In lieu of School Spotlight, State of the Re:Union is honoring our brave active duty troops, reservists and veterans this Veterans Day by telling stories about how those who serve our nation are also serving each other.

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Veterans Day Special

Our Veterans Day Special, produced in 2010, goes beyond the news headlines to tell the stories of the emotion, challenges and victories that occur when our troops return home from duty.

You can listen to the full episode below, or visit our Veterans Day episode page to listen to it broken up by segment.

Listen Here….

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Cowboy Soldiers: From the Wyoming Episode

Additionally, our 2011 fall season also featured an episode from Wyoming, where we were introduced to two talented National Guard Soldiers. They met on deployment to Iraq and decided to start a country group.  Skip ahead to 9:33, where the story of the Joe Speed Band starts.

Listen Here

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All of us here at State of the Re:Union would like to thank our brave soldiers and veterans for their service and sacrifice.

I recently went to Phoenix for a meeting and I was trying to figure out how to use the light rail to get from the airport to the downtown hotel where I was staying. I found it frustrating that the transit authority website didn’t have a feature for figuring out your itinerary, or at least, I couldn’t seem to find it. Then I remembered, of course, Google Maps does that now, the transit agency doesn’t have to.

Information sharing of that sort has become routine, part of an ongoing joint project between the public, private and nonprofit sectors to use information and communications technology (ICT) in new ways to inform and empower the public. Jay Nath, director of innovation for the city and county of San Francisco writes about it in the fall issue of the National Civic Review, a special issue we published with the help of ZeroDivide, “Beyond the Digital Divide: How New Technologies Can Amplify Civic Engagement and Community Participation.”

The issue has a range of articles on the subject, everything from the use of video games to re-imagine urban neighborhoods, to the ways mobile technology is being used to mobilize voters from under-served communities.

Nath focuses on the advances in access to government information and the transition from a focus on transparency and accountability to one of citizen participation and contribution in what he calls a “new architecture of openness and collaboration.”

“The traditional focus of open government advocates has been on accountability,” he writes. “Very few would argue with this principal, but the new open government is likely to focus more on information sharing that empowers citizens to be more actively involved and creative.”

Nath traces this evolution, interestingly enough, to a tragedy that took place at the end of the Cold War, when a Korean jetliner was shot down by the Soviets after it mistakenly flew into their air space. Originally, global positioning system (GPS) data was reserved for the military, but after the KAL catastrophe, President Reagan ordered GPS data to be released to the American public.

The Obama administration has put a big emphasis on open government and information sharing, releasing a repository of information called Data.gov. San Francisco has a similar effort called DataSF.org using open source software. More than 60 local apps have been created using the data.

“One iPhone app, Routsey, helps citizens navigate Bay Area transportation providers by using real-time prediction information,” he writes. “By using a phone’s GPS location, they can identify the nearest transit stops and determine when the next bus or train is coming.”

The potential of ICTs to help the public access information is an established fact, but what may prove to be equally significant is the ability of citizens to be part of a two-way feedback mechanism with government. Nath cites the example of the Urban Forest Map, which gives citizens a view of trees in the city. The data for this site comes from the city and a non-profit group called Friends of the Urban Forest, but ordinary people can add to or update information that is fed back to the city.

San Francisco is exploiting the potential of “crowdsourcing” with its Improve SF project. Citizens are given the opportunity to generate ideas and the best will be given seed funding through micro-grants.

Where it will all end up we don’t know, but local governments are already being transformed by these new ICTs. Read more about it in the National Civic Review. Electronic files of this special issue are being made available to the public for free on the Wiley Online Library.

Also, ZeroDivide will be hosting a free webinar featuring Jay Nath Thursday, November 17 at 10 a.m. PST, and you can find out more about it here. The topic of the webinar will be using technology for civic engagement.

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Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

Here at State of the Re:Union (SOTRU) we obviously talk a lot about community and the real people that are coming together to make their cities and towns a better place. The sports cross-section of our communities are often overlooked when thinking of positive social change. The central tenets for any team are spirit, dedication, tenacity and teamwork… and those adjectives can also describe a lot of the stories we feature here at SOTRU. All too often we hear the negative side of sports, but there is so much good that happens both on and off the fields and courts that doesn’t get featured.

ESPN recently featured a remarkable story that illustrates a community coming together through sports in the aftermath of the devastating tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri in May. The city was essentially flattened and more than 150 people were killed. Dozens of relief organizations have stepped in to help those affected by the disaster and the sports community was no exception.

ESPN’s story, featured below, focused specifically on what one high school football player experienced in the wake of the devastation and how the Kansas City Chiefs team gave the Joplin football team a memory they won’t soon forget. A small triumph in the midst of tragedy.

What are your favorite stories of sports teams bringing people together? How has a local or professional team made an impact in your community?

