Arizona Capitol Times » Blog Archive » AP-Univision Poll: Immigration splits Americans

AP-Univision Poll: Immigration splits Americans

By The Associated Press

Published: May 14, 2010 at 6:44 am

A group of protesters against Arizona's controversial immigration bill march on the State Capitol in Phoenix. A new telephone poll by the Pew Research Center shows that 59 percent of Americans approve of Arizona's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants while only 32 percent disapprove. The polll was conducted on May 6-9 and released Wednesday, May 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Paul Connors, File)

Illegal immigrants are a boon, not a burden to the country, a resounding majority of Hispanics say, according to an Associated Press-Univision Poll that underscores sharp contrasts between the views of Hispanics and others. Most non-Hispanics say illegal immigrants are a drain on society.

In addition, most Hispanics condemn Arizona’s strict new law targeting undocumented immigrants, while only 20 percent of non-Hispanics oppose it.

The survey also found some remarkably similar views between Hispanics and non-Hispanics on the complex, emotional issue of immigration, which has gained prominence this election year. About two-thirds of both groups consider illegal immigration a serious problem, only a quarter of each think the Arizona law will ease the state’s troubles and the largest portion of both populations think current limits on legal immigration should be left alone.

Even so, much of the poll — which questioned 901 Hispanic adults and was compared to a separate survey of the general population — reads as if soundings were taken of two distinct worlds, an impression fortified by follow-up interviews.

“People are not coming to this country to do bad things, people are coming to make money for their families,” said Javier Zurita, 43, a factory worker in Garfield, N.J., a U.S. citizen from Ecuador. “These people love this country, they’ve had sons and daughters in this country.”

William Ryan, 38, a contractor from Elkridge, Md., sees things differently.

“It seems like every working illegal immigrant has four family members who don’t work. And we’re paying for all of them,” said Ryan, who is white and non-Hispanic.

According to the poll, 74 percent of Hispanics said the country’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants mostly contribute to society. Just 35 percent of non-Hispanics agreed, with 60 percent saying illegal immigrants are largely a drain.

Some 67 percent of Hispanics said they oppose the Arizona statute. Just 20 percent of non-Hispanics oppose it, with 45 percent favoring it and 30 percent neutral. The law allows local police to demand citizenship papers from people they suspect of being here illegally and to detain them if they can’t produce the documents.

“If I go to the convenience store for a gallon of milk, I don’t carry those kinds of things,” said Martin Ortiz, 37, a U.S.-born citizen and maintenance worker from San Diego. “I just slap on a pair of shorts. And a police officer notices me? Why should I get detained?”

Countering that viewpoint was Michael Doucet, 25, a technician from Houston who is white and non-Hispanic. He wants existing laws enforced and backs the new Arizona statute.

“Illegals are illegal,” said Doucet. “It’s not a problem with discrimination, it’s not a problem with whites hating Hispanics, it is what it is. Most illegals are Hispanic.”

Underlining the divergent reactions to the Arizona law, seven in 10 Hispanics hope their states don’t enact similar statutes, more than double the non-Hispanics who feel that way.

Nearly nine in 10 Hispanics said a way should be found to help illegal immigrants already in this country become citizens, an idea that wins support from just over half of non-Hispanics. Some 62 percent of non-Hispanics — compared with just 24 percent of Hispanics — think being in the U.S. illegally should be considered a serious crime.

By 73 percent to 46 percent, more Hispanics than others said police crackdowns on illegal immigrants are likely to target Hispanics unfairly. About three quarters of Hispanics said they would consider it a big problem if Arizona police questioned a Hispanic who turned out to be here legally, more than double the non-Hispanics who said so.

“It’s not one of these things where the Left would have you believe the Gestapo will be out there stomping down doors,” said John Wagner, 60, a manager with the Department of Homeland Security from Las Cruces, N.M.

But Jackie Gallegos, 18, a high school student from El Paso, Texas, said she resented intrusions the Arizona law would allow.

“People are living here, working here, why shouldn’t they have rights?” she said.

While both groups agree that illegal immigration is a serious problem, 83 percent of non-Hispanics think the federal government should be doing more about it, while 52 percent of Hispanics voice that view.

