Millions of people around the world are planning to walk out of their classrooms, offices and homes this Friday to call for an end to fossil fuels. The Global Climate Strike started with Greta Thunberg and her fellow classmates walking out of their school to demand climate action. Tomorrow, their protest becomes a worldwide event. But not everyone has the privilege of attending a protest in person, and they aren’t often designed to accommodate people with disabilities. For others, missing work to attend can mean a loss of crucial income. There are dozens of reasons why someone might not be able to go to a march, but that doesn’t mean you can’t advocate from the sidelines Here are a few ways to support a protest if you can’t (and even if you can) attend.
Encourage Friends To Go
Check on friends and family members who are heading out to the rally. Make sure they make it to and from the event safely and have all the gear they need. You can also provide them with snacks, water, signs or words of encouragement to help them feel empowered at the event.
If you can’t be there in person, attend an online rally. For this year’s Climate Strike, businesses can join the Digital #ClimateStrike. Companies can show support by disabling their website for the day and putting the world’s focus on climate. If you don’t have a website, turn to social media. Tweet, Instagram or Facebook about the event and share the causes you care about. Someone on your feed might come across the post, be curious and get involved.
Reach Out to Legislators
These are the people who have the ability to enact permanent change, so let them hear your voice. Contact your local, state and national politicians and urge them to act. It’s a method that has encouraged Senators to cosponsor bills, propose amendments and vote in support of your cause. Hop on the phone and make a call.
Donate
If you have the means, donate to a cause you believe in. But before you give any money, make sure to do your research. Sites like Charity Navigator grade organizations based on their transparency and financial health and can help you ensure your donation is really supporting the cause.
Volunteer
If you can’t make it to the protest, find a time afterward to help clean up. The protest is likely in your city, and strong communities spur more action. Studies confirm that clean cities increase our happiness, which means everyone is more equipped to enact change. If that’s not possible, find another way to volunteer. The causes you champion need help. If you aren’t sure where to start, VolunteerMatch and Idealist use your location and interests to connect you with organizations looking for an extra set of hands.
If crowds aren’t your thing, attend a town hall or commission meeting. It’s a chance to make your voice heard in a less jam-packed setting. These events give you a chance to ask questions and talk directly with leaders. The Town Hall Project makes it simple; enter your zip code and it provides you with upcoming events. You can also check your city’s website to find meetings open to the public.
Buy From Brands That Back Your Cause
Your voice has power and so does your dollar, so buy from companies and places that also support your cause. If you’re concerned about our climate crisis, consider switching your energy to a green power provider. Check Green-e’s certified resources page to find one in your area. The next time you forget to switch off your lights, you won’t feel as guilty. Not being able to attend a rally or protest can be frustrating, but that doesn’t mean you can’t support the cause. All of the actions on this list help create change, so start with one and jump in. More: It’s 2019 and We Still Don’t Have Gender Equality. These 8 Groups Are Fighting to Change That
On its surface, American politics has devolved into shouting matches on social media, or at best something we exercise on occasion at the polls…which can be disheartening to those looking to become more politically active. Luckily, former White House policy adviser Eric Liu has a very different view of what civic engagement can (and should) look like. Liu co-founded the Seattle-based nonprofit Citizen University, with initiatives geared toward “cultivating a culture of citizenship,” as he puts it. One such program, Civic Saturday, is modeled after a faith-based service, but the focus is on connecting and empowering people who might be disillusioned with the political status quo. NationSwell spoke with Liu about how to get young people excited about their civic duty, to help ensure America remains a robust democracy. NationSwell: What exactly is Civic Saturday, and how does it fit within the larger nonprofit you co-founded, Citizen University? Eric Liu: Citizen University’s mission is to spread the belief that democracy’s on us, that it’s possible to make change in civic life and that we’ve got the responsibility to try. It’s about cultivating the character and kind of civic ethics that can start changing the culture. We’ve got a portfolio of different programs that get at those goals in different ways. One of those programs is Civic Saturday, which is basically a civic analog to a faith gathering. It’s not about religion in a traditional sense, but about what you might call American civic religion — a creed of ideas and ideals, and what it takes to actually live up to and to fulfill the promise of our democracy. [We] sing, there are readings of texts that you might consider civic scripture, whether they are famous like the preamble to the Constitution or lesser-known things like a Langston Hughes poem. There’s a civic sermon at the heart of [these gatherings] to help make sense of whatever may be going on in the moment morally, ethically and politically. NationSwell: The goal of Citizen University is to empower individuals to become responsible, engaged citizens. So why use a religious framework for Civic Saturday, which features what you call sermons and scripture, but has nothing to do with actual houses of worship? Liu: Whichever faith or tradition you’re from, organized religion has figured out a few things over the millennia about how to bring people together, about how to create a language of common purpose and about how to use text to spark people’s reckoning with their own shortcomings, weaknesses and aspirations. So when we started Civic Saturday, we looked around at different examples of people who have been successful at engaging folks this way. NationSwell: Does that ever turn people off? Like they want to become more civically engaged, but the churchiness of it all gives them pause? Liu: Right now, we are facing a crisis of spirit and purpose [in this country]. There are people in organized religion who address that through that channel, and more power to them. For someone who is a-religious and unchurched, once they walk in the door [at Civic Saturday], they realize that even though they are not