Older and Weiser

Here is an op-ed piece written by Michael Weiser. In it he discusses the disturbing findings from the Illinois Civic Health Index — a study that tracks civic participation in his native state — which was released last week.

Older and Weiser readers may remember one of our recent posts—“Study Shows Civic Participation Declining in Recession” — about a study of Florida’s civic culture which showed similarly dismal results.

In the following post, Michael suggests that it’s not just the adverse economic circumstances contributing to civic apathy but also widespread cynicism and generational mistrust of government caused by a series of political scandals there.

Your comments are encouraged.

Blog Editor

Have you heard the one about the President, the Pope and the Mayor of Chicago alone on a boat in Lake Michigan?  Well, the boat begins to sink and the three argue over which of them will get the only life jacket aboard.  After much debate, the President suggests that the democratic thing to do is to vote on who gets it.  And, so they do.  The Mayor of Chicago wins 17-2.

Vote-buying, ballot-box-stuffing and a pay-to-play culture of political corruption long have been the city and state’s gift to comedians everywhere.  But, as this week’s release of the first-ever Illinois Civic Health Index demonstrates, the power of corruption to corrode our trust in government and erode our civic life is no joke.

The Illinois index is a collaboration of the McCormick Foundation, the McCormick Freedom Project and the National Conference on Citizenship, which I chair.  NCoC is the only entity chartered by Congress with the mission to encourage Americans to become more active and engaged citizens.  It found that Illinois ranked 40th among the states in the quality of its civic life and there’s much to suggest that the cynicism bred by a long string of political scandals is to blame.

For example, just a couple of years ago residents of this state were more likely to volunteer their time than other Americans.  Now, they are less likely to volunteer.  While the nation as a whole has been volunteering at a higher rate in the past three years, Illinoisans have cut back sharply on volunteering (29.9 percent to 24.9 percent) since 2006.  It’s easy to blame a difficult economy but recession has reduced the time and energy that all Americans spend on their communities.  Something else is at play.

According to the index, just 15 percent of Illinois residents said they believed state government “did the right thing” most of the time, compared to 27% of all Americans.  Moreover, our confidence in the state’s civic traditions was among the lowest of all states.  That’s especially damning of a state that supposedly prides itself in being the “Land of Lincoln.”

The report concludes that this lack of trust in state government has an impact on our view of other institutions, which makes us less likely to get involved in local policy making or volunteering through formal organizations.

All of this is reflected on the faces of Illinois’ young people, who are less likely to volunteer, work with neighbors to solve problems or attend public meetings on community issues than their peers elsewhere.  Nationwide, “millennials” – those born between 1979 and 1995 – lead preceding generations in rates of volunteerism.  In Illinois, millennials were the least likely of any generation to volunteer, with almost half saying that they had “hardly any” confidence that Illinois state government, for example, would spend federal stimulus money wisely.

The cynicism of young people about the institutions they will inherit makes them less likely to participate in a system they see as broken.  Their trust, and that of their fellow residents of all ages, must be rebuilt.

Perhaps because we are disillusioned about our political culture and the effect it has on our children, according to the index we strongly support legislation that teaches civic engagement, such as providing tuition in exchange for national or community service, requiring students to pass a civics test and incorporating “service learning” into school curricula.

Most importantly, no politician – however malevolent – has taken the DNA of our community from us: the one-to-one trust we have toward each other’s good intentions and fundamental honesty.  As the index notes, informal civic engagement, such as neighbors working together on a problem in their community, is actually on the rise.

As a native of Chicago and a Chicago-area resident for nearly 50 years, I believe we should seek no lesser standard from the leaders elected to solve problems in Springfield, Chicago or on any town council.  Accepting corruption as a natural condition – or worse, yet, laughing at it – is bad for our self-esteem, our civic health, the state and our children.

Filed under: Civics by Michael Weiser