More on civic spaces

Marc Fisher of the Washington Post has a few thoughts on a proposed new DC library.

For those not familiar with DC geography, the proposed site is about 3 blocks from the Verizon Center (home of the Washington Wizards and Capitols) and Chinatown, surrounded by swanky hotels and office buildings.

While a state of the art library facility anywhere is good for a city, I hope that this doesn't take resources or focus away from local libraries, which could be a force in some areas of DC that aren't seeing all the redevelopment dollars and boom of the Gallery Place/Chinatown area. Those are the public spaces that are most needed.

View from the sidelines

Just want to point you over to Peter Levine with some thoughts on how disconnected people feel from politics, even in a watershed election year such as this one.

Among the most important observations is this one:

Third, there was no empowerment agenda--no talk of how citizens have become
spectators but could be given new responsibilities for self-government. This is
a deep problem exacerbated by the complexity of modern issues, the delegation of
power to administrative agencies and courts, the weakness of grassroots groups,
and the influence of specialists (lawyers, economists, professional
educators).

Conservatives respond to public unease about spectator politics when
they attack "activist judges" for "legislating from the bench"; but their
critique is usually inconsistent and opportunistic. Some progressives may have
seen voting as a sufficient form of empowerment in 2006--but it isn't. We will
need richer and more demanding forms of civic engagement if we are really going
to grapple with our problems.

This lack of "empowerment" or whatever label you want to give it is an issue that I plan on giving a lot of attention to. Go see what Peter has to say, and feel free to share any thoughts on what could possibly "empower" voters.

Our civic spaces

My walk to work this morning took me past not one, but two polling places. They were about a block and a half apart, and both had lines out the door.

One was in the gymnasium of an elementary school, the other in the lobby of my local public library.

Walking by, I was struck by how both of these public institutions only seem to be used as truly public spaces when election days roll around.

There certainly are some libraries that see themselves as spaces for public discourse. In my home state of Wisconsin, Russ Feingold often holds his listening sessions in public libraries. In the lead up to the 2004 election, I had the opportunity to coordinate some "book clubs" in Wisconsin libraries that brought citizens together to talk about political conduct, and the book A New Political Covenant. The conversations that came out of those spaces was fascinating, but one of the most common refrains was how much people craved opportunities to have those kinds of discussions in a safe space.

Schools are even more closed off than libraries. Certainly, high school athletics can serve as a social center of a community, but to truly be a public space there needs to be more than just entertainment and a sense of identiy at stake. Too often, we view schools as an issue rather than a physical structure that can be a force in a community. Meeting spaces and gathering spaces are at a premium as we move toward a more isolated and insular society, and schools are an abundant source of such spaces.

Of course, taking adavantage of these spaces call for some imagination, so I turn to you. How do you think these, and other potential public spaces, can be used beyond election day to improve the civic health of your community?

Eyes on Virginia

I have been quiet in this space for some time for a number of reasons. The most pressing ones involved a crunched work schedule and a hectic personal life.

The more pressing was a general frustration with public life that has overcome me the last few weeks of the last few election cycles.

Those of us in the DC metro area had two competetive Senate races to occupy our mindshare and our airwaves (as well as our answering machines).

The race in Virginia was particularly frustrating. It was a race that got personal very early, and just went downhill from there. Sadly, it appears that the end is not near, and that the slide will continue with the anticipated recount.

I think being left with this sludgefest as the possible deciding election is appropriate for the politics that we have seen for the past few years. Sadly, it's all of us who will have to suffer through it. Maybe, as this race comes into sharper focus across the country we will finally be able to say enough is enough. Or more importantly, maybe both sides will look at this race and say, maybe if we stuck to the issues we could have pulled it out.

We all can dream.