International Civic Engagement

Suzanne Morse on City Managers, Mayors and Civic Engagement

Suzanne Morse posted the following entry today on Smart Communities:

Today begins the fiscal year for many of our states and municipalities. It is also the time when the budgets in place will likely be less than last year. After multiple quarters of decline, services are being cut left and right. As I tell audiences, if you are waiting for relief from Washington, DC, you have got a long wait. But in many things painful, this is a learning opportunity. What you cry? This is a time like no other to get citizens involved in the reality of local politics. I am not talking about a focus group to set priorities for local spending. I am talking about ways to inform and involve the public on the issues at hand. If there will be less for social services--say so--and ask for help. If parks and recreation are to be affected--say so--and ask for help. People are not stupid. They know that gas prices are affecting everything from food delivery to municipal services. This is an opportunity to change business as usual. More people have to step up to meet the needs. Methods of delivery have to change. This is time to remake the community where we live. Will the economy come back? It always has. What will be different this time is that we will be better prepared, have closed the gaps, and will engage the community in ways not seen before. Actually not a bad trade-off if we can pull it off. Check out this free information from Public Agenda to get started.

Local governments seem to be warming up to the benefits of civic engagement, as evidenced by this August 2007 National League of Cities City Practice Brief.

Neal Peirce on 'Metropolitics'

In his June 29, 2008 weekly Washington Post Writers Group syndicated column, Neal Peirce writes:

The time may be ripe for a new metropolitics, a radical new “deal” between the federal government and America’s metropolitan regions.

Metros -- the increasingly urbanized regions that make up the “citistates” of our time -- are the center of action in today’s America.  The biggest 100 alone account for 65 percent of our national population and 75 percent of our economic activity.  They have become the country’s wellsprings of innovation, investors, higher learning, advanced research, and profitable businesses.

If the metros succeed, America succeeds-- and if they fall short, the nation may too.

[snip]

The thought’s close to revolutionary -- the federal government attacking critical national goals not by ignoring our citistates, or dictating to them, but by empowering them.

Because today, it’s fair to say, official Washington is largely adrift and unfocused in how it deals with states and localities. Either it’s mired in congressional earmarks or a stale “we know best” grant-in-aid approach.  Hundreds of disparate, unconnected programs are administered in “silo” fashion by such federal departments as Transportation, Energy, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development.

Some of this made sense a generation ago, when Washington attracted more top talent and our metro regions were barely coalescing.  But devolution of federal powers, begun under President Nixon, has changed the landscape.  Today the concentration of skills has shifted out to the metro centers and their multiple partnerships of governments, corporations and universities.

Just check our top economic clusters: Global finance in New York. Life sciences in Boston. Advanced manufacturing in Minneapolis.  Logistics in Louisville.  Photonics in Rochester.  Energy in Houston.  Banking in Charlotte. Advanced technology in Silicon Valley and Seattle.

If the United States is to compete globally, maintain its standard of living in a challenging 21st century, it has to keep adding new creative clusters and strengthening the ones already formed.  Such countries as Japan, Germany and Korea are ahead of us in such smart moves.

Paul Light on "Can't-Do Government"

[Courtesy of The Partnership's Daily Pipeline]

Paul Light opines in the Washington Post about the many management challenges facing the next POTUS.  He writes:

[T]he next president will appoint almost 3,000 political executives. Not only will these appointees dilute transparency between the top and bottom of government, but each must go through a brutish approval process that will vitiate the chain of command. The 60 pages of clearance forms have never been more complex or difficult to complete — one set has to be filled out using a typewriter. Hillary Rodham Clinton might have promised to be ready on Day One, but she would have been lucky if her appointees were in place by March of Year Two.

The president will also oversee a federal work force that is increasingly frustrated and demoralized — with good reason. Asked to do more with less, it is close to doing everything with almost nothing. Federal employees do not get the resources necessary to do their jobs; they rate their leadership as barely competent at best (and getting worse) and give their hiring and disciplinary processes failing marks. Turnover is up at all levels; customer service ratings are down.

The next president will also be responsible for recruiting thousands of new employees. However, many of the most talented young Americans consider the federal government a career of last resort. They understandably wonder whether government service would give them a chance to make a difference and acquire the skills they need in an unforgiving economy. They are not saying "show us the money" but "show us the work." And federal work has not been showing well lately.

Ask Not What Graduates Can Do For the Nation

Today's edition of The Partnership's Daily Pipeline includes a Paul Light Christian Science Monitor op-ed piece in which he provides advice to high school graduation speakers:

It's high school graduation time and the halls are ringing with John F. Kennedy's exhortation to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

[snip]

Given the state of the economy, speakers might rephrase Kennedy as follows: "Ask what you can do for your nation, and we will ask what the nation can do about Darfur, global warming, health insurance, an affordable college education, and a long overdue expansion in Americorps." Now that's worthy of a standing ovation.

Harlan Cleveland Passes Away

The Washington Post reported last week on the passing of Harlan Cleveland at age 90.  Among his many accomplishments, Harlan served as the founding dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs in Minneapolis, an assistant secretary of state, a NATO ambassador, a university president and as president of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA).  Harlan also wrote a dozen books on leadership and public affairs.

