November Fifth Coalition

11/16/07 November Fifth member Harry C. Boyte publishes an op-ed in the (Minneapolis-St. Paul) Star Tribune: "Our passive society needs some new Nehemiahs. Democracy is a way of life, not just a trip to the ballot box. We can find inspiration in a figure from ancient Jerusalem."

11/15/07 The Center for Democracy and Citizenship is using a quote from Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen: "There is nothing beyond the reach of ordinary citizens doing the daily work of democracy, and no problem too great to tackle with the power of active citizenship."

10/13/07 Senator John Edwards, in a speech in Keene, NH, proposed "Citizen Congresses," explicitly citing the November Fifth Coalition and Coalition Members including AmericaSpeaks and Study Circles. See the National Coalition for Dialog and Deliberation website for links to numerous op-eds and blog posts in which members of our community responded to the Edwards initiative.

10/09/07 Ron Fournier of the Associated Press writes a news/opinion piece based on America's Civic Health Index. It's on the Yahoo news portal and elsewhere. Fournier begins:

WASHINGTON - It happens every election year: Pollsters slice and dice the electorate, identify an important new group and give those voters a fad-worthy monicker. Reagan Democrats. Angry Men. Soccer Moms.

Here's a heads-up on what should be the dynamite demographic of 2008: "The Civic Core."

That's the name given to 36 million Americans who actively discuss society's problems and work to solve them. These community-building citizens are both a key to the nation's future and a valuable resource for political candidates.

And yet, with few exceptions, Democrats and Republicans alike are giving the Civic Core — and community service itself — short shrift.

[...]

Microtarget that.

5/18/07 dana boyd posts her "rough unedited crib of [her] actual talk" at the Personal Democracy Forum, entitled "Digital Handshakes on Virtual Receiving Lines": " To my dismay, politicians have primarily treated the digital world as another broadcast medium similar to TV. It's about putting up structured, formalized, formal content for others to consume wholesale. ... I would like to argue that there's another way of thinking about the digital world... as a networked public where people live their lives. This is most visible through sites like MySpace and Facebook, but is also true of blogs and YouTube and other online communities. These are not simply spaces of information dissemination, but they are networked publics. They are places where people are gathering en masse to do all sorts of things that they normally do in public places. (read more.)

5/1/07 NewsHour Productions covers work on immigration issues by the National Civic League in Greeley, Co

4/22/07: Towns and cities take on global warming. ("Can cities make a dent in a global dynamic? 'Minneapolis-St Paul as a city is, in fact, a minuscule portion of the problem,' said Lennie Bernstein, an Asheville, N.C.-based environmental consultant and internationally known climate change expert. 'But it's not a problem that has a single solution. And what cities are doing is commendable. They're actually reducing CO2 emissions, and secondly, they're educating people.'" )

4/22/07: Green city: Sustainable practices put into action: "Every day is Earth Day" may just be a slogan that, ironically, is used widely only once a year, but the city of Portsmouth [NH] has made implementation of the mantra a priority to conserve resources and save money. Incorporating sustainable practices was identified as an important goal in the master plan two years ago after resident study circles made it a clear priority. ... The concept was once driven by environmentalists, but is making more sense to fiscal conservatives because of rising energy costs.

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