Hispanics trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle immigration, while it’s the other way around for non-Hispanics. Still, only 45 percent of Hispanics approve of how President Barack Obama is dealing with the issue — one of the few national issues where they rate his performance relatively poorly.

In other findings:

— Almost nine in 10 Hispanics say illegal immigrants take jobs Americans don’t want, compared with six in 10 non-Hispanics.

— More than a quarter of Hispanics say they would not have had documentation proving their status had they been stopped by police the day they answered the poll, about double the rate for non-Hispanics.

— Most Hispanics say only the federal government should enforce immigration laws, while a majority of non-Hispanics want local police involved.

The AP-Univision Poll was conducted from May 7-12 by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 901 Hispanic adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

The findings were compared to a separate poll of 1,002 people from the general population, also by GfK Roper. It involved cell and landline interviews conducted from May 7-11, and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.

___

Associated Press Polling Director Trevor Tompson, AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and AP writers Suzanne Gamboa and Christine Simmons contributed to this report.

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Center For Progressive Leadership - State Offices

Stephen Barr Group Publisher, SGB Media Group "I wish to help support and promote progressive candidates, campaigns and initiatives through the use of social networking, media relations and good old fashioned door knocking!"

Steve is the owner and Group Publisher at Phoenix based SGB Media Group, which was formed in 2006 as the administrative arm of a consortium of smaller internet based companies serving narrowly defined, demographically targeted market segments via several business models. This includes affiliate marketing fundraising initiatives, niche social network development & administration, blogs, discussion forums and eZines focusing in the nonprofit, political and fine arts communities.

Prior to forming SGB Media Group he was in the music and commercial real estate industries in New York, Los Angeles, Palm Springs and San Francisco Bay areas. He also serves as the Director of Social Media at GiveClicks.com, The Icehouse Arts Museum and Alwun House Foundation and is the Executive Director of Code Bule Arizona, The Modern Progressive Network, Rehab Arts Studio and Dad Found Not Lost nonprofit organizations.

 Meet the other 2009 Arizona Fellows

 

 

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Politicians join social networks

Politicians join social networks

Saturday, March 20, 2010

By PATRICK JOHNSON

pjohnson@repub.com

AMHERST - Not long after her April 2008 election to the School Committee, Catherine A. Sanderson thought she'd create a simple, little blog to keep voters informed about what the committee was doing and to gain voter feedback.

"Those were my noble goals," she said of the origin of her blog,

myschoolcommitteeblog. blogspot.com

Advertisement

In a matter of months, her simple, little blog grew and grew to the point of becoming neither simple nor little.

Her two to three posts per month grew to as many as 20, the monthly visitors tally reached as high as 10,000, and individual posts could generate as many as 150 reader comments.

Sanderson says the blog has more than accomplished its original purpose. "I ran on a platform of more communication and more transparency," she said. "It's hard to not communicate and not be transparent when you're on a blog telling people, 'Here is how I am going to vote and why.'"

Sanderson is one of many politicians at the local, state and federal levels who are realizing the importance of using simple blogging platforms, such as Wordpress or Google's Blogger, and social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, to connect with the voters.

"There's no filter," said Westfield Mayor Daniel Knapik, who maintains Facebook and Twitter accounts. "People can get their message out to people exactly as they intend without it being altered, shortened or taken out of context."

State Rep. Donald F. Humason Jr., R-Westfield, uses Facebook to keep in touch with friends and constituents. "Hopefully, they are doing the same thing," he said.

The ease of conveying information to your own personal network of friends, fans and followers makes Facebook and Twitter a natural among politicians at all levels of government and on both sides of the aisle.

CONTINUED 1 | 2 | 3 Next

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Committee to Elect Jason Williams 2010 | Platform

Platform

As the first person in my family to attend college, I have long recognized the importance of a high quality education. Our society has been built on the premise that education is the avenue to personal and economic advancement; with the solid foundation of a high-quality public education, each person has the potential to achieve his or her dreams. This belief has certainly played out in my life, and my own experiences have made me committed to ensuring every child has the opportunities I did: to have an excellent education which prepared me to pursue my academic and career goals and to have access to greater opportunities than previous generations in my family. Because of this commitment, I taught in a high-needs school and have dedicated my career to working in education.

