Tom presented on “Crowdsourcing Social Change” at TEDxDePaul on October 13. You can watch the presentation deck and listen to the audio here (18 minutes). We did some crowdsourcing on the spot – asking attendees to reveal how much student debt they will have upon graduation and to share ideas for dealing with mounting and unmanageable student debt. Thanks to the folks at GoSoapBox for the use of their platform for this demonstration! Participate here.
Join us on Thursday, October 11 at the Multikulti Space from 6:30-830pm for our next civic hack work session.
RSVP using Gathers.us.
We are working on three projects:
From The Atlantic Magazine online edition, “For the past two years, Code for America has been embedding developers in city halls across the country, an initiative designed to show municipal officials what’s possible with technology, even if this small army of visiting fellows can’t carry on the job forever. What cities really need in the long run, of course, are not temporary technologists and their stopgap services. Cities need a full-fledged, permanent industry around this stuff. A company called Socrata, for instance, has gotten into the fledgling business of helping cities publish and manage their public data. But there aren’t many companies out there selling modern web services to cities, or tools built on city data to citizens, or platforms for the two to connect better to each other.”
I was at a forum “What’s In The Water in Illinois? Reform Symposium on Illinois Government” on Thursday and Friday at the Union League Club. The event was sponsored by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.
The Institute was described as the late Illinois Senator’s “living legacy.”
The event assembled an all-star collection of Chicago reformers and academics, including Professor Dick Simpson, Professor Paul Green, Brian Gladstein of the Illinois Campaign for the Political Reform (ICPR), Cindi Canary ICPR’s recently retired long-time director, Terry Pastika of the Citizen Advocacy Center in Elmhurst, and a long list of corruption and election-reform scholars.
It was a tale of woe and defeat. The stories and statistics were horrifying reminders of the broken politics of Illinois that has defeated progressive efforts for reform, social justice and equity for decades while showering the wealthy insiders with billions of public dollars.They play and we pay.
No one wore a Freddy or Jason mask – but it was Halloween come early – but with all tricks and no treats.
Some of the papers delivered were “Chicago and Illinois: Leading the Pack in Corruption,” “The History of Corruption in Illinois,” and “The Illinois Culture of Corruption and Comparison with Texas.” It was a tale of venality and unchecked greed. Illinois and Chicago are two of the most corrupt jurisdictions in the nation. Since 1976 some 1,828 public officials have been convicted of crimes in Illinois – 1,521 were from the Chicago metro region! We are Number One in convicted public officials in America! Professor Simpson called The Illinois Governor’s Mansion and Chicago’s City Hall two of the most dangerous crime scenes in the state.
Our efforts at campaign contribution reform are weak and our tradition of nepotism, jailed officials and conflicts of interest is strong. The assembled scholars seemed to shoot down or discount every popular effort at electoral reform I’m aware of – including public financing of elections, term limits, limiting the amounts of campaign contributions and amending the U.S. Constitution to prevent corporate domination of elections. One particularly annoying session was about character and seemed aimed at a high school audience and suggested that we all should live up to a bullet point list of noble and common sense character traits, such as Trustworthiness, Respect and Honesty. Well, great – maybe if we send all our representatives that list they would wake up and live right.
At the end of the sessions I was left wondering what we poor snookered citizens are supposed to do. I made a suggestion. I urged all the civic groups and leaders assembled there to compile a short list of Illinois election-related reforms that would open up the system and then band together to train and support good government candidates in 2014. I made this observation, “A mentor of mine told me once that politicians have reptilian brains and operate on this calculus – Can you help me or hurt me? If we can do neither, then we are invisible to politicians.” I said that unless we organize for power we would be doomed to see each grow old at events like these.
Here’s one particular striking piece of data from one of the many papers (you can get them all here) on the effect of Illinois’ new campaign limits law on the 2011 Mayoral race. Bottom line answer = Not much.
Download this as a pdf.
Six in 10 registered voters polled think state government in Illinois is more corrupt than in other states, according to a new poll from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute.
Roughly 58 percent of respondents to the recent poll said Illinois government is more corrupt than in other states, about 37 percent felt other states were just as corrupt, and only 2 percent felt Illinois was less corrupt.
The findings are the latest from the institute housed at SIU Carbondale, which surveyed 1,261 registered voters statewide between Sept. 4 and Sept. 10.
