Download or read book Real Democracy written by Frank M. Bryan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relying on an astounding collection of more than three decades of firsthand research, Frank M. Bryan examines one of the purest forms of American democracy, the New England town meeting. At these meetings, usually held once a year, all eligible citizens of the town may become legislators; they meet in face-to-face assemblies, debate the issues on the agenda, and vote on them. And although these meetings are natural laboratories for democracy, very few scholars have systematically investigated them. A nationally recognized expert on this topic, Bryan has now done just that. Studying 1,500 town meetings in his home state of Vermont, he and his students recorded a staggering amount of data about them—238,603 acts of participation by 63,140 citizens in 210 different towns. Drawing on this evidence as well as on evocative "witness" accounts—from casual observers to no lesser a light than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—Bryan paints a vivid picture of how real democracy works. Among the many fascinating questions he explores: why attendance varies sharply with town size, how citizens resolve conflicts in open forums, and how men and women behave differently in town meetings. In the end, Bryan interprets this brand of local government to find evidence for its considerable staying power as the most authentic and meaningful form of direct democracy. Giving us a rare glimpse into how democracy works in the real world, Bryan presents here an unorthodox and definitive book on this most cherished of American institutions.
Download or read book The New England Town Meeting written by Joseph F. Zimmerman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1999-03-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking study, Zimmerman explores the town meeting form of government in all New England states. This comprehensive work relies heavily upon surveys of town officers and citizens, interviews, and mastery of the scattered writing on the subject. Zimmerman finds that the stereotypes of the New England open town meeting advanced by its critics are a serious distortion of reality. He shows that voter superintendence of town affairs has proven to be effective, and there is no empirical evidence that thousands of small towns and cities with elected councils are governed better. Whereas the relatively small voter attendance suggests that interest groups can control town meetings, their influence has been offset effectively by the development of town advisory committees, particularly the finance committee and the planning board, which are effective counterbalances to pressure groups. Zimmerman provides a new conception of town meeting democracy, positing that the meeting is a de facto representative legislative body with two safety valves—open access to all voters and the initiative to add articles to the warrant, and the calling of special meetings to reconsider decisions made at the preceding town meeting. And, as Zimmerman points out, a third safety valve—the protest referendum—can be adopted by a town meeting.
Download or read book Slow Democracy written by Susan Clark and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconnecting with the sources of decisions that affect us, and with the processes of democracy itself, is at the heart of 21st-century sustainable communities. Slow Democracy chronicles the ways in which ordinary people have mobilized to find local solutions to local problems. It invites us to bring the advantages of "slow" to our community decision making. Just as slow food encourages chefs and eaters to become more intimately involved with the production of local food, slow democracy encourages us to govern ourselves locally with processes that are inclusive, deliberative, and citizen powered. Susan Clark and Woden Teachout outline the qualities of real, local decision making and show us the range of ways that communities are breathing new life into participatory democracy around the country. We meet residents who seize back control of their municipal water systems from global corporations, parents who find unique solutions to seemingly divisive school-redistricting issues, and a host of other citizens across the nation who have designed local decision-making systems to solve the problems unique to their area in ways that work best for their communities. Though rooted in the direct participation that defined our nation's early days, slow democracy is not a romantic vision for reigniting the ways of old. Rather, the strategies outlined here are uniquely suited to 21st-century technologies and culture.If our future holds an increased focus on local food, local energy, and local economy, then surely we will need to improve our skills at local governance as well.
