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What is it?
Chicago Minute Civics is pretty much what it sounds like: 1 minute audio explainers about different parts of Chicago’s government. You can listen to the episodes here.
Why does this matter?
A year ago, I asked organizers, activists, and local government advocates about the barriers that they faced in getting more people active or taking on bigger roles in Chicago campaigns. They said repeatedly that a lack of time, energy, and resources was the biggest hurdle. Relatedly, they said that getting people up to date on the characters, key terms, and problems in Chicago politics were a big part of how they spent their time and a barrier to getting more people, more entrenched, in organizing campaigns.
Why are they audio? Why are they only a minute long?
One way to address this barrier is to make it easier for more people to understand Chicago’s political system. That means putting that information in new, more digestible mediums.
With so many people using digital tools during this pandemic, we’re able to use new tools for learning, teaching, and organizing on a massive scale that has never been possible before.
That means we can think more about how to ‘meet people where they’re at’ in approaches to political education…
