Community visioning: What if...?

[Skidmore]

I've been watching the local news and just saw a story about the little community of Palo which sustained much damage during the summer floods. That community got together and were engaging in an exercise referred to as "community visioning" to rebuild. Everyone from the children to the elderly were encouraged to write on easels what the needs of the community were and discuss how they thought those needs could be met. What if we work together with our new President and legislators (all levels) to organize and conduct a day?/week? where everyone engaged in community visioning as a way to assist our leaders with prioritizing the work ahead.

What would we like our nation to look like physically and what partnerships and relationships can we foster to achieve the goals of our individual towns, our states, and the nation? I know that some of this happens routinely in the course of conducting public business, but I'm talking about a mechanism by which all citizens are actively called to participate in shaping their nation, not just relying on big money interest present concerns and ideas to the government.

Any thoughts?

[Skidmore]

1. kick.

Astounding. I guess we'd rather quit organizing.

[crispini]

2. The question is too big.

But I think the internet is a big help. I think transparancy is important. Especially as you go down to a local level. More and more at the fed. and state level has to be posted online. But not at the city level. Require cities to post their entire budget and all kinds of juicy details on the web and some geek citizen investigator will comb through it and find the details and post them on the internet and make a stink.