It is important to understand that if the selected student does not take their role seriously, the group can vote them out at any time. But the point is that no one who wants to learn a skill set or take on a responsibility is written off and denied an opportunity.
3. Unexpected Friendships
It always amazes us how quickly these very different students, who would not typically associate with one another, become friends.
2. Lotteries, Leadership and Biases
In our work, we found that critical leadership has regularly come from students who struggle with homework, making friends, or speaking in public. They worry us at first, but prove us wrong by showing up for meetings, listening to their teammates, and following through with the things they say they will do.
1. Democracy In Practice
Democracy In Practice is changing the way student governments are formed and how they work, making them more diverse and representative of student bodies.
7. Restorative Practices: A Science of Human Dignity
Restorative practices provide a simple framework to give people a voice in a noisy world, and agency at a time when global events happen faster and with more frequency than we have the time to keep up with. Restorative practices are indeed a social science that allow us to fully express and experience our humanity with dignity.
6. How Restorative Practices Can Spark Workplace Creativity
What if your workplace sparked, instead of stunted, creativity? What if you worked at an organization that intentionally developed leaders who structure collaboration, conversations, and connections to nurture creative solutions?
America’s Addiction to Voting
By Kerra L. Bolton Americans are addicted to the idea of voting. Voting represents ownership of the public policy and lawmaking processes. It denotes exclusive (citizen) membership in the American experiment of democracy. African Americans and women have died for the right to vote. Recently, however, voting has become performative. We like to be seen […]
5. How Circle Rituals Can Build Community Resilience
“It started as a way of surviving, but then it became the most precious, human thing you can do at such moments,” she said. “We sat down…in a circle just to come back to ourselves, to try to find the words for what we were feeling and try to make sense of it.”
4. Seeking Truth…And Finding It
I feel that my journey so far has been one long proof of the concept proposed by Ted Wachtel in his blog post, Revolution By Conversation: that We, The People can take back our peaceful, convivial way of life, but only if we are willing to do the difficult work of taking back our democracy through working toward True Representation. And that begins with having civil, respectful dialogue with each other.
How to Spend $20 Billion: A True Representative Approach to Crafting State Budgets
The future of democracy – whether we live in Baltimore or Brussels – depends on citizen assemblies coming together, putting their differences aside, and working toward common sense solutions that benefit everyone. Without True Representation, we’ll continue to live in societies in which fear is allowed to place barbed-wire fences on our borders and in our hearts.
