The bylaws of the garden club and the associations Tocqueville admired would not translate straightforwardly online. Too much is different in online spaces: the ease of joining and leaving, the cultural and geographic diversity, the speed, the anonymity, the metrics of reputation, and on and on. And yet his basic insight has remained salient: a syn

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As public theologian and faith leader Rev. Jennifer Bailey has said, “change happens at the speed of relationships.” And yet, today, so much of our infrastructure is built — purposefully or not — to slow relationships down, making single-player mode the default and dooming us to the status quo.

But it also seems clear that reinforcing local community structures should not be the only approach. So many towns and neighborhoods in the United States are effectively mini-one-party states. With the demographic sorting that has taken place over the last 40 years, focusing our attention primarily on local politics and participation in local decis... See more