The Practicing Democracy Project

“In democratic countries, knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all forms of knowledge: on its progress depends that of all the others.” De Tocqueville

Our goal is to combine teaching, research and community outreach to develop leaders committed to making democracy work. As people around the world search for ways to make their voices heard, the voices of many Americans have been stilled as increasing political inequality amplifies ever-growing economic and social inequality. Organizing people to articulate their values and assert their interests effectively requires developing able leaders committed to engaging their fellow citizens in effective collective action. The goal of this project is to support the recruitment, training, and development of this leadership.

Our approach is to build a community of practice that includes educators and practitioners, based in colleges and universities, on the one hand, and community based organizations, on the other. This community of practice has three goals:

First, we will create the venue in which we can form relationships, compare experience, support each other’s learning, and develop collaboration.  We will expand our reach through a Practicing Democracy website.

Second, we will expand opportunities to learn these leadership skills in colleges and universities by supporting the development of instructors, courses of instruction, course venues, etc.  Our network links such efforts among educators at Antioch New England, Boston College, Brandeis, Brown, Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, Providence College, Simmons, Stonehill, Suffolk, Tufts, Umass Amherst, Umass Boston, Umass Lowell, and Wellesley.

Third, we will support development of effective community organizations by identifying potential organizers, creating internships, and enhancing training and development programs. Currently we work with over 100 such organizations in the Boston area including unions, churches, community organizations, advocacy groups, etc.

Although our goals are modest, we believe we can contribute to the work of democratic renewal by linking the rising generation of public leaders with opportunities to make democracy work by building powerful community based organizations.

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Practicing Democracy Project Story

Our approach to the development of public leaders grows out of the experience of Marshall Ganz and other in  the Civil Rights movement, the United Farm Workers, grassroots electoral campaigns, and teaching the “practice” of organizing at Harvard and elsewhere. Based on a pedagogy of reflective practice, the participants learn to identify, recruit and develop leaders, build community among that leadership, and build power from the resources of that community by forming relationships, motivating participation, devising strategy, and mobilizing action. Using a learning framework rooted in practice, but informed by the insights of social science and history, participants learn to reflect critically on their own practice in writing, presentations, and discussion. They thus learn to practice organizing, appreciate the organizing tradition, and understand the contribution of organizing to social movements, democratic organizations, and political institutions. To support this work we have developed a set of “organizing notes”, a teaching manual, and books of reflections.

The original course served about 60 students each year drawn from masters’ programs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Divinity School , and the Graduate School of Education. A seminar version is taught in the social studies program of Harvard College , at Stonehill College , and at the University of Massachusetts , Amherst. And a 5-session version has been developed for union leaders, CDC directors, clergy and other leaders and practitioners from community organizations in the US and abroad. Some 2000 students have completed the regular courses.

To accommodate more students – and to model what we are teaching – we developed a teaching team, drawn largely from former students. Teaching fellows usually serve no more than two or three years before they begin to teach their own versions of the course, continue their studies, or enter the world of practice. Of 25 teaching fellows, 13 have become full-time organizers and 7 have developed their own versions of the course that they now teach.

Because the focus of our work is in the community, we formed working relationships with many community, issue, and advocacy groups. Our initial collaboration developed around the design of organizing projects that could serve both their needs and the needs of the students. The organizations found this relationship also offered them an opportunity to recruit trained organizers.

For many groups, however, “hosting” organizing interns also affords them an opportunity to learn from their own experience. Through our Community Fellows Program, community organizations nominate members of their staff or leadership to enroll in the semester-long course, at no cost to them except for the student’s time. This year we admitted eight Community Fellows who brought their world of experience into the classroom and, at the same time, learned to bring valuable new perspectives to their work in the community.

We also explored ways to expand our community of practice. To support a learning community among former students, we launched a Peer Learning Network, a web-based “community” that shares resources, reports on participant’s activities, helps find jobs, and can provide a venue for discussion. We contribute to collaboration among colleagues by participating in monthly conversation with those engaged in similar teaching efforts. And we learned that our own efforts to bridge the divide between school and community around the practice of civic engagement coincides with the efforts of others: the Political Education Project of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Democracy Project of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the Civic Engagement Imperative of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, and various Ford Foundation initiatives.