Posted by Michelle Dickson on May 10, 2021
Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.
5/03/2021 - Hear the Progressive AND Conservative Cases for Open Primaries
Earlier this month, we told you about Unite America’s report “The Primary Problem.” As a brief refresher, Unite America found that approximately 48% of U.S. House elections were decided by primary voters. Thus, primary elections are a critical opportunity for citizens to make their voices heard. In most states, however, you have to register with one party or the other to participate.
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Posted by on May 03, 2021
Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.
4/26/2021 - Issue One: 1/13 of Election Dollars Came From 12 Megadonors
Sometime it’s quite difficult to understand big numbers, including when it comes to money. My father Jeff Garson, though, came up with a simple thought experiment to wrap our minds around what a million dollars means as opposed to a billion. It goes like this:
You’ve time travelled back before the year 2000 and you want to count your money by hand before you reach the year 2000. If you had a million dollars and each $1 took 1 second, you would need to start the morning of December 21st, 1999, or about 10 days before the new year. If, on the other hand, you had a billion dollars, you would need to start in April of 1969.
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Posted by Michelle Dickson on April 29, 2021
Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.
4/21/2021 - Citizen Redefined: Teaching Citizenship Culture to Young Americans
At Citizen University, Americans are taught to think of citizenship as a way of life; as a community. In some ways, Citizen University sees citizenship as a religion, complete with civic sermons every Saturday. In this case, the object of “worship” is the grand experiment of self-governance that we have been navigating for nearly 2½ centuries.
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Posted by Michelle Dickson on April 29, 2021
Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.
3/30/2021 - Kids Don’t Want to Have to Pick Sides
Last month, we highlighted an article by Nick Troiano of Unite America. In the article, Nick notes that, according to a recent Gallup poll, half of Americans self-identify as “independent.” However, less than a third of Americans are registered as independent. Presumably, part of the reason for that difference is that independents in 14 states (including heavily populated states like Pennsylvania, New York, and Florida) can’t vote in the primaries.
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Posted by Michelle Dickson on April 19, 2021
Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.
4/13/2021 - Unite America: Primary Elections Determined 83% of the House. Wait, What!?
I know this subject line feels like click-bait, but Unite America has done the math. In fact, elections for the 2021 U.S. House of Representatives were actually less competitive than it looks (numbers come from page 9 of the report):
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Posted by Michelle Dickson on April 05, 2021
Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.
4/06/2021 - Join Us In Two Weeks. Let’s Honor Some Amazing Collaborators
Back in January we told you about the American Civic Collaboration Awards -- a.k.a. “The Civvys.” Each year, the Civvys are awarded to three collaborative efforts “that put community and nation before party, ideology and narrow interests.” It’s a way of (1) saying thank you to people and organizations that make our country a better place, and (2) telling their stories to a wider audience.
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Posted by Michelle Dickson on March 29, 2021
Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.
3/23/2021 - Counting Philadelphia: A Census Story
Early last year, when COVID-19 was still an unknown threat, the U.S. Census Bureau was at my library encouraging locals to apply for a job with the 2020 Census. I decided to apply and was eventually hired as the supervisor for my community in Southern New Jersey. It was my duty to make sure that everybody in my town was counted.
During a normal Census year, this is challenging. In 2020, as you can imagine, it was an entirely different beast. We had less time to get the job done, and we were knocking on strangers’ doors during a deadly pandemic.
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Posted by Michelle Dickson on March 15, 2021
Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.
3/09/2021 - Celebrating Women with BA Members and Partners
March is Women’s History Month and -- here at the Bridge Alliance Education Fund -- we’re all about it. The healthy self-governance movement is full of strong women who are actively stewarding our democratic republic toward a better, brighter future. Indeed, half of all executives in the Bridge Alliance are women! Meanwhile, Bridge Alliance member Ballotpedia recently put together a fascinating snapshot of women’s growing influence in our government.
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Posted by Michelle Dickson on March 08, 2021
Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.
3/02/2021 - Facebook Can’t Differentiate Between Us And Instigators!?
We have a problem. As some of you may know, Facebook paused political advertisements in November to reduce the flow of disinformation around the elections. Not a bad idea, but it appears their definition of “political” is a bit….aggressive.
Some members of the Bridge Alliance, including Liz Joyner and The Village Square, are finding that they can’t boost any of their work, including programs about forming friendships! If Facebook were serious about reducing polarization, this is exactly the type of content it should be allowing.
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Posted by on March 01, 2021
Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.
2/23/2021 - Getting Back to the Classroom: Easy Answer, Hard Questions
As COVID vaccines become more accessible, we are going to have to decide how and when to return to “normal.” We will also have to decide what parts of the old “normal” to bring into the new.
One area where there’s widespread agreement is education. Everybody believes that a return to in-person learning is critical, but we’re having difficulties figuring out how to get from here to there. Philip K. Howard of Common Good argues that it’s safe to open schools as long as certain protocols are followed, and blames public sector unions for standing in the way. The unions, for their part, insist they want to get back to class, but that educator safety must be assured.
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