PA Group: Animal Rescuers
PA Project: Community 3k Walk/Run Fundraiser
Often times, the education system can be seen as rigid and formulaic, limiting the potential of young people. Phil O’Neil, a three-year veteran public achievement coach, knows this well. However, he sees public achievement as a way to break the mold and this has inspired him to pursue a career as an educator.
Continue reading “The Oz Behind the Curtain – Phil O’Neil: Public Achievement Coach”
Mukwa
5th grader at Maxfield Elementary School
PA Group: Culture and Diversity
PA Project: Multicultural Cookbook
Public Achievement creates free space where young people develop the power to take leadership in at least part of their education and impact the world around them. Students choose a community issue they are passionate about and work for an entire school year to develop a solution, using “everyday citizen politics” to work across differences. Throughout the process, students develop public confidence, learn how to organize and become leaders. Continue reading “R.E.S.P.E.C.T – Mukwa uses Public Achievement to encourage others to respect different cultures”
The Tom SenGupta Forum aims to create inclusive places with opportunities for learning and sharing of ideas which inspire ordinary citizens to reclaim our moral compass and reshape our world. This, our first public forum, is an opportunity to talk and learn about the legacy of slavery and its impact on society today. Please join us.
Thursday, February 25
4:00-5:30pm
Cedar Commons
2001 Riverside Avenue, Minneapolis
This event is free and open to the public
New forum relaunches legendary discussion group. The first topic — the legacy of slavery — won’t be timid.
The iconic pot-bellied stove was absent. No jam-packed retail shelves stood watch. But the essential ingredients of the never-named monthly discussion group that challenged premises and pricked consciences at a Prospect Park drug store for 27 years came together anew last week — chief among them the group’s founder, Tom SenGupta.
SenGupta, 76, has had two cancer surgeries and a run of chemotherapy in the year since he sold Schneider Drug on University Avenue, the independent drug store he owned for 43 years. But the pharmacist has recovered sufficiently to again pursue what always seemed to be his true calling — the perfecting of American democracy. … read more
The media casts Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as populists. But a civil rights activist reminds us that the great populist movements of the past channeled people’s anger into a force for constructive change.
BY HARRY BOYTE | JANUARY 15, 2016
Coming back to the US after time in South Africa, anger in the election is like a blast furnace. I’m also struck by the ubiquitous use of populism as a framework of analysis.
“Trump and Sanders: Different Candidates with a Populist Streak,” reported Chuck Todd on NBC News. Most reporters and commentators use “populism” to mean inflammatory rhetoric. Thus Jonathan Goldberg, writing in the National Review, argues Trump and Sanders are “Two Populist Peas in a Pod,” stirring up “millions of people [who] are convinced that the system is rigged against them.”
Continue reading “In a Season of Rage, Populist Lessons From the Movement”
One side pits winners and losers against each other in a race for the American Dream, while the other wonders what might be possible if we work together to form communities, build schools and create a culture of mutual respect.
We’re proud to be working with Rep. Frank Hornstein, featured in this op-ed piece from the Star Tribune.
Forget Nazi comparisons — find other ways to reject hateful speech: Even in the rare case where it’s warranted, there are better ways to counter ugly, fear-mongering rhetoric.
By
I like your question to students, “how are decisions on various levels of importance are made?” I agree that the capacity to “throw the rascals out” is essential.
But I also am convinced democracy is not only about decision making. It is about co-creation and a feeling of ownership – where “culture” comes in.
Some years ago I had an exchange with two distinguished academics, Eric Olin Wright and Archon Fung, about their “Deepening Democracy” essay, later published in Politics and Society (my response, “Reconstructing Democracy,” is also on the Havens site).
They were interested in developing “transformative democratic strategies,” larger than local experiments or single issue movements. Drawing lessons from large scale examples which they called “empowered deliberative democracy,” from habitat conservation planning under the Endangered Species Act to participatory budget discussions in Brazil, they developed a model which could be adapted to schools.
They distilled three principles: Issues have a practical focus on specific, tangible problems; all involve ordinary people affected by the problems and officials close to them; all rely on deliberative development of problem solving. They noted three design features – decentralization of state decision making to local units; creation of formal linkages that connect local units to each other and to more central authorities; and ways to support and guide problem-solving efforts.
Last March we announced the Sabo Center’s partnership with Changing the Norm of Society, a project conceived by Tom SenGupta, long time pharmacist and owner of Schneider Drug on University Avenue in Minneapolis, who convened hundreds of conversations on politics and public issues that took place after hours right in the aisles of the drug store. Today we are pleased to introduce the project under its new name, the Tom SenGupta Forum.
The project’s mission is to create inclusive places with opportunities for learning and sharing of ideas which inspire ordinary citizens to reclaim our moral compass and reshape our world. Planning is underway to open the Tom SenGupta Forum soon and the first topic will be the legacy of slavery and its impact on society today.
MinnPost column by Doug Grow: The Legend of Tom SenGupta
Star Tribune column: Beloved community leader to say goodbye to his independent drugstore
Star Tribune column: Philosopher pharmacist dreams of a memorial to the common man
To donate to the project by mail, send a check payable to Augsburg University to:
Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship, Tom SenGupta Forum
2211 Riverside Avenue, CB 10
Minneapolis, MN 55454
To receive e-mail updates about the Tom SenGupta Forum please send a message to sabocenter@augsburg.edu
November 12, 2015, 7:00-8:30 p.m. | Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis.
Insurgent Democracy offers a new look at the Nonpartisan League and a new way to understand its rise and fall in the United States and Canada. Lansing argues that, rather than a spasm of populist rage that inevitably burned itself out, the story of the League is in fact an instructive example of how popular movements can create lasting change. Depicting the League as a transnational response to economic inequity, Lansing not only resurrects its story of citizen activism, but also allows us to see its potential to inform contemporary movements.
