WIXLIB

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSAt the Kirwan Institute, we believe that everyonehas the potential to contribute to our communities and that the diversity of experiences, backgrounds and traditions that people possess arethe ingredients that make our communities richand vibrant. To realize these assets, we believethat everyone must have equal opportunity toexpress their voice when community decisionsare made.Much of what we have learned in regards to community voice and community development overthe last ten years has been in conversation andco-learning with our partners. Through our partnership with ISAIAH in Minnesota, we learned thatpersonal stories and structured dialogue betweencommunity members could be a useful tool inunderstanding implicit and structural barriers toopportunity. In our hometown of Columbus, Ohio,we saw how important neighborhood institutionsand social capital are to expanding opportunityin a racially diverse, mixed-income, revitalizingneighborhood. While working with the DetroitCivic Engagement Fellows in Southeast Michigan,we reexamined our assumptions about civic engagement in a 21st Century economy.This document draws from these on-the-groundexperiences, and from our previous writing,notably “Growing Together for a SustainableFuture: Strategies and Best Practices for Engaging with Disadvantaged Communities on Issuesof Sustainable Development and Regional Planning,” “Expanding Democracy: A Framework forBolstering Civic Power and Rebuilding Communities,” and “Shining the Light: A Practical Guideto Co-Creating Healthy Communities.”The proceeding pages are also influenced by aseries of conversations that we conducted withsome of our community partners after our workwas completed. The authors would like to thankPonsella Hardaway of MOSES, Dessa Cosmaand Danielle Atkinson of Economic Justice Alliance of Michigan, Steve Sterrett of the WeinlandPark Collaborative, Reverend John Edgar of TheChurch for All People, Tatiana Vizcaino-Stewart ofBetter Healthy Communities Merced, and DoranSchrantz of ISAIAH of Minnesota for their wisdomand generosity.We were also greatly influenced by the writingsof Peter Block, most notably “Civic Engagementand the Restoration of Community” and The Abundant Community, and Eric Uslaner, “Civic Engagement in America.”The lead author would like to thank Sharon Davies,Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for theStudy of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University, as well as Christy Rogers, Jason Reece,David Norris, Jillian Olinger, Cheryl Staats, CharlesNoble III, and Matt Martin of the Kirwan Institute,for their contributions to this document.K I P H O L L E Y is a researcher at the Kirwan Institute. His primary area of focusis community engagement, social capital, and civic leadership. Kip works toequip minority and low-income peoples with the tools needed to bring equityto the civic engagement environment, helping the Kirwan Institute to fulfill itsmission to promote a just and fair society.WWW. KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU8KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

CHAPTER 1What isCivic Engagement?Civic engagement has been discussed in many academic disciplines, fromgeography and sociology to business and public administration, makingconsensus on a definition elusive. The term civic engagement is also usedinterchangeably with related terms, such as community engagement, publicparticipation, and civic life. A definition of public engagement provided bythe National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation notes that it is “oftenused interchangeably with the term ‘civic engagement,’”5 which points tothe confusion and closeness of these terms.While one can argue that terms suchas ‘civic’, ‘pubic’, and ‘community’describe different contexts for engagement, we have found that these termstend to be used interchangeably in practicalapplications. Therefore, for the purposes ofour work, we tend to use all such terms to describe acts where community members of allstatuses make and appraise community decisions, either formally or informally.The American Planning Associationdefines civic engagement as “the process ofworking collaboratively with individuals andgroups to achieve specific goals,”6 while the International Association of Public Participationdefines public participation as “any processthat involves the public in problem solvingor decision making and uses public input tomake decisions.”7 The National Coalition forDialogue and Deliberation further definescivic capacity (i.e., “the capacity for communities, organizations, and societies to makewise collective decisions and to create andsustain smart collective action”) and publicengagement in similar terms (“various formsof highly inclusive public dialogue and delib-THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU9

eration that are critical steps towards policydevelopment, collaborative civic action, andother forms of public problem solving”).8Other definitions are narrow and distinct.The Public Participation Handbook definespublic participation as “a process by whichpublic concerns, needs, and values are incorporated into governmental and corporate decision-making.”9 The handbook thengives qualifying statements that denote whatpublic participation isn’t. According to thetext, public participation relates only to administrative decisions by public agencies orprivate organizations (not public officials orjudges), occurs only between people and organizations, and is an “organized process.”10Robert Putnam, a noted scholar on socialcapital, argues that civic engagement is meantto “refer to people’s connections with the lifeof their communities, not only with politics.”11The organization Philanthropy for Active CivicEngagement (PACE) posits that “the definingcharacteristic of active civic engagement is thecommitment to participate and contribute tothe improvement of one’s community, neighborhood and nation.”12 These latter definitionsdescribe a set of conditions, rather than aseries of actions. The National Civic Leaguefollows suit with its definition of civic infrastructure as “formal and informal processesand networks through which communitiesmake decisions and attempt to solve problems.”13 Similarly, The World Bank definescivic engagement as “an environment madeup of the legal, social, and administrative processes that give the community a voice in government matters.”14CASE STUDY PROFILEBuilding Healthy Communities: MercedTatiana Vizcaino-Stewart is the Hub Manager for Building Healthy Communities: MercedHub. (BHC Merced) BHC Merced is part of a statewide 10-year plan from The CaliforniaEndowment. BHC Merced is a partnership made up of community residents, public agencyleaders, community benefit organizations and other interested individuals and organizationsaimed at taking action to their communities a healthier and happier place to live. The HUBwill be coordinated and managed by the host agency (United Way of Merced County) andthe HUB Steering Committee.The Kirwan Institute was commissioned by The California Endowment to embark on acommunity engagement and opportunity mapping process as part of the Endowment’sBuilding Healthy Communities initiative in Merced. As part of this process, Kirwan partneredwith BHC Merced to identify existing assets in the community, seek opportunities for assetdevelopment, and build capacity around the use of Kirwan’s Opportunity Mapping approachand systemic policy change. From the outset, we all understood that the opportunity mapsproduced as part of this project were a means to an end. Our primary focus was to increasethe capacity of the community to communicate their needs and make positive changes.10KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

