Getting Involved in Hopefully Positive Participatory Local Governance
In the midst of a fairly busy week, I had a good, interesting experience with the Cook County Government. It happened at a Community Conversation regarding a "Cook County Policy Roadmap" that President Toni Preckwinkle, the current Cook County Board President, posted on one of her Facebook pages.
Even the fact of the event being announced on President Preckwinkle's Facebook page struck me as positive. A constituent just has to follow President Preckwinkle on Facebook to know about outreach events happening. In this day and age, when our personal information along with our friends' personal information gets skimmed from Facebook to possibly sway US Federal Elections, practically anyone who cares can stay fairly apprised of announcements from a governmental office by just following it on social media. If readers take anything away from this blog entry, I hope they'll go follow the Facebook pages and other social media accounts of their elected officials and governmental offices to stay abreast of public announcements.
I won't get into too many localized details about the event, so non-Cook County residents don't have to worry too much about feeling left out or getting bored. We discussed some local matters, but the event itself ended up more of brainstorming event, which felt refreshing. I'll describe some aspects of the meeting, but nothing too particular to Cook County. If anything, mentioned aspects could provide some insight into governmental practices and discussions governments have with their constituents.
Before getting into the positivity and refreshingness of the event, though, I want to make sure other residents of Cook County know that two more events in the Policy Roadmap Community Conversation program looking for input from constituents will be occurring in April. Click here for further details on the program, including details on the next two events. It also includes a link for submitting ideas that you might have through a survey (especially if you can't make it to one of the events).
President Preckwinkle didn't make it to this event, so attendees may not want to have expectations about her showing up at the future events, either. The host did a good job with this one and had a sense of humor. The host and other staff also showed a lot of enthusiasm and sincerity about realizing the feasible aspects of the discussions, with the emphasis on feasible. Government, politics, and budgets being what they are, who can say how far any of these ideas will really go?
This meeting and the other Conversations make up a part of a process set forth by President Preckwinkle to create a Strategic Framework for the Cook County government. The machinations for this process has very much just started. See the last sentence of the last paragraph to see my expectations for how well I expect this enterprise to succeed and how much I expect it to please constituents. Nonetheless, the fact that the Cook County government puts effort into outreach towards its constituency to get input on the process feels heartening.
In a Powerpoint presentation, the host presented the following goals to the Policy Roadmap:
These Community Conversations meetings likely focus on goal four from the list above. The majority of the meeting involved breaking out into groups for us residents/constituents to express our thoughts on the shortcomings of the Cook County government regarding the following categories (copied from Powerpoint presentation):
The first thing that stuck out to me occurred at the beginning of the event. The host introduced herself then asked everyone else in the room to introduce themselves. A lot of people in the room introduced themselves as part of the Cook County government or as representing some type of community organization that likely looked to influence the government. Out of around twenty of us, I think only three or four of us announced our names without listing representation of an organization.
Introducing myself without an organization attached at that point and introducing myself in a break out group as a "private citizen" met with positive reaction, which surprised me. The host and the leader of one of the groups seemed to smile a little more and perk up a bit, giving off the sense that they had more interest in the course of events. I could be reading more into those interactions than reality, but I'll stick to my perception (especially considering I originally thought the government and organizations didn't want novices involved, thinking the novices would just get in the way of getting things done).
I may have disappointed the leader of the first break out group I participated in. At the end of the break out discussions, someone in each group would provide a quick summary to the rest of the meeting. The group leader wanted me to make the announcement, but I refused. I used the excuse that I felt a bit too tired (I was), but I also felt a little shy and uncomfortable.
Maybe sometime later when I get more involved in these types of things and get back into the hang of speaking with strangers and putting myself out there, I'll put myself out there more.
The smaller break out groups didn't really intimidate me much, but I also had time to feel out the group before breaking into the discussion. Comparably, I didn't have much sense about the rest of the room. Associations of heated political discussions in my head could have also contributed to my hesitation of presenting myself to a large room of politically involved people (though some day I really need to get over myself on this aspect since I want to make the world better).
I don't think the group leader asked me to present just because of my status as private citizen, either. Even though I took a few minutes to enter the conversation, I had some good ideas. A lot of my input was more
I said very little on shortcomings since I didn't and don't have any in mind.
The above happened in the Environmental Justice group, and honestly, other than recycling, being a conscious consumer, and possibly commuting on a bike every chance I get, I don't see myself having much influence or even context on the matter, though I have interest in learning more. I guess from my input and reactions, though, it became clear to a staff member of the Cook County Forest Preserve that they need to do more to promote their activities, their locations, and frankly, their existence, to the public. The same goes for other programs that the Cook County government has for addressing environmental concerns.
When the group leader asked for any ideas how to actually promote these things, we had few ideas. One person mentioned putting something on tax bills (but that struck me as a little classist/elitist since only property owners would get the tax bill, but promotion is promotion). I might have but might not have suggested promoting on public transportation, both in the vehicles and at stations.
This part of the conversation led me back to wondering how to successfully promote and reach out to people these days as we possibly
Which leads me to ask:
The next break out group, Economic Vitality (Vital Communities), had a different chemistry compared to the first one. The group leader had something of a strange way of running things. He expressed his opinions then mentioned that since he was a leader, he couldn't just write down his ideas. The ideas that he wrote down had to come from us. This leader definitely felt like he wanted to steer the conversation into certain directions by presenting his ideas then saying that he couldn't write them down on his pad of paper to take back to the Cook County government.
