David Wilcox produced this excellent video report on people’s involvement in their neighbourhoods. It features community organiser Jim Diers who was in London recently. Kevin Harris also wrote about Jim’s visit.
As I’ve said before much of the discourse around “citizen empowerment” seems full of think-tank cleverness and easily sounds patronising. This seems to be the real thing. I particularly liked Jim’s challenge to the paradigm of government-as-business, which reduces citizenship to mere customer status. When he says “the government is us” it’s not a slogan, it’s actually quite a radical rallying cry.
