Lori Sturdevant: Citizens, grab your tools

By Lori Sturdevant

Last update: October 30, 2009 - 1:34 PM

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Lori Sturdevant The crowd alone was inspiring at Thursday night's annual meeting of the venerable Citizens League, Minnesota's 57-year-old nonpartisan collective of people seeking ways to advance the common good. The 93-year-old, 1,000-seat Pantages Theater (the former Mann Theater) was a good three-quarters full. League executive director Sean Kershaw said that made this year's gathering the largest for the organization since architectural lion Frank Lloyd Wright was the annual meeting's featured speaker at the Leamington Hotel in 1957.

More inspiration for citizens to do their part for a better society came from Nate Garvis, vice president for government affairs for Target Corp. A "civic entrepreneur," Garvis wants Minnesotans to get past thinking of government as a partisan battleground, and recognize it as one among many tools at citizens' disposal for minimizing society's persistent maladies.

Government is imperfect, as all tools are, he said. But combine government action with media messages, cultural norms, educational themes, voluntary group efforts and more, he said, and major change happens. Consider this country's race relations: "We went from 'I have a dream' to 'I have a black president'' in 45 years, Garvis noted.

The power of Internet-based social networks is only beginning to be brought to bear on public problem-solving, he said. He urged citizens to school themselves as "connoisseurs and curators" of some portion of the community's shared life, and then seek to influence others with that knowledge, using social networks and more. The notion that government alone is the custodian of American common good can and should give way to a sense of stewardship that is much more widely shared, he said.

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