Which really brings me to the whole point of this civic exercise – what the hell do we do?

I think people feel helpless.  Want to know why there are thousands at #BlackLivesMatter protests?  People know they can do something that way.  The evil flipside is our political process, where desperate people are exploited by con-man politicians to vote against their own interests.

The loss of real civic engagement for much of the country has left us truly helpless and vulnerable.  We’re not asking what we can do for our community, state, country.  We’re not staying truly informed.  We’re small atomistic units bouncing around and bouncing off each other, but not connecting.  We may even sever connects because some bile-spewing media figure told us to hate some group of people.

I guess I see it this way.

  1. Be informed.  Really informed.  Know what’s going on, ask questions.
  2. Connect with others.  Any way you can – and connect with people different than you (though you have to start with people like you).
  3. Do stuff.  Find ways to change the world.  Nothing’s too small – I can’t claim to be a person making revolutionary changes (well, not yet, but I have a few decades left in me).

These are not an optional part of citizenship.

Be informed.  Reach Out.  Be active.

Now as for my own efforts:

  1. I’ve reached out to a local political group’s lead and am going to a meetup run by another on Monday.  Once again I’m finding people involved in political groups aren’t too hot at recruiting and expect you to reach out.
  2. More and more since Brexit I’m shifting my news-reading approach to stay better informed as noted before.  It’s changed a lot of things for me – but you can overdo it and obsessively check news all the time.  I need to learn to be selective.
  3. I’m evaluating some of my other community involvements due to changes in groups I know and work with.  Sometimes people don’t need your help or change their missions, which leads me to ask what I’m supposed to do.
  4. Identity is really key to understanding civic engagement – knowing what you can and should do is part of knowing who you are.  Which sounds corny but I’ll try to write more later.

And needless to say I need to get off my butt and write my reps on both violence reduction and gun regulation.  The latter, again.

– Steve