{"id":1681,"date":"2017-01-31T12:16:42","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T20:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/?p=1681"},"modified":"2017-01-31T12:16:42","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T20:16:42","slug":"we-must-fight-to-protect-democracy-in-a-digital-age-lucy-bernholz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/?p=1681","title":{"rendered":"We must fight to protect democracy in a digital age. \u2013 Lucy Bernholz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lucy Bernholz is a self-professed \u201cphilanthropy wonk.\u201d Among other things she is currently director of the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford\u2019s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. For the past eight years, I\u2019ve worked with her as editor and \u201cco-conspirator\u201d of an annual monograph. Lucy’s \u201cBlueprint\u201d series is a forecast for philanthropy and the social economy about the ways we use private resources for public benefit. Each year, she identifies big ideas that matter for the coming year and offers a series of annual predictions and critical developments to watch in the future (“glimpses”) .<\/em><\/p>\n

From the start Lucy has written primarily for readers engaged in the worlds of philanthropy, nonprofits, and social investing. Over the years, though, I\u2019ve increasingly found that what I learn from her informs my thinking and my actions\u00a0in many ways\u00a0and is useful way beyond my direct involvement in these fields. So I\u2019m eager to share some of her ideas\u00a0through excerpts from the most recent <\/em>Philanthropy and Social Economy:\u00a0Blueprint 2017, originally published in December 2016. What follows is most of the introduction, a short passage from “Glimpses of the Future,” and a sobering excerpt from her conclusion. At the end of the excerpts, you\u2019ll find more information as well as\u00a0links that allow you to follow her thinking.<\/em><\/p>\n

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From the Introduction\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe must fight to protect civil society and democracy; they do not defend themselves.\u201d<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"\"Paradoxes abound. Some global indices show democracy on the rise around the globe, while other measures stress that spaces for civil society are closing. Since democracy depends on civil society, it\u2019s hard to know how both can be true.1<\/sup>\u00a0 In another head- scratcher, a year that was defined by the politics of lies also saw\u2028an increase in the systemic faith in data and algorithmic analysis as guides to a better future. Resolution of these paradoxes comes down to human action\u2014we must fight to protect civil society and democracy; they do not defend themselves. We must interrogate and make understandable the digital tools and data we use to make decisions, as they are simply encoded versions of our values.<\/p>\n

Some truths hold. I spent part of 2016 working with the incredible artists behind the award-winning documentary Big Sonia<\/em>. The film tells the story of an immigrant in Kansas City. She survived the holocaust, living through and being liberated from three Nazi concentration camps. She raises a family, survives economic changes that redraw the map in her Midwestern suburb, and only in her last decade begins to share her life story publicly. I won\u2019t tell you more\u2014go see the film. But here\u2019s how lasting truths work.<\/p>\n

The filmmakers worked for years, and as every artist or author knows, timing a release is tricky business. As it happened, Big Sonia <\/em>premiered on the big screen on Wednesday, November 9, the day after the U.S. presidential election. Sonia, aged 91, was there. Her story\u2014of\u2028 resisting fascism; of surviving state-sponsored deportation, incarceration, and cultural destruction; of running a business through economic good times and collapse; and of always standing against the forces of hatred\u2014resonated with amplified power on that particular day. But the story\u2014and its truths\u2014are timeless.<\/p>\n

“I believe in democracy, and when my ideas fail at the polls, I work harder as a citizen.”<\/span><\/h3>\n

I did everything I could as an organizer, a voter, and a citizen to bring about a different outcome to the U.S. presidential election. I disagree completely with the candidate and winning coalition\u2019s proposed economic, healthcare, security, and foreign policy proposals. I am scared by and motivated against their language, behavior, supporters, and proposals regarding immigrants, people of faith, people of color, LGBT people, and women. Economic inequality is the problem, but it cannot be fixed by social and political injustice. I believe in democracy, and, when my ideas fail at the polls, I work harder as a citizen.<\/p>\n

I am telling you this because I don\u2019t just think about civil society in democracies; my life depends on it. This was true before the U.S. election and will be true long after I stop publishing. That I can publish these words without fear of recrimination from my government is precisely the strength of the system. If I am recriminated against, or if others turn away from these words because I\u2019ve expressed these differences, then that is both the future I fear and the one I write to prevent.<\/p>\n

During the U.S presidential campaign, candidates from both major parties faced intense public scrutiny for their charitable activities. This exemplifies an issue\u2014the blurring boundary between politics and philanthropy\u2014that I\u2019ve written about for years in this series and which boiled over in 2016. Similarly, both campaigns were defined by their digital practices\u2014one by a reliance on Twitter and the other by a reliance on private email servers. The summer of 2016 showed us that governments that promise unhackable security will come to regret it (I\u2019m looking at you, Australian census bureau and U.S. Democratic National Committee).<\/p>\n

The vulnerability of our election technologies to digital malfeasance makes us wonder if the core act of voting is safe and reliable. There are historical antecedents that can guide us in these times (see Big Sonia<\/em>, above), but our dependence on digital systems and the ways in which they facilitate both freedom and control, expression and censorship, surveillance and new economic powers is what we face anew.<\/p>\n

