Daily Resource Highlight - 8/16/2021

Posted by on August 16, 2021 at 4:57 PM

Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.

August 10, 2021 - Go To Civic Genius to Become a Civics Genius

At the Bridge Alliance, we assume that a well-educated electorate is capable of governing itself (hence the phrase “healthy self-governance”). The thing is...it’s hard to be well-educated in today’s America. The Information Age has seemingly incentivized faster news at the expense of accurate news.

That’s why it’s so valuable to have a resource like Civic Genius. Civic Genius is not a news source (for that we recommend AllSides or The Flip Side or another news-based member). It also doesn’t keep tabs on pertinent legislation (go to IssueVoter or Bill Track 50 for that).

Instead, Civic Genius gives users an easily-digestible foundation of knowledge on key issues like immigration and redistricting. These “explainers” take less than 10 minutes to read, but provide a fairly comprehensive, broad overview of the topic’s history, key terms, sources of controversy, and key players. They also use conversational language (and a bit of humor) to make these resources as accessible as possible.

We look forward to Civic Genius releasing more issue explainers in the future. In the meantime, I highly encourage you to take advantage of their other Genius Guides. Each of these guides give a quick overview of a category of power broker who helps determine our nation’s policies, like Congress, Governors, and even District Attorneys.

And if you think you already understand immigration somewhat, test that confidence with their immigration quiz. I got 8 out of 9 right. Can you get a perfect score? 

August 12, 2021 - Ch-Ch-Changes with Participatory Budgeting Project

My jukebox brain is doing its thing again. It started with Changes by David Bowie (hence the subject line), and now it has moved on to Imagine by John Lennon. Can you tell that I was raised on the classics? Both of these songs are very appropriate, though, for today’s newsletter.

Participatory Budgeting Project is offering organizations the opportunity to rethink their operations with their PB for Orgs program (applications due August 27th). In most companies, the budget is determined by executives. PBP wants to challenge that thinking and incorporate democratic principles and practices into the budgetary decision-making process. 

If you think participatory budgeting might make sense for your organization, join them on August 16th @ 3 PM for more information on their PB for Orgs program. They have hundreds of examples of PB working in schools and localities through the United States and Canada, and now they want to bring this new way of thinking and operating to the business world.

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