Dear Citizen,
Our Neighborhood Democracy Network online services are currently live! What you see now pales in comparison to what we have planned and under active development!
The current web services are designed to help regular people begin the process of meeting together online and face-to-face to discuss local, state, national, and international issues, to develop and propose solutions to problems in public and foreign policy, to engage in an open planning process for all types of municipal and state plans, and to discuss what positive changes neighbors can make in their own neighborhood through cooperation and community service.
Future web services will reach a high level of sophistication, yet will be simple to use for creating and operating a variety of public forums, each type having its own unique purpose that complements the others.
The public forums, the training materials, and the website have been developed as a comprehensive response to the following questions, some that we hope many people ask themselves and some that we want to ask you:
- "How can my opinion ever really count?"
- "How can I bring up an issue I care about to everyone's attention so that something eventually gets done about it?"
- "How can we even begin to deal with all the problems we face?" What if we each teamed up to work on one or a few?
- "Nobody knows their neighbors anymore.” Even if it's true, is it written in stone?
- Are those at the top the only ones with good ideas?
- Are you skeptical that anything would ever change, just because you and a few others have a meeting? What if the meeting you had last night got people talking across town the next night at a similar meeting? What if hundreds of meetings around town during the next several weeks took a vote on your proposal?
- Don't we often ignore what we have in common and, instead, focus only on our differences? Aside from keeping the peace and showing courtesy, when we consider the merits of each person's idea, opinion, or claimed fact with an open mind, doesn't that have the potential to lead to better decisions by all of us, as a whole?
- If we can't learn to work and talk together on a small level, how can we really be part of anything bigger than ourselves?
Democracy literally means “the people rule.” That's bold.
For all their faults and blatant discrimination, the ancient Greeks had the basics of democracy down cold. (They invented it.) They spoke up. They knew how to have meetings. Big meetings. Smaller meetings. Meetings in the Capitol. Meetings where they lived. They took turns at random to serve in their own government for short periods of time. They were their own Congress. For being "ancient", they came up with some clever techniques for the day-to-day operation of their democracy. Maybe we can revive their spirit, do them proud, and perhaps do them one better.
What can we do in our own time to build on what was left by those who lived in the 5th century B.C.--and in 1776? Isn't there plenty of room in a representative democracy, in a republic, for vigorous and widespread exercise of First Amendment rights to speak and peaceably assemble, in order for citizens to raise their own issues, do their own research, have their own discussions, come to their own conclusions and then publicize them? Doesn't a healthy democracy need something like that?
Neighborhood Democracy Network, Inc., was founded on the following beliefs:
- For a democracy to work at its best, it needs more than the official representative government and a few chances for its citizens to vote each year.
- A democracy needs as much feedback as possible from its citizens on the multitude of issues facing it.
- A democracy needs each person to believe enough in themselves and in those around them, to try and learn to talk together about important issues on a regular basis without reverting to gladiatorial combat.
- A democracy needs a well-designed system that employs the latest technology, where useful, and that people trust--because they run it and understand it--in order to capture these regular discussions and then generate a "public opinion" on each issue.
- This public opinion needs to be concentrated ("digestible" and concise).
- Finally, a truly public opinion on an issue should be derived from all the citizens affected by it, or a representative cross-section, and should not be the product of interested groups (whatever valid role they might otherwise have in society).
We want to help you help your neighborhood begin this experiment by providing you with free website services and training materials. We expect to learn a lot from what you try and will adjust our services and guidance, as you tell us what works and what doesn't. Our organization knows it doesn't have all the answers. On the contrary, we believe the answers will be found in the people, as large numbers contribute their ideas, information, and perspectives in response to the challenges of our time, big and small.
Please send us your email address if you want to receive the latest news.
Thanks for your kind attention and interest.
Sincerely,
The Launch Team
Neighborhood Democracy Network, Inc., a §501(c)(3) charitable organization.
P.O. Box 719
Milwaukee, WI 53201-0719