Expanding Civic Engagement

Civic engagement refers to the methods in which citizens get involved in the life of a community in order to improve conditions for other people or to help shape the community’s future. This term has been used to date primarily in the perspective of younger people. But previously few years, a new movement has surfaced in promoting higher civic engagement by older adults. The spirit of involvement in government looks it may be spreading from campaigns to monitoring the sausage-making and to helping out with governing. We would clearly not be as far as we are on Healthcare Reform without a huge amount of pressure from the nurses and doctors and Labor and the blogs and new progressive infrastructure. Here especially, Mike McGinn is operating to get us Seattleites involved in this steadicam process of obtaining Seattle moving. I was at Jeannie Kohnl-Welles’ annual 36th LD post-election analysis and heard from Gov. Christine Gregoire, State Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, Home Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, county executive-elect Dow Constantine, and newly elected Seattle mayor Mike McGinn. Reuven Carlyle served as host within the absence of Kohl-Welles, who is taking longer recovering from metal detector surgery than expected. The rest of those folks were paying attention to McGinn, the guy who won in spite of them, the guy who won while becoming outspent 3:1 simply because he had a great team of mainly volunteers and they kicked butt. The other elected paid a lot attention to him, going out of their home microdermabrasion method to welcome him, talking fairly earnestly with him prior to and following the panel. It was great fun to watch and felt very genuine. He’s showing them that it’s feasible to do governing differently. We are able to make use in the desire that so many of us need to make a distinction. And you can win doing it that way. It is an exciting time to become an active tankless water heater Democrat, to watch as individuals pay more attention to the problems and are more willing to put some effort into understanding much more complicated problems. This really is hugely essential. As soon as individuals will spend more attention, to go below the headlines, they’ll vote more progressively. The individuals of this state got it so right, a minimum of on the statewide issues. Having those two hard money lenders south carolina statewide votes on, 71 and 1033, was nerve-wracking however it sure brought out the numbers of determined progressives in Spokane and Bellingham and Pierce, Snohomish and King counties. And what margins! The 53/47 approval of R-71, which established the law that the legislator had passed known as “Everything But Marriage”, a bigger margin than anybody expected. Only 8 counties authorized so clearly progressives had been out in force in those more liberal, (all west in the mountains) counties. But the margins that voted down Tim Eyman’s newest and worst initiative had been impressive. 58/42 with 25 counties approving. In King County, and particularly in Seattle, we voted overwhelmingly for Dow Constantine more than Susan Hutchison – by 59/41, a whopping 18% percentage points. Seattle’s election, close enough to take a few days to count brings us to the most interesting and hope-inspiring election win since Barack Obama’s win last fall. Buoyed by a good team, an enormous number of young volunteer supporters and McGinn’s increasing ability to speak with and listen to the voters after which to state what he was learning, Mike McGinn won this election by 51/48. Civic Engagement is now expanded via online technologies. There are also a lot of tools available that will educate people on the problems, connect people to every other and their common causes, but the workshop also made it clear that it is important to use these tools as a spring board to actual action. It is important to moving these individuals offline into the actual globe to engage in actions such as phone banking, taking part in community meetings or speaking to public officials in person.