Author Archives: Peter Levine

Asset-Based Community Development

Although civic actors should think critically and address problems, it is also valuable to be able to identify and appreciate the existing assets of any community, no matter how disadvantaged. Lesson 8 of Longo 2023 entitled “Asset-Based Community Development,” helps … Continue reading

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Facilitation

Group discussions of contested issues depend on good facilitation, and we can learn to facilitate well. Lesson Six of Longo 2023 is a free guide to developing skills for facilitating groups. This lesson draws upon a framework and materials developed … Continue reading

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One-to-One Interviews

A basic technique of community organizing is to conduct one-to-one interviews with members of a community to gain understanding of issues and needs, create relationships, identify people who have leadership potential, and recruit residents for group discussions and collective action. … Continue reading

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Frontiers of Democracy 2022: A Festival of Cases

Draft agenda, subject to change June 24, 2022 at 145 Harrison Ave., Boston MA (Tufts School of Medicine), room 114, or online *Marshall Ganz is Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing and Civil Society at the Kennedy School … Continue reading

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Vote16USA’s Campaign to Lower the Voting Age in San Francisco

This SNF Agora case study by Scott Warren and Brandon Klugman “explores challenges that emerged for a coalition of high school–aged activists involved in the Vote16SF campaign, a movement to lower the voting age in San Francisco. This activist group, led … Continue reading

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A Quandary in Queens

“A Quandary in Queens” is a case study by Elinor Pierce, the Research Director at the Pluralism Project. It focuses on the dilemma of a young lawyer and community organizer, Aminta Kilawan-Narine. For many in Aminta’s Indo-Caribbean Hindu community, offerings to the sacred waters … Continue reading

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Feeling Exposed in Online Class: Safety in the Virtual Civics Classroom

Feeling Exposed in an Online Class is a case study from Justice in Schools. According to the summary: A civics teacher at a vocational school (MBO) in the Netherlands finds herself in an uncomfortable situation when a parent interrupts her … Continue reading

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Picking Battles: a case about guns in schools

“Picking Battles” is a case from Justice in Schools. According to the summary: Florida high school social studies teacher Caitlin Crosby grapples with her school’s consideration of arming one of its popular, ex-military teachers. Ms. Crosby is opposed to the … Continue reading

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Taking the Action Out of Civics?

“Taking the Action out of Civics?” is a case study from the Justice in Schools initiative. The case examines the debate over a form of project-based civics education called Action Civics, in which students research a topic of their choosing … Continue reading

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Polycentrism

Vincent Ostrom, Charles Tiebout, and Robert Warren wrote that a “polycentric political system” exists when “many centers of decision- making which are formally independent of each other . . . take each other into account in competitive relationships, enter into … Continue reading

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