Chicago Votes is a new nonprofit dedicated to energizing young people into public life, doing voter registration work, triggering serious debate about public policy AND having a kick ass good time! Co-founded by activists T.J. Crawford and Rebecca Reynolds and sporting an impressive board of scholars and civic engagement champs, the organization is modeled after The Bus Project from Portland.
Here’s how Chicago Votes describes its work. “Chicago Votes does volunteer-driven democracy for our generation. We’re not left or right, but forward. We think democracy’s great, and believe it works best when tons of people participate…We believe our generation can build a greater city (which sounds like a little much, but seriously — who else is going to do it?) We believe politics needs to be more accessible, more equitable, and more innovative. So we’re pulling together young Chicagoans across the city to turn things around. And we’re having a ton of fun doing it. Just look at Give a Sh*t Happy Hour and Trick or Vote! For more “about us,” read Our Mission.”
Judging by the turn out, the faces in the crowd, the aldermen who spoke, the music and the vibes, I’d say they are off to a great start! Send them some love at http://chicagovotes.com/donate.
Join the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement (IPCE) at the University of Illinois Chicago, the Spencer Foundation and the Mikva Challenge for an evening of conversation with Harvard Associate Professor of Education, Meira Levinson.
While teaching at an all African American middle school in Atlanta, Levinson realized that her students’ individual self-improvement would not necessarily enable them to overcome their historical marginalization. In order to overcome their civic empowerment gap, students must learn how to re-shape power relationships through public, political, and civic action. Read more about Dr. Levinson’s work.
For one evening in Chicago, Levinson will discuss the themes from her new book, No Citizen Left Behind.
Wednesday, October 3 – Books available for purchase and signing by Levinson at 4:15 p.m. Lecture: 5 p.m.
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)
Student Center East, Cardinal Room
750 S. Halsted Street, Chicago, IL
Contact IPCE at (312) 355-0088 or visit www.ipce.uic.edu for more information.
Questions about the Freedom of Information Act? Looking for help with a denied request? Need help formulating your FOIA request and asking for the right documents? Sign up for a one-on-one 15-minute session with an attorney at no charge! Meet with a FOIA expert for free legal advice on how to get your request answered. (Appointment necessary.)
Co-hosted with Kirkland & Ellis LLP and the Center for Open Government at Chicago-Kent.
Questions about the Freedom of Information Act? Are you looking for help with a denied request? Need help formulating your FOIA request and asking for the right documents?
Sign up for a one-on-one 15-minute session with an attorney at no charge! Meet with a FOIA expert for free legal advice on how to get your request answered.
A scheduled appointment is necessary. Contact Stephanie Simon at ssimon@bettergov.org or 312.821.9042 for an appointment. Additional information is required before an appointment can be scheduled.
This FOIA Clinic will be held in downtown Chicago at:
Chicago needs a place and space like the CivicLab to help citizens do democracy. According the State Investigation Project from The Center for Public Integrity, Illinois gets a miserable grade for public integrity. According to Statehouse reporter Amanda Vinicky, dispite some recent legislative efforts, there has been no real change here.
“But in some ways, they are like nips and tucks — cosmetic facelifts that conceal a host of ethical loopholes. Despite wide knowledge of its crooked history, Illinois remains a state where lobbyists do not have to disclose their fees, where legislators cannot be sanctioned for conflicts of interest, and where the judges who make it on the bench are those with the best political connections.
In a study released on Feb. 15 by the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Illinois Institute for Government and Public Affairs —which ranked the per capita number of government appointees, employees, and others convicted of public corruption— Illinois came in a dismal second among states, behind Louisiana (the District of Columbia was the worst). According to the report, since 1976, the state tally of convictions is 1,828 – or around 51 per year; “at the heart of most convictions,” the study said, “is a payoff for something that is a sweetheart contract or a law or permit necessary to do business.”
And just Friday, the Illinois Legislature expelled Rep. Derrick Smith from the House – the first time that’s happened in over 100 years. Federal prosecutors accused Smith of writing a letter of recommendation on behalf of a day care center for a $50,000 grant in exchange for the fictitious operator kicking back $7,000.
I’m at a training session for community organizers this week in Chicago run by The Midwest Academy, one of America’s foremost organizing training centers. They are a Chicago treasure, established in 1971 by Heather Booth and Steve Max.
From the first day of training, a very hard truth: “Being right doesn’t mean you win.” The Number One rule for social change? People in charge will not give you anything unless you organize for power to demand it and then only if the people in charge believe that you have organized enough power to hurt or help them.
