Government and/vs. Community

The Constitution of the United States starts off with the words, "We the People."

citizen - a native or naturalized member of a state or other political community

active citizen - a citizen who takes an active role in the community (as in crime prevention and neighborhood watch)

consumer - One that consumes, especially one that acquires goods or services for direct use or ownership rather than for resale or use in production and manufacturing.

democracy -
1. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
2. A political or social unit that has such a government.
3. The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.
4. Majority rule.
5. The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.

1. Mary Ann Floto, of the Office of Community Affairs, Executive Office of the Mayor, writes:

BRANCH LIBRARIES TO OPEN ON SUNDAYS BEGINNING THIS WEEKEND
D.C. Public Library Makes This and Other Customer Service Changes

Beginning Sunday, October 15, 2006, the District of Columbia Public Library will open its branches to the public on Sundays. In addition to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, all seventeen full-service neighborhood libraries in the city will be open from 1 to 5 p.m. each Sunday and now will operate seven days a week. The exceptions are the four small community libraries and the Deanwood Kiosk, which will continue to be open Monday through Friday.

"Sundays are generally when families spend the most time together so it's great they will now be able to make their local branch library a family activity where every member can find something they enjoy," said Ginnie Cooper, the D.C. Public Library's Chief Librarian. "Whether it's families or individual residents, we're going to be attracting groups of people who wouldn't normally have time to come to the library during the week. This is going to enable us to serve many, many more people who have information needs but perhaps did not have time to get their needs met."

My response: duh!

I think this is a great step forward, and obvious, but the real question is how many people use libraries, especially branch libraries, during the week, before the hours of 5 pm? The point is to provide service when it is convenient for patrons a/k/a customers, a/k/a citizens.

Too often government agencies think about what is convenient for the organization, rather than asking the question "how can we best serve?"

2. Relevant to this is the increasing number of government officials running for public office. The lastest example is former City Administrator Robert Bobb, who is running for the presidency of the DC School Board.

I have been railing about the DC Government orientation to citizens as customer-consumers rather than as citizens. Citizens have more rights to direct the process. Customers merely buy-acquire-receive services, without much in the way of rights or privileges when it comes to directing how the services are provided.

It took a neighbor, a professor of public administration, to identify the point succinctly (which I wrote about in another blog entry).

Agency administrators brought up in a culture of bureaucracy, which is what the provision of government services is all about, are focused on people as consumers of services, not as citizens with rights.

If they run for political office and are successful, their orientation to citizens is completely different from the more political-legislative side, where voters put you in office. It's too hard for the average bureaucrat to all of a sudden become a populist. Mayor Williams is a perfect example.

The average unthinking person says that a customer orientation on the part of government is a good thing, because that means that the agency becomes more responsive. But ultimately the agency is allowed to be disconnected from having to change in substantive ways, if change is necessary and required.

(cf. the whole movement about "choice" both in the U.S. in charter schools and vouchers, etc., as well as the general approach of "New Labour" in the U.K. What really matters is not "choice" but the provision of great public services.)

The common people, citizens, are not considered to be the primary source of political power.

Getting back to Mr. Bobb, I think that under the Williams Administration, he has been part of the move of reproducing a consumerist government disconnected from citizens as "the primary source of political power." (To be fair to Mr. Bobb, this started long before he came on the scene.)

But now Mr. Bobb is all of a sudden into "democracy," because of the possibility that the likely Mayor, Adrian Fenty, proposes Mayoral control of the DC Public School system.

To get a lesson in this irony check out "Bobb: Mayor's school takeover should be 'vetted' with citizens," on page 13 of today's Examiner. (Note that my prodigious Internet research skills seemed to be stymied by the way the Examiner has indexed this article, so I can't link to it). From the article:

Bobb said he was willing to lose the president's job and cede control of the schools to Fenty--if D.C. citizens give their approval. 'This is a significant proposal impacting the lives of children in the District of Columbia,' Bobb said. 'I just want us to have an honest discussion with the community.'"

The Examiner is also running a three part series on urban school improvement. Two of the articles are online thus far:

-- School rescue: ‘People are looking to the mayor’s office’
-- New York school takeover gets mixed reviews

3. There is a lot of room for more civic engagement and deliberative democracy in the local government, as well as in the country more generally.

Last night I (so did others) had another very troubling ANC experience and it really ought to be an embarrassment to us as citizens of the District of Columbia as well as products presumably of a K-12 education system that is supposed to teach us how to be good citizens among other things. (Of course Bowles and Gintis, in Schooling in Capitalist America, argue that schools are designed to create good little unquestioning workers. Maybe they're right.)

Many ANCs are no better than third world dictatorships, with a complete disregard of procedure, fact, and the rule of law.

Something I've said for more than 20 years is no less true today:

You can't expect someone to graduate, after being educated for 13-17 years in relatively authoritarian settings, and upon graduation, expect them to become active, free thinking, participating members of society.

For focused discussion about education in civic engagement, see this blog entry from January, "Chile and Civic Engagement." It's about a lot more than Chile and the new president, Michelle Bachelet.

Index Keywords: civic-engagement