Civic engagement

You know, like there's just you have to do more.

You have to value civic engagement if you've.

If you want to affect change and you have to prioritize it in your life, it has to become something that you do on a regular basis.

I mean, that's what this whole show has been about.

Yeah, y'all definitely seeing more need there.

Uh, but also, like, we had a chance to, to meet with fellow faith leaders a couple weeks ago in Houston as part of the Houston Faith Votes campaign, and, uh, I, I do think we're starting to see faith leaders recognize that, uh, we need to be doing the mission work, uh, in our local community and feeding people, but we also need to be building those, uh, relationships with, uh, other faith communities and doing the work together to increase civic engagement, uh, to make sure that our communities recognize that part of the way we address hunger, uh, is by participating in advocacy work, uh, for things like SNAP and TANF, uh, but also by, uh, engaging in, in the electoral work, the, the, the, the voting work, uh, required to elect folks who share our values.

And so talk to us about, uh, the work y'all are doing, um, in that space, uh, as, as part of the Houston Faith Votes coalition, but also in your local congregation.

Sure.

Uh, so, uh, one of the things that, uh, our senior pastor, Dr. D.Z. Cofield, uh, is extremely adamant about, uh, is exercising, uh, your constitutional and God-given right to vote, regardless of which party or candidate, you know, you're supporting.

Um, but to not exercise your God-given constitutional, uh, right to vote, uh, is to, uh, i- is, is, is, is to sit silent, right? And to, uh, in some way give a tas- [laughs] excuse me, a tacit endorsement, uh, of, of, of some of what we're seeing today.

Uh, and so our church believes, uh, in making sure that, uh, we, uh, invest in civic engagement.

Uh, of course, you know, nonpartisan civic engagement, but civic engagement that empowers, uh, our, uh, not only our congregation, but our community, uh, our fellow brothers and sisters, uh, community, community engagement that equips them with the information they d- that they need, uh, to make, uh, a informed decision, but also equip them with the access to make a decision.

My mom was a white woman from the South, a Christian who grew up in charismatic churches in Missouri and Tennessee.

This is why I am so excited to bring you Mixed, a new series from the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement in Apari, created by my friend and colleague, Dr. Kiyoti Joshi.

Khyati is a Hindu woman of Indian heritage, and she unexpectedly fell in love with a white Christian man in Jerusalem of all places.

That's where the story begins, and it takes us through her journey of convincing her parents that marrying this guy was worth it.

Thank you for that, Emily.

Representative Clark, another constitutional congress, but I want to ask you about civic engagement specifically that Emily was referencing there.

How can we do a better job of that as we think about the next 50 years?

Well, one, I would like to say that someone mentioned it earlier, civic education.

It is election season, and that means that we need to get our kids involved.

So this episode is about civic engagement.

How do we get our students to be good citizens? How do we train them up in the way they should go? And as teachers, how do we get our students to think critically, showing them how to think and not telling them what to think? So it's a fine line.

Hi, thank you so much for joining the Falling for Learning podcast.

But, you know, very happy to start this new school year.

We're in the election cycle and because we're falling for learning, we're always talking about how to entice them to fall in love with learning, how to engage them, how to draw them in naturally.

And I think in election season, just speaks to that because it's competition, but it's also at the very heart of civic engagement.

So we're just going to give an overall definition.

So it's been a fun way to try to use performance to educate people about what's going on.

It's like, God, I would love nothing more than if my work as an artist can help make civic engagement cool again.

Just like one little drop in the bucket.

Like, hey, it's great to be informed and know what's going on because you might think, oh, I don't do politics.

Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason.

Now up next, county board meetings, data centers, civic engagement, and university educations.

For environmental science students at the University of Illinois, crucial lessons on ecology are currently unfolding at local county board meetings.

For instance, as Champaign County considers an ordinance to regulate new hyperscale data centers, students are stepping up to the microphone to translate academic research into civic discourse.

All right, folks, I want to say thanks for being here.

If you have enjoyed this summer, the Access Daily Brief and my live show here with my friend Matt Taylor, Access Live, I want to ask you to think about supporting us as a paid subscriber on Substack or to donate to our nonprofit, which is called the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement.

We want to keep doing this work.

We want to keep doing the Access Daily Brief every day.