I collaborated with Harlan during the early part of this decade while employed with ASPA.  Harlan wrote a series of online columns for ASPA, including one in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In recent years, Harlan blogged for ILF Post, an amazing accomplishment for a typical octogenarian!  [I encourage you to read Harlan's November 2006 post titled "Is Obama 'Ready?'"]  But, Harlan was not a typical octogenarian.  I found him to be more technologically astute than many people half his age.

Harlan will be missed by many.  Thankfully, future generations will be able to access his astute words both in print and online.

Park University Alumna Comments on Significance of Obama Nomination

Kansas City Star reporters Lynn Franey and Mará Rose Williams interviewed three local African-American leaders, including Park University alumna Elma Warrick (MPA '92), regarding their reactions to Barack Obama's presumptive Democratic Party nomination.

The reporters wrote the following about Warrick:

When Elma Warrick was 7 years old in the late 1950s, her mom told her they could not sit down to eat at a downtown Kansas City restaurant.

They stood in the section for black people, watching a white mom and her little girl sit at a table and dine.

So Warrick is awed by the Democrats’ choice of Barack Obama to run for president of the United States.

Never did the Kansas City woman dream she would have the chance to vote for an African-American presidential candidate from one of the two major political parties.

“Most African-Americans, particularly of a certain age, are astounded by this revelation,” says Warrick, a former Kansas City school board member. “Not in my lifetime did I ever think that it would ever be possible, quite frankly. To see a young man, who happens to be African-American, selected by a national party with the backing that he has received — I’m awestruck by it, frankly.”

I recalled this morning a different conversation about race in America, one that Warrick and I engaged in during the spring of 1992 in the heat of the Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of four police officers accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King.

That March, I had just come to work at Park University as administrator of the Graduate School of Public Affairs (now Hauptmann School for Public Affairs).  Warrick was scheduled to graduate in May and came to my office on the afternoon of Friday, May 1.  She was enrolled in a Friday evening class that semester.

Warrick lamented the jury's decision, and we discussed in detail the social and cultural implications while violence raged in Los Angeles.

That May afternoon, Warrick expressed serious doubts about the future of African-American males, not just in L.A. but across the country.  Sixteen years later, she voiced amazement about Obama's rise to national political leadership.

I find it quite incredible to see how the world and people's attitudes have changed over these past sixteen years.

The Millennials, Facebook and Social Change

Check out this PhilanthroMedia post by Carla E. Dearing in which she describes the relationship between the philanthropy establishment and the millennial generation.

A Reminder about Human Goodness and Decency

On Saturday, I upgraded my cell phone at a local electronics supercenter.  I subsequently went out for lunch with my family.  We left the restaurant and returned to our car.  I proceeded to buckle in my son in his car seat, when the lunch receipt flew out of my pocket.  I bent down to pick up the receipt and could not reach it under the car.  I backed up the car, so my wife could grab the receipt.

At our next stop, I realized that my cell phone was missing, and I attempted to retrace my steps.  I looked inside the restaurant and in the restaurant parking lot but found no phone.

This morning, I received a call from a City of Kansas City, MO employee who found my phone in that restaurant parking lot.  He located my father's number in my cell phone directory.  My father, to whom I spoke yesterday about my missing phone, directed him to my place of employment.

Imagine how I felt losing a new cell phone less than one hour after obtaining it!  I am extremely grateful to this individual and for his willingness to seek me out.  My belief in human goodness and decency has once again been reinforced.

Campaign '08 and the Politics of Meaning

My colleague Alex Pattakos, author of the international best-selling book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts, recently guest blogged on Basil & Spice about the U.S. Presidential campaign and the politics of meaning.  He concluded by writing:

...let me propose a new “politics of meaning,” one that asks both candidates and the electorate to focus on the will to meaning rather than either the will to pleasure or the will to power. From a candidate perspective, this means that those seeking elected office should be willing and able to reveal their values and goals in ways that are authentic and transparent; they should be willing and able to articulate how their values and goals are truly “meaningful”; and they should be willing and able to demonstrate unequivocally that they are authentically committed to to these values and goals. From a voter perspective, this means that citizens must take their responsibilities seriously by being willing and able to do their due diligence on those seeking elected office, including careful and thorough examinations of personal character, and be willing and able to cast their votes accordingly. Only in this way will America be able to live up to the ideals of a democratic society. Only in this way will America be able to shift the focus of politics away from the magnetic draws of forces like pleasure and power towards an authentic commitment to meaningful values and goals. And only in this way will we be able to ensure that we are voting for the best person to be the President of the United States and not just an American Idol!

Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation

I had the privilege last Friday both to visit San Francisco and to learn about the great work of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC), a non-profit that houses 2,500 extremely low-income people—seniors, children, people with disabilities, low-income wage earners, people with AIDS, families and immigrants—in 1,800 apartments and residential hotel rooms in 25 buildings in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood.

I also participated in a walking tour of the neighborhood, which allowed me to grasp first-hand the signficant role TNDC continues to play in serving multiple populations.  Visit the TNDC web site to take a virtual tour or to learn how to schedule a walking tour while in San Francisco.

TNDC will celebrate its 27th birthday during a May 30, 2008 dinner.