religious, they’ve been hungering for a sense of purposeful shared community that elevates questions of moral challenge right now. Common ritual [can give] people shared purpose. NationSwell: It does seem that with the advent of the internet and the erosion of the public sphere, community has become fractured and people are really craving personal connection. I’m assuming just getting people in the same room to talk and share ideas is a major goal of yours. Liu: Exactly. Among the crises of our politics is this profound isolation, atomization and loneliness, and what Civic Saturday animates in people is this desire to be in the company of others where it’s OK to ask for help, and not be alone. Giving people permission to [do that] in a way that is constructive and not tapping into our worst demons is a good thing. Eric Liu leads a convening of Civic Saturday. At every Civic Saturday, community partners come to register folks to vote, to get signatures for ballot measures. And at the end of every Civic Saturday, we have community announcements: People will talk about a film screening they’re doing, or a talking circle they’re organizing on local issues of homelessness or whatever it might be. But the key here is we’re not organizing that. We’re creating the space and inviting people to exercise their own agency and power to do the sparking, the inviting, the organizing and so forth. It’s not our agenda to register voters, but it is our agenda to spread the belief that it’s possible to make change happen and then create the space for people to start doing that. NationSwell: What are some other Citizen University programs that tie into your broader mission of sparking people into action? Liu: We run something called the Civic Collaboratory, which is a network of civic innovators from all around the country that fosters new partnerships and collaborations among these very disparate kinds of civic innovators. We also have a youth program that activates young people in exercising their own power in political and civic life. We’ve also launched a program called the Joy of Voting, which proceeds from the premise that there used to be an American civic life, this culture of raucous, joyful, participatory engagement around voting and elections during the 1800s [and] up to the early 20th century: Street theater, open-air debates, parades, dueling bands, concerts, toasting and bonfires. Television kind of killed that, but there’s no good reason why we can’t revive that culture, especially at the local level. Because after decades of living mediated political lives through our screens, our intuition was that people are hungry for an invitation to come out and treat voting not as “eat your vegetables, do your duty,” but “join the party,” right? The Knight Foundation agreed with that premise and [gave us funding]. So over the last few years, we’ve traveled to seven cities around the country, organizing musicians, artists, activists and neighbors to generate locally-rooted creative ideas. And then we give them modest grants to execute them. NationSwell: I saw that Civic Saturday was just in Los Angeles. Have you franchised the model? Liu: When we launched Civic Saturday four days after the [2016] presidential election, we realized we’d struck a nerve. We started doing them regularly in Seattle, and they started getting a little bit of attention. People throughout the country started asking, “Hey, can you bring Civic Saturday to our community?” So we’ve taken Civic Saturday to L.A., New York, Nashville, Des Moines, Atlanta, Portland, Maine, and other places. But of course that is not super-scalable. So we launched Civic Seminary, a program to train [people] how to run their own Civic Saturday. Not just [training on] how you run events, but more deeply, how do you talk about, think about and reckon with these ideas, while thinking about the gaps between our ideals, our actual institutions and our practices. We’ve now got a couple dozen people around the U.S. who are running their own Civic Saturday in different kinds of settings. NationSwell: There are people who are, as you put it, hungry for this kind of connection and civic engagement, but there are many others who have been historically marginalized and who feel like they don’t have any civic power, they don’t have a voice. How do you reach people like that? Liu: I think you put your finger on the core question of all civic engagement: How do you do this work in a way that’s not just cycling through the usual suspects? We’re trying to reach partners or colleagues who in turn can reach circles and communities where we don’t have direct ties. One of our other programs is called Citizens Fest, which we did in New Orleans, Dallas and Memphis. In each of those cities, we had a core anchor partner on the ground who had deep relationships in precisely where you’re talking about — in communities that aren’t always invited to participate, show up and be part of civic power gatherings. In all of those communities, the folks who showed up [represented] such a diverse group on both class and race dimensions. As we’ve been getting applications for the 2019 cohorts [for Civic Seminary], it is kind of heartening to see the breadth of people from [different] socioeconomic backgrounds, rural versus urban. They run the gamut from a 23-year-old ex-gang member from the southside of Chicago, to a young mother in small-town Tennessee, to people who are educators and poets and artists in places like Indianapolis and Tucson. We brought them together and we have designed an arc of experience for them that is about understanding themselves, understanding our times and being able to speak a language of tapping into the emotional undercurrents that drive so much of politics right now. You can think about politics as voting midterms and issues, but undergirding all of that are currents of fear, anxiety, hope, impatience. And so a big part of our time together is about equipping each other to break through cynicism that people have about American ideals, and to talk about how ideas of equal justice under law might play out in communities where there is unequal justice. MORE:9 Strategies for Talking Politics — Without Picking a Fight
You don’t have to cast too wide a net to find people willing to criticize government officials as out of reach, out of touch or simply not doing enough to help propel communities forward. While those criticisms are subjective, of course, technology now offers an objective way for local leaders to better understand what’s working for their constituents and what isn’t. Whether you’re a city official who wants to enhance your understanding of a specific community around you, or you’re a citizen looking to vent about impossibly long lines at the DMV to those in a position to do something about it, we’ve rounded up four apps that local governments are using to gauge how to best fix their cities.
