Reflections on Civic Discourse and Global Challenges
What the push for local change can teach us about international policy challenges
Few issues are uniquely local. Though any given issue may be common or universal, the manifestation of an issue locally brings unique challenges and experiences. It is in addressing these issues where civic participation is most fundamental. Issues we care about frame the context and discourse for why and how we engage with government. At Generation Citizen we tell our students and teachers to learn and teach about government and civic participation by focusing on the state and local levels politically. It is at the local level where students can most directly connect with issues and where they can most concretely affect long-term, systemic change through a focus on policy and legislation. The content of our curriculum omits an international perspective and focus altogether.
My work over the last four years, at Generation Citizen and the Oregon Student Association,has focused exclusively on state and local politics and advocacy. This was a radical departure from my time in college where I was obsessed with global challenges around food security, climate change, and economic development. At the time I’d argue that globally, nothing else seemed consequential. My research and studies focused on how nations, organizations, and society writ-large address these challenges and how actors and global civil society are working to create change.
After four years, I am preparing for the next phase of my civic journey. I’m going to graduate school for a professional degree that will allow me to return to my focus on international and policy-focused work around sustainability, food security, and economic development. But my view of this work has been radically altered. Through college I didn’t always think much for the local focus of an issue. I still consider these global issues to be some of the most important challenges of our time. However, I now believe that without maintaining a local focus, we lose a critical form of civic discourse that strengthens the solutions presented against global problems and strengthens policy-making globally and locally.
We live in an interconnected world. Many local issues are driven by global forces. Climate change and the opioid epidemic are two immediate examples. What I’ve come to see is that global forces are also influenced by local developments. Local contexts frame and shape civic discourse globally. It is worth noting the role that civic discourse plays in creating an important relationship between the local and global focus on policy issues.
One example that illustrates this cycle between local contexts and global discourse is the issue of access to nutritious and affordable food. This is an issue I have seen multiple GC classes focus on in Brooklyn and the Bronx for their student advocacy projects. One class worked to expand initiatives for corner delis to provide more nutritious and local food choices. Is this focus on food security in a hyper-local context comparable to food security challenges in say Southeast Asia or rural America? Food security is defined through a combination of health, access, and affordability. While their respective experiences may not be the same, these three factors are as relevant to students in New York City as they are to communities across the country, and across the world.
Over recent years I’ve learned how important civic participation is to addressing the global challenges that have been a long-time passion of mine. Action Civics as a pedagogy is state and locally focused and it has helped me to understand how critical it is to address issues at the local level. However, I also see that this pedagogy — and the practice it encourages — carries a deep connection to global civil society. As I begin the next phase of career and move on towards work on issues at an international level, I recognize I will carry my experiences of the past few years with me. Any positive, systemic change globally will be contingent on collective action and civil society. We need a population that has the skills, knowledge, and experience in discourse to act locally and think globally. Civics education that prepares our youth to think about issues in both a global and local context is perhaps a fundamental part of the solution to global challenges.
Generation Citizen is a nonpartisan, 501(c)3 tax exempt organization which does not endorse candidates; our goal is to engage our staff, participants, and stakeholders in political and civic action on issues that matter to them personally and in their communities. The opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the writer alone and do not reflect the opinions of Generation Citizen.
