Orientation 2025 Day Two

On the second day of Civic Bridgers Fellowship orientation, we continued to discuss democracy and how bridging plays an essential role in building the connections to maintain our democracy. Each of the sessions that day built off the others until I had a firmer sense of what democracy does for us, and how we can work to defend it.

To begin, Jill broke down how we are protected by the rule of law, individual rights, and electoral freedom. She helped us visualize these concepts in our daily lives, as we discussed the benefits we experience all around us. This made the workshop feel really concrete. 

The next idea that really stuck with me was two ways to conceptualize democracy: the vending machine vs. community kitchen model. Libby argued that we often treat our democracy like a vending machine; we put a vote in and expect to receive something out. Unfortunately, that model reduces us to passive consumers of elections, it makes us treat democracy as a single event every two or four years. Instead, in a community kitchen everyone is a coparticipant. You choose tasks based on what needs to be done, and everyone contributes what they can. I found the second model much more valuable because it made me think about how we can contribute to the norms of democracy in small ways all the time.

Finally, we were introduced to asset mapping, a tool used to recognize the strengths of your community. This helped us to identify the strategies or points of pressure that are necessary to create change. Staying on the theme of the every day, the example we were given was from local politics. A group of Minnesota teens spent years planning and lobbying their township, local businesses, and their mayor in order to build a skate park. To do so, they first had to identify their own strengths, what they needed, and who they needed to persuade. Asset mapping was such an interesting way to visualize the essential steps for change.

I learned a lot of tangible, daily steps we can take to rebuild our own democracy. The sessions gave me tools to address problems I see in my own community, and strategies that I can use to work with others to fix them.