We know education largely determines a child’s chances in life; however, I often see students working very hard but not getting the opportunity for the excellent public education they deserve. We must change this trend. We must, as a state, say we will no longer allow students’ life prospects to suffer because of our own inability or unwillingness to provide an excellent system of public education. Our students do not have to fail; the question remains though: will we fail them? As Superintendent of Public Instruction, my responsibility, and the focus that will always be central in everything I do, will be to ensure every student in this state has access to an excellent public school, through which they will have the opportunity to pursue greater life prospects and reach their full potential.

Arizona is at a unique place in history. We are facing a significant financial crisis, the effects of which will continue to impact the state dramatically. Education, too, is at a crossroads. People have become frustrated with trying the same solutions, hoping for different results. The confluence of these two conditions provides the opportunity to be bold and innovative. We must find solutions to the challenges of an insufficient number of excellent schools and laggard student achievement. We have to recognize there is no silver bullet to improve our education system. We also have to be willing to try new ideas, evaluate programs honestly, and commit to discarding what does not work while expanding that which does.

Especially during times of uncertainty, it is imperative that leaders operate with a foundation of core principles to guide their decisions. My core beliefs, developed through my experience in public education and from which I will always operate, are:

• All children can succeed academically.

• We have a moral imperative to give all students a chance to achieve.

• Building excellent schools must be a community effort and a community priority.

Based on these core beliefs, I have developed a framework for guiding all policy and programmatic decisions. As Superintendent, I will make each of my decisions based on what is best for Arizona’s students, ensuring all of the Arizona Department of Education’s actions are fair, innovative, and accountable.

During these turbulent times, the citizens of Arizona need to understand the values guiding their leaders and trust leaders will act in accordance with those values. Fairness, innovation, and accountability are my three guideposts, and they will ensure we are moving forward, toward an excellent public school system.

Fairness

Every student in Arizona has the tremendous potential to learn and to succeed academically. It is only fair to ensure every student has access to at least the basic resources, to provide them with the tools needed to thrive. We must set our students and our schools up for success. As Superintendent, I will do everything within my power to ensure schools have the basic resources to move students forward; however, the challenge is larger than resource allocation. The current generation of students is the first generation to have lower life prospects than their parents;ⁱ this reality is not a part of the American Dream. I will actively seek out as many partnerships, innovative programs, and resources to make certain our schools are providing each student with a fair opportunity to excel.

We have learned that human capital is the most important resource schools have. The impact of a highly effective teacher or principal cannot be underestimated, especially in a high-needs school. In fact, an excellent teacher can counteract many of the challenges students in low-income communities face.ⁱⁱ We must build a talent pipeline of excellent teachers to teach in all of our schools. We should also encourage highly effective teachers to consider teaching in low-income schools. We know financial incentives can help attract effective teachers to high-needs schools and subjects, but these monetary incentives are not always the best option nor the most motivating for teachers. ⁱⁱⁱ Therefore, I will work with teachers, administrators, and the Legislature to develop a broad-based incentive system to attract high-performing teachers and school leaders to work in our highest-needs schools.

The values of democracy require that we not only focus our attention on providing opportunities for all students, but we also commit to moving all students forward. In the era of No Child Left Behind, focus turned to the percentage of “proficient” students. This law had positives: schools and districts could no longer mask low-performing students behind a good overall average. However, in too many cases, schools focused disproportionately on the “bubble students” – those who were just within reach of proficiency. Certainly, students who are within reach of proficiency need the extra attention and guidance to get them to performing on grade level, but this intense focus left both the very high-achieving and the very low-performing students behind.^iv It is just as great of a loss to let a high-achieving student settle for mediocrity as to let a low-performing student slip through the cracks. We must move all students forward, pushing them to reach their own individual potential, which is why I believe we should hold ourselves accountable for each student’s growth.

