Skip to main content

With Liberty and Civic Engagement for Some [PSMag.com]

 

A dozen old, white, property-owning men sit around a pub and decide how best to govern America. Is this the scene of a town hall during the American Revolution or a local city council meeting today? It could be either. And that's a problem.

The reality is that most public meetings still skew older, whiter, and wealthier. When city planning meetings or budget committee hearings attract such a narrow minority of the population, policy decisions that tend to favor the few at the expense of the majority.

Or, as Dan Parham, co-founder of Neighborland, a Web-based platform that engages residents in city planning projects, lamented at a recent event at New America California, "When public hearings are held at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday there is no way for my wife, a working mother, to show up, get informed, and contribute." Our current system fails to adequately educate and engage residents so that they can participate in deliberative democracy.



[For more of this story, written by Leila Pedersen, go to http://www.psmag.com/politics-...-engagement-for-some]

Add Comment

Comments (0)

Post
Copyright ÂĐ 2023, PACEsConnection. All rights reserved.
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×