it is a tremendous honor to be here at the historic Florida theatre especially when you think about who has previously walked on this stage Ray Charles Johnny Cash Elvis Presley BB King now we may not be the king of rock and roll or the king of the blues but each of us holds the most important title in American democracy well hang on a second you might be saying I'm not a president or a governor or a senator or a congressperson or a mayor well you don't have to be because in our democracy the most important
title is that of citizen former Illinois governor two-time presidential candidate and United Nations ambassador Adlai Stevenson said it best as citizens in a democracy you are the rulers and the ruled the law givers and the law abiders the beginning and the end but it's not enough to hold the title remember the first three words of our United States Constitution We the People We are fortunate enough to live in a country that is supposed to be led by four and of the people but to make that work we have to build and flex our citizenship muscles
to make government respond and therein lies the challenge most Americans don't think we can make government respond back in 2015 the Pew Research Center did a study of Americans attitudes toward government they found that 74% three-quarters of Americans no longer believed that elected officials care what we think well those feelings of frustration and alienation are perfectly understandable when you consider what's going on in the nation's capital in all 50 state capitals but it's also understandable when you think about that we realized that we haven't been trained in the skills needed to make elected officials care
what we think over the last several decades civics and citizenship have largely gone missing from the American curriculum and when they have been taught they've been taught as civics in other words what are the three branches of government who are the members of the cabinet how does a bill become a law not as participatory civics in other words how do we use our citizenship rights and responsibilities to move government in our direction imagine you were teaching someone the game of basketball would you teach them by taking them into the locker room and having them read
books about the history of basketball maybe have them watch some videos of basketball or would you take them out in the court and have them practice passing and jump shots and dribbling well in our democracy right now that locker room style is the way we're teaching civics and it's wrong because we don't want to be in the stands of democracy watching it happen we want to be on the court of democracy making it happen well today I'd like to share with you the stories of some Americans who have been on the court making it happen
and have won and in that process I want to help dispel some myths and provide some truths about effective citizenship so the first myth not a surprising one in this hyper partisan and polarized world in which we live is that people can no longer work together across partisan and ideological lines to make a difference the truth is that people can work together to achieve common goals and to illustrate that truth I'd like to take you from here in Jacksonville to Atlanta Georgia and introduce you to two remarkable women Debbie Dooley and Colleen Kiernan Debbie on
your left was one of the founders of the National Tea Party Colleen on your right was the executive director of the Georgia Sierra Club now let's think about that for just a second Tea Party and Sierra Club not two groups we would ever think would work together on anything but when Debbie and Colleen met in 2012 and got to know each other they realized they had a shared passion for making their home state of Georgia a more solar energy friendly state so working together and with some solar energy advocates they formed the very aptly named
green tea coalition great name right well that Coalition had a major obstacle it was the large politically influential investor owned utility in Georgia Georgia power one of the most powerful special interests in the state but despite that opposition Debbie and Colleen and their team helped to persuade Georgia regulators to require that Georgia Power includes solar energy as part of their electricity mix they helped to persuade the Georgia Legislature to make it easier for homeowners to put solar devices on their homes they even changed the culture in Georgia so much that today Georgia Power has embraced
solar energy and is building solar generation facilities all over the state of Florida Debbie and Colleen were so successful that today while Florida is the Sunshine State in name Georgia is the Sunshine State in fact and that's because these two women defied conventional wisdom and work together across partisan and ideological lines we can do that too so that was our first myth that I hope we've dispelled and I now wanted to spell a second one and for that I'd like to travel from Atlanta Georgia to Miami Beach Florida and that myth is the myth that
one person can't make a difference we ever said that to yourself hey I'm just one person what can I do well as you'll see from the case of Miami Florida you can do a lot and perhaps you're more familiar with Miami Beach by its other name South Beach maybe you watched Miami Vice in the 1980s maybe you've eaten a Joe's stone crab maybe you've tried the South Beach diet I know I have or maybe you know South Beach because of its very visually distinctive Art Deco buildings well those Art Deco buildings are still there today
because one person stood up and made a difference so let me set the scene for you it's the mid to late 1970s and Disney World has just moved to Florida several years ago communities like Miami Beach are trying to amp up their own tourism economies and so developers and some other leaders in Miami Beach have decided that the way for them to do that is to redevelop parts of South Beach and dismantle some of those historic Art Deco buildings well one person was having none of that and her name was Barbara kappahd man Barbara was
a recently widowed historic preservationist who was passionate about these Art Deco structures well Barbara worked skillfully and ingeniously at every level of government to protect these buildings she helped to elect pro preservation elected officials at the city of Miami Beach she worked with the state of Florida historic preservation officer to gain their support for her efforts and most notably she got South Beach listed on the National Register of Historic Places Barbara was so successful that today 40 years later those historic buildings still stand now lovingly watched over by Barbara's monument and protected by the organization
that she worked hard to create the Miami design preservation league those buildings are there today because one person stood up and made a difference and all of us can do that as well so the last point I'd like to make now that we've hopefully dispelled those two myths is to talk about one important truth of citizen engagement and that's this when our moment comes for effective citizenship we have to reach out and seize it to make government respond and to help show how possible that is I'd like to make one last Geographic shipped this time
going from Miami Beach to Columbia Missouri to the campus of the University of Missouri let's set the scene again it's the fall of 2015 November 2015 to be precise and four weeks students have been expressing concerns about racism on campus and they're frustrated because those concerns have not been addressed as quickly as the students felt like the administration should have well one group of students saw their moment and step forward to build and flex their citizenship muscles and that was the two-time defending FEC East football champion Missouri Tigers again it was November 2015 and at
the end of that week they were scheduled to play in a very important neutral site game against Brigham Young University in Kansas City Missouri and that game wasn't just important for their record it was also important because it was going to generate significant revenue for the University of Missouri 1 million dollars well several days before the game some of the University of Missouri players announced that unless those student concerns about racism were addressed and the university president resigned they were not going to play in that upcoming neutral site game their teammates back them up their
coaches backed them up and shortly thereafter the University of Missouri president resigned that is an example of what we're capable of when we seize the moment for civic engagement all of us can do that and so when we leave here today we have a choice we can be one of the seventy four percent of Americans who believe that elected officials no longer care what we think and do nothing or or we can be a Debbie or a Colleen or a Barbara or a University of Missouri tiger and we can use the skills of effective citizenship
to make them care well how do we start where does this process begin well first it begins with the realization that even one person can make a difference Barbara taught us that anyone can leave here today and be an effective citizen and to do that the first step is to identify or define a problem in your community or neighborhood challenges are all around us maybe you want to clean up your local park or increase funding for technology in your child's school and once you've defined that problem set a meeting with the local official who can
help you solve it perhaps that local officials a school board member a city council member a county commissioner a state legislature but meet with them and persuade them as to the rightness of your cause and if you can't persuade them find allies who can remember the story of Debbie and Colleen allies can be found in the least likely of places and don't forget throughout this process the most fundamental truth of American democracy in this country we the people rule we can and must build and flex our citizenship muscles to make government listen care and act
thank you very much [Applause]
