The Civic Imagination Project

 "In this opening exchange, we want to provide a bit of background regarding the notion of participatory politics..." 

"We talk about “civic” as if the term is widely understood and utilized. But what if it isn’t?"

"The thing is that politics in Israel is also - and increasingly so - characterized by properties that are hardly beneficial for democracy."

"And indeed the social ties of fandom have translated into all sorts of publics, civic action, and political cultures."

"This persistent emphasis on newness risks escalating the generational divisions of queer feminist historiographies." 

"To me, the biggest recent development is the increased role of media technologies in politics." 

My interest in participatory politics is connected to my work in immigrants’ rights movements in the United States... the activism of undocumented youth..."

"Decades later I find that the issue, for me and many others, is authoritarianism." 

"Participation in a digital culture is not the same as public life."

"It is undeniable that people of color are under tremendous threat right now..."

"Do you think that art education and artistic practice could be areas of challenging and reinventing our relationship with technology?"

"The vast majority of us are living among the most demographically complex set of people who have ever lived together in a democracy."

"I like to say that technologies network us, but it is our stories that connect us."

"I vividly remember the reactions that rolled in when it was revealed that over 50% of white women voted for Trump in 2016, which ranged from performative shock to knowing dismay."

"To my mind, the energy fueling the Arab Spring must have transformed, but never dissipated."

"Political minds aren’t born from just going to march one day from out of nowhere. I think popular culture, formative life experiences, and media habits contribute more to our media activism than anything else."

"Historically, what has made media participatory was how they were used and by whom, not the technologies themselves."

"The problem that many of the necessary resources for participatory politics, particularly those based on capital like technological infrastructure, skill, and access, come from existing centers of privilege and power is very real."

"One of the key stories behind Brexit may very well be the deplorable failure of (or frustration with) participatory politics."

"Actually, the ethical is problematically absent in contemporary Western political discourse as a whole. That is one more reason why we should explain that the redistribution of power is deeply ethical."