Other than the leader and me, we had two other men in the group. We all presented some ideas and had some interesting conversations about them all. Oddly, though, about three quarters of the way through the break out session, the other two guys got into a conversation about something off topic. It didn't bother me. The phenomena unfolding in front of me fascinated me more than anything.
We had come up with some interesting ideas but ran out of steam, and the leader of this group seemed more interested in steering the conversation more toward his ideas than to encourage the group to come up with the ideas. Unlike the Environmental Justice group with group leaders pretty much asking the same question and requesting elaborations on shortcomings of the Cook County government, and the participants staying on topic and feeling energized, the Economic Vitality group with a leader steering the conversation didn't always stay on topic and didn't always stay energized. The group dynamic fascinated me.
At one point, though, one of the other group members in the Economic Vitality group, someone involved in a community organization, complimented me on having good ideas. I don't remember the context. It might have happened at one of the points where I got self conscious in the discussion. I frequently have this reaction while in group interaction, thinking that I might have been hogging time then pull back to try giving someone else the floor to contribute their own ideas. I have plenty of ideas, especially in this category, but I don't want to silence anyone else's voice (though to be frank, the other two participants were black, I'm white, and I didn't want my perceived social privilege to quiet anyone else's voices). Nonetheless, getting that compliment from someone who I perceived as having experience in this political/governmental realm gave me a little boost of confidence.
This Community Conversation event won't provide any immediate or even medium term results. The host of the event anticipates that they'll have a Policy Roadmap set up and shared with the public by the end of Fall 2018. Even then, though, as mentioned above:
By the time the process goes from ideas to execution, the end result can look little like the ideas. So many other people and interests get involved that things get diluted because all the different interests get balanced against each other. If good results come of this, great! If not, it's politics and government that we're used to.
My big personal takeaway, though: Sometimes our governments want to hear from us private citizens outside of elections, maybe even community organizations want more private citizens involved. Just the pleasant surprise and attempts by some of the officials and staff at this event to get me more involved showed me this.
The fact that this event occurred in the first place shows an attempt to get private citizens involved, even though it resulted in a lot of community organization representatives showing up. Still, a couple of those representatives wanted me to get involved, too, complimenting me on my ideas and encouraging me to speak up more. We might like to think that all this governmental and political stuff focuses too much on influence peddling and power grabbing, but sometimes, maybe even a lot of the time, our governments and politicians sincerely reach out to us to get involved.
Not to say that this event always felt like a completely selfless, altruistic exercise to work out ideas and thoughts. Some networking occurred. People exchanged business cards. I even got a couple business cards. Next time I should have some cards ready to hand off/exchange.
For the most part, though, at least 80% of the business cards handed off came from employees of the Cook County government reaching out to constituents and who wanted to make
So, yeah, maybe a little influence peddling occurred at the event, but I mostly saw people sincerely trying to improve things.
That's where we, as private citizens, come in. It didn't take me much work to get involved here. A couple weeks ago, at the end of the week in which the Illinois Primary Elections for 2018 occurred or the week after that, I decided to follow my elected officials on Facebook and Twitter. I have little ambition for public office, but I want to make the world better and a major way I see doing that is
(Though I've lived a fairly uninteresting life, I don't want to go through or put my closest family through the close scrutinity involved in an election.)
Very soon after I joined President Preckwinkle's Facebook group, I saw the announcement for the Community Conversation event. I debated going to it for a little bit since I have a lot to do then decided to go the night before. To make the world better and improve the connection of government/politicians with the public, I needed to go, I needed to get involved. So I went. Remember me mentioning that feeling that something needs to happen encourages me to say "Screw it" then do what needs doing?
And I think everyone in the United States and the world, where it's feasible and not life and limb risking, should do the same.
I think this is especially the case for people who complain about politicians in office, that they don't trust the government, that they don't think their vote matters, etc. etc. Stop being cynical and get involved.
Because you never know, they might actually listen to you and take you seriously. Apparently a couple people did at an event that I went to. At least two of them were staffers for the government that perked up and might have even felt inspired about a private citizen getting involved. Maybe they felt that their initiative actually would have the voice of people involved, and our governments could become a government by the people, for the people.
And to our government officials, have more conversations and town meetings like this. Listen to your constituents. Even you Federal elected officials. Your lack of outreach has had a lot to do with enabling the populous to put Trump into office. And when possible, local, State, and Federal officials shouldn't hesitate to coordinate town meetings and conversations with their constituents. Don't just do it when we have elections coming up, do it as much as you can!
The same goes to people thinking about running for office or campaigning for office. Reach out to the consituents. Set up these types of meetings. Get them involved. Inspire your potential constituents. Embolden your potential constituents into action. Get them to think that it's only natural for you to get into office because you're attending to the needs of the area, the state, the country, the world, and to them. Make it so they have a hard time eliminating themselves from participating through selection bias. Help them feel welcomed into the process, not alienated. Engage them!
Get involved and involve others. Be the change you want to be and encourage others to become change. Help make the world a better place and embolden others to do the same. Even little old you can make a difference. I believe in you. Believe in yourself.
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