Download or read book Mr and Mrs Prince written by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-07-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucy Terry was a devoted wife and mother, and the first known African-American poet. Abijah Prince, her husband, was a veteran of the French and Indian Wars and an entrepreneur. Together they pursued what would become the cornerstone of the American dream — having a family and owning property where they could live, grow, and prosper. When bigoted neighbors tried to run them off their own property, they asserted their rights, as they would do many times, in court. Merging comprehensive research and grand storytelling, Mr. and Mrs. Prince reveals the true story of a remarkable pre-Civil War African-American family, as well as the challenges that faced African-Americans who lived in the North. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina is the author and editor of several books, including Carrington, Black London (a New York Times notable book), Black Victorians/Black Victoriana, and Frances Hodgson Burnett. She is the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor in Biography at Dartmouth College, where she is the first African-American woman to chair an Ivy League English Department. She has won grants from Fulbright and the National Endowment for Humanities and hosts “The Book Show,” a nationally syndicated weekly radio program that airs on ninety stations across the country. “Compelling ... History and mystery mix in this tale to make Mr. and Mrs. Prince as absorbing as it surprising and informative.” — Christian Science Monitor
Download or read book Town Hall Meetings and the Death of Deliberation written by Jonathan Beecher Field and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the erosion of democratic norms in the US and the conditions that make it possible Jonathan Beecher Field tracks the permutations of the town hall meeting from its original context as a form of democratic community governance in New England into a format for presidential debates and a staple of corporate governance. In its contemporary iteration, the town hall meeting models the aesthetic of the former but replaces actual democratic deliberation with a spectacle that involves no immediate electoral stakes or functions as a glorified press conference. Urgently, Field notes that though this evolution might be apparent, evidence suggests many US citizens don’t care to differentiate. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead
Download or read book You Don t Have to Be Everything written by Diana Whitney and published by Workman Publishing Company. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poems to Turn to Again and Again – from Amanda Gorman, Sharon Olds, Kate Baer, and More Created and compiled just for young women, You Don’t Have to Be Everything is filled with works by a wide range of poets who are honest, unafraid, and skilled at addressing the complex feelings of coming-of-age, from loneliness to joy, longing to solace, attitude to humor. These unintimidating poems offer girls a message of self-acceptance and strength, giving them permission to let go of shame and perfectionism. The cast of 68 poets is extraordinary: Amanda Gorman, the first National Youth Poet Laureate, who read at Joe Biden's inauguration; bestselling authors like Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Acevedo, Sharon Olds, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Mary Oliver; Instagram-famous poets including Kate Baer, Melody Lee, and Andrea Gibson; poets who are LGBTQ, poets of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, poets who sing of human experience in ways that are free from conventional ideas of femininity. Illustrated in full color with work by three diverse artists, this book is an inspired gift for daughters and granddaughters—and anyone on the path to becoming themselves. No matter how old you are, it helps to be young when you're coming to life, to be unfinished, a mysterious statement, a journey from star to star. —Joy Ladin, excerpt from "Survival Guide"
Download or read book Hearings Reports and Prints of the Senate Committee on Banking Housing and Urban Affairs written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 1148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Local Glories written by Ann Satterthwaite and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To most people, the term "opera house" conjures up images of mink-coated dowagers accompanied by tuxedo-clad men in the gilded interiors of opulent buildings like the Met in New York or La Scala in Milan. However, the opera house in the United States has a far more varied-and far more interesting-history than that stereotype implies. In Local Glories, Ann Satterthwaite explores the creative, social, and communal roles of the thousands of opera houses that flourished in small towns across the country. By 1900, opera houses were everywhere: on second floors over hardware stores, in grand independent buildings, in the back rooms of New England town halls, and even in the bowels of a Mississippi department store. With travel made easier by the newly expanded rail lines, Sarah Bernhardt, Mark Twain, and John Philip Sousa entertained thousands of townspeople, as did countless actors, theater and opera companies, innumerable minor league magicians, circuses, and lecturers, and even 500 troupes that performed nothing but Uncle Tom's Cabin. Often the town's only large space for public assembly, the local opera house served as a place for local activities such as school graduations, recitations, sports, town meetings, elections, political rallies, and even social dances and roller skating parties. Considered local landmarks, often in distinctive architect-designed buildings, they aroused considerable pride and reinforced town identity. By considering states with distinctly different histories--principally Maine, Nebraska, Vermont, New York, and Colorado--Satterthwaite describes the diversity of opera houses, programs, audiences, buildings, promoters, and supporters--and their hopes, dreams, and ambitions. In the twentieth century, radio and movies, and later television and changing tastes made these opera houses seem obsolete. Some were demolished, while others languished for decades until stalwart revivers discovered them again in the 1970s. The resuscitation of these opera houses today, an example of historic preservation and creative reuse, reflects the timeless quest for cultural inspiration and for local engagement to counter the anonymity of the larger world. These "local glories" are where art and community meet, forging connections and making communities today, just as they did in the nineteenth century.