THE APP THAT POLICES THE POLICE
It’s common practice for police departments to keep tabs on what’s happening in a neighborhood, such as the number of assaults, robberies and thefts. But there hasn’t been much traction in measuring more abstract problems, like how a community feels about their local officers. Until now, beat cops have been the eyes and ears of a community, and major cities like Philadelphia and New York dispatch police to patrol on foot and talk with local residents in a protocol known as community policing. But how does one measure its efficacy? Enter Elucd, a Brooklyn-based startup that compiles data on how residents view local law enforcement. The company reaches hundreds of thousands of people each month via location-targeted smartphone popup ads — including on perennially popular apps like CandyCrush and Instagram — that link to short surveys. So far, Elucd has announced partnerships with four police departments, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Grand Rapids, Michigan. In New York City — home of the country’s largest police department and Elucd’s first client — precincts have implemented the company’s data-driven “sentiment meter,” which compiles users’ responses into a “trust score” and provides rankings on how safe they feel in their neighborhoods. Commanding officers then use that feedback to determine how to improve community engagement with neighborhoods where scores have gone down or remain low.
THE APP THAT ISSUES REPORT CARDS FOR CITY SERVICES
Had a really annoying time at the DMV? Disappointed by the state of your local park? Tell the government about it! In Washington, D.C., a city initiative has been letting residents do just that since 2012. The website Grade.DC.gov is powered by software meant to analyze customer sentiment toward the hospitality industry, but local leaders in the nation’s capital have been tapping it to generate feedback on government services instead. On the site, users can grade their interactions and experiences with more than a dozen public agencies, including the departments of education, transportation and health, and submit comments; think of it as the Yelp of social services. The platform also culls publicly posted comments from sites like Twitter and Facebook and uses those to inform the letter grades. The results have been mostly positive, and any bad grades that are initially recorded tend to improve almost immediately. For example, the District Department of Transportation received an initial F grade in November 2017; one month later, the agency was boasting an A-minus, putting it near the top of its class. But whereas former Mayor Vincent C. Gray, who piloted the customer-service initiative, had viewed those grade bumps as incredible achievements, they also brought into question how measurements were actually done. For example, the Department of Transportation still has a B-plus rating as of June 2018, despite public sentiment showing quite the opposite. Still, the platform continues to be a powerful way for people to voice their opinions on how their government serves them. Last month alone, Grade.DC.gov saw more than 4,000 people submit reviews.
THE APP THAT ENCOURAGES CITIES TALK TO EACH OTHER
As the old adage goes: People can find more strength in their similarities than in their differences. Last year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago began pairing urban areas with their sister cities through its Peer City Identification Tool, which was designed to help troubleshoot local issues based on what’s working in other cities of similar demographics. By gathering data on close to 1,000 cities and townships across the nation, local government leaders in places from Anchorage, Alaska, to Montclair, New Jersey, can peruse data on a range of issues. By examining their city’s labor market conditions or economic outlook against those of comparable cities, officials are better able to discern solutions that have demonstrated impact elsewhere. For example, let’s say your smallish town has an affordability gap. You could see where there’s another town of roughly the same size with similar industries and population demographics, but with plenty of inexpensive housing options, to try and figure out if what worked to close the gap in that city can be replicated in yours. In Rockford, Illinois, city officials used the data from the tool to map out its Transform Rockford initiative, which aims to build a more inclusive and equitable city by 2025. “For a community our size, having access to the data the Chicago Fed has — there would have been no way we could have done that by ourselves,” Jake Wilson, Transform Rockford’s program manager, told NextCity.
THE APP THAT LETS YOU REVIEW RESTAURANTS — AND PRISONS
Many people turn to the giant of online user reviews, Yelp, to pontificate on everything from the bathroom condition of a local dive bar to the best brunch for your money on Sundays. And now, prisons and jails are increasingly getting the Yelp treatment. “I reviewed jail on Yelp because I couldn’t afford a therapist,” one user reported. Others have left comments on how to score the best meals from a prison’s kitchen staff; the dress-code requirements for prison visitors; and the interior design of the facility (“The windows were too small and the view sucked,” according to one disappointed former inmate). It’s unclear if prison administrators actually act on the reviews, but according to a report by The Marshall Project, just letting people know what to expect before their time in the slammer is helpful in its own right. Athena Kolbe, a social worker in Detroit, told the publication that she wanted people to “be prepared for [prison] mentally when you go into it, [and] when you come out of it, know that all that disrespect you experienced, everybody else is also experiencing that. It’s not just you.”
America may feel like a nation split in two, and in some ways, it is. Just days after the election, aGallup poll found that a record high 77 percent of the country believed that the country is divided on the most important values. Recent incidents like a Republican congressional candidate allegedly assaulting a journalist and tension at town hall meetings suggest more heated moments are still to come. Yet it’s possible to debate the issues without getting ugly.
