Why Neighborhoods Matter: The Local Roots of Ascendant, Wired, Global Democracy
by Matt Leighninger and Reemberto Rodriguez
 The following is a preview of a
Leadership Training Institute seminar being held during NLC’s
Congressional City Conference, March 13-17 in Washington, D.C.
For some time, a fundamental shift in citizen attitudes and capacities has been affecting local politics. Though it has been largely overlooked by national observers, this shift has created new tensions between local officials and their constituents, and inspired a new wave of civic experimentation in local governance.
In 2008, the frustrations and political potential of active citizens became one of the central stories in a historic presidential election. By recruiting 3 million volunteers — and more importantly, by giving those people much more meaningful responsibilities and opportunities than in any previous presidential election — the Obama campaign tapped into, and helped to reveal, the nature of 21st century citizenship.
But, though the success of the Obama campaign suddenly put
citizens in the spotlight, we still have only vague answers to some critical
questions. What kind of relationship do people want with their
government? How can temporary organizing strategies — whether they
employ online technologies, or face-to-face meetings, or both — be incorporated
in the way communities conduct their public business?Can the energy of 2008 be sustained in ways that will
strengthen our democracy?
To answer these questions, we need to look at what is
happening, and what could happen, in neighborhoods. There are three main
reasons for this. First, the style of organizing that the Obama campaign
deployed is a fundamentally local, even neighborhood-based approach. The
tactics of network-based recruitment, small-group meetings and citizen-led
action planning (and even the use of the Internet to aid these activities) were
all honed through years of work at the local and neighborhood levels. The first
practitioners of these strategies were community organizers in the tradition of
Saul Alinsky, but over the years a much broader array of local leaders,
including elected officials, school administrators, community foundations and
police chiefs, have used and adapted these tactics to engage citizens in public
decision-making and problem-solving. The Obama campaign itself relied heavily
on an extensive local infrastructure. The incredible scale of the effort could
not have been achieved without “boots on the ground” in thousands of
neighborhoods.
Second, though the Internet has given citizens the chance to
connect with people all over the world, some of the most dynamic applications
of the new technologies are situations where online communication builds on,
and complements, local connections. Online neighborhood forums, which are
proliferating rapidly, illustrate some of the ways in which technology is
enriching — not replacing — face-to-face interaction. “When we talk about
social media, we are talking about social change that happens online and on
land,” said Allison Fine, author of “Momentum:
Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age.” Democracy may be increasingly
global, but it may also be increasingly local.
Finally, the experimentation with neighborhood governance
that has occurred in a handful of cities over a 30-year period represents a
tremendous, and often overlooked, source of knowledge on these questions.
Starting in the early 1970s, local governments in places like Portland, Ore.;
Dayton, Ohio; and St. Paul, Minn., created neighborhood council systems as
a way of engaging residents in public decision-making and problem-solving. The
history of these neighborhood governance structures offers a rich legacy of successes,
mistakes, strengths and weaknesses that can inspire and inform democracy
reform at every level of government. Details: Leighninger and Rodriguez will be leading a full-day Leadership Training Institute seminar during the Congressional City Conference on Sunday, March 14 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.nlc.org.
Matt Leighninger is the executive director of Deliberative Democracy Consortium in Washington, D.C. Reemberto Rodriguez is the director of the Silver Spring Regional Center in Silver Spring, Md.
|