There is a vocabulary problem at the center of American civic life. The words we use to describe civic engagement — participation, activism, mobilization, organizing — are used interchangeably in contexts where they describe fundamentally different things. That interchangeability is not a linguistic accident. It reflects a genuine confusion about what civic activity is supposed … Read more
Civic infrastructure did not collapse evenly across America. It collapsed along the fault lines that already existed — geography, race, class, and the presence or absence of institutional alternatives. Where those fault lines converged, the collapse was total. And in the places where the collapse was total, the consequences of civic infrastructure absence are not … Read more
At some point in the last thirty years, while civic society was running episodic campaigns and wondering why nothing was sticking, the organized interests side built something. Not a conspiracy. Not a secret. Something visible, documented, and operational — a connective infrastructure for their side of the fight that has been running continuously ever since. … Read more
When you hire someone to represent your interests, you are entering into a principal-agent relationship. You are the principal. They are the agent. The arrangement works when the agent’s incentives are aligned with yours — when doing right by you is also doing right by them. It breaks down when the agent acquires a second … Read more
There is an assumption so embedded in how Americans talk about political change that it rarely gets examined. The assumption is this: government identifies problems, develops solutions, and the public responds — either supporting or opposing what has been proposed. Citizens are the audience. Government is the actor. The public’s job is to send signals … Read more
Think about the last time a civic campaign you cared about built real momentum. The organizing meetings, the phone banks, the online energy, the feeling that this time something was actually going to move. Now think about what happened six months after it ended — whether it won or lost. Where did the people go? … Read more
You already know something is wrong. You’ve voted. You’ve called your representative. You’ve signed the petition, donated to the campaign, shown up to the meeting. And the thing you were trying to change either didn’t change, or changed briefly, or changed and then got reversed the next time the other party won an election. That … Read more