View Every Interaction as Educational
“If you want to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with you, you have to check your assumptions at the door,” says Lisa Cohen, a clinical professor of psychiatryat the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. When listening to someone who has opposing views, approach the conversation with the assumption that you can learn something from them.
Avoid Blocking
To cool hot debates, don’t counter an argument with adversarial phrases such as “I disagree” or “but.” “That’s dismissive,” says Susan Heitler, a Denver-based clinical psychologist who writes Psychology Today’s Resolution, Not Conflict blog. Ninety-three percent of Republicans are more conservative than the median Democrat, while 94 percent of Democrats are more liberal than the median Republican – up from 64 percent and 70 percent, respectively, two decades ago, according to thePew Research Center. Since most people are so firm in their beliefs, trying to convince others to change will just put them on the defensive.
Stop Prepping Your Response
Just listen. Then reply. “I think a lot of times, especially on social media, people assume others have ill intent and the conversation just goes upside down, unfortunately,” says Edda Collins Coleman, co-founder and chief public affairs officer of All in Together, a non-partisan organization working to decrease gender gaps in political and civic engagement. One method for de-escalating tension during a curt social media exchange: ask a follow-up or clarifying question that demonstrates you’re attentive to what’s being said.
FosterAdditive Dialogue
Use this technique from improv performers. Repeat a specific word or phrase used by the other person, then carry the conversation forward. Heitler recommends saying something along the lines of, “Yes, higher taxes are a serious concern for me as well, and at the same time…” or “The mistake the president made was surprising because that’s an area he knows a lot about.” A calm exchange between Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and his constituents after a town hall meeting in Columbia, S.C.
Channel Your Inner SEAL (Yes, really)
Try the 4×4 method, a tactic Navy SEALs use to keep cool under pressure. Start by expelling air from your chest for a count of four, then inhaling through the nose for another four seconds before holding it for four more. Sometimes you just need to take a break from the politically charged exchange or step away from your mobile device, says Collins Coleman, who teaches the strategy at workshops.
Open with the Right Questions
“Ask what they believe in, and why, and what’s important to them,” says Cohen. Alternatively, try this opener: “I’ve always had a very different point of view, but help me understand how you see this.”
Check your tone
Keep it calm and friendly — even during debates about serious topics like immigration reform or anti-terrorism measures. “People’s ears open when they’re feeling relaxed,” says Heitler.
Give It Another Go
If a battle becomes so heated that one or both parties walk away, give it some time — several minutes, hours or even days. Then re-engage by offering an olive branch through a bit of agreement, with something like, “I was thinking about what you said on the Supreme Court, and I very much agree about…” Acknowledging a portion of what they said, with a non-threatening tone, could provide the opportunity for a fresh start, says Heitler.
Channel Your Emotions Into Action
Trade an explosive confrontation for political gain. Direct your passionate efforts towards influencing members of government. Use social media (keeping in mind the tips above!) or make an in-person visit to a lawmaker’s office (which might prove even more fruitful). Or check out new platforms like the left-leaningDaily Action and Wall-of-Us, which suggest ways that constituents can take action by contacting government reps about various issues. Homepage photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the environmentalist Civilian Conservation Corps, one of America’s first experiments in public service (aside from the traditional routes of joining the military or running for office). Decades later, John F. Kennedy’s global Peace Corps and Lyndon B. Johnson’s domestic anti-poverty program, VISTA, followed. And later, Bill Clinton formed AmeriCorps to instill service as a core ideal. NationSwell Council member MacKenzie Moritz, chief of staff and head of partnerships at Service Year Alliance, believes that civic engagement is about to reach its apex, as more young people sign up for a year of service. NationSwell spoke to him by phone in Washington, D.C., about how 12 months of service could heal the country’s divides. What is a service year? Who can participate, and what do they do? A service year is an opportunity to do a year or two of full-time, paid service with a nonprofit, government or university, working to address an unmet societal need. Some of the best-known examples out there are things like the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps programs like Teach for America and City Year, and the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Our focus is really on this idea of how to provide opportunities for people to act on the responsibilities of their citizenship. [With Service Year Alliance,] we primarily focus on recruiting 18-to-28-year-olds — whether after high school, during college or after — to have this opportunity really early in life, because we think it will unlock a next level of civic engagement for the rest of their lives. Of course, they’re certainly not limited to those ages; plenty of people decide to do a service year later in life. Why is a service year so important now? After two years in Philadelphia, where I taught ninth-grade world history, I ended up leading Teach for America’s national recruitment strategy and technology team. At that time, we were seeing 60,000 applicants every year for 6,000 positions. There was just a tremendous interest from young people to give back, to leave their mark on society. The vast majority of people that were raising their hand to volunteer were ultimately told they weren’t a good fit. They were being rejected, only to go home and read a newspaper article about how Millennials care only about themselves. With our politics, people aren’t feeling as connected to larger systems as they had historically, leading to declining rates of social trust. We need something new that restores the fabric of our country. What would you say to the person who thinks service years are well and good for others, but not for them? The Franklin Project got started at Aspen Ideas Festival a couple years back, when Gen. McChrystal was asked whether he believed in the draft. He said, “I think you’re asking the wrong question. The right question is, ‘Should every young American serve?’ I think the answer to that is yes. But does the military need everyone? I think the answer is no. We need to create a lot more pathways for young people to serve.”