Innovation

The challenges facing our public schools will not be solved overnight, but they can be solved. Innovative programs and policies are necessary to adapt to our changing environment. As Superintendent, I will continually search for the most promising innovations other states and school districts are using, while also closely following research into new solutions.

Several areas of focus for innovative programs and policies will include:

• Assessment – Changes need to be made to the current AIMS testing program. We must realistically acknowledge that continually lowering the standards for AIMS has watered it down so much it is no longer useful.^v Does it matter if AIMS scores are rising, if passing the test does not indicate a student is college or career-ready?^vi We need to raise the bar on the level of difficulty for our state assessments, making them measures of college and career-readiness, but we also need to ensure we are capturing a full understanding of what a student knows and can do. No singular test can ever measure fully students’ skills and knowledge. We need to have multiple indicators to determine students’ readiness for graduation.^vii These other measures can include real-life applications of knowledge, interdisciplinary projects assessed by teams of teachers with a standard rubric, or portfolios of classroom assignments to demonstrate subject mastery. Because of the importance of assessment in our schools, redesigning our state assessment system will be my first priority in office. I believe teachers need to be intimately involved in this process, because they have the first-hand knowledge of how students demonstrate mastery. In my first year in office, I will convene a group of teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders to develop a new system of assessment based on multiple mastery indicators. By bringing the right people to the table, I will ensure Arizona creates a world-class assessment system.

• Student Growth - We should incorporate measures of growth to determine student progress. The first critical step is to collect baseline data from which to build a valid, reliable system of assessing growth. Ambitious models for measuring growth already exist.^viii Many states and the federal government are adapting and implementing growth models for a more comprehensive understanding of student achievement. Arizona will be a leader in this effort.

• School Management – We need to reaffirm the role of principals as true instructional leaders.^ix Principals need access to talented teachers, around whom they can build a highly effective team. Then, principals must be responsible for providing the necessary support to lead their team to excellence, including counseling out those staff members who are underperforming. Empowering principals will also demand significant accountability; if principals are given the responsibility of being the instructional leaders of their school, then they will be held accountable for their schools’ results.

• Rewarding Results – The challenges of teacher compensation are well documented. Given their critical importance to student learning, teachers need a higher level of compensation. Teachers also need to be recognized for excellence. For this reason, I support a performance-based pay system for our educators. There are high-quality examples of performance-based compensation systems across the country,^x some as close as the Alhambra School District in Maricopa County.^xi A performance-based compensation plan would be connected to the new accountability system, using multiple indicators of both student achievement and professional growth. Designing a performance pay system needs to include all of the stakeholders, especially the teachers. It is critical for us to build a successful system. In Arizona, we already have a foundation for performance-based pay in Proposition 301. Despite its lofty intentions, Prop 301 has not been a true reward for excellence.^xii I will work with teachers, districts, the Performance Based Compensation Task Force, and the Arizona Legislature to reform the implementation of Prop 301 and make it a true performance-based compensation system. We also have the Career Ladder program in some of Arizona’s school districts, which is a starting point for building the professional trajectory for classroom teachers. I will support the continued use of Career Ladder and explore options for expanding it to the rest of the state.

• Partnerships – I have had the privilege of working with many nonprofit organizations here in Arizona, and I have seen the tremendous impact they have on schools. We must harness the potential of these partnerships and increase their impact, particularly for under-resourced schools. Many nonprofits are much more efficient and effective than the government; by building strong working partnerships, nonprofits can meet the needs of students when schools do not have the capacity to do so. In order to promote this collaboration, I will assemble a nonprofit council, made up of representatives of nonprofit organizations who are having a significant impact on the schools. This council will work hand-in-hand with the Arizona Department of Education to identify and understand student needs and develop innovative ways for addressing those needs.

• Local Support – Arizona has a vibrant history of local control of schools, and this commitment to local control enables schools and districts to adapt to the unique needs of the community. As long as a program promotes greater student achievement, and is fair, innovative, and accountable, the Arizona Department of Education will honor the goals of school districts and provide them with technical assistance, when possible, to implement their community-based reforms. The Arizona Department of Education should serve as a resource to help school districts attain federal grants; it should also facilitate conversations among superintendents to find areas of collaboration. The role of the Arizona Department of Education will be to encourage innovation, not to stifle it.

