civic engagement

Civic Diary 10/18/2016

October 18, 2016 by Steven Savage

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

Jesus it’s been a month since the last Civic Diary? My whole once-a-week experiment truly has not gone well. The last 3 months have been nuts with work, reorgs, and lots of illness. I’ve been sick four times, my roommate three, friends and co workers quite a bit – short form is it seems that kids dragging diseases around produced an unholy synergy. Oh, and allergy season.

So all those plans? Yeah. I gave up and just donated money to the Clinton campaign. If I’m going to be miserable and watch my schedule constantly change then at least I can do is put my cash where my yap is and do some good that way. I certainly understand now why people sometimes just donate, life gets in the way.

That’s my plan for the rest of the election at any rate, since things are saner, but my chance to do GOTV myself is diminishing. I’m going to keep this in mind in the future.

(Part of me wonders if I’d be so calm if Clinton wasn’t so far ahead.)

Also I’ve been bad about contacting my representatives. That’s on me – I set an alert and promptly ignored it.

However I still plan to be more civicly engaged, which comes down to:

Still plan to get involved with a local branch of a political party. Only in this case it’ll probably be post-election.
Gonna remember this “donate” thing more than just presidential elections.
Still following the news like a fiend. In fact, more on that later.
Still planning to look into a city council advisory position next year.
Assessing my choices and schedules to free up some more time for civic engagement or anything else. I’ve realized I get into ruts and will do things automatically.

But a few realizations:

First of all, our news media is awful. I’m wondering if my focus as a civic geek should be on that. I’ve signed up for action alerts from Media Matters For America which I’ve found very useful. That’s an issue with civic engagement, there’s so much to do.

Secondly, related to this, misinformation is incredibly high. I’m seeing why I need to practice debating, engaging on media, etc. Not for the all-to-common showing off, but just to promote intelligent discussion.

Third never forget that civic engagement is on all levels. Despite the crazy of late, despite the illness, I took time to do non-political civic engagement – speaking, helping our friends, etc. As nuts as it was I kept engaged.

Fourth, seriously, if you are civicly engaged go easy on people who aren’t. My attempts to do it have been far below my expectations.

Well except for the illnesses going around work is saner and life is saner. So my quest continues – being a good civic geek.

– Steve

Civic Diary 7/31/2016

July 31, 2016 by Steven Savage

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

Not my best week as an engaged citizen, but also a week where I considered a few important issues and had some insights. So let’s get to my latest on being a better citizen.

Beyond my upcoming visit to a political organizing party where I’ll work on GOTV, I’ve also engaged a member of a local political group to advise me – just in case this doesn’t work. After my past experiences, I want backup plans.

I’ve done poorly on one of my original goals – contacting my representatives more. I’ve been so focused on the political conventions and the campaign, I’ve forgotten to go annoy them very much. Not a good thing, and something I’m remedying by setting an alert for myself in my calendar.

I also did fall a bit behind on following my government news feed. Then again that was kind of my entire news feed the last two weeks, so I’m not sure I did.

One funny thing I did, in light of the Putin/Trump/Russia/Hacking mess is do a bit of my own protest by queueing up Tweets to mention this – not a load, no more than one a day, properly tagged. It takes little effort and is my small contribution to keeping that issue in the spotlight – currently for 3 more weeks. I was productive in my tiny way.

So that’s a bit on protest, which brings me to . . .

Protest Isn’t That Useful

Watching political events as of late has made me doubt the value of protest in modern politics. Unless it reaches a critical point, it seems to have very dilute effects. I’m not against it, but I’m against people thinking that’s all they need to do. My little Twitter thing is something I know is just an easy little extra.

Protest paired with plans, action, local organization, fundraising, is fine. Protest is one of many tools, but it seems as of late, embodied recently with a minority of Sander’s supporters, that people think protest is all there is. Go out, yell, magic happens.