He went on to say that citizenship is a membership. We spend a lot of time talking about its rights, and we spend very little time talking about its responsibilities. About only 1 percent of Americans serve in the military, and frequently those are folks who come from families that have a long history of serving in the military. It’s really dangerous for us, as a country, to get into the mindset of thinking that service is someone else’s job, that it’s not a shared responsibility across all of us. Service years involve exploring your identity as a citizen. During his time as a Teach For America Corps member, Moritz (left) brought students to a 2008 presidential debate in Philadelphia. The teens are pictured here with former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell (right) Is there a book you’d recommend for someone who wants to understand your approach to public service? “Heart of the Nation: Volunteering and America’s Civic Spirit,” by John Bridgeland, chair of the domestic policy council in the Bush administration during 9/11, does a really good job of providing a history of service in America and outlining a future of where we could go. What do you wish someone had told you when you first took this role? If I had been holding myself to the expectations I had for myself as a college graduate at 21 years old, I would not be doing any of what I’m doing today. There’s so much out there that I didn’t know existed back then. There are a lot of different levers that exist out there for changing our society. It’s very easy to fall into focusing only on the ones you know. With how fast the world is changing, there’s a lot more that are being created all the time. I hope that, 10 years from now, I’m doing something that doesn’t exist today. What are you most proud of having accomplished? When I was a teacher back in Philadelphia, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of amazing young people. My male students, you’d ask them what they want to do, and they’d say [play in] the NBA or the NFL. In a moment of frustration, I ended up taking a trashcan and putting it on a stool. I said, “Alright, everyone get out a piece of paper. Crumple it up. On the count of three, shoot.” Ninety-five percent of them didn’t go in. “Okay,” I said, “We need a backup plan here.”
The funny thing is that one of the students ended up playing in the NBA, which makes me look foolish, but I was right for the rest of them. The students I’m most proud of are two of the students I taught as ninth graders, who, after college, did Teach for America back in Philadelphia and now, after completing that, are staying in the classroom. It’s been such a privilege to mentor them over the years, stay in touch with them and see the cycle go all the way around. There’s just so much talent and potential in all of America’s classrooms. I got to play a small role in helping people to realize that, and I’m excited to continue to help with that through all the work that I do. To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here. Note: Since the publication of this article, Service Year Alliance has become a NationSwell advertiser.
Watching the bare-knuckle cage match that is our presidential election in 2016, it’s no wonder voters are tempted to just unplug the television and bolt the door until Election Day. But the team behind the networking site Brigade wants you to turn those frustrations into something productive. The website, funded in part by tech billionaire Sean Parker of Napster, Facebook and Spotify fame, was founded as a virtual forum for civic engagement and is now turning its attention to getting out the vote in November.
In the site’s earliest incarnation, political enthusiasts sparred over policy proposals, hoping to convince ideological opponents to switch sides or, at the very least, see another point of view. In the last few months, Brigade has shifted its emphasis to the election: Political allies in the same district declare which candidates they’ll be supporting in the voting booth, from the commander-in-chief all the way down to county coroner, with the goal of rallying like-minded folks to the cause.
When visitors first log in, they are asked for their address and presented with dozens of issue-related survey questions. Then, their answers are compared to other users (including people in their area) who’ve pledged their votes to a specific candidate. This is particularly useful, CEO Matt Mahan points out, for down-ballot races: After the incessant media coverage of the presidential race, voters may know who they want to see in the Oval Office, but still have no idea who’s best suited to represent them on Capitol Hill, much less in City Hall.
Brigade joins the likes of Turbovote, which sends electronic reminders about key registration deadlines, and BallotReady, which can fill in any knowledge gaps in down-ballot races. NBCU and Vote Smart provide a comprehensive suite of tools to help with every step of the process, including a quiz that matches users with a candidate based on policy positions; a comprehensive FAQ page that covers eligibility, registration, polling places and more; and a tool that lets people check the voting requirements in their state. Users who were granted early access to Brigade’s new ballot tool have already pledged almost 300,000 votes for candidates from the top of the ticket to the important, but frequently overlooked, down-ballot races. And they invited almost 1 million friends to pledge votes as well.
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But what distinguishes Brigade from other voting tools is its permanence: Members can wonk out, regardless of how far away the next election is. Think of it as Facebook for the politically minded.
“We believe a voter network needs to exist in the world,” says Mahan. “We’re creating a way to make the political process more accessible, engaging and transparent for ordinary people. That’s our long-term vision for Brigade: to bring democracy online.”
Because Brigade tracks a user’s pledges, it’s easy for people to see their impact, like how many opinions they’ve changed through online discussions or how many people they’ve recruited to their candidate. Elizabeth McAlexander, of Knoxville, Tenn., for example, knows she’s swayed 110 other Brigade users to vote for Green Party nominee Jill Stein, measurable data you can’t find anywhere else.
