The Phoenix Futures Forum

If there was a year in recent world history that can be called the Year of Democracy, it was 1989. The Berlin Wall was toppled, totalitarian regimes fell throughout eastern Europe and the former Soviet states, Chinese students marched and died under a papier-mâché Statue of Liberty. The people of Phoenix were not living outside the lap of these waves; In 1989, an army of Phoenix citizens came together in the shared belief that Phoenix was their community, that they had the right and the power to shape it as their shared home. The process began in late 1988, but the project was community-wide in 1989.

In frankly assessing the successes and failures of that effort, we can learn a great deal about how to improve our local version of democracy. Because the urge toward community self-determination is the soul of the American experience, we never have to wait long for the effort to begin anew -- to push aside politics-as-usual for another brave attempt. We lose a lot of time and energy, however, when we have to always start from scratch. It is possible, and it is now the work of this site, to provide creative links between these times and these attempts--a shared memory and a cumulative foundation of prior work, research and ideas.

If we have stumbled upon any wisdom, it is this:

1. The leadership elite cannot move the city forward without the enthusiastic company of the grass-roots community;

2. The grass-roots community needs the whole-hearted company of the leadership elite;

3. The people who will be responsible for implementing the programs simply must be among those excited people who develop the ideas;

4. It is possible to advance too many ideas too fast;

5. An annual update process, involving large numbers of citizens, is necessary if serious issues are to be moved;

6. The civic improvement agenda must be housed outside the political and bureaucratic walls of government;

7. The effort must lead to the election of government leaders who arise from this civic process and who will transmit to government the community's values and goals.