Citizenship - What Does that Mean?
RNLC, with our focus on the local community collective, realizes the core to the social fabric, to the building and sustainment of community comes down to this question: What is a citizen? This important question has led us to the discover of a major thought leader. In his wonderful book, Community: The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block offers the following:
"A citizen is one who is willing to do the following:
"A citizen is one who is willing to do the following:
- Hold oneself accountable for the well-being of the larger collective of which we are a part.
- Choose to own and exercise power rather than defer or delegate it to others.
- Enter into a collective possibility that gives hospitable and restorative community its own sense of being.
- Acknowledge that community grows out of the possibility of citizens. Community is built not by specialized expertise, or great leadership, or improved services; it is built by great citizens.
- Attend to gifts and capacities of all others, and act to bring the gifts and capacities of all others, and act to bring the gifts of those on the margin into the center."
