Are citizens and constituents civically underestimated?
If so, what are they not being encouraged to do, that they should be?
Probably the most obvious civic prompting we receive as members of society would be “get involved”, “vote”, or perhaps “call or write your member of Congress.” While these three are certainly good advice, what else should people do who wish to influence Congress, public policy, or the government?
Some things that come to mind:
*Comment on pending federal regulations. This is public, it’s online, and it’s underappreciated. Comments that disagree with immanent regulations don’t go without effect; future agencies will have more cover to overturn existing regulations given previous commentary.
*If you are an expert in some subject matter, pay attention to the committee of jurisdiction relevant to your expertise. Your attention will likely have unintended consequences.
*Write or call your member of Congress, when no one asks you to. While popular support can be essential for big important fights, many many many other votes go by with very little attention payed to them. If you call about a vote only you care about that is two days away, you may be the FIRST one in your member’s office to bring up that vote, get in on their radar. A constituent feedback score of 1 to Zero means your feedback has much more chance to have an effect.
*Be the Media. Blog, comment on blogs. Learn to write a Query–if you have firsthand experience, a compelling argument, or the urge to research something, a magazine might be willing to pay you to share, and you could reach a lot of people in the process.
*Fight with the Media. Write a Letter to the Editor, pitch an Op-Ed, offer feedback to an ombudsman.
*Dig around. Check out original documents, read others’ sources, and learn to search government data sources beyond the search engine.
Have other suggestions? Leave them in the comments.
Make a Suggestion
5 responses so far ↓
Old Bogus // Mar 17, 2008 at 9:22 pm
As an elected “official”, my experience has led me to believe that most citizen EXPECT to be lead by the nose by elected persons instead of having to do anything for themselves; i.e., tell me what to think.
Another large percentage only care about one issue; everything else is irrelevant. And if anyone doesn’t support their issue, they are failures.
The rest of the citizens would rather bitch than do anything. That way whatever happens isn’t their fault.
I realize this is a cynical view of the electorate but I have arrived at this point from experience. I have taken to responding to general complaints with, “What have you done to change [it]? If you are just complaining without doing something [all the things in the post], you have NO right to complain. Do something or quit whining.”
This response has elicited interesting replies and none of them negative. It has also stopped a lot of whiny crap in my inbox! All of the stuff I have dealt with this way had nothing to do with my position of my local school board. Complaints relevant to that position I take to meetings unless they are far off the mark. Like firing effective administrators because they POed some parents because they expected students to perform.
Evan Paul // Mar 18, 2008 at 2:13 pm
With all due respect to “Old Bogus”, I think most people act pretty rationally about these things.
When people elect leaders, they expect those leaders to LEAD. Now what appropriate public leadership looks like is a matter of opinion, however there are some great resources for this at http://content.ksg.harvard.edu/leadership/. There was also a great recent essay on how different the leadership styles of Clinton and Obama are at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/opinion/04brooks.html?_r=1&em&ex=1204779600&en=52f3626afabc6614&ei=5087_&oref=slogin
A great post for the Open House Project would be defining what public leadership looks like in an age of (potential) mass collaboration.
Now for the topic at hand…
While there are plenty of tools that enable citizens to comment, critique, protest, etc. the legislative process (one of the latest examples is http://www.e-votingbooth.com/), there are far fewer tools available for citizens to interact with one another to develop policy together and then take collective action to see these policies enacted. Advocacy is most often a fairly top-down process driven by interest groups and few citizens have the expectation that they could have a hand in crafting policy directly. Some of the attempts at wiki-style policy development hold a lot of promise if they can be coupled with a clear link to decision-making. Too many of the current efforts are feel-good civic exercises that few people are motivated to participate in because they, rationally, don’t see that it will yield any influence.
In the light of the potential of developing technologies, how self-governing can and should citizens be in a large democracy like the U.S.? How does this change at different scales - city, state, nation? Could citizens self-organize to create a master plan for their city? Could citizens self-organize to re-write health care policy for their state? Could citizens collectively determine the appropriate role for the U.S. in Iraq?
I think these things are becoming possible with modern technologies, so the real question comes down to what are the appropriate roles for citizens versus elected leaders.
Ross Hammersley // Mar 20, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Somewhat tangential to the “wiki-style” policy development Evan is suggesting, the soon-to-be-launched http://www.Change-Congress.org will eventually incorporate a way for citizens to keep tabs on members of Congress and their pet proposals, allowing a search-able database to be created whereby anyone can track adherence to the Change-Congress platform for reform and, for instance, measuring the level and source of PAC $ accepted by a member, earmark information, etc.
This would certainly be a method for average janes and joes to be intimately involved in the government and in transparency, and is something that could be done at home, rather than attending hearings, etc. I might prefer folks to be a bit more actively/deeply involved in the ‘making of the sausage’ that is legislation and public policy by personally attending hearings, public comment sessions, etc., but this would certainly be a way folks could help increase government transparency but do so in a less prominent, and perhaps, for some people, more comfortable way.
Professor Lessig (Stanford Law) has more of the details…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/fix-congress-first_b_92456.html
David Weller // Mar 20, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Citizen activism has a history of success when large numbers engage in easy to do grassroots projects, like a fax blast or an email campaign. Personally, my US Rep. is very stolid about citizen lobbying efforts, as he is proud to have committed to his pledge of strict fiscal and social conservatism, claiming 93.3% rating.
This is a complex issue, as, for instance, Project Vote Smart pushes their issues questionnaire to all candidates for where they stand, yet some public interest groups encourage citizen lobbying on those same issues.
Boy in the Bands » Blog Archive » So, what can advocates do other than protest? // Apr 30, 2008 at 10:02 am
[…] then since I was maintaining a strict day job/blog divide. John, however, broadened the theme and posted it on his work blog. Some of his suggestions will come naturally to politically trained citizens. One in particular was […]
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