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DWE NEWSLETTER: MAY, 2022
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Contents
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This month's newsletter features the following sections: Announcements, State of the Organization, Deliberations, and DL (Democratic Lottery) Roundup of articles, papers, and reports of interest. To see the accompanying graphics, be sure your email client or browser is set to display images.
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From the Editor
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Welcome to the DWE newsletter. Feedback is appreciated. Please send your responses to content and relevant links to articles, papers, and reports of interest, as well as proposals for "Deliberations" articles and other features to editor@democracywithoutelections.org
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DWE May Monthly Meeting
Sunday, May 15, 4:00-5:00 PM Eastern (1:00-2:00 PM Pacific)
Come a few minutes early and meet people informally.
meet.google.com/eqt-xszt-kfe
(US) +1 929-269-2008 PIN: 156 668 251#
Presentation: Jump Starting a Citizens' Assembly
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Wayne Liebman
Jump starting the Petaluma Citizens' Assembly was a year long process, which culminated in the Petaluma City Council's vote to authorize an assembly of 36 lottery selected citizens to decide the fate of the public fairgrounds. I'll go over the steps it took to get there, with some observations on sortition activism and advocacy in general.
The secret: "How do I work? I grope." — Albert Einstein
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PLEASE SUBMIT SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE PRESENTATIONS HERE.
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May DWE Board Meeting
Thursday, May 5, 7:00-9:00 PM Eastern (4:00 – 6:00 PM Pacific)
meet.google.com/vot-idfx-aub
(US) +1 386-603-3506 PIN: 428 131 542#
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A few of the participants at a recent DWE meeting share a moment of hilarity. (You had to be there.)
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LOTTERY FOR BOARD DIRECTORS
In keeping with the focus of our organization, we use democratic lotteries to select the Directors for our Board. Terms are 18 months and are staggered so that every 6 months a lottery selects three new Directors. We've had an interesting turn of events. Michael Miller from Renton, Washington served a term on our first Board, has been off for awhile and has been randomly selected again to join the Board! Michael joins new Directors Jeri Anderton from Merriam, Kansas and and Janet Fox-Petersen from Wichita, Kansas.
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HELP WANTED
- Assistant Editor for the Newsletter, who will help with content gathering, monitoring article sources for the Round Up section, managing artwork, assembling, editing, proofing, etc. No experience necessary. Become a desktop publishing master! For more info, contact Wayne.(editor@democracywithoutelections.org)
- Cyber Security Consultant: advise the Webmaster on website security. If you have this expertise and are willing to make yourself available on occasion, please contact Dave Tarby.(wm@democracywithoutelections.org)
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Ed Group Moves Forward with Teacher Training Course
DWE Education Group members have been exploring ways to initiate young people into the movement for deliberative democracy. Currently, we’re creating a college level training course for high school teachers, to encourage them to include the study of citizens assemblies and other reform initiatives in their secondary school civics curriculum. We hope the program will both raise awareness of new democratic tools in high schoolers and fuel their active participation in future democratic reforms.
Recently we’ve received a $10,000 grant earmarked for tuition support for teachers enrolling in our training course. We’ve also been searching for partners and have reached out to Stanford University, Bard College, and Colorado State University, who all have strong connections to the democratic reform movement. Our goal was to find an academic host for the training course who could offer college credit to interested teachers as well as connections to large numbers of potential participants.
In March of this year, our Education Group chairman, Chris Forman, announced that Bard College had accepted our invitation to host the course. An ideal sponsor, Bard attracts students from all over the country because of its cutting-edge reputation. Last fall, the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, located on the Bard campus, hosted the conference: Revitalizing Democracy: Sortition, Citizen Power, and Spaces of Freedom. The college is well connected to a broad network of educational institutions, ensuring word of the course can spread.
We're now in the process of convening a roundtable of stakeholders to offer guidance and to develop next steps for the project. Participants interested in becoming involved include the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, University of Pittsburgh Professor of Political Science Michael MacKenzie, and Linn Davis of Healthy Democracy. We hope representatives from the Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State University will soon join us.
-- Rich Brown
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Unburden yourself. Send articles/suggestions to: editor@democracywithoutelections.org
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Several DWE members have written articles to promote democratic lotteries and citizens' assemblies, submitted them to national publications like Reason and The New York Times, and been consistently rejected. Evidently our ideas are too radical! So we begin a new section in the Newsletter that will highlight one of these articles each month.
This month we feature an article titled "The End of Elections?" by Owen Shaffer. It discusses the role that Big Tech has in manipulating elections in a new way and, unsurprising to us, shows how citizens' assemblies can be used to change the playing field. Send it to your friends, talk about it on social media and give our movement some traction!
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Please submit suggested links for next month's roundup HERE.
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Bard College: Citizens Assembly Summer School
Bard College has announced a three-day workshop for July that will introduce public servants, local politicians, and civic leaders from across the political spectrum to key elements of citizens assemblies. (Click HERE for more information.)
Do you know or know of a public official who could benefit from attending? Fellowships are available. Email plindsay@bard.edu with any questions.
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More perils of elections. Suggested by John Hwang
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What was talked about on DWE slack in April?
Join in! Also: Slack enables private conversations between any two people in the organization! Build those lateral one on one connections!! Are you new to DWE and you have some questions? Slack is the place to get your answers and asking will help others who are new too, as well as stimulating interaction on slack!
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How to Connect on DWE Slack
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