What Democracy Looks Like

By HEATHER SEGGEL

You may have seen footage this summer of students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, site of the terrible school shooting that killed 17 on Valentine’s Day, touring the country to register young voters. Perhaps you’ve also encountered memes or calls to action suggesting that phone banks be replaced with texting parties, a change specifically intended to target the youth vote. This year, even the lowly QR code has been drafted into use as a voter registration tool; just point, click, and be sure you’re on the rolls. If today’s GOP is the party of old white men, a progressive future calls for diversity and the energy of youth. How to attract them and keep them engaged is still the question.

The activist group Indivisible was created to promote political engagement locally in order to resist the Trump agenda, a sort of Tea Party movement toward the opposite goal post. But learning the ins and outs of local government can be daunting. City council meetings start late, run long, and are not as funny as they were on Parks and Recreation. Some activists in Austin, Texas, decided to reach out to young locals with a ’zine that’s also an activity book, with the goal of helping them navigate the system. A Beginner’s Guide to Local Government: Austin, TX, is scrappy and earnest, and a good point of entry for those trying to learn their way around city hall and civic engagement.

Author Amy Stansbury and designers Hal Wuertz and Jordan Shade break the process into five achievement levels, ranging from Newbie to Mentor. They profile a local in each category with brief interview snippets and a nice illustration, while also offering tips on how to earn what’s essentially your merit badge at each stage. Figure out which district you live in and who your city council member is! Go to a meeting! Figure out which causes you’re drawn to and join, or create, an action group to work on them! Write a letter to the editor! Once you’ve made it to one level it’s hard to resist the pull to keep going.

There are two complicating factors here, but neither presents an insurmountable problem. First and most obviously, the ‘zine is very specifically made for the citizens of Austin. Its creators used GoFundMe to cover their print run and are available to present the material in person, but if you’re not in Texas a lot of it is not going to translate. That said, reading it in my Northern California town, I pulled out the Sunday paper and found the list of my local representatives, double-checked the date of the next city council meeting, and did a basic brush up of my Leslie Knope bona fides. I’m not a young person, but I’m also not a mentor so my work here isn’t done. Good to know.

The other problem is the price; the ‘zine costs over $15 with shipping. At 28 half-size photocopied pages with a black and white glossy card stock cover, it’s snappy looking. It comes with a small sheet of stickers and mini golf-style pencil in a clear plastic sleeve, nice touches all. But that’s crazy expensive. A Californian can buy a used copy of the League of Women Voters’ Guide to California Government, an encyclopedic guide to every layer (state, county, city, neighborhood, sedimentary) of who does what, for nine bucks online. If you’re in Austin and working through the levels with a group, I can see it being worth it and a lot of fun to compare notes along the way. For the rest of us? The five levels are a fun way to gauge your involvement, but not necessary; if a group had a single copy and wanted to adopt that model, they could do so easily.

Hopefully, this idea is not happening in a hipster vacuum and communities outside Austin are making similar efforts to reach and engage young people. Voting in national elections is obviously important; for many of us, 2018 and 2020 are likely to be the most important elections in our lifetimes. But “politics” is not just what happens in Washington, D.C.: It’s the Roundup sprayed in your local playground that can be replaced with mulch; your public library, parks department, and other city and county resources; your waterways and how they’re used or abused. Most things that affect you where you live are in turn affected and steered by local politics. The vast majority of your neighbors don’t show up and get involved; those who do influence real outcomes. A Beginner’s Guide to Local Government: Austin, TX, is a solid starting point for Texans, but can also be useful to anyone new to local government. Read it, use it, and start showing up.

A Beginner’s Guide to Local Government: Austin, TX is available from afunctionaldemocracy.com.

Heather Seggel is a writer based in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2018

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