Civics 107

Civics 107: Insights About America’s Cities was written by a career City Manager that worked in and managed some of the largest Council-Manager Form of Government cities on both coasts of America. He also dealt with public officials, department managers, employees, and citizens that worked and lived in the cities that he managed during his city management career. The major sections of this book include America’s Cities, Politics and Politicians, The Urban Scene, The Government, From the Trenches, Personal Reflections, and the last section, called Closing Thoughts. Various appendices are also included in this volume to help educate the reader. These include a glossary of terms, our nation’s voting rights history, and resource directories for our states, as well as our country’s national resource directories.

What will it take to restore American democracy and rescue it from this moment of crisis? Civic Power argues that the current threat to US democracy is rooted not just in the outcome of the 2016 election, but in deeper, systemic forms of inequality that concentrate economic and political power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. Drawing on historical and social science research and case studies of contemporary democratic innovations across the country, Civic Power calls for a broader approach to democracy reform focused on meaningfully redistributing power to citizens. It advocates for both reviving grassroots civil society and novel approaches to governance, policymaking, civic technology, and institutional design - aimed at dismantling structural disparities to build a more inclusive, empowered, bottom-up democracy, where communities and people have greater voice, power, and agency.