Wikified Governance

I'm currently listening to a talk by Lawrence Lessig he gave at Harvard's Berkman Center in November, where he discusses the Change Congress project. ChangeCongress.org, together with MorePerfect.org, is a start to cobbling together a new technology of civic engagement.

The limitation of these projects is that the focus on national (or in the case of MorePerfect, national and state) issues. Mind you, ChangeCongress.org is at least focusing its attention on legislative districts, so it gets local by the mechanics of it, despite its focus on Congress.

I really want to resume work on the Transpartisan Meshworks project--the focus here being on local governance (village, town, city, county; school, water, fire, and other special districts). Plan on cracking open my Nolo guide to starting a non-profit this week. Anyone have any advice on cobbling together a board of directors?

(Okay, that's spooky. Not two minutes after I posted this, Lessig responded to a question by saying that Change Congress doesn't yet have a board--or didn't as of November when the talk was recorded.)

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While listening to Speaking of Faith (American Public Media), I was startled to hear guest Pankaj Mishra, journalist and author, speculated that the Buddha, if confronted with the modern centralized state, would advocate a devolution to governance at the level of community, such that individuals would be better able to effect control over their own experience of the world.

This is not at all in keeping with what I expect most American Buddhists would have to say on the matter, but it certainly reinforces my own conceptualization of elegant empowerment through local civic engagement.

There's a certain synchronicity in having heard these two podcasts one following the other.