aka Ken Smith: Notes toward a citizen's toolkit

In a 2015 New Yorker posting reflecting on the fiftieth anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where a police riot and subsequent bad publicity helped advance the cause of civil rights in our country, George Packard notes the essential link between healthy democratic institutions and active citizenship. Citizens must regularly provoke change in their government--they can't count on elected officials and bureaucrats to be far-thinking enough, be brave enough, to have enough of a commitment to justice.#

What tools do citizens need to make this essential contribution to their democracy?#

Notes toward a citizen's toolkit:#

Eternal vigilance, a healthy watchdog press, citizens with the skills necessary for civic life and the backbone to use them, people who understand that groups are stronger than single voices and groups of groups are even stronger, people who know how make groups and groups of groups, people who know how to publish. Networks in place already prepared, like semaphore, for when a message must be sent. Mistrust of the ease of a merely private life. Strength of character.#