Do individual actions matter?

One of the discussions in community organization and participatory democracy is do individual actions matter?

-- 'How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?' 30 Million People Wonder, from The Onion
-- Going Green but Getting Nowhere, from the New York Times

E.g., does my recycling really make a difference? Or does bringing my own bag to the grocery store make a difference (in a place where there isn't a bag tax)? Or picking up litter, since more people just throw more stuff the next day ("One piece of trash theory;" Don't Mess With Texas Research Results).

Does using public transit make a difference (umm, yes)?

Or getting an electric car over an internal combustion engine (in early stage of the technology, probably not, between the extra energy expended to create the car + greenhouse gas effects, maybe it will be better in late stages, + the induced driving effect--people believe that their driving of an electric car is less harmful, so they drive more,). Etc.

I know that I notice programs like the Certified Wildlife Habitat from the National Wildlife Federation. Communities in Maryland use it to be certified at the community and individual household level. Certified households get a yard sign, which is how I learned about it in the first place.

There is a "River Star Homes" project in the Elizabeth River Watershed in Virginia. Certified households get a yard flag.

I think these programs are important. Maybe feeling better about yourself because you buy an electric car isn't as good.

Although the overall impact is an issue. How much impact do you have? My street is cleaner because I pick up litter. But, seeing my examples, the households on the street that generate the most litter haven't changed their behavior. Or, Suzanne confronted someone who doesn't pick up after their dog. They just changed their route to avoid our block, and so now some other household gets to pick up after them, not just us...

Does successful civic engagement require empathy?

LA Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez attended a one day conference focused on the sorry state of public dialogue and civic engagement in the U.S., and a big problem at the conference was lack of consensus about what civic engagement is. See "A cultural civics lesson: In order to change today's gridlocked public dialogue, maybe we should skip the town hall for the concert hall."

From the article:

For some, it was simply about the teaching of how government works. For others, it was mainly about civility. And for a third group, into which I fell, it was about something more meaningful and demanding. Kristen Cambell of the National Council on Citizenship, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering civic engagement, was also in that last group. "Successful civic engagement," she told me, "is all about capturing and harnessing empathy. Ultimately, we're talking about wanting people to care for their neighbors, communities, their country."

I do agree that if you don't care about and for people, it's hard to get energized enough to give up your time and other resources ("money" etc.) to work in part for others without necessarily receiving much in return.

America's dirtiest cities

Is a Travel & Leisure story, "America’s Dirtiest Cities 2010" based on their annual survey of readers to determine "America's Favorite Cities." DC ranks #15; New Orleans is #1; New York City is 6th. It'd be interesting to separately rank commercial districts from residential neighborhoods.

I am a fan of the Keep Australia Beautiful Litter Survey form myself.

Defining deviance down vs. defining deviance up

Dog owning miscreants, photo by District Curmudgeon.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote an essay, now very famous, called Defining Deviance Down, which made the point that as various types of deviance became more widespread, the definition of deviance in terms of various infractions becomes looser, because communities have limited resources in terms of its ability to "sanction" offenders, either through the maintenance of social codes of order through norms, socialization, and public opprobrium, or through what I call the exercise of the "coercive power" of the state.

In the UK, under the previous Labour Government, the state fought back against deviance through the "anti-social behavior orders" and various initiatives focused on ridding communities of people who were proven to be persistent, habitual nuisances and offenders, out of the recognition that negative behaviors of some people can lead to a significant reduction in the quality of life for other residents in a community. The current government is scrapping ASBOs for more traditional problem-oriented policing approaches. See "Asbos to be scrapped following review" from the Daily Telegraph.

In the U.S. we soldier on.

Somehow I missed the entry in District Curmudgeon about a couple who let their dog s*** in a treebox without cleaning it up.

Apparently I missed the thread about it in Greater Greater Washington, where someone was spiritedly defending the miscreants, and accusing the Curmudgeon of stalking.

Fred Siegel's The Future Once Happened Here is a book from the late 1990s about the decline of cities, and its major thrust is the point of how defining deviance down supported a significant decline in social order and the quality of life in cities, and that until certain mayors in certain cities took a stand against bad behavior in the public sphere, ranging from quality of life offenses like littering to transit turnstile jumping and crime, in an application of the "Fixing Broken Windows" ideas of Kelling and Wilson (1982 article from The Atlantic. (Also see the article "Making Neighborhoods Safe" from 1989.)

