The Better you can co-operate the better you can effectively organize socially and politically
Our hope of organizing for our economic and social well-being survives among a significant number of us. That hope survives even after the many wounding blows it has received. I do not know how it has revived or even survived, but it has. That hope diminished when trade unionist failed to teach their children the how of social organization and the why of responsibility for self-governance. Than the majority of parents abdicated their responsibility for the nature of their children's educational institutions. Then their children began to fail their own children. Soon public schools began to fail to teach citizenship skills and civic organizing. I believe that their were good reasons for these failures and and others of a similar nature. Even so, they were damning.
Union members and others were not taught, nor did the teach one another enough of how to use our constitution or how to use democracy. They had good reason for not doing so. Most of those reasons were moved by their history and the state of the nation at the time. Some began to see citizenship as a gift rate than to see it as the responsibility of practicing self-governance, the freedom and responsibility to learn to govern themselves. Many, to this day have a very limited understanding of our history. We learned little of how our earliest citizens learned self governance. I believe that "committees of correspondence is still taught in most high schools." Those committees were organized by those citizens to coordinate self governance and to transmit reliable and valuable information. Some say, that the became the post offices of the United States of America.
I seem to have begun this piece with unions near my conscious mind. The idea of union, of what has been called unionism is important, as have been union members. I have not intended to make them our focus here. I intend to include all citizens and their part in governance in this writing.
However, I am old enough to have heard the talk of pre-WWII union men, many of whom had not completed high school. They spoke with pride of their organization. On thinking back on that which I overheard they spoke of what they had been learning and teaching one another included philosophy, democracy, law, government, citizenship, organizing, and more!
I has very young and may be fantasizing a bit, but I am looking at those times through mature eyes. They had taken on a significant amount of responsibility for governing themselves and for their citizenship. Their talk included foreign affairs, but was more highly focused on their city, county, state and nation. So their focus was mainly in their country. They were idealist to an extent, but they understood that opposition to their organizing had been deadly.
Unions are few in the US of today and unionionism less understood than in those days. Smaller too is the participation in mens clubs and other civic organizations. Working people at even profesional levels seem to have little time for civic or social organizing, there is perhaps a bit of nascent activity.
Among a few of our surviving unions is archived information about active citizenship, organizing, active democracy and more. That information can be tapped. So, a few union members and a few unions may offer us useful example of doing effective citizenship, organization, and democracy which can be adapted to the realities of today.
After the Second World War there was a decline in citizen organization and God seemed to many to look like money. Many men and women became less active in their clubs and some never became members. Most of those clubs and civic organizations had been, in some part, a source of civic organization and practice, and did much good. Some club members had done a better job of educating one another about the politics of the land than had many union members. Many civic organizations an clubs still exist, most are less active and have smaller membership. Many do still maintain information related to active citizenship. Many held a belief that we had the ability to co-operate for our common good and the good of others.
Aspects of effective citizenship seem to have been misplaced. There seems to be less knowledge of the use of organizing, of self governance, of active citizenship common among us. Fewer of us belong to clubs and civic organizations. Many of them still exist, but with greatly reduced participation. Some of them have small libraries and archives with some information about organization, active democracy, and other information related to citizenship. Clubs and unions have archived some governance related information such as political and social histories, organizing tactics, civic organization, social movements, and more.
Some public libraries maintain a little of such information, but less than they once did. Much of such information can now be found online on the www. There is information about topics like grassroots organizing and activity, active citizenship, and self governance.
Community colleges, universities and and other such institutions have much to offer, often under labels like political science and civic sociology. There you may find info on active citizenship and effective democracy, you may hear it said that active democracy is the only democracy. In history they have some stories to tell about effective social movements. University people have done some good work in modernizing and updating some understanding of our governance wisdom. It takes some effort to get to some of this information. As always, you are the leader of your own learning. You are your best guide to effective citizenship, when you are willing to adapt and learn. Its OK to get help when it is tempered by the best of your own good sense.
An area of agreement among many thoughtful people is centered on the fact that the more citizen activity there is in governance the existence of democracy.The quality of that democracy may be determined by the quality of the education and of the information among those citizens. The fewer the active citizens the less democracy. You may find that fewer agree on this: The less learned the citizen the less useful may be the democracy. This seems to have some validity. Even so, I believe that experience can be a darn good teacher. I believe that as you practice citizenship your chances of being an effective citizen improves. So, the more citizens practice democracy and citizenship the more a nation knows of good effective democracy and good effective citizenship.
There is much to learn about voting and demonstrating. There is much of more importance to learn about good governance. You can start practising today.
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rcs