Accountability

Too often in our schools today, the word “accountability” is just a catchphrase. Because educational outcomes are so aligned with our state’s economic strength, we must have real accountability in our schools.

• Honesty - Real accountability first demands honesty. We must honestly assess where our students stand, set goals for growth, and then expect to be held accountable for reaching those goals. The days of having 70% of students pass the AIMS while only a quarter can pass the NAEP,^xiii the national assessment most commonly used as a benchmark for state performance, must end. Arizona is currently participating in the Common Core consortium, which has been tasked with developing internationally-benchmarked, college and career-ready standards and assessments. Under my leadership, we will assess the quality of standards and assessments this initiative produces and then, if they meet our requirements of rigor, implement these aggressive standards. If students are not performing adequately, we need to assess what teacher, school, district, and state actions are leading to that result.

• Gateway Years - We must also recognize that we are not holding ourselves accountable for student achievement if students are promoted without attaining proficiency and grade-level performance. I will implement three “gateway years” – 3rd grade, 8th grade, and 12th grade – at which point students who are not performing proficiently will not be promoted. But we cannot implement these gateway years without also providing sufficient interventions in order to help each student reach proficiency by the end of these grades.^xiv By using assessment data and teacher evaluations, each school will identify which students are at risk of not meeting the level of proficiency needed to advance, ideally at least two years prior to the gateway year. Each school will then have to implement interventions, such as summer school, referring the student to a nonprofit-based tutoring program, or developing student action plans to help prepare the student to demonstrate grade-level proficiency.

• Transparency - Every teacher should be held responsible for moving all of his or her students forward every year. Some classrooms have students performing well below grade level, while others have students performing proficiently. In either case, a student’s academic stagnation is unacceptable. Teachers have the responsibility for ensuring students make at least a year’s worth of progress during the school year. As a state, we need to implement a growth model in which teachers are held accountable and rewarded for the progress students make in their classroom during the school year. If a student comes into a 4th grade classroom reading on a 5th grade level and finishes the year still reading on a 5th grade level, is that progress? I do not believe it is. Designing and implementing this growth model will go hand-in-hand with the changes in teacher compensation and assessments. Teachers, principals, districts, and the Arizona Department of Education will work together to develop a transparent and fair process to determine what represents an ambitious yet achievable goal for students’ academic growth. Arizona already has some programs, such as the ECAP program, which can be adapted to align with this student growth model.

• Collaboration - Teachers cannot do the work of educating students alone. Students and parents need to be fully invested in education. Accountability means we, as a state, need to have high expectations for everyone involved in education, especially students. We need to prepare students to be empowered to drive their own learning, and we must expect them to do so. Parents must be full partners with schools in their students’ education, and schools need to make a concerted effort to be an inclusive, collaborative environment for parents.^xv Community members have a part to play as well: our schools should be true community centers, harnessing the talents of everyone in the community in the effort to provide an excellent education for all students. To make these changes in our public schools, Arizona must take an “all hands on deck” approach. We must proactively identify and tap into the resources already existing in our community, including human resources. Our schools need the talents and dedication of each person, and each person in our communities needs to feel a sense of ownership in our public schools. The changes I will make are sustainable, driven by the commitment of talented people, finding innovative ways to move toward excellence. We cannot continue to make excuses for lowering our expectations for anyone, whether they are principals, teachers, students, parents, or community members. High expectations for everyone will be a center-point of the Arizona Department of Education under my direction.

The Direction We Must Go

The elections of 2010 will have a significant impact on Arizona’s trajectory. As a state, we need to dramatically increase human capital and aggressively recruit talent to the public schools. We also need to implement innovative solutions to persistent problems and hold people and programs accountable for delivering on their promises of student achievement. We need to be honest about the current state of our schools, and we need to truthfully evaluate programs to ensure money is being spent in an efficient and effective way. Being Superintendent of Public Instruction will require making many hard decisions. I will always make these decisions based on my core beliefs and values. Arizonans can be assured all programs and policies will be fair, innovative, and accountable. Together, we can make Arizona’s public schools excellent and ensure all of our students have the opportunity to reach their potential. I ask for your support and your vote in order to reach these goals. Thank you for your commitment to the students and the future of Arizona.