In 2005, I wrote about the cause celebre in Korea, when a woman let her dog s*** on the subway and didn't pick it up. People took photos and through the power of social media, social opprobrium was laid thick on the woman and she ended up quitting her job. See the 2005 Post column titled "Subway Fracas Escalates Into Test Of the Internet's Power to Shame."

AWESOME.

At the time, I speculated that in the U.S., something like this is unlikely, happen, because we don't have much of a culture of responsibility. Plus, the digital divide would make it hard to shame people who aren't online.

When people demand better won't we get it?

While about "art," I think today's Frazz comic strip is relevant to this discussion. It's really tomorrow's Frazz, because the paper doesn't always print them in order, so I can't insert the image here.

In the 3rd frame of the 4 panel strip, Frazz tells Coach Hacker that "you don't adjust art down to your expectations."

People who don't behave and act properly don't need other people to defend them, we as society need people to admonish them, so that they will do better the next time.

By demanding the best of ourselves and others, we can have a functioning society.

(Also see the "communitarian" ideas by Amitai Etzioni.)

Montgomery County is "weird." (It's called civility.)

Montgomery County Fire truck on Cedar Street in DC
Originally uploaded by rllayman

(Image: Montgomery County Fire truck on Cedar Street in DC. Apparently it is easier for the Silver Spring fire station to service parts of Takoma Park, Maryland via Blair Road/DC than it is to go through Montgomery County.)

1. Saturday I was in Silver Spring, returning a Zipcar. I was at the intersection of Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue. The light for Colesville Road traffic turned green. But two blocks away on Georgia Avenue, fire trucks were rushing towards the intersection, sirens blaring.

The traffic stayed put. No cars jumped the intersection until the fire trucks passed.

That would never happen in DC.

2. Yesterday, I rode my bike up Colesville Road, about a mile past the Beltway, to a Ritz Camera store. (I had taken it to a Ritz store to be repaired, and that store is now controlled by a liquidator holding a going out of business sale, so the company sent the camera to this far out North Silver Spring location.)

Riding up and down Colesville Road, I was surprised to see how relatively little litter there was alongside the roads (definitely more trash was present at the intersection with University Boulvevard).

So many streets in DC are so trashy. It's embarrassing. But cleanliness starts with people properly disposing of their trash in the first place.

How to save as much as $1 billion to "reform" DC Public Schools: teach kids how to behave and act

A poster in a Webster classroom reminds the students of the "Webster Way." Photo: Sam Hodgson, Voice of San Diego.

At least that's my estimate, based on this example from San Diego, in the piece "School Turnaround Built on Teaching Students to be Students," from the Voice of San Diego.

From the article:

Five years ago, suspensions abounded at Webster Elementary. Fights regularly erupted during recess and teachers feared violent outbursts from gang-involved 6th graders. New principal Jennifer White was shocked to learn that Webster had 70 suspensions the year before she arrived, and 80 the year before that. ...

Fast forward to 2008. Students cheerfully greet their teachers by name, line up quickly, and listen respectfully to each other in class. The endless procession of kids to the principal's office has stopped. White now spends her mornings ranging freely between classrooms to observe teachers and videotaping their best lessons to share."

It's a changed school, I'm telling you," said Lydia White, no relation to Jennifer, a guidance assistant who has worked 30 years at the school. Her eyes suddenly welled. "They've blossomed. It amazes me."

Teachers chalk up the turnaround to a homegrown program that explicitly teaches students how to behave in class. Building on Buguey's initial efforts to improve discipline, Jennifer White and her teachers crafted the Webster Way, which teaches "scholarly behaviors" such as eye contact, cleaning up your trash, and greeting teachers by name. Such skills are usually expected but not actively taught, White said.Teachers at Webster devote 10 to 20 minutes daily to role-playing those behaviors and discussing why they matter. Throughout the day, they invoke the Webster Way.

"Schools assume that a student will come in, and just know what to do," school psychologist Steve Franklin said. "At Webster, teaching a student how to be a student is really important. We don't expect them to already know how to read, to do math or write. So why aren't we teaching these things, too?"

It sounds elementary, and hardly radical. Yet the results have been dramatic. Webster has seen suspensions plummet and test scores surge since instilling the Webster Way. Only 10 students were suspended last year. Test scores ranked Webster in the top echelon of demographically schools statewide.similar schools statewide.

-- The Influence of Parent Education and Family Income on Child Achievement (pdf)
-- and read the book The Future Once Happened Here...