“We are all digitally dependent now.”<\/span><\/h3>\n

Some might yearn for the pre-digital days of politics, when we didn\u2019t worry about email hacks, server security, or social media campaigns. Those days are gone forever. When we stop and catch our breath, we realize this is true also of civil society. We are all digitally dependent now. This offers opportunity and risk, risk that extends beyond cybersecurity. Our digital dependence shapes the nature of data our nonprofits and foundations collect and what they do with it. It explains why new policy environments\u2014from intellectual property law to telecommunications regulations\u2014now determine who can participate, where, when, and at what cost. And it makes \u2028it ever more important to question our core assumptions about what resources we use for social good, how we exchange them, how we will pay for this work, and who will benefit.<\/p>\n

This is the eighth annual Blueprint<\/em>. I\u2019ve spent \u2028the year learning with colleagues in the U.S., Australia, Austria, Brazil, the Netherlands, and Sweden. For several years I\u2019ve been arguing that civil society and philanthropy must \u201cassume digital.\u201d The information we gather, store, and exchange electronically and the networks we use to do so are now an integrated part of the way civil society functions. Working internationally \u2028is a wonderful way to experience the breadth, depth, and diversity that this dependence takes.<\/p>\n

Our digital networks are global, but the knotted mess of national and international regulations on everything from free speech to fundraising forced me to check my own assumptions and biases in each region. What is a nonprofit? What qualifies as philanthropic? Who regulates? What roles do co-ops, impact investing, online giving, text messaging, broadband, open source software, and philanthropy play in this setting? My effort to find answers to these questions informs the way I understand digital civil society, the social economy, and philanthropy in 2017.<\/p>\n

From “Glimpses of the Future” . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

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“Digital space\u00a0can be as closed as it can be open.”<\/span><\/h3>\n

Most discussion of social media, the internet, digital infrastructure, and data in the social sector\u2014at least in wealthy democracies\u2014 emphasizes its \u201cdemocratizing\u201d nature and the ways in which it changes gatekeepers, amplifies\u00a0voices, and enables mobilization. This is not the whole story, nor is it inevitable. Digital space\u00a0can be as closed as it can be open. To keep civil society alive in digital spaces, we must change our assumptions about and our usage of the digital infrastructure. Small subgroups of civil society actors have long been trying to shape and protect digital rules and systems, whether that means fighting for broadband access or protecting people\u2019s right to know when the companies they work with have their servers hacked. This now must become the fight for all of civil society, before the space closes and cannot be reopened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

From the Conclusion . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

“Our dependence on digital data changes civil society.”<\/span><\/h3>\n

The very nature of civil society is changed by our dependence on digital data. The set of rights that civil society depends upon\u2014free expression, free association, and the right to privacy\u2014remain the same. But they manifest differently on Facebook than in the town commons of old.2<\/sup>\u00a0The relationships between national laws and norms matter more than ever before because of our global digital systems.<\/p>\n

We cannot continue to act as if adapting our \u201canalog\u201d practices to digital resources will work. Digital data don\u2019t work the way that time and money do. Digital infrastructure is not the same place as Speakers\u2019 Corner in Hyde Park, London. We need to create\u2014collectively and urgently\u2014new software code, new organizational practices, and new legal requirements if civil society is to continue to thrive in the digital age.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Footnotes<\/span><\/p>\n

1 \u00a0<\/sup>Agnes Cornell, J\u00f8rgen M\u00f8ller, Svend-Erik Skaaning, and Staffan I. Lindberg, \u201cCivil Society, Party Institutionalization and Democratic Breakdown in the Interwar Period,\u201d University of Gothenburg, Working Paper, Series 2016:<\/em> 24, The Varieties of Democracy Institute. Available online here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2 \u00a0<\/sup>See Timothy Garton Ash, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Blueprint 2017<\/em> is published in partnership with GrantCraft, a service of the Foundation Center. The monograph can be downloaded for free here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Blueprint 2017<\/em> is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-noncommercial-noderivs 2.5 license.<\/a><\/p>\n

Keeping up with Lucy<\/span><\/p>\n

The best way to follow\u00a0Lucy\u2019s thinking is on her blog, Philanthropy2173<\/a>. <\/em>Subscriptions are free. Two good posts to check out are:\u00a0\u201cCivil Society Now<\/a>,\u201d November 11, 2016 and\u00a0\u201cNot in my name (or my email or mobile number)<\/a>,\u201d January 14, 2017.<\/p>\n

Previous years\u2019 Blueprints <\/em>can be downloaded at grantcraft.org<\/a> or lucybernholz.com\/books<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Information about Stanford\u2019s Digital Civil Society Lab can be found here<\/a>.
\nThe Lab begins a description of itself this way: \u201cThe rapid adoption of digital tools for social and political action has resulted in a complicated new sphere we refer to as digital civil society<\/em>. Digital civil society includes all the ways people and organizations voluntarily use private resources for public benefit in a digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Lucy Bernholz is a self-professed \u201cphilanthropy wonk.\u201d Among other things she is currently director of the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford\u2019s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. For the past eight years, I\u2019ve worked with her as editor and \u201cco-conspirator\u201d of an annual monograph. Lucy’s \u201cBlueprint\u201d series is a forecast for philanthropy and the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-commons-civil-society"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7pXN0-r7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1681"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1713,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681\/revisions\/1713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}