Category: civic engagement
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President Obama On Civic Participation
Yesterday, on his first full day in office, President Obama issued a memorandum (one of just three that day) that is required reading for people in the civic participation field. Thanks to Joe Goldman and Sandy Heierbacher for pointing it out. Notwithstanding some of my earlier concerns with government involvement having the potential to distort civic…
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Does Politics Understand Engagement?
Yesterday I wrote about misgivings I have in connecting civic engagement too closely with the formal workings of government. My main concern is that citizen-generated activity could tend to be stifled and bureaucratized by creating some kind of “office of civic engagement” or an “engagement czar” (this is akin to President Bush’s Office of Faith-Based…
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Should The Government Be Involved In Civic Engagement?
Many friends and colleagues have worked hard on something called the Agenda For Strengthening America’s Democracy. Put simply, this is an effort by an broad array of people in the “civic participation” field to lay out a set of principles that could guide the Obama administration moving forward. They see this as a reasonable thing…
Brad Rourke 