Progressive politicians and policy advocates have advocated since the days of Roosevelt for pushing democracy closer to the people. Creating more active and engaged citizens who take a bigger interest and role in government...of the people, by the people, for the people, etc.. Yet, as we stand here today, we know that this has not come to pass. Even in a place as diverse and well represented by citizen advocates as Oak Park, we still have our loudest and most consistent voices in the room - of which I am one - and not many others. But getting engagement, input, and participation from the vast majority of the village, especially minorities, has been much harder.
Yes, we try. We have citizens commissions and those are fantastic but they are just another form of representative democracy, just in the appointed form rather than elected. The bread and butter of our community engagement process, and most really, is the public meeting. Every Village Board meeting, every school board meeting, every local government meeting is a public meeting that allows citizen comment and enables participation and, in theory, allows our voices to be heard and allows us to engage in the process. The problem is that it’s often the same ol’ people engaging. The same ol' voices being heard. This is not unique to Oak Park.
From a curbed.com article on urban planning: “In many ways, the public meetings we hold today to discuss local zoning policy, approve a proposed development, or otherwise shape the evolution of our neighborhoods haven’t shifted very far from that original format. Sadly, that includes the part about older, white males, especially homeowners, tending to have outsized power in these settings.”
That same article said the following: “The paper “Racial Disparities in Housing Politics: Evidence from Administrative Data,” which analyzed records from such meetings in nearly 100 Boston-area communities, found that while 80 percent of the area population is white, an estimated 95 percent of meetings attendees were white.” And while 4% of the population was Black, only 2% of the meeting participants were.
In a Next City article on the same topic: “I think that study does a good job of calling out the fact that the way the system operates, when left to its own devices, has a significant bias in favor of homeowners, the middle class, whites and immediately adjacent property owners,” Kriesberg says.”
I added the stats to make one point clear, the anecdotal evidence we see of the loudest voices in the room here in Oak Park? It isn’t anecdotal. It’s a fact and it’s present almost everywhere you have a public meeting concept. And if you want to get community engagement at any meaningful level, the best way to do it is still via the ballot. And even then, turnout in the last election was only in the high 20% range, still skews more white than not, more older and affluent than not, but you still get many times more representation than you can reach in a public meeting, listening session, or the streaming numbers on our village website.
Our current community engagement processes do a great job of pretending to engage the people while amplifying the loudest voices in the village. It’s not representative, it’s not equitable, and it’s not the true voice of the people. If we truly want the most equitable and representative outcome to questions such as “Shall the Village of Oak Park defund its Police Department?”, placing it on the ballot is still the best choice, of the poor choices available. That might change in the future, all eight candidates for Village Board have improved community engagement high on their list of things to accomplish, I’m hopeful that whomever is elected can engineer a more equitable process and the non-binding referendum question on defunding the police illustrates why that’s necessary.
-CjW