“People need relationships to see how they can dosomething bring them into communities where peoplecan see themselves as a bunch of Davids, working ona small scale to make change. It’s only found throughcommunity, a space where they can share their story,trust being developed and can feel confident that we cantake this on.”Ponsella Hardaway – Executive Director, MOSESThe Kirwan Institute’s Definitionof Civic EngagementWe believe that civic engagement is more thanjust a set of practices; it is also a set of conditions. The civic engagement environment isnot only informed by what we practice, butby how we are positioned in our communities.The civic engagement environment exists inthe interconnection of our community and individual lives. How we practice civic engagement is tied to our access to resources andopportunities, which is dependent upon the(perceived and intended) motivations behindissue-specific public engagements.For instance, in the Town and Village ofEssex, Vermont, the engagement environmentis spearheaded by Heart and Soul Essex, acivic engagement program sponsored by theOrton Family Foundation. The civic engagement environment is marked by principlessuch as ‘Community Connections,’ ‘Thoughtful Growth,’ and a dedication to uplifting thelocal economy. The community of 20,000 isoverwhelmingly White, with a median household income that is higher than the nationalaverage. It is home to IBM Microelectronicsas well as a number of ski resorts and privateschools. Many of the principles that guidethese efforts are directly informed by the principles of community members and matchcommunity engagement patterns, includingprograms to promote local businesses, and theuse of community events such as fairs and festivals as engagement and empowerment opportunities. The environment also has supportfrom organizations and businesses, but is stillled by community members.“civic engagement is more thanjust a set of practices;it is also a set of conditions.”Meanwhile, on the west side of Columbuswhere the author spent most of his childhood,the economic conditions are much different.The per capita income is lower than the national average, with many residents living on fixedincomes and working more often in blue collarand service jobs. Many of the people whom hewent to high school with did not finish college.The neighborhood is becoming increasinglydiverse, with significant numbers of Hispanicand Somalian community members. Community-wide principles for civic engagement areTHE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU11

not documented in any manner, and practicesspecifically designed to affect community decisions are relegated to public meetings, oftenheld on weekday evenings and with little inherent power built in for individual community members to affect community changes.Institutional support has traditionally beenlow, with many area businesses generally onlysuperficially involved in community activities.In both of these cases, the practices and principles of the civic engagement environmentare linked to the socioeconomic conditionsof the residents.We believe that civic engagement describesthe practices, principles and socioeconomicconditions that comprise the environment inwhich people interact with their communityand come together to make and implementcommunity decisions that provide justiceand opportunity for all community members.Community decision-making is the foundation of access to opportunities and justice.Certainly state and federal laws and regulations, as well as a rapidly globalizing world,impact our lives. Yet how we experience anddefine our communities on an everyday level—interactions with our neighbors, service providers, local businesses, religious leaders, andofficials—helps to give shape to the ideas like“neighborhood” and “community” and providesa space for people to act with power no mattertheir circumstances. City hall meetings and12KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITYvoting booths are not the only places for ourvoices to be heard. People engage with theircommunities in a multitude of ways, fromcommunity festivals and PTA meetings toshopping at local businesses and participating in block watches. These interactions arecentral to the idea of community, and providepeople with a rich environment for creatingopportunities for everyone.At its most basic, civic engagement is howwe exercise our political power, individuallyand collectively. Research shows that civicengagement is the tool that people tend to interact with policymakers and others with thepower to act on our communities directly.15Civic engagement is how we as people makecommunity policies more responsive andensure that those decisions are beneficial.16On one hand, in a democracy, the voices ofthose who participate most are most likely tobe heard and heeded by decision-makers.17 Onthe other hand, inequitable access to meaningful civic engagement opportunities can leadto inequitable participation—and thus, unjustinvestments, conditions, and outcomes. n

