This is the final paper for my Introduction to Civic Engagement class at Portland State University in Winter 2018
Civic engagement has become increasingly more an academic topic in recent years. With populations shifting back from the suburbs to major cities, and suburbs becoming cities, the idea of people in a community developing the community has become the focus of classes and academics. While individuals engaged in community development may seem like activists against growth, many do have excellent points that must be addressed on an academic, political, and economic basis. The root of the discussion should be does civic engagement matter, if so, what ways does it matter, and what is the best way to go about civic engagement.
Before analyzing if civic engagement matters, the term must be defined. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines civic engagement as a “broad set of practices and attitudes of involvement in social and political life that converge to increase the health of a democratic society.” Youth.gov states civic engagement is a process in making a difference in one’s own community. Reading Rex Brukholder’s book The Activist’s Toolkit a reader can gain an impression of what he would define civic engagement to be, take what you love doing, and use it to make the place you love a better place to live.
While these three definitions may seem different on the outset, looking deeper they share two commonalities: individual involvement, and place. By keeping the involvement measurement at the individual, this allows for choice of when and where to engage. Encouraging individuals to work together should be the focus of any organizer, as it will keep group identities out of the picture as best as possible. By using place as a metric, this allows the term civic engagement to apply to an area as small as your block, to the federal government. The common thread between the individuals participating in the civic engagement should be the place, organizing based on specific identities (i.e. race, sex, religion) lead to harmful divisions and out-grouping.
Burkholder comes to civic engagement as an activist. Based on a speech he gave at PSU on 7th March, 2018, he stated activism and civic engagement were on a continuum, while this is not an overtly inaccurate statement, it should not be overlooked that there are some actions which are clearly activist, and some which are clearly engagement (this will be expanded on page 4). With the idea of the activism/engagement continuum, there are several benefits to Burkholder’s view of civic engagement. In The Activist’s Toolkit, Burkholder recommends you find out what you are good at, and how you can use that to best serve your community. Burkholder argues love is what drives us to get out of bed and go about our lives, the love of something or someone. He advocates you find that passion and find a way to use it to make your community better. Burkholder uses real stories from his youth and from other people on how they got involved in civic engagement or activism.
The strength of this argument comes from the central thesis, being love. If you love doing something and you love a place, why not do that thing for that place? If you love a place, would you not do whatever you could to make that place better? The argument is quite compelling, especially when backed up by his own experiences here in Portland. The next big piece is he tells potential activists to not get involved, but to think about the issues at hand. Burkholder argues a potential activist should look into all sides of an issue, and think deeply about all the sides and arguments before getting involved. This encouragement will (hopefully) get the angry (young) person to consider what they are upset about and get them involved on the right track, backed up with research.
It is here that Burkholder’s bias truly comes out, he sees civic engagement and activism as the same thing, rather than different tools. In the previously mentioned speech, he did delineate the two a bit more, but the continuum remained. To contrast the two, Dictionary.com defines activism as “the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations,protests, etc.” This definition lists actions as part of activism, namely the demonstrations and protests. Therefore, activism can be seen as working outside the bureaucracy, where civic engagement is working in the bureaucracy. Civic engagement, as we have seen, can even be not working with a government at all, and just making your community better. The foundation of his entire argument is flawed, fracturing the structure built on it.
Civic engagement should never be linked with activism. They are vastly different tools for changes to civic life. Burkholder’s linking of the two, or using the two interchangeably, creates confusion for the general reader, and dilutes both words. The greatest issue of community-based civic engagement is self-gentrification. Community-based civic engagement is the use of projects which make the community a better place to live, such as tool libraries, community gardens, and creation of parks. Self-gentrification is a consequence of community-based civic engagement where due to the successful engagement, property values have risen to the point of pricing out the people who lived there and conducted the community beautification projects. This is a factual threat to communities.
With all of that said, does civic engagement matter? In a word, maybe, it depends on what definition of civic engagement you use, and how you use it. Civic engagement is a tool, and like any other tool, it only matters when used correctly. If civic engagement is used to get people involved in local, state, and federal politics, it does matter. If civic engagement is misused as activism it does not matter. If a community bars a development company from gentrifying their neighborhood, but through their own actions prices themselves out of their homes, it does not matter.