ⁱ Life prospects as a function of educational attainment; see: Luzer, Daniel, “Education Rates in US Decline”, Washington Monthly, December 8, 2009, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/education_rate_in_us_declines.php.

ⁱⁱ See Rivkin, S., E. Hanushek, and J. Kain “Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement,” Econometrica 73(2), 2005, 417-458, or Rockoff, J. E., “The Impact of Individual Teachers on Students’ Achievement: Evidence from Panel Data,” American Economic Review 94(2), 2004, 247-252.

ⁱⁱⁱ Goldhaber, D., “Addressing the Teacher Qualification Gap: Exploring the Use and Efficacy of Incentives to Reward Teachers with Tough Assignments,” Center for American Progress, November 2008, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/11/teacher_qualification_gap.html.

^iv Choi, K., P. Goldschmidt, and K. Yamashiro, “Exploring Models of School Performance: From Theory to Practice”, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST), University of California, Los Angeles, March 2006, http://www.cse.ucla.edu/products/reports/r673.pdf.

^v For example, see: Kossan, P., “Educators Seek Answers Beyond AIMS”, Arizona Republic, March 15, 2009, http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/03/15/20090315aims0315.html

^vi See: Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, 2005, Public High School Graduation and College-Readiness Rates: 1991–2002 or Arizona State Report Card, Quality Counts 2010, Education Week, January 14, 2010 in which Arizona rates a D- for College Readiness: http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2010/17src.h29.html.

^vii Chappuis, S., J. Chappuis, and R. Stiggins, “The Quest for Quality” Educational Leadership 67(3), November 2009, 14-19. See also: Brookhart, S. “The Many Meanings of ‘Mulitple Measures’”. Educational Leadership 67(3), November 2009, 6-12.

^viii See: http://my.dpsk12.org/objectives/default.aspx.

^ix Fink, E., & Resnick, L. B. “Developing principals as instructional leaders,” Phi Delta Kappan, 82, 2001, 598-606.

^x For example: Sarrio, J., “Knox County Schools are Success Story for Teacher Pay Plan,” January 16, 2010, http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100116/NEWS04/1160336/1970, and http://denverprocomp.dpsk12.org/about/.

^xi Arizona Performance Based Compensation Taskforce data.

^xii See: Aportela, A., “Performance Pay in Arizona as a Result of Proposition 301″ Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Arizona Chamber Policy Brief, “Recruiting the Best and the Brightest,” June 16, 2008, http://www.azchamber.com/news/view_article.cfm?ID=62.

^xiii See 2008-2009 Arizona State Report Card: http://www.ade.state.az.us/srcs/statereportcards/.

^xiv McCombs, J., S. Kirby, and L. Mariano, eds, Ending Social Promotion without Leaving Children Behind: The Case of New York City, RAND Corporation, 2009.

^xv Viadero, D., “Scholars Identify Five Keys To Urban School Success” January 26, 2010, http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/01/27/19ccsr.h29.html?qs=chicago.

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I endorse Jason Williams campaign!

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SGB Media Group Transitioning Blogs from Google Blogger to Posterous

Effective February 5, 2010 Phoenix based SGB Media Group, LLC has begun transitioning the majority of it's published blogs from the Google Blogger platform to the Posterous tumbleblog platform in an effort to continue to use the latest cutting edge technologies in it's creative digital publishing and social media marketing business. This transition will include the seamless integration of SGB Media Group's other web properties on other networks/platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The first transition is now complete with The Affiliate Marketing Publisher's Report which SGB Media Group, LLC began publishing in 2006 with others tto follow during the month of February, 2010.

 

 

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Arizona Prison Watch

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Transpartisan Shift - Transpartisan Alliance

The mission of the Transpartisan Alliance is:

• To motivate and inspire Americans to work together across divides
  
• To unite America by practicing and teaching the principles of transpartisanship and
  
• To provide a Transpartisan Forum (be a Neutral Convener) where unlikely connections, cooperation and partnerships happen.

