3D Politics Institute
Upon the passing of our friend and colleague, Bernie Ronan, we were brainstorming the idea of how we could carry forward Bernie’s legacy. For his long and distinguished career Bernie advocated for civic engagement, community involvement, democratic ideals, and civic education. He established the Center for Civic Participation in the Maricopa Community College District and contributed to the vision of democratic education in too many ways to mention. Suffice it to say, we want to continue his good work both for the Maricopa Community Colleges in the state of Arizona and for public education in America. We want to present in different forms—blogs, short articles, position papers, and the like—cogent arguments promoting public education. We want to connect citizens with good ideas to the citizens who could implement those ideas. Mostly we want to influence people to promote good and useful public education. We want to support an education in democratic deliberation based on the educational philosophy of some great thinkers: Plato, Hegel, and Dewey, to name a few.
Mission Statement
To make strong arguments for good causes related to the promotion of public education in and for direct deliberative democracy and to support persons, places, and programs that participate in those causes.
Why 3-D Politics?
Something that is 3-D is three-dimensional. That is, it has width, height, and depth. Most of us are well familiar with this concept, because our physical world is three-dimensional, and we negotiate it pretty well most of the time. In short, 3-D is reality, and if we want our politics to be real, then we want them to be 3-D: direct and deliberative and democratic. We want to see that our political decisions are wide or comprehensive and encompassing. We want to see that they also have height—that they are significant in our lives and affect us directly and importantly. Finally, we want those decisions to have depth; we want them to have real substance and quality behind them. We want them made sensibly, reasonably, through dialogue and deliberation. So we want and need our democracy to be “real.” Help us to achieve 3-D politics now.