Democracy has become an idea that doesn't aid conversations anymore. Democracy doesn't imply probably the energized resistance to corporate control that it did hundreds of years ago. The word doesn't imply institutionalized bottom-up leadership (and that is exactly what I am talking about). It doesn't provoke imagery of a cyclical governing system designed to inform the top of the concerns of the bottom and truly apply the pressure to get work done. Recycled too many times over, it has lost creativity and originality. Implementation requires patience and dynamic interventions to liven debates and investigations of critical issues.
The solution can be found by flipping the organizational framework and reinstating a culture of civil service to communities instead of entitlements and elitism. Putting into place leaders who generate dynamic group work capable of engaging the disengaged. (This often requires proving to 'followers'' potentials for future work through hands-on skill building.)
I stress group work because democracy requires the incorporation of all the members' skills and ensures culturally-relevant conversations.The solution to our problems of community decay, gentrification, unemployment, lack of healthcare, poor schools, requires a great deal of coordination between many different families and stakeholders. We must gather people together and begin a democratic conversation around agreed upon subject matter. Call it 'a community conversation'. Through creative group work we can dig into the causes of our challenges and successes and build stronger, more unified communities. Only then will democracy come to mean what it once meant: power to the people.
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