Citizen Voice

The following materials provide everything a small, nonpartisan team needs to launch Televised Town Meetings in your metropolitan area — a proven process for giving hundreds of thousands of citizens a collective voice in their common future. Developed over 45 years by Duane Elgin — who co-founded the nonprofit “Bay Voice” in the San Francisco Bay Area and collaborated with ABC-TV in 1987 to produce a live, prime-time town meeting watched by over 300,000 viewers — these resources have been updated for the mobile phone era. Now, 90% or more of citizens in a major metro can provide virtually instant feedback to a televised forum considering on critical issues. This package uses Minneapolis as the exmple but is intended for any major city and includes an organizing flyer and handbook, a model letter for outreach to organizers, television station partnership agreements, a broadcast megaphone system for civic engagement, relevant broadcast television laws, suggested website architecture, and a short video of an early televised town meeting in action. These materials are offered as a gift to any city ready to move from protest to progress — all that is needed is a committed team of three to five people willing to provide independent, nonpartisan leadership. To move from mass protests to mass choice, citizens can pick up their mobile phones and cast live votes for the future they want!