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Univision, the premier media company serving the U.S. Hispanic community, announces that it will host a Historic Education Town Hall with with President Barack Obama that will be taped