Citizen Solution: How You Can Make A Difference

Foreword

Foreword DON SHELBY The Citizen Solution: How You Can Make a Difference is a deceptively simple title for a book. Most of us cut our civics baby teeth on the notion that we, the people, navigate our ship of state. What, then, could this book teach us? Harry Boyte doesn’t teach us, so much as remind us, that citizens produce our society and government and do not simply consume its culture and services. The Citizen Solution conveys its message by examples, and as a storyteller I learned long ago that people learn lessons best when lessons are wrapped in stories or parables. Having spent a good portion of my professional career in journalism bemoaning the loss of public participation in our own lives, I am thrilled to see Boyte provide case after case of citizen problem solving right here under our noses. Most of us believe we know what citizenship means, but Boyte shows us, in this wonderfully readable book, what citizenship looks like in action. We need the examples, because we don’t fully comprehend the real meaning of this common, and perhaps, overused term: citizenship . My own notion, now informed fully by this book, comes from my third-grade teacher, Marjorie Quick. While it may come as a surprise to younger readers, school report cards once made room for grades in xi citizenship. When I handed over my report card to my father, I knew what he would do. He would look past the grades in English, Math, and History and flip the card over to see how I scored in Citizenship. The only acceptable grade was an A. Once, in the third grade, I got a B in Citizenship. My father was ashamed. I was confused, because the truth was that I had no idea what citizenship was nor how I was being judged. The next day I asked Mrs. Quick, “What is citizenship, anyway?” She smiled beatifically, as though she’d been waiting a very long time for the question. “Honey,” she said (in those days, teachers could use endearments for their young charges), “Citizenship means how well you work with others. First you try to become the best person you can be. Then you help others to do the same. Then, together, you work to make this the best classroom in the school. If everyone is a good citizen, working together, think what a nice school we will have. Then, when you are older, you will work with others to make a good neighborhood, community, and town. Then, what I hope is that you will grow into an adult who will work with others to make a better state, and a better country, and even a better world.” I’ve never heard a better description of citizenship, nor have I ever needed one. Mrs. Quick’s kind of clarity has, over these past fifty years, been lost to many of us. Citizenship has been conflated with nationality, politics, and reductionist patriotism. In The Citizen Solution: How You Can Make a Difference, Harry Boyte makes plain what working well with others looks like and what a nice place we can make if we follow, and replicate, the citizenship of the men and women and groups highlighted here. And, like Mrs. Quick, he gives us a little homework to drive home the lessons. When I finished this book I was reminded of the words of another woman, a citizen warrior for women’s rights, Hannah Whitall Smith, who said, “There are people who make things happen, and there are those who watch things happen. And there are those who wonder what xii • F O R E W O R D happened.” Harry Boyte obviously likes people who make things happen. Marjorie Quick is long gone, but her simple lessons live on in my heart, and in some small way, I hope, in my neighborhood. Harry Boyte would have loved Mrs. Quick. Mrs. Quick would have loved this book. F O R E W O R D • xiii xiv The Citizen Solution 1 2 ...