A healthy democracy requires a citizenry full of people who have built communities, held office, and started initiatives. You can’t expertly serve and intentionally organized group if you haven’t built and nearly broken several. That is why my strategy for serving democracy is to focus on online communities, which provide this opportunity to more people than ever before. Of course, as strategy it isn’t very strategic: it boils down to “change everybody.” But it’s necessary, so you have to proceed as if it’s possible. I’m still struggling with it. But there are patterns that have pulled it off. Organizations like the Scouts (Boys and Girls Clubs of America, officially the largest paramilitary organizations in the US) happen to require all of these things, and they built a system that lets people learn in flexible mentor-driven ways. Making this poster helped me get these ideas down clearly.