That’s not it. Again involvement in politics, organizing, pushing for issues, that matters. Getting attention is at best part of it, and worse a waste in our distractible, sensationalist media. If you don’t build (or work with) an organization, you risk being either ignored or a sideshow unless you fit someone else’s narrative.

Post-Conventions

So after the two political conventions, a few impressions:

The Democrats walked with it, with an inclusive platform over a divisive one, with a lot of real political and personal testimony.
Trump’s followup has been horrible, from attacking the parents of a fallen soldier to weird conspiracies about Fire Marshals. Hillary’s comment that anyone that can be set off by Twitter shouldn’t be President seems to hold water.
The Democratic party seized the mantle of patriotism at the convention, and Trump’s actions are only helping them. This is a major cultural shift, and though one that makes sense (patriotism as a coming together), I saw a bit of discomfort on this in random Twitter commentary, that it could become jingoistic or otherwise pathological. I’m not that concerned, but it bears watching.
Conventions are like promises. Sure they’re theater, but people are supposedly saying things they believe in. I liked a lot of what I saw of the DNC – now I can call them on it.
We’re facing some kind of social and political shift, but I can’t get my arms around it. The Republicans have support but seem to have locked themselves out of the presidency. The Democrats are the patriotic adults in the room.

That’s it for me. Any more civic thoughts for you?

– Steve

Civic Diary 7/24/2016: Principles, News, Trump, Information

July 24, 2016 by Steven Savage

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

Another busy week for me – I had some classes at work. My pretty awesome boss pointed me at them, so not only did I get important management training, I now have to take a test because these people aren’t messing around. However it meant Monday and Tuesday were solid work, along with most of Wednesday.

But hey, I got some Civic activity to talk about. For those of you new here, I’m documenting my experiences in being more engaged as a citizen, inspired by Anil Dash.

Civic Engagement

Right now I’m sort of on hold in getting involved in Election 2016 due to the conventions – which means everyone is focused on watching them, getting ready for what’s after them, and in the case of the Republicans, apparently wondering what the hell happened. I’ve got my contacts lined up with the right local groups and political parties, and in a bit over a week will be going to a huge networking event to find what I can do for 2016. Sort of glad to have sorted that out – but as noted if you want to get politically involved it’s not always clear how. I’ve found that, unless you want a random angry mob of people, a lot of political organizations that aren’t special interest (unions, professional associations) really recruit from the choir.

Pretty sure part of my future in politics is recruiting.

Also, more and more thinking on the idea of being on the city council advisors for my city. My local library is doing a Pokewalk, how can I not love a place like this?

Communication

I finished The Little Book Of Revolution, a great book on how we need to engage people in personal political discussion. Despite my gift of gab, I’m not that great at political discussion because I’m very results-oriented not framing oriented, so the book was quite valuable. I see how I can work with people better as opposed to coming off as . . . well, a well-meaning project manager. Which is what I am.

One major takeaway from the book is the need for people to understand their own political philosophies and frames, which is very rare. If you don’t know where you’re coming from and how to interact with people as part of a picture, how do you talk to them? So one thing I want to do is sit down and think over and clarify my own politics – which I might do here.

Confucius once described something called “making your stand,” which seemed to fit this – the phase in your life where you have a comprehensive philosophy. I think we all need that. If we have it, we need to be sure we’re good at discussing it.

News

Remember how I’ve gone on about the importance of following the news? Well when you do and find things like Trump has assorted ties to Russia? That it seems he’s financially dependent on Russian interests? Yeah. This is why you follow the news as a citizen.

I feel we’ve lost the idea of the sophisticated, informed, practical citizen. Sure it was an ideal, but now too often it’s an act, someone acting informed when all their ideas come from a conspiracy website or some media hack. Being informed is hard work. And a bit depressing.

You also have to act on it.

There’s your takeaways. Get involved (and it takes time), learn to communicate, and follow the damn news.

May not have much more this week as its busy, but I’m guessing after next week it’s gonna get interesting.

– Steve