In August, 2021 Harry C. Boyte posted the following on Academia.edu and asked for feedback. Our exchange follows:

Background paper for “Tomorrow’s City Manager,” a session at the 2021 ICMA conference, October 3-6, 2021

Beyond the Vending Machine

Citizen professionals as agents and architects of a productive democracy

Harry C. Boyte, Institute for Public Life and Work, Augsburg University

Revitalizing the legacy of public work

The recently released United Nations report on climate, which UN Secretary-General António Guterres calls a “code red for humanity,” is a signature for the epoch. Climate change joins with Covid, polarization, rising inequality, intensifying bigotries, loneliness, and other vastly complex problems. No government can fix these by itself. Even to ameliorate them requires tapping energies and talents of diverse groups and generating widespread civic activation and civic responsibility.

To meet such challenges, we need what my colleagues and I call “public work,” effort by a diverse mix of people who work across lines of differences – partisan, racial, economic, religious and other -- to solve public problems and create our commonwealth. Here, the public work of the New Deal era is especially instructive.

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