CHAPTER 2Social Inequities inCivic EngagementMany communities suffer from an inadequate civic engagementenvironment. It is not surprising that membership in community organizations has fallen across the country and that surveyshave shown that attendance at public meetings and politicalevents has also fallen over the past half century.18One difficulty is that in many communities across the country, the engagement environment is built forefficiency in terms of time and money.19 Thisattitude has increased as communities acrossthe country have faced tighter budgets, butthe principle of efficiency is often written intothe rules for civic engagement in many communities.20 The open meetings laws acrossthe country tend to be tightly regimentedand constructed to produce standardization,rather than voice and power.21 For instance,the Brown Act in California contains rigidprocedures for how officials and residentscan communicate during meetings and otherwise.22 Unfortunately, “efficiency” is still apriority for public meetings in many places.For instance, during a recent conversationwith a metropolitan planning organizationconcerning engagement with equity advocates and residents from areas of racially concentrated poverty, officials claimed that timeand resource constraints made it impossibleto spend a great deal of time on “niche” concerns of the advocates and residents. As thecomment on “niche” concerns demonstrates,an emphasis on efficiency does not necessarily lead to equity in civic voice. Studies showthat when civic engagement activities emphasize efficiency over empowerment, the resultis a loss of influence for residents, particularlythose whom are already at a socioeconomicdisadvantage.23Additionally, people are left out of the con-THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU13

versation for reasons of politics or preference.In one study of civic engagement, communitymembers in Clearwater, Florida related thatlocal meetings did not include the community’s diverse population, but limited them to“the usual suspects,” who were also on severalboards.24 In a similar study, New Jersey residents complained in a survey that electedofficials often appoint community membersto engagement who have their own particular agenda.25 When community membersare invited to participate in the engagementprocess more readily, they can find theirvoices muted by the use of aloof and unfamiliar jargon, or meeting procedures that arecompletely foreign to the manner in which“The decline in civic life isoccurring alongside a wideningwealth gap and a shrinkingmiddle class, where more andmore Americans are strugglingto make ends meet”they often interact with the community. Inour work in Detroit, a regular complaint fromcommunity advocates was that the communityengagement meetings for the city’s planninginitiatives were often too technical for residents to understand. Our community partnersalso pointed out that in many communities inthe city, the connections between low-incomeand minority community members and thepeople, places, and activities that comprisedthe engagement environment in the city wereweak and had little bearing on their lives. Morepeople than ever are unclear about how toengage in community decision-making, sothey don’t engage at all.Despite the variety of civic engagement14KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITYtechniques available, much of the engagementenvironment in many communities still consists of meetings and hearings that are sometimes inaccessible or outright unknown tomost residents. In Detroit for instance, re-entering citizens, immigrants, the disabled, thehomeless, and other residents make up a significant portion of the community, but oftendo not have a significant voice when decisionsare made, largely because they are unable toattend public meetings due to resource constraints.26 Yet these are the people who tendto be the most affected by community policydecisions.The growing divide between the haves andhave-nots in the civic engagement environment mirrors the growing divide in our communities. The decline in civic life is occurring alongside a widening wealth gap anda shrinking middle class, where more andmore Americans are struggling to make endsmeet.27 In our more disadvantaged communities, decades of neglect and disinvestment,along with economic and racial inequality,have robbed these communities of healthycivic engagement supports. This results inbleak engagement environments that oftenseparate vulnerable residents from opportunities to make a difference in their communities.28 Further, inadequate support forengagement weakens their ability to influence the policies that drive community investment.29 Residents in these communities havebeen deprived of the resources necessary tocollaborate effectively to ensure justice andcreate meaningful opportunities to succeedthrough investments in schools, parks, freshand affordable food, preventative health carefacilities, day care, community policing, blockwatches, credit for home improvements andgreen weatherizing, community gardens, anda host of other opportunities.30All of this is occurring at a time of risingincome inequality and heightening levelsof poverty, particularly among communities

“[The] relationship shift needs to be done in a way thatcreates reciprocal accountability—so that residents andgovernment and business all see mutual respect asessential [for healthy communities] as it is.”Dessa Cosma – Economic Justice Across Michiganof color. While the growing gap between thewealthiest Americans and the least wealthyAmericans has been well documented, theracialized income gap is even worse, withWhites earning 19 times as much as AfricanAmericans and 15 times as much as Hispanics at the beginning of 2000.31 The unemployment rate for African-Americans is over twiceas high as the national average, and in 2012,9.7% of non-Hispanic Whites were living inpoverty, compared to over 25% of Hispanics and African-Americans.32 People of colorare more often learning in poorer performing schools, and living in more impoverishedneighborhoods.33These economic trends are importantbecause rising income inequality is a majorcontributor to unequal access to public poweralong racial and economic lines.34 Accordingto University of Maryland Professor of Government and Politics, Eric M. Uslaner, ineffectivecivic engagement in communities with highminority populations and those with few resources reinforce structural inequalities andc

with wealth and power, rather than a vehicle for delivering civic power to the community. Because of these circumstances, civic engagement has begun to lose legitimacy and effectiveness, as people look elsewhere to make change, partic-ularly in communities that are struggling.1 To restore