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Policy Change We Can Start Today!

A collection of 36 issues

A Joyous Interlude in a Harsh Season

Several Decembers ago, my father had the idea to write JOY in rope lighting on the kitchen fence. Actually creating JOY turned out to be less JOYful: my fingers went numb, the twisty ties were too short, and despite multiple attempts, it came out looking like JOF. After we wrestled

A Joyous Interlude in a Harsh Season

Several Decembers ago, my father had the idea to write JOY in rope lighting on the kitchen fence. Actually creating JOY turned out to be less JOYful: my fingers went numb, the twisty ties were too short, and despite multiple attempts, it came out looking like JOF. After we wrestled

A Surefire Way to Overcome the Powerful

Our politics is a bit short on saints and Buddhas these days. The halls of power seem to have more crooks, ne’er do wells, bullies, backstabbers. Given that this motley crowd makes up the loudest faction of today’s politics (though not the only faction), we might assume that

The Election We Aren’t Talking About, and Could Easily Sway

Now for three things we likely didn’t learn in high school. And hold onto your hats and pearls, because you’re about to get (civically) blown away! First: State legislatures are the hottest legislative thing around. They calls the shots on redistricting, data center regulation, how millionaires and billionaires

Bettering Our Democracy in Less Than a Minute

I once had a client who changed it all for me. Some years ago, she was winding down her time at a job and making the requisite calls to notify bigwigs and stakeholders. A few calls were plain yogurt pro forma, she said. But a bunch of calls...she paused,

One Common Advocacy Tactic Not Worth Your Time (and What To Do Instead!)

I’d bet the moon and most of its cheese that an email like this has shown up in your inbox. It comes from an organization telling you about the famine in Haiti or the water quality near data centers or how billionaires are making hay while the rest of

Three Things We Can Do for Democracy Beyond Voting

This democracy of ours has some pretty special features, chief among them that we get a say in how we’re governed. It’s baked into the very word democracy itself: demos means common people and kratos means power. But nobody really teaches us how we can utilize our democracy

10ish Minutes for a Healthier Democracy

It’s springtime, when a young person’s fancy turns to thoughts of love and some of America’s fancy turns to thoughts of primaries. Some is the hardest working word in that sentence. Nearly 80% of folks who are eligible to vote in primaries don’t. Which gives the

A Secret Strategy for Making Good Change

When I worked in Congress, the meeting requests that came into our office were nearly always for time with the Congressman. The buck stops with the politician, so of course that’s who you should meet with, right? But here’s a fun little secret nobody tells you: meeting with

One Way to Change a Broken Status Quo

I once saw a terrific sign at a cash register: “If you’re afraid of change, leave it here.” A few months back, I was talking with a friend who was pulling together a group of colleagues to tackle a wicked problem in their field. The nagging issue, my friend