Citizenship Then and Now: Launch of the Obama Foundation
John Dewey and Citizen Politics
Citizens as Co-Creators of a Democratic Way of Life, 2017
The Civil-Rights Movement's Lesson for Today's Politics, Nation magazine. 2016
In a Season of Rage, Populist Lessons From The Movement, 2016
Laudato Si', Civic Studies, and the Future of Democracy, 2016
My story of the KKK, Martin Luther King, and Populist Politics
The Fight For America's Soul, 2015
The Deeper Lessons of the Incident at Middlebury
I learned in the movement a "different kind of politics," citizen politics of empowerment which is beyond parties and partisanship — sober, self-reflective, dealing with the world as it is but aiming at changes toward a more just, inclusive egalitarian, democratic society. I also learned that "democracy" is a profound, inspiring, animating idea, far more than voting or volunteering — a way of life.
I worked in the movement in high school in Greensboro, chaired the CORE chapter we organized at Duke when I went there in the fall of 1963, and worked on and off the staff of SCLC (in and out of college) in 1963, 1964, and 1965, mostly as a field secretary. Work included support for voter registration (North Carolina and Florida); community organizing; organizing student support for the maids and janitors organizing campaign Local 77, at Duke, community organizing in Durham from 1966-72 in poor white communities, after MLK assigned me to organize poor whites, and then taking lessons from the movement to helping build the New American Movement and later the People's Alliance in North Carolina.
Public Achievement, an international youth political and civic empowerment movement I founded in 1990 to bring the movement lessons of agency, politics, and democracy to youth today, operates in 23 countries including the US, Poland, Gaza and the West Bank, the Ukraine, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe, and Japan.
© Copyright
Webspinner:
webspinner@crmvet.org
(Labor donated)