civic intelligence

Jan

2026

From Minneapolis: The Power of Collective Courage

A dear friend from Minneapolis sent me this heartfelt message about the resilience of her fellow citizens in the face of the ICE crackdowns (shared with permission):

“I’m so proud of my city right now. Everyone is in it for the long haul. Every shitty thing they do, more of us come out to witness, record, object. I’m expecting it to get worse before it gets better (if that’s even a thing anymore ‘better’), but we won’t go down quietly & we will win the narrative war.”

As an eyewitness account of the power of community she recommended:

https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/from-minneapolis-ive-never-seen-unity

Its author really captures the spirit of what’s unfolding:

“The resistance to ICE in Minneapolis is strong, generalized, and sustained. It’s also entirely decentralized and leaderless (or “leaderful” if you’d like).

Jan

2018

Building “networks of communities” for a civic intelligence movement with impact

We live in an age of confusion, stagnation, and crisis. What we need is not more of the same top down, neo-liberal corporate and government interventions. These are just a recipes for ever more socio-economic and cultural alienation, disillusion and disempowerment. Instead, we should tap into the growing bottom-up and middle-out capacity around the world for civic intelligence: the collective, citizen-driven, (where possible institutionally supported) capability to think and work together. As Doug Schuler says:

Civic intelligence describes what happens when people work together to address problems efficiently and equitably. It’s a wide-ranging concept that shows how positive change happens. It can be applied anywhere – from the local to the global – and could take many forms.

Civic intelligence, properly taking root in the real world out there, is a necessary condition for any progressive movement-with-impact to build.… Read more...

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