During the course of this class, I interviewed (with my partner Karson Pence) an activist Aaron Brown, and a senior member of the Oregon House of Representatives, Rep. Susan McClain. We talked to both of them about HB 2017 and why they either supported or opposed the bill. HB 2017 is a massive transportation spending bill that allocated funds to fix the I-5 through the Portland Metro area, fix the I-217, and allocated funds to the expansion of public transportation. This is a state-wide law that was supported by all of Oregon, as well as Washington, Idaho, and California. The bill was hotly debated through 2016 and was signed into law in 2017.
Aaron Brown argued several points about the expansion through the Rose Quarter of Portland. He argued freeway expansions never solve congestion, but only encourage more drivers to take the freeway. Mr. Brown stated his organization’s tactic was to erect formal resistance until the building plans just died. He stated the $450 million spent on this bill would be far better spent on expanding public transportation and giving each neighborhood in Portland and equal share of that money to allow them to do what they thought was best. He believes everyone should take public transportation and to leave the freeways just to shipping vehicles. He also argued that more lanes on surface streets should be dedicated to public transportation.
Rep. McClain clarified several of the points Mr. Brown made. Rep McClain is the head of the House Transportation Committee and was instrumental in writing HB 2017. She argued the expansion of I-5 was not an expansion at all, but fixing a design flaw with the exit only lanes. Rep. McClain also stated this was state-level legislation and Portland could not resist it from being enacted. She also told us the debate on this law had closed in 2017, and if the activists wanted any changes made, an entirely new law would need to be debated, written, and passed, all the while the fix to I-5 would be conducted anyway.
In this case, the truth rests with Rep. McClain. The resistance to this bill, while genuine, is too little, too late. The efforts by Mr. Brown should have been taking place in 2016 while the bill was being debated, and if he was making these efforts, they obviously had no effect. Since the legislation is state-level, and Portland as a city had the chance to voice opinions on the bill, the time for debate is over and the fixes will be coming. From what we learned, Mr. Brown does not know what he is talking about.
This case shows the differences between and activist (Mr. Brown) and a civically engaged individual (Rep. McClain). Mr. Brown is out in the streets, collecting signatures, and arguing in front of city council, and spreading false information to the people he talks to. Rep. McClain is actively taking part in the shaping of legislation that will affect her community (she lives in Hillsboro). These two people show the sharpest difference between and activist and someone involved in civic engagement.
Being involved in civic engagement should be going to city council meetings. Writing letters to the mayor and city council. Setting up meetings with your representative on issues you care about. Often times marching in the streets makes little to no impact. Several years ago while working as an education lobbyist, I was in Sacramento meeting with staffers about California education bills. There was a march and protest outside the capitol building of around 40,000 students, the staffers had no idea they were even there. What made the difference in legislation (and therefore reality in education) was our group of student lobbyists going and talking with individual staffers about the bills that were coming out and getting them to see our side of the argument.
Banyan, Margaret E. “Civic Engagement.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 25 May 2016, www.britannica.com/topic/civic-engagement.
“Civic Engagement.” Civic Engagement | Youth.gov. Accessed March 13, 2018. https://youth.gov/youth-topics/civic-engagement-and-volunteering.
Burkholder, Rex. The activists toolkit: advice and encouragement from an experienced activist to help you be a successful leader in your community. Portland, OR: Rex Burkholder, 2015.
“Activism.” Dictionary.com. Accessed March 13, 2018. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/activism.
“Keep Oregon Moving (HB 2017).” Oregon Department of Transportation : Keep Oregon Moving (HB 2017) : State of Oregon. Accessed March 13, 2018. http://www.oregon.gov/odot/pages/hb2017.aspx.
Brown, Aaron. “Interview with Aaron Brown.” Interview by Tommy Dragna and Karson Pence. Interview conducted at a coffee shop in Portland
McClain, Susan. “Interview with Rep. McClain.” Interview by Tommy Dragna and Karson Pence. Interview conducted at Rep. McClain’s Salem office
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