Roma for Democracy

Community Organizing Democracy Organizers Forum Romania

            Bucharest        The Roma people constitute about 12% of the Romanian population with between 1.8 and 2.2 million people disbursed across the country, even though official census figures number only 600,000.  Their minority status has led to intense discrimination in the region for hundreds of years.  We were meeting with Alin Banu, the Executive Director …

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The Veneer of Democracy in Local Boards

Democracy Wade's World

            Washington        In the 1960s, citizen participation seemed to be coming to low-and-moderate income communities with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.  Maximum feasible participation was a baseline requirement for local community action programs.  In CAPs, one-third of the seats had to come from the lower income constituency, ostensibly being served by the programs. …

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Calling Up the Military to Stop Protests

California Democracy Immigrant Protests Trump

            New Orleans       There’s nothing like federal immigration officials doing mass arrest roundups in workplaces, especially in urban America, to get everyone out in the streets.  What Trump and his mad dog aide, Stephen Miller, don’t understand is how embedded immigrants, undocumented and not, are in American communities, workplaces, and families.  These are not …

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