Social Civics

If people, communities, or even nations lose their memory, they lose their character. That is why cultures throughout the world work at maintaining their identity and passing traditions along to future generations. But what if a nation purposely decides it no longer wants to remember its history? What if a country imposes amnesia on itself? Helen Krieble argues persuasively that this is precisely what has happened to America. It has lost the memory of its own founding principles, and the sacrifices made over the past 250 years to preserve them.

Years of political violence and protests against injustice have revived interest in teaching civics in schools. The problem? Civic education—as it currently exists—privileges systems, not students. It promotes incremental change within a broken democracy rather than responding to the youth-led movements that call for the abolition of inequitable social structures. What will it take to prepare young people for the just future they are fighting for?

Before the Civil War, colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures, conventions, and courthouses.

In a scathingly funny account of his time in the Washington swamp, Florida firebrand Matt Gaetz, one of President Trump’s key supporters in Congress, gleefully skewers the enemies of the MAGA revolution and lays out his own vision for the future of the populist movement.

Virtual Country examines the current nexus of technology and western democracy, pointing to a historical opportunity for We the People to evolve our democracy to include a new public institution that enables a coherent, collective voice on the issues that affect us all. The book's centerpiece is a proposal for a new online institution for citizen reengagement - the National Town Square. The Square would be a transparent, citizen-led, noncorporate, nongovernmental, nonpartisan online venue for individual advisory voting, moderated discussion, and more.

Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, Robert Wuthnow brings us into America's small towns, farms, and rural communities to paint a rich portrait of the moral order -the interactions, loyalties, obligations, and identities - underpinning this critical segment of the nation. Wuthnow demonstrates that to truly understand rural Americans' anger, their culture must be explored more fully. Moving beyond simplistic depictions of the residents of America's heartland, The Left Behind offers a clearer picture of how this important population will influence the nation's political future.

This friendly guide is for technology people who work, or want to work, in the public sector. Cyd Harrell outlines the types of projects, partnerships, and people that civic technologists encounter, and the methods they can use to make lasting change. She focuses on principles to help technologists find the right way to do the most good, starting with finding the people already doing the work. Based on her years of government tech partnerships, Cyd offers practical advice on how to build alliances with public sector partners, what tech (and non-tech) skills are most useful, and more.

America is at a crossroads. We are alienated from civic engagement, and our democracy is in doubt. Yet there is a new energy in the air. Young people are again taking up the role they've often held: as leaders of change, demanding a better future, wielding their votes to uphold democracy and lead the country forward. Enter Generation Citizen, an organization dedicated to empowering youth through revitalizing civics education across America.

The liberal arts university has been in decline since well before the virtualization of campus life, increasingly inviting public skepticism about its viability as an institution of personal, civ­ic, and professional growth. New technologies that might have brought people together have instead frustrated the university’s capacity to foster thoughtful citizenship among tomorrow’s lead­ers and exacerbated socioeconomic inequalities that are poison­ing America’s civic culture.

Silicon Valley is imperializing the planet. With nearly bottomless supplies of cash and ambition, a small group of companies have been gradually seizing symbolic and practical civic leadership in America and worldwide. But Silicon Valley does not answer to the electorate; nor have they been voted into office. And the perils of their influence are only now making themselves known.

With four distinct tours of duty during his eight decades on this earth, LC Johnson has brought a world of experience to the county he calls home. While he and his wife, Gracie, deliberately chose the area that is now Peachtree Corners for their retirement, it is what this community represents that first attracted the pair. LC spent his earliest years, his first tour of duty, as the son of cotton farmers in southern Mississippi. He responded to the rumblings of the early civil rights movement and heeded the advice of many of the elders in his life by joining the military.

In 2008, Geoghegan - then an established labor lawyer and prolific writer - embarked on a campaign to represent Chicago's Fifth District in the US House, in a special election called when the sitting congressman, Rahm Emanuel, stepped down to serve as newly elected President Barack Obama's chief of staff. For 90 days leading up to the election, Geoghegan, a political neophyte at age 60, knocked on doors and shook hands at train stations and made fundraising calls.

Who controls American immigration policy? The biggest immigration controversies of the last decade have all involved policies produced by the President - policies such as President Obama protecting Dreamers from deportation and President Trump banning immigrants from several majority-Muslim nations. While critics of these policies have been separated by a vast ideological chasm, their broadsides have embodied the same widely shared belief: that Congress, not the President, ought to dictate who may come to the United States and who will be forced to leave. This belief is a myth.

Most Americans are likely to encounter the effects of government malfeasance or neglect close to home—from their governors, mayors, town councils, school boards, police, and prosecutors. In fact, deals shrouded in darkness are regularly made at the state and local levels, often the result of closed-door discussions between governments and industry without any scrutiny whatsoever from the public.

An outspoken centrist, Senator Snowe stunned Washington in 2012 when she announced she would not seek a fourth term and offered a sharp rebuke to the Senate, citing the dispiriting gridlock and polarization. After serving in the legislative branch at the state and federal levels for 40 years, including 18 years in the U.S. Senate, she explained that Washington wasn’t solving the big problems anymore. In this timely call to action, she explores the roots of her belief in principled policy-making and bipartisan compromise.

Almost 250 years ago, our Founders thought We the People were the solution. Today, it looks like we have become the problem. What happened, and what can We the People do about it? Every day, the news delivers the same story: as a nation, we are so divided, we spend more time picking fights than solving our most urgent problems. It’s exhausting and exasperating. In Remaking the Space Between Us, Smith invites us to see what lies behind this story: a growing trend in which more and more of us are seeking refuge in like-minded groups while distancing from groups different from our own.

In Pedagogy of Freedom Paulo Freire travels ever more deeply into the territory where learning and activism are the essence of human life. This profound book shows why an engaged way of learning and teaching is central to the creation of the individual, culture, and history. This book displays the striking creativity and profound insight that characterized Freire's work to the very end of his life—an uplifting and provocative exploration not only for educators, but also for all that learn and live.

Callousness toward lack of civic sense, which you would have experienced, and insights on desired etiquettes are drawn in this publication on non-prescriptive tangents. Intriguing and inspiring, it throws light on propriety deficiencies widely considered trivial in urban India, through compelling stories and real life experiences.

In the 2018 best seller The Case Against Impeaching Trump, Alan Dershowitz lamented how American political discourse has devolved into hypocrisy and the criminalization of political differences. Arguments to impeach Trump failed Dershowitz’s “shoe on the other foot test”, or his political golden rule: Democrats must do unto Republicans what they would have Republicans do unto them, and vice versa. Since then, we’ve only become more divided. The Case Against the Democratic House Impeaching Trump includes and expands upon Dershowitz’s 2018 book.

In Here We Go Again, you will be challenged to realize that much of what you have been conditioned to believe, might be at odds with Scripture.