Building Relationally Democratic Cultural Infrastructure From the Ground Up
The human basis of democracy is in our commitment to share power with each other in everyday practices.
[All work generated by The Center for U.S. Rural Cultures Studies has been transferred to The Relational Democracy project.]
MISSION :: RDP generates original in-field research that grows cultural work and creative projects aimed at proliferating everyday democratic practices in U.S. cultures.
VISION :: A country whose balanced human power relations create healthy enabling conditions for democratic processes and systems.
VALUES
- Transparency is essential. RDP works with no blinds on the windows.
- Openness is critical. RDP’s channels of communication are always accessible.
- …
Open Cultures Grow Democratic Norms
Open cultures create the conditions that feed and grow democratic norms, which are embodied in human practices: what individual humans say to one another and what we do in relation with each other. Democratic practices in a culture create trust, make space for vulnerability, nurture creativity, support difference, and foster expression — all necessary conditions to grow power-sharing (democratic) practices. Democratic practices are open and inclusive: they “turn-toward” and seek out and embrace diversity in all its forms.
Democracies thrive when those committed to power-sharing via systems and processes contribute novel and creative cultural ideas and practices. Democratic ecosystems are…
Or, A Little of What Happened When I Invested Everything in 5 Years of Time
Near the end of a two-year sabbatical in solitude, and two weeks before the earth shifted on its axis 11.8.2016, I drove away from my Richmond, California home the day it closed escrow and two days later, took possession of my new property in Cave Junction, which is in Southern Oregon.
Cave Junction is about 20 minutes north of the California border. It is one of many red rural counties in Oregon, and the poverty is like nothing most urban dwellers in the United States have ever personally experienced, except to drive through. …