After last week’s blog, “Let’s bring together the Tea Party & Occupy Wall Street,” Michel Martin, from NPR’s Tell Me More, asked me and representatives from the two groups to have an on-air conversation. All the potential peril in trying to do something productive could be heard during this conversation. But I remain undaunted, and I hope you are, too. Here’s why.

First, it took a nice dose of courage for Michel to invite the three of us on. Not surprising coming from Michel, but noteworthy nonetheless. Joining me were Shelby Blake, from the Tea Party Patriots, and Kyle Christopher, from Occupy Wall Street.

From the get-go the conversation took a turn for business as usual. The two individuals saw themselves as representatives for their respective groups, and so what came forward were the well-worn talking points, name calling, bomb throwing, and insistence that “We’re Right, You’re Wrong!” No matter what Michel asked, the responses towed the party line. This is the reality of where we at the national level – we cannot deny it. Right now, these groups are talking past each other.

The key to moving the conversation forward will be to get folks around the table who do not see themselves as either “leaders” or “spokespeople.” When I talk to everyday individuals who subscribe to one of these movements, I have found among them – as I have found among most Americans – that they want to find ways to move the country forward. Like many of us, they too are anxious about where the country is headed, scared about their own jobs and keeping their homes, and lack trust in various leaders, institutions, organizations, and groups to hear their concerns.

That is why on Tell Me More I said the best place to get things moving is on the local level. On the national scene, too many groups (not just these two) are happy to indulge in gridlock, because that’s their ticket to “success.” They want to rally more members, more financial support, and more clout. Making progress on the national level will require the shifting of broader conditions in the country.

Still, there is a ripe opportunity before us: to tap into a growing groundswell in the country. This represents what I believe is the big missing story in America today. People want to come back into the public square. People want to make a difference. And people want to be a part of something larger than themselves. They feel they can no longer go it alone – it simply doesn’t work. Nor do they think that outage alone will change current conditions – they say we must note it, understand it, and then get beyond all the outrage.

Let me be clear: What I’m suggesting is no silver bullet. Nor is it about all of us “getting along” or “liking each other.” The times demand that we be more practical than that. At issue is how best to change the trajectory and dynamics of a gridlocked and mistrustful public life and politics.

One good place to start (among others) is to bring people from The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. As I’ve said, what I don’t mean is to bring representatives of the two groups together; instead, my hope is to engage everyday Americans who happen to subscribe to these two groups. If we can show even some progress, it will be an important sign to all Americans – and to the leaders and spokespeople of these movements – that people want to get to work.

At the Institute, we’re actively pursuing ways to push this effort ahead. Please, let me know your own ideas and ways for us to work together.

All this is possible. We can do this.

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A dynamic public speaker, Rich Harwood is a frequent keynote for foundations and national organizations. He is an expert contributor on national and syndicated media outlets including MSNBC, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN’s Inside Politics, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Special Report with Brit Hume, C-SPAN, and many others. He is also the author of Hope Unraveled: The people\’92s retreat and our way back (2005), Make Hope Real: How we can accelerate change for the public good (2008) and numerous studies, articles and essays chronicling vital issues of our time. His most recent written work, Why We\’92re Here: The Powerful Impact of Public Broadcasters When They Turn Outward, is being published and distributed in Spring 2011. You can follow him on twitter @RichHarwood and facebook.com/richharwood.

You can read Rich’s posts every Tuesday on State of the Re:Union’s website.

Postscript on The Therapeutic Neighborhood

Today’s post from Abundant Community contributor John McKnight revisits the Clearness Committee and how it helped one woman’s challenge in deciding treatment for a life-threatening disease. She explains her experience and interaction throughout the process and how it saved her life. (To read original The Therapeutic Neighborhood excerpt, click here. For State of the Re:Union’s post synopsis, click here.)

“The Clearness Committee is not a cure-all,” says Parker Palmer in the excerpt from A Hidden Wholeness we posted recently in The Therapeutic Neighborhood. “But for the right person, with the right issue, it is a powerful way to rally the strength of community around a struggling soul, to draw deeply from the wisdom within all of us.”

My sister-in-law, Mary, was at Quaker study center Pendle Hill for months after an operation for a brain tumor. Here is her reflection on her experience with a Clearness Committee:

“Clearness Committees are made up of people called together to support individuals, couples, or groups in making decisions.

“I called a Clearness Committee to help me decide about my ‘next step’ when I was at Pendle Hill, the Quaker Center for Study and Contemplation.

“I asked seven people to come together with me and offer support, raise questions, give suggestions, and feedback.  These were people in the Pendle Hill community who I felt could give me helpful input from their varying perspectives.

“These people didn’t tell me what to do, but helped me to become clearer about my future direction.

“I did preparation for the meeting by answering some pre-clearness questions–such as about my personal history with relevance to the decision to be made, my commitments, sources of support, goals, and what was holding me back from various options.  I gave this background information to the committee members prior to our group meeting.

“They met with me for several hours one evening. After they brainstormed my strengths, they asked questions, raised concerns, and offered me feedback.