The Primary Goal of the Transpartisan Alliance is:

• To catalyze a shift away from the dysfunctional, divide-and-conquer political game and toward a more respectful, accountable, cooperative and productive political game using proven methods of dialogue, deliberation and conflict resolution. Our primary focus is fostering authentic citizen empowerment where ALL points of view are valued and where citizens from all sides take responsibility for cooperating to create win-win policy options that 80% of people can say "Yes!" to.

The Situation

In the face of uncertainty, cooperation is our call to action.

The American democratic republic is faced with a choice. We as individuals, and collectively as a country, are yearning to return to the values our nation was built on: a culture of courage, faith, love, trust, respect, inclusiveness, security, freedom, communication and cooperation.

The competition for 51 percent to win power and control, has divided the political field in two. Our winner-take-all, two-party political system and the significant influence of narrow interests, is largely responsible for the state of our union today. That is why it is important to shift our political culture away from compromise solutions that favor insiders, and towards common ground solutions that tap the wisdom and serve the well-being of the whole.

A growing number of citizens are less inclined to identify with, or be defined by, red and blue boxes. The current breakdowns that are featured every day in headline news reveal the complexity of our economic and social systems. People are talking about these challenges and more of us are recognizing the need to find common ground and better ways to politically collaborate. We are developing a greater appreciation for our differences, not as something that divides us but rather as different windows on the whole we are all trying to understand. The nation is at a tipping point, it is yearning for a new way of connecting to get things done.

Now is the time to unite America one conversation at a time.

The Transpartisan Alliance will connect and empower citizens to work in partnership, to transform our politics and to awaken the genuine spirit of government of the people, by the people, for the people. We will do this by:

• facilitating a shift in the political culture – beginning at the smallest scale – from competition to cooperation in which every point of view is valued;
• amplifying the voice of the people for the general interest by providing them with the tools and means to bridge divides and collaborate;
• engaging the passion, brilliance and creativity of average citizens and leaders to deliver generative, innovative solutions as alternative ways to solve our most pressing challenges;
• reconnecting Americans to the sense of ownership inherent in responsible citizenship.

Citizenship in ancient Rome was a privileged social status afforded to a few. The American evolution of the term offers this status to all human beings willing to be accountable for, and committed to, the well being of the whole. A citizen is one who takes ownership in, and responsibility for, the future of their community and nation. The Transpartisan Alliance is a facilitator of healthy, empowered citizenship.

A Plan of Action: The Role for Empowered Citizenship

In the spring of 2005, Ashland Oregon’s city charter was up for review. A charter is a constitution and a new version was being proposed which would have made Ashland’s government less transparent and accountable. In response, a handful of citizens decided it was important to have a high quality, communitywide dialogue about the question, How do we choose to govern ourselves in Ashland? So, they went out and knocked on a couple hundred upper, middle and lower class doors, inviting a microcosm of the community to an “Ashland Constitution Dialogue.” A serious six month discourse of weekly facilitated library and café conversations sprang from that initial grassroots effort. What the citizens of Ashland discovered was that all sides of the community shared a core set of values and principles for governance including, openness and transparency, protecting the commons, high citizen involvement, checks & balances and accountability.

On July 4, 2005, the participants self-published a printed newspaper with their findings entitled “By the People.” It was distributed from the people who took part in the dialogue, to the people of the community and rapidly seeped into the public conscience as the accepted way to govern the city. While it took two years for the official charter changes to make it onto the ballot, when they did, 77% of the citizens voted them down in favor of the values and principles that emerged from the dialogue.

What happened in this city could have happened anywhere in America. The important thing to take away from this story is that this dialogue was transpartisan. It included homeless people as well as people who live in the wealthiest part of town. It was not a lobbying effort from the people to the officials or special interests; it was an inclusive, expanding community conversation about what the people were for, not what they were against. It was a trust building public conversation based in listening, respect and honoring of difference that catalyzed subsequent dialogue efforts that now serve as a resource for creative options for local decision makers.

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