Donald P. Green, a political scientist at Columbia University whose research focuses on how to mobilize and persuade voters, will be studying the impact of Brigade’s pledges on turnout. While his job requires him to be a “determined skeptic,” he believes that Brigade’s social influence could boost participation. “Many people feel disconnected from the political process. In some ways, even though they are interested enough to register to vote and feel a sense of civic duty, it’s as though they were invited to a social event. Without that extra nudge of saying, ‘Hey, let’s go,’ they might just miss this one,” he explains. “Anything that brings people into contact with each other or reminds them of social norms tends to increase turnout.”
To be sure, the site still has its share of partisan strife — users who’d rather take personal swipes at Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump rather than discuss those candidates’ positions — but Mahan believes those conflicts will subside once the election is over. He references the time a San Francisco county supervisor, Scott Weiner, logged in to debate affordable housing policies, a model for what he expects to see in the future as the site’s following pressures elected officials to make an account.
Once a new president is sworn in, Mahan sees Brigade as an important driver in guiding the issues that the new administration will focus on. Rather than imitate the mud-slinging candidates did in the run-up to the election, Mahan hopes users will be able to carry on high-minded political discussions and collaborate on solutions. “There’s a lack of faith today that our political process works,” says Mahan. “There’s a feeling that participation doesn’t matter and that the system is rigged.” And that may be the biggest reason of all for forums like Brigade to exist — to create a much-needed space for citizens to meaningfully carry out their civic duties. This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st-century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future-forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.
New York City’s housing court might not be the most obvious subject for a comic strip. But for tenants doing battle with landlords, the colorful, often whimsical illustrations contained in “Housing Court Help,” an animated booklet that educates renters on their rights, can mean the difference between staying in their homes and getting evicted. It’s just one of many creative projects developed by the Brooklyn-based Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a nonprofit that uses art and design to increase civic engagement. Under the leadership of executive director Christine Gaspar, the small team works on roughly three dozen projects a year; most recently, a documentary about trash infrastructure, a bilingual guide for immigrants buying health insurance and a comic book about succession rights on apartment leases. NationSwell spoke with Gaspar at CUP’s offices in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood.
How have your views on leadership evolved over the course of your career? I once had a colleague who went through an assertiveness training for women, where the tagline was “Die Before You Cry” — which is really intense! I thought about that during an emotional moment a while back, when I was talking to the staff. It was the day the ruling came down that there wouldn’t be an indictment in the Michael Brown case, and I just started crying. We ended up having a really powerful conversation. Afterward, two staff members emailed me saying how proud they are to be part of an organization where it’s okay to show you’re vulnerable, particularly around issues that are important to you. I realized then that there are other ways to show leadership. Namely, the ability to not just focus on the day’s workload, but also having the freedom to say, “You know, something really bad happened today, and we need to talk about it.”
What innovations happening in cities are you most excited about right now? One cool thing that New York has been doing, and that CUP has been involved with, is participatory budgeting, where public funds are allotted according to how community members want to use them. Rather than representatives choosing for us, we’re voting ourselves, picking what the projects are and developing the proposals. New York City Council members have been doing this for the last two years, and it’s growing: more and more districts are doing it every year. It can be labor-intensive, but it really engages a lot of people, especially those who aren’t traditionally involved with political processes. There are more low-income individuals, people of color, undocumented people who normally have barriers to civic engagement, and younger people who aren’t old enough to vote. It’s broadening the scope of who gets to be civically engaged.
Residents from New York City’s Chinatown neighborhood look over the “Rent Regulations Rights” pamphlet created by CUP.
Where do you find your inner motivation? The combination of getting to do things that are creative and visually expressive but that are also impactful and meaningful to people is so exciting. I feel really lucky to work with such an amazing group of people on the CUP staff. We also collaborate with a group of partners and many community organizers, all of whom represent different perspectives. Then there is our work with talented artists, designers and visual thinkers. It’s an interesting combination of people, fields and topics. There’s never a day where you feel like, “I got this. I already know everything that’s going on today.” It keeps things exciting.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job? I wish someone had told me to go home more. When I first started working here, CUP was really small — a three-person staff at that time — and it was the first time I was running an organization. I felt this incredible sense of responsibility, which I still do, but also fear of doing something wrong. I worked a lot of hours, because I was so nervous about making sure that I wasn’t missing something. The truth is that you’re always going to miss something. At the same time, one of the things I contributed to CUP is making it an organization where we don’t all work crazy hours. We work really hard, people are incredibly committed to the organization, but they also have families and hobbies and outside lives. It took me a while to make it sustainable as a place for me to work.
What’s your proudest accomplishment? When I started at CUP, there were only three of us on staff, and now there are nine. Every day, they go out and work on projects, and together, we continue to build this organization. That feels really good, that I played a big role in bringing us to where we are today.
What’s your favorite book? If I’m being honest, I’d probably pick a children’s book, because I really like the illustrations in them. I feel like they speak to my work in that they use visual storytelling to achieve clarity and accessibility. Some of my favorites, which I think of often and now share with my child, are the Richard Scarry books, like “Busy, Busy World.”