“By the end of the evening I received important insights as to how to proceed, and greater clarity about my future, which at that time was to return to Pendle Hill for another three-month session. Ultimately that decision led me to Ohio. . . .

“There were many other practical decisions that had to be made in the outside world to support my decision, but it was in the Clearness Committee that the direction for my future was made clear to me and supported.

“My reaction to the Clearness Committee?  It was an invaluable experience of the thoughtful pushing and caring of friends in community.

“What is unique?  In response to my desire for clarity, I reached out to my community for suggestions and feedback.

“What do they do that professional counselors can’t do?  As side-by-side members of the Pendle Hill Community, they knew me from various personal perspectives, and offered on-going caring support rather than being outsider professionals.  The dimension of sitting as a group in silence for guidance and discernment was a valuable part of the process.”

Clearly, for Mary, the “clearness” process was the work of a therapeutic community with profound meaning.

It is quite easy to lose track of one’s personal sense of understanding with so much static coming in at a rapid-fire pace daily. Perhaps the Quakers have hit upon something that is often overlooked or dismissed as being too invasive or quirky. For people such as Mary, not only does it make sense, but instills an inner peace and strength truly knowing that she never has to go through this alone. I believe this knowledge in and of itself is therapeutic. Yes, there are professionals who can assist in discerning the best actions for an individual, but is a more austere clinical setting the best way to begin the healing process? For some it might be, but who is to say that works for all? What about you, if you had a potentially life changing decision, what scenario would you prefer, and why? We would love to hear what you have to say, so send your answers our way.

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John McKnight is an expert on communities. An Ohio native who currently lives near Chicago, he has spent decades organizing communities and researching them, primarily in the Windy City itself. In the course of his career, he mobilized neighborhoods during the civil rights movement, wrote several books about community development, created a center for urban affairs at Northwestern University, and even taught the current President a thing or two about advocacy. (Yes, it’s true: way back when, a young and eager Barack Obama interned at McKnight’s training program for community organizers in southeast Chicago). If that’s not enough, he recently co-authored a book called “The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods.”

State of the Re:Union will be featuring pieces from John McKnight and Peter Block of Abundant Community every other Monday.

It sounds almost like the set-up for a bad joke: what do you get when you put dozens of computer hackers and elementary school teachers in a room and keep them there overnight? But, no, it’s no joke. It’s the game plan for an event in Baltimore next weekend that brings together two communities not ordinarily in frequent dialogue with one another: web developers and educators.

On the weekend of November 12^th and 13^th, an estimated 80 software designers and developers will gather at a Baltimore high school for a fast and furious session of building applications based on ideas crowd-sourced from local teachers and administrators. I stumbled across the event, billed as “Education Hack Day,” while researching an upcoming SOTRU episode in Baltimore. It’s the brain child of Mike Brenner, the founder of StartupBaltimore, a networking group for tech entrepreneurs, and Scott Messinger, a teacher-turned-web-developer. Scott’s background bridging education and technology informed the idea. “Software development is largely missing a teacher voice,” he told me. “A lot of the products we have to use as teachers aren’t always that useful for us, or that intuitive.” The solution to that problem, Scott and Mike thought, was just to get teachers and the developers together to generate solutions. “Why don’t we have the teachers tell about their problems and their ideas and have the developers and designers and teachers get together and create something?”

Now, for many “hacking” connotes something subversive or illicit—computer programmers sneaking into protected digital terrain, intent on sabotage. But the word has another definition, one that is more creative than destructive. In this case, Scott says, by “hacking,” they mean “improvising, creating from nothing something that solves a problem.” What kind of problems could hackers and teachers actually solve over the course of one weekend? They’re not attempting large-scale education reform, here. An end result might be something like an app that helps teachers and administrators keep in touch with students’ families and set up parent-teacher conferences. Or it could be a product based around a particular item on the teachers’ list of tools they’d live to have. A friend of Scott’s who is the principal of a Baltimore public school just purchased ipads for all the kids in his 5^th grade classrooms. He’d like some sort of application that makes the ipad function as a reading manager. “So they’ll login to the app, they’ll find out their reading level, and they’ll read some of those books,” Scott says. “And they’ll answer some questions and if they answer the questions right, that’ll bump them up to the next reading level.”

The plan for Education Hack Day is modeled on the success of another event Mike organized, Civic Hack Day, which brought developers together to work projects for state and city government (an app that calculated the likelihood of getting a parking ticket came out of that). And, ultimately, one of the goals is developing a stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem for tech start-ups in Baltimore. Who knows what kind of ideas for a new company might be seeded this weekend, perhaps in a burst of coding creativity at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning? And if that new company is also built around finding education solutions that benefit the Baltimore community as a whole, Scott and Mike think, well, that’s a win-win. That’s the kind of result that’d be very far from the punchline of a joke about mixing hackers and teachers.

Update: To learn how things went at Education Hack Day, check out Mike Brenner’s recap here.