Download or read book Reports written by Vermont. Dairymens Association and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 1068 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Economic Opportunity Amendments of 1977 78 written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Human Resources. Subcommittee on Employment, Poverty, and Migratory Labor and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 1334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Genius of Impeachment written by John Nichols and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A more-timely-than-ever argument that impeachment is an essential American institution from the author of Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse. This surprising and irreverent book by one of America’s leading political reporters makes the case that impeachment is much more than a legal and congressional process—it is an essential instrument of America’s democratic system. Articles of impeachment have been brought sixty-two times in American history. Thomas Jefferson himself forwarded the evidence for impeachment of the first federal official to be removed under the process—John Pickering in 1803. Impeachment is as American as apple pie. The founders designed impeachment as one of the checks against executive power. As John Nichols reveals in this fascinating look at impeachment’s hidden history, impeachment movements—in addition to congressional proceedings themselves—have played an important role in countering an out-of-control executive branch. The threat of impeachment has worked to temper presidential excesses and to reassert democratic values in times of national drift. The Genius of Impeachment makes clear that we sorely need such a movement today, and that both the president and vice president deserve impeachment. In the spirit of maverick congressmember Henry B. González, who introduced articles of impeachment against both George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan for making war without a declaration, this book is a fearless call to Americans to hold our leaders accountable to democracy. “Arguing that regular elections are an insufficient democratic guardian against corrupt officeholders . . . this work relies on its power-to-the-people persona for its appeal.” —Booklist
Download or read book Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Vermont written by Vermont. Supreme Court and published by . This book was released on 1890 with total page 1156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Report of the Board of Agriculture written by New Hampshire. Board of Agriculture and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Public Management written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 752 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with 1925 the March number of each year contains the annual proceedings of the International City Managers' Association.
Download or read book Automobile Blue Book New York State and adjacent Canada written by and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 1314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Honeybee Democracy written by Thomas D. Seeley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-20 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How honeybees make collective decisions—and what we can learn from this amazing democratic process Honeybees make decisions collectively—and democratically. Every year, faced with the life-or-death problem of choosing and traveling to a new home, honeybees stake everything on a process that includes collective fact-finding, vigorous debate, and consensus building. In fact, as world-renowned animal behaviorist Thomas Seeley reveals, these incredible insects have much to teach us when it comes to collective wisdom and effective decision making. A remarkable and richly illustrated account of scientific discovery, Honeybee Democracy brings together, for the first time, decades of Seeley's pioneering research to tell the amazing story of house hunting and democratic debate among the honeybees. In the late spring and early summer, as a bee colony becomes overcrowded, a third of the hive stays behind and rears a new queen, while a swarm of thousands departs with the old queen to produce a daughter colony. Seeley describes how these bees evaluate potential nest sites, advertise their discoveries to one another, engage in open deliberation, choose a final site, and navigate together—as a swirling cloud of bees—to their new home. Seeley investigates how evolution has honed the decision-making methods of honeybees over millions of years, and he considers similarities between the ways that bee swarms and primate brains process information. He concludes that what works well for bees can also work well for people: any decision-making group should consist of individuals with shared interests and mutual respect, a leader's influence should be minimized, debate should be relied upon, diverse solutions should be sought, and the majority should be counted on for a dependable resolution. An impressive exploration of animal behavior, Honeybee Democracy shows that decision-making groups, whether honeybee or human, can be smarter than even the smartest individuals in them.
Download or read book The Five Habits of Highly Effective Honeybees and What We Can Learn from Them written by Thomas D. Seeley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-20 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies of animal behavior have often been invoked to help explain and even guide human behavior. Think of Pavlov and his dogs or Goodall and her chimps. But, as these examples indicate, the tendency has been to focus on "higher," more cognitively developed, and thus, it is thought, more intelligent creatures than mindless, robotic insects. Not so! Learn here how honeybees work together to form a collective intelligence and even how they make decisions democratically. The wizzzzdom of crowds indeed! Here are five habits of effective groups that we can learn from these clever honeybees. Princeton Shorts are brief selections excerpted from influential Princeton University Press publications produced exclusively in eBook format. They are selected with the firm belief that while the original work remains an important and enduring product, sometimes we can all benefit from a quick take on a topic worthy of a longer book. In a world where every second counts, how better to stay up-to speed on current events and digest the kernels of wisdom found in the great works of the past? Princeton Shorts enables you to be an instant expert in a world where information is everywhere but quality is at a premium. The Five Habits of Highly Effective Honeybees (and What We Can Learn from Them) does just that.
