JOIN OR DIE: A movie about why you should join a club
putnamdoc.com
Saved by Sam Liebeskind
JOIN OR DIE: A movie about why you should join a club
as Bob Putnam lays out in Bowling Alone, participation in parent-teacher organizations has dropped from more than 12 million in 1964 to about 7 million. Despite decades of increased urban migration bringing us more physically proximate to each other, we don’t know each other better — instead, our reported feelings of loneliness have shockingly doub... See more
New_ Public • Celebrating the labor that holds up our democracy: the community entrepreneur
Sarah Wong added
Putnam draws on evidence including nearly 500,000 interviews over the last quarter century to show that we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often. We’re even bowling alone.
Balaji Srinivasan • The Network State: How To Start a New Country
American communities founded on intense associational activity now have a civic participation vacuum. Associations once mobilized their constituents for specific improvements. Now only local governments -- often elected by tiny numbers of voters, or self-appointed small business groups -- serve as public custodians. While there have always been goo... See more
Tal Shachar • Main Street Bets
sari added
Over the last 50 years, people have shifted away from meeting and volunteering regularly in associations and informal gatherings such as support groups and Bible study groups, choosing instead to engage through “checkbook participation,” where we outsource and pay local and national organizations who hire professional staff to do the good works and... See more
Alex Pentland • Rediscovering the Pleasures of Pluralism: The Potential of Digitally Mediated Civic Participation — Digitalist Papers
when the going gets tough, Americans build new civic institutions .
Eli Pariser • 🏘️ 🌐 Your town’s online group matters more than you think
Sarah Wong added
There's a Neighbor for That: On Civic Associations as a Social Technology
otherinter.net
Sam Liebeskind added
“crisis on our hands when it comes to civics education.”5 For O’Connor, the failure of high school students to understand the American system of checks and balances clearly indicates that we are failing to prepare young people to participate in civic life. The wide gap in voter turnout between people under thirty and those above—generally around 20
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