Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Bridging the policy gap
How do communities and groups that typically engage less with policy making have their voices included? How does the government create effective policies if they don’t reflect the communities’ challenges? A recent initiative that aims to bridge the gap between communities and public policies is headed by political science professor Amy Lerman, executive director of the Possibility Lab at UC Berkeley. The interdisciplinary lab partners with California’s Youth Empowerment Commission and includes researchers, state and local government representatives, and community organizations. It aims to influence policy by working with groups that typically participate less in traditional forms of civic engagement, such as voting or funding campaigns.
In an interview with India Currents on the sidelines of the state’s California Connects regional convening in San Francisco, hosted in partnership with American Community Media, Lerman urged people to look beyond the comfort of their communities to partner with “unusual allies.”
The interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
India Currents: Tell us about Possibility Lab and your partnership with California’s Youth Empowerment Commission. What is it that you’re trying to achieve with this program?
Amy Lerman: We’re fairly new, having been around about four years now. We are trying a really different model of what university research can look like. All of the work that we do is in partnership with the state. We work with about a dozen state departments and agencies, trying to think together with them about how to co-create policy with communities, how to really deeply engage with communities in a meaningful way, and how to reach the constituents that they may have had a harder time reaching. We really try to push the boundaries of engagement in ways that help to rebuild trust and reduce polarization, and really think about California as a testing ground for how we can do a better job with democracy.
IC: Speaking of your partnership with the Youth Empowerment Commission, how do you decide on problem areas that you think need work? Does the state approach you?
AL: We started working with the Youth Empowerment Commission about a year ago. It’s a new commission. It is one of the first formalized state-level commissions that is staffed by young people, a really interesting and diverse youth from California who are tasked with representing the voices of young people in policymaking, thinking about how our budget and our policies reflect the needs and values of their generation. They are tasked with engaging with the community so that they can make sure that they are always tapping back into the young people from their own local communities so that they can elevate their voices to the Governor and the legislature.
They are the ones who choose as their priority areas. We help support them in that process. For example, when they need data on what policies are being proposed this legislative session, or what the top priorities and challenges are that young people from different communities are facing in their local communities, we can bring that data to them.
IC: So this is to influence policy at the State level. Could you share an example of how the data you gather can influence policy?
AL: A good example is a project that we’re running right now with the Strategic Growth Council and the Governor’s Office for Land Use and Climate Innovation. We brought together communities across three different regions, and we are focusing on the rest of the regions within the coming year. We assembled community organizations, local elected officials, regional representatives, foundations, private philanthropy, and researchers—all within those regions who were thinking about the state’s climate future, which is also a priority area for the (Youth) Empowerment Commission. We brought people together to really think about what the strategic plan for the state should be on land use and climate innovation. We collected data throughout the day from all of those different organizations. We ran some surveys. We used an interactive data collection and deliberative democracy tool to help people prioritize recommendations to the state. Ultimately, we were able to come up with a really comprehensive assessment of what each of those regions need and want from the state in terms of the climate strategy. That assessment will inform the strategic plan for the state for the next five to 10 years.
IC: The youth around the world have been very involved in trying to influence climate change policies. Why was this project important and why now? What were we not doing right?
AL: Two things. One was really thinking about how you bring in communities—young people and other communities—that have historically not been the ones who are most consistently turning out to vote, or donating money to candidates, the kind of things that we think about as traditional ways of participating in government and policymaking. We saw an opportunity to think more creatively about what it takes to bring young people and other historically underserved communities to the table; how do we give them more of a voice in the policy-making process and how to make policies reflect what they need, want, and are experiencing.
The other big piece was really feeling like there was an opportunity for us as researchers to play a bigger role. We didn’t want to just sit back and evaluate things as they happen, but really to be in the mix. We wanted to help get innovations pilot tested, gather data, see what’s working, and feed that data back into the policy process so that we’re really contributing in a more direct and meaningful way to all of these big questions we’re facing as a society right now, around democracy and the success of policymaking to meet people’s essential needs.
IC: Which communities or groups do you find do not have a say in policymaking?
AL: Young people. We know that they are systematically less likely to turn out to vote, or to contribute money to campaigns, or write letters to elected officials. But it’s also low-income folks, both in urban areas and rural areas, crossing the partisan divide. It includes communities of color, as we know that there’s a racial distinction in who turns out to vote. We are really thinking about how we don’t just wait for elections to happen, but we really meet people where they are.
IC: Do you focus on getting more people to vote?
AL: Not really. We think that’s really important, yes, but there are lots of people working on that. Our contribution, hopefully, is thinking about all of the ways that we can engage people in policy-making between elections. We want to engage people in ways that don’t just rely on elected officials to do all of the hard work of democracy. We need to bring people in so that we can leverage the expertise that they have about what’s going on in their communities, because they’re the real experts about what they need. We do policymaking better if we can bring that expertise together in order to help inform where we’re going as a state, as a nation, as a global economy.
IC: The Indian diaspora was the fastest growing in the U.S., but new immigration policies – like the H1-B fees and falling international students enrollments in universities – could change that. Yet, there’s a generation that’s all American, born and raised here, but still identify with the ethnic community. Immigrant communities will always be in flux. Have you found these communities harder to reach, to get their voices in policy-making?
AL: It varies even within the community; some parts of the community are really engaged in power, while others feel really disenfranchised, or even scared of what’s happening. This is especially true if they are here on a visa or a green card, and their immigration status is uncertain. I think there’s just a huge variation in terms of how you reach people and how you meet them where they are.
What we’re seeing right now is a generation of young people across the board who are just feeling much more uncertain about what they can count on. This uncertainty involves immigration, social services, the job market, and the labor changes that will happen with Gen AI. They are growing up at a time when they are both overwhelmed with information and also don’t have really solid information about what their futures will look like. This is really scary. It’s a moment where we need to be in conversation across exactly those lines of difference: generational differences, economic differences, and immigration differences. Policy is fundamentally about agreeing on what we want and how to get there.
IC: What advice would you give to local organizations that work with and in their communities? How should they engage?
AL: I think we have to be working together, and we have to be working with unusual allies. It’s not enough anymore just to talk to the people in your own community or who look like you, think like you. We’ve become so siloed in terms of the communities that we talk to. Find somebody who is really an unlikely ally and find the things you have in common. There are so many things that we have in common, so many more than the things that we feel like are the things that divide us. Those are the folks we need to be in conversation with and working with.
This article was produced as part of the American Community Media (ACoM) California Connects – San Francisco Regional Fellowship.
