Let’s help civic groups join forces to increase their clout at City Hall

July 22, 2007
Tom Ferrick Jr.
For The Inquirer

At the risk of sounding like Johnny One Note, let me spout off again about neighborhood and civic groups in Philadelphia.

These groups have emerged in recent years as a positive force for change in the city.

The question is: What’s the next step?

Personally, I think it is time for neighborhood and civic groups to play a major role in shaping citywide politics and policy in the coming years.

At least that is what I have been preaching for the last several years to anyone who would listen.

First, some background:

Beginning in earnest in the 1980s, new neighborhood and civic groups popped up all around the city, mostly to fill the void left by the retreat of the Democratic political apparatus (all those aging committee people), along with the retreat of city government as it staggered under the financial meltdown of the Mayor Wilson Goode years.

Many of the these groups have matured into robust and savvy grassroots organizations.

In many locales, they have replaced the atrophied political organization as citizens’ liaison with City Hall.

They deal with issues of growth and decay, of neighborhood promise and peril — at street level, every day.

The volunteers who do town watch, sit on the boards of recreation centers, deal with zoning cases, organize clean up days, fight graffiti — I could go on — have become experts in government through their years of experience. They know its limits; they know its potential.

This network of civic and neighborhoods groups could serve as the permanent constituency to push for and implement a lot of what needs to be accomplished in Philly.

Why haven’t they stepped forward as a force?

Why haven’t they come together to try to create a common agenda — and then work to see it implemented?

I can think of a couple of reasons.

First of all, these are volunteers, for the most part. They have day jobs and do this civic work on nights and weekends. Who needs another meeting?

Second, they tend to keep their heads down and concentrate on the most local of problems. They worry about their block or their neighborhood first.

Finally, they are naturally wary of those who try to organize them, suspecting — often rightly — that the organizers have a private political agenda (read: furthering their own political careers).

That’s my spiel, and I guess I made it one too many times, because the other week Editorial Page Editor Chris Satullo said to me: "I understand what you are saying. Why not do something about it?"

I asked: "Like what?"

He said: "Why don’t we convene a meeting of these groups and see if we can help them agree on some course of common action, a statement about the new relationship they’d like to have with an invigorated City Hall. At least that would be a first step."

As Satullo outlined it, it could be done under the banner of Great Expectations, the year-long project to get citizen input and create an agenda that (we fervently hope) the next mayor will consider and act upon.

Great Expectations runs under the auspices of the Editorial Board of this newspaper and the Project on Civic Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, with funding from the Lenfest Foundation and the Knight Foundation.

No one connected with this project has plans to run for public office. (To quote Mo Udall: "If nominated, I shall run to Mexico; if elected, I shall fight extradition.")

No one connected with this endeavor has a hidden political agenda. All our agendas are out in public, in print, for all to see.

All we are seeking to do is act as honest brokers, to move this idea along.

Along those lines, we plan to invite civic and neighborhood group leaders who’ve taken part in Great Expectations to a little summit — sometime in the fall, we’re thinking — to discuss this moment of opportunity.

If you count yourself among those civic activists and you have an idea about what the common priorities should be, please begin sharing them now. And do not be shy about advancing the name of your group and its officers in order to get an invitation to participate.

The place to e-mail your ideas and suggestions is: great-expectations@sas.upenn.edu.

The purpose of the meeting would be concrete: to get a sense of what civic and neighborhood groups’ top priorities are for changing the way city government operates and relates to them — and how the groups work with one another.

Look for more information on this event in these pages as the project advances. We’ll come up with a date and site for the meeting, buy the cookies, and bring trained moderators who can help keep the dialogue flowing.

You can also contact me directly at the e-mail address and number listed below.

Contact Tom Ferrick Jr. at 215-854-2714 or tferrick@phillynews.com.