It’s a Group Project

A Short Weekly Newsletter for Linkedin Members

From the classroom to city hall, a weekly short focused on local governance! The notion, “It’s a Group Project,” came from a Q & A session between noted New York Times journalist Jamelle Bouie and Mysha Cherry, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. The forum was the 57th installment of UC Riverside’s HAYS Press-Enterprise Lecture Series. Jamelle’s presentation focused on the failure of the Reconstruction Era and its subsequent impact on contemporary American democracy. Since democracy itself is a group project, Professor Cherry compared it to the angst of students when assigned their own group projects. The audience groaned knowing all to well how difficult and frustrating group efforts really are. Democracy itself is the prime example. Can we even hope to get a grade of “C”?

Starting Friday, April 10th, 2026, I will posit the meaning and importance of the “Democratic Group Project” as it unfolds at the local governmental level. I certainly am not the first to traverse this subject. However, when has there ever been a time when those working in government needed to know even more about the purpose of government? Balancing the books, filling the pot holes, while serving and protecting goes without saying. When government forgets for whom it works for, is where the consternation starts. It’s messy. It’s problematic. It invites the naysayers and the gadflies. Regardless, it is necessary if the nation is to continue as a democratic republic. It’s easy to slide into the simplicity of autocracy and the favoring of a segment of society over another. Finding balance between individual liberty and pluralism has always been the nations greatest challenge. The struggle to find that balance unfolds at the local level everyday. Those working in government play a pivitol role in framing the dialog itself. This responsibility, this understanding, starts in the classroom. Some got it. Some did not.

You can find the link below:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/observations-perceptions-public-participant-stephen-harding-tv0mc