CivicSolve

Civic Meditation 102323: Reconnecting With Civic Discourse

There was a time when people spent time discussing, exploring, debating, addressing, and forming the questions of their time. This kind of thing happened in public forums, open and informal debates in the public square, and more recently, in formally set up debates – like the Munk Debates (https://munkdebates.com).

“In today’s fast-paced world, who has time for such luxuries?” is a question you might be asking yourself and you’d be right to do so. It is all that the average person can do just to get enough sleep, enough to eat, have enough time to get in work, time for friends, family and maybe even yourself, without adding something like public conversation into the equation. This seems like an obvious dilemma as old as time, but alas…this is a fairly new problem for society. Before the industrial revolution, when we had more of an agrarian society, we made time for conversation and public discourse with other members of the community.

For Hamilton fans, the song, “Farmer Refuted” where the titular character really gets to show his stuff, in public debate with a citizen speaking out against the Continental Congress who had decided to revolt against King George’s taxes. While entertaining, the song serves as an example of the kind of public debate that regularly occurred when significant issues bubbled to the public consciousness. There was still plenty of work to do, but that work had its seasons and there was still time for civic discourse.

Civic discourse is how we check in with each other about what matters to us, what’s going on, what needs to happen, and where we go from here. At best, we might have this kind of forced and directed discourse at a town hall for an election candidate or if you’re really fortunate, an actual elected official. At worst, the closest thing you get to this is a broadcast or cable TV show where formatted segments of limited debate are offered between talking heads who pretty much agree on everything or will never agree on anything.

We talk about voting, holding elected officials accountable, protesting ,and taking action locally, but before any of that happens, we have to talk. We have to practice talking with others in our community about what matters to us and seek to understand what matters to them. We’ll find plenty of places of agreement and disagreement, but most importantly, we’ll find out who we are as a community and only by knowing that, are we able to fulfill our responsibilities as citizens of self-governance. If you can’t find outlets for civic discourse in your community, there are online communities like Civics For Life (https://civicsforlife.org/public-square/), who provide opportunities to engage with others seeking a public square to debate, explore, question and address the issues of our time. While local discourse may be best, we must seek out discourse wherever we can find it.

Monday Meditation 91823: Change Above Begins Below

For those of you who watch political news what do you typically see? Talking heads stating an opinion about someone or some issue they want people to pay attention to. If you’re lucky, maybe they stumble onto a legitimate point, but even if they do, they rarely miss an opportunity to tell you who is to blame and why they can’t be trusted.

I try to stay away from advice and at best, offer thoughts for consideration, but I’m going to break that practice today. Here it is, STOP WATCHING POLITICAL NEWS. Seriously, stop watching it. I don’t care if it’s Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Newsmax or OANN. This isn’t about partisan preferences, though there’s nothing wrong with those. This is about the health of our democratic republic. Even the best shows are not created with the primary purpose of informing. They are designed to elicit emotion, which would be fine if the average viewer had sufficient civic education and awareness to appropriately direct such emotion.

According to this 2020 Brookings Report (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-need-for-civic-education-in-21st-century-schools/) 1 in 4 people can name all three branches of the federal government and only 17% of people trust elected officials in Washington D.C. to do right by the American people. It would be safe to assume that these numbers have gone down even more since 2020. So, all watching political news is likely going to do for the average viewer is make them angry or depressed and inspire them to do something they are not prepared to do or worse, something that they have no business even thinking of doing (HELLO, January 6th!!).

Instead of sitting in front of your television, devoting an hour of your precious time to political news, try this instead, go to a school board or a city council meeting. I know, it sounds CRAZY, but believe it or not, the people there and decisions they make in those meetings will affect you a lot more than ANYTHING you’ll see on Fox News or MSNBC. You can change minds and policy at the local level much more than the federal level because you’re closer to the action. You go to the same schools, grocery stores, places of worship, parks and movie theaters as your City Council/School Board Member and proximity to power is proximity to change.

Our Democratic Republic was designed with the intent that citizens would make their voices heard at the local and state levels (Democratic) and through those voices, determine who would represent communities at the state and federal levels of government (Republic), where representatives act as proxies for the will and well-being of the communities/states that they represent. Change was always meant to come from the bottom up, but somewhere along the way, we got stuck looking up and stopped looking around. If we want real change, let’s stop looking up at the TV and start looking around our communities, because that’s where change is made.