What don’t most people know about you? I’m from Waterbury, Conn., which used to be the brass capital of the world. When I was growing up there, the town was the brownfield, Superfund capital of the Northeast, with heavy-metal manufacturing and abandoned factories. I grew up in a fairly low-income, working-class family, and my parents are immigrants. I can relate on a personal level to a lot of the projects I work on today, because they’re consistent with my own experiences. These are qualities that aren’t visible to people, but I believe that my background has informed the way I work and the things I think about.
For many high school and middle school students, civic engagement may not be their top priority, but one millennial is working to reverse that. By connecting them with college volunteers, Generation Citizen is working to transform the next generation into civic-minded citizens.
With his father a member of the State Department, Generation Citizen Founder Scott Warren grew up watching the people of Zimbabwe, Kenya and other African and Latin American countries take great pride and enjoyment from participating in elections. However, upon his return to the United States, he found the exact opposite — which inspired him to take action.
According to National Journal, the idea for Generation Citizen came to Warren in 2007, during his senior year at Brown University. By 2008, he had two programs running in Providence, R.I. high schools. And in just six short years, Warren has grown the program to include 10,000 students and 500 college volunteers across New York City, San Francisco, Boston and Providence.
What is Generation Citizen? Well, it’s a nonprofit that places college volunteers in high schools and middle schools to teach a class and run a semester long civic-centered project. These college volunteers (or Democracy Coaches, as they’re called) are neither student teachers nor education majors, but are simply interested and engaged citizens.
For one semester, a Democracy Coach works in a classroom helping students research and develop a plan to solve a local problem of their choosing. First, the students have to identify the root cause. Next, they create a specific goal to address that cause. Then, they must create a list of people who can achieve that goal and develop tactics to persuade them to help. Lastly, they form alliances and execute the plan.
Some of the issues covered include bullying, public housing, unemployment and public transit.
The purpose is to show students that their voice can be heard and that it is possible to influence those in charge.
According to Warren, many students are skeptical at first that they can make a difference. “We’ll go into the classroom and say, ‘How many of you actually feel like you can actually change your communities?’” he tells National Journal. “At the beginning, a lot of them are really skeptical.”
What makes the difference for the students, though, is the dedication and encouragement of their Democracy Coaches.
“They treated us like college students,” eighth-grader Sayem Hossain says. “Whenever they gave us work they were like, ‘You guys want to do this?’ They made us feel like, ‘If you don’t want to do this, what’s the point of doing it?'” MORE: How Can a Mayor Enact Change Once He’s Left Office?
For many, the way to strike change into a system is by running for office or joining a nonprofit. However, while still valuable, there’s a new wave of millennials looking to tackle civic problems from a different angle: business. And it’s these people that business accelerator Tumml is working to make big.
The origins of Tumml can be traced back to a meeting between founders Clara Brenner and Julie Lein at the MIT Sloan School of Management. While there, the two women became intrigued by businesses that had both a social mission and a profit motive.
As a result, the two moved to San Francisco after graduation and formed Tumml in 2012, a business that helps civic minded businesses get off the ground.
Headquartered in the South of Market neighborhood, the company has worked with 17 companies worldwide.
So what does Tumml do for its clients? Well, the purpose is to support “urban impact start-ups” who are looking to improve the functionality of civic systems — whether it is education, transportation or small businesses.
Once selected, Tumml provides each client with initial funding, workspace, mentors, help with managing and operating a business and the chance to meet and work with local government and nonprofit leaders who are addressing the same topics.
Chariot, founded by Ali Vahabzadeh, is one of the startups working with Tumml. Vahabzadeh was amazed by how inefficient the San Francisco transportation system was compared to those in London and New York City, so he started his own company, which services residents in the crowded community corridors of the city.
Tajel Shah is another entrepreneur working with Tumml. The mother of a preschool student, she was aggravated with the application process for private preschools, where a paper application had to be filled out for each individual school. Her company, KidAdmit, streamlines the process by working like the college common app: one online application that can be sent out to Shah’s network of 150 private schools in San Francisco.
For Brenner, these problems are exactly what they are trying to address: the small things that make life tick.
“If you want to solve a problem in your own community, in your own backyard, there isn’t really a place for you to go,” Brenner tells National Journal. “Where would you go find money to do that? I couldn’t have told you two years ago. So we decided an organization to try to change that.” MORE: Why More Cities Are Creating Innovation Labs
For decades, Binghampton, a neighborhood on the east side of Memphis, Tenn., has been known for little more than crime and urban blight. After it was cruelly bisected by an expressway in the 1960s, the area was abandoned by motorists and pedestrians; guidebooks advised tourists to avoid it altogether. “Here’s a community that was cut off from its center, and its residents cut off from services,” says Sarah Newstok, program managerat Livable Memphis, a nonprofit devoted to revitalizing the Bluff City. “This was a Bermuda Triangle of infrastructure investment.”
Now, at last, real investment is on the way. In February 2014, construction crews broke ground on the Hampline: a two-mile cycle track that will connect Binghampton to nearby parks and trails, and bring much-needed traffic and economic activity to local storefronts as early as this fall. And while Newstok says the cycle track’s protected lanes should make it one of the “safest and most innovative” in the country, the Hampline’s design isn’t its only noteworthy attribute — equally remarkable is how it was funded. While the bulk of the money came through the usual avenues of city grants and foundations, the last $69,000 of the $4.5 million project was raised via ioby, a crowdfunding platform that’s helping to launch environmental and community development initiatives around the country through microfinance.
Crowdsourcing might seem an unusual way to fund urban infrastructure, but ioby (the company’s name is always written with lower-case letters) is making it work. The nonprofit was started by three friends — Erin Barnes, Brandon Whitney and Cassie Flynn — who had moved to New York City after graduating from an environmental master’s program at Yale University in 2007. Although all three came to New York to pursue environmental careers, it wasn’t long before they all felt disillusioned with the green movement. “All too often, environmentalism seems to deal with things that are really far away — deforestation in the Amazon or melting glaciers,” says Barnes, now 33. “We kept hearing people say, ‘What can I do personally?’” MORE:What’s ‘the Country’s Best Smart Growth Project’?
Over drinks in 2007, the trio discussed the need for a more relevant green vision — one with an urban focus. When another acquaintance, a researcher at the U.S. Forest Service, showed them data about the thousands of volunteer groups laboring to maintain city parks, the friends saw an opportunity to put their burgeoning philosophy into practice. “There was all this energy in the city, but these groups had such tiny budgets,” says Whitney, 31. “We thought there had to be a way to connect people and resources.”
To make it happen, Barnes, Whitney and Flynn borrowed a model from Donor’s Choose, a New York nonprofit that allows individuals to donate to projects in public schools. (The term “crowd-funding” didn’t even exist yet, says Whitney, so the friends gave their system the not-so-snappy name “online micro-philanthropy.”) In 2009, they launched a prototype, calling it ioby, a site where individuals or groups could post project descriptions and fundraising goals and interested donors could contribute money or manpower. The name ioby is an acronym for “in our backyards,” a play on the oft-heard phrase “not in my backyard” (NIMBY).
At first, ioby’s founders weren’t sure whether their prototype would work — would elderly community gardeners, not the web-savviest demographic, really raise money through the Internet? But bolstered by countless meetings and training sessions, groups concerned about parks and gardens around the city began raking in donations. Some of the successes proved transformative: In the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, for instance, ioby helped the Green Alliance, a local community-improvement organization, raise money to shut down 78th Street to traffic during the summer months and turn it into a recreation area. Word spread, and requests began trickling in from urban gardeners around the country: Could ioby make its platform available outside of New York?
On Earth Day 2012, the group opened its site to aspiring crowdfunders nationwide; today, ioby has projects in 61 cities, from Seattle to Durham. The organization also began approaching cities about more comprehensive institutional partnerships. “We wanted to reach places where there’s no real infrastructure for environmental activities — the American South and the post-industrial Rust Belt,” says Barnes, ioby’s executive director. In 2013, that meant forming a partnership with Miami, a city that’s been ranked as the least civically engaged in the country, to revitalize public space. Ioby’s now collaborating with OpenPlans, a technology nonprofit that works with cities and planners, to crowdsource potential projects in the city — which include creating an exercise park designed expressly for people with mental and physical challenges and installing children’s swing sets underneath a downtown monorail. ALSO:9 Surprising Infrastructure Innovations Happening Right Here in America
Memphis, where decades of blight have left behind an estimated 80,000 abandoned properties, was a natural site for ioby’s next partnership. When ioby and Livable Memphis first discussed paying for a portion of the Hampline through micro-donations,Newstok was cautious about setting a precedent in which nonprofits solved problems that were the rightful responsibility of city government. But those concerns were trumped by the sense of community ownership that came with more than 500 local donations. “We’ve been able to say to elected officials, ‘look, we don’t want to delay this project, and we’re going to put our money where our mouth is,’” Newstok says. “That’s a big, big message.”
In addition to the Hampline, ioby and Livable Memphis are collaborating on a bevy of smaller initiatives, including a tool-sharing program at a sustainable farming academy, a smartphone app to help cyclists find greenways and a project to install solar panels on 30 municipal buildings. Ioby’s efforts are flourishing beyond Memphis, too: So far, the organization has raised nearly three-quarters of a million dollars and fully funded 282 projects nationwide. And while ioby doesn’t keep track of spilled sweat, there’s been plenty of that as well — more than half the people who donate to projects also volunteer to implement them.
As ioby has grown, its founders have come to reject the environmental label, and the social baggage it carries, altogether. While Whitney, the group’s chief operating officer, acknowledges that many ioby projects still have a sustainability bent, he says that the leaders behind them don’t consider themselves “green” — they’re just folks trying to improve their communities. “We imagine a national network where anybody with an idea for their neighborhood can connect to share expertise and ideas,” he says. “We want to be a hub for people creating more livable cities.” DON’T MISS:Pat Tillman’s Legacy — A Marine Fights to Bring His Last Platoon Member Home
