One Civic Act

Acumen was founded in 2001 as a philanthropic entity focused on poverty reduction. Importantly, it committed itself to investing patient capital bridges the gap between the efficiency and scale of market-based approaches and the social impact of traditional philanthropy. Not quite a foundation and not quite a venture capital fund. It also started +Acumen to offer skills-training to social entrepreneurs. And there are +Acumen chapters which build a community of like-minded young professionals together. Today, I joined with the Boston+Acumen chapter to learn about what the +Acumen’s Impact Circles. It’s the next evolution of their +Acumen chapter — really it amounts to a 20+ people making donations of $500 each to Acumen and then receiving what amounts to a membership.  I’m thinking about it.

A problematic pattern in government for an executive branch that disagrees with regulation, but of course can’t pass legislation, is to appoint a regulator who will not enforce said regulation. Unfortunately, it undercuts the rule of law. Today, I signed a petition to request Governor Charlie Baker to remove an NRA leader from being the Massachusetts Commissioner of Fish & Game. We need government officials to respect the law.

Today, I joined in an effort, jointly hosted by Sister District and Indivisible Somerville, to boost voter registration in Michigan. I wrote 10 post cards that were sent to un-registered citizens across the state. All of them had recently received voter registration forms in the mail. I have no idea what their political leanings are, but that’s not the point. We’ve got to boost citizen participation in our governance. As a group, we wrote 340 post cards! Impressive.

When I took on the co-moderation role for the Buy Nothing Somerville community , there were about 650 members. Now, there are well over 1,400. Unfortunately, I haven’t done a great job nurturing the community. Buy Nothing facilitates the free exchange of goods and service, yes, but it stresses building relationships with neighbors. It’s not just about the transactions. That’s hard to do when half your community is brand new. Today, I began to rectify that with the first in a series of posts, giving “pro tips” on norms for the community that are designed to facilitate relationship-building. I actually wrote a series of pro tips, and I’ll post them perhaps weekly.

Hurricane Maria, the tenth-most intense Atlantic hurricane on record, was way back in the Fall, but its effects will be felt for years if not decades. Puerto Rico still has large portions without power. Tens of thousands of families lost everything. Today, I went to a party with a purpose, at my friend Elizabeth’s house. We had traditional Puerto Rican food and coquito, and donated to two families in need on the island.

I first wrote about ranked choice voting last May.  It’s a simple change to how voting gets tabulated, to allow voters to rank their choices instead of picking just one. Maine has passed a resolution to use it for state-wide elections, although I think that’s tied up in the courts right now. Today, I supported an education video blog series, on Kickstarter , to help explain how ranked choice voting works. I still like the idea, but it’ll take a big boost in public understanding to really make any inroads.

Continuing to learn more about zoning here. At the last Land Use Committee hearing, we got a long presentation on the general principles behind Somerville’s proposed new zoning code. Today, we had a representative from Somerville’s Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development committee sit with the Climate Coalition of Somerville to talk turkey. It was great session because we could really hear from the author of the new code himself, who has experience writing zoning codes across the country. All in preparation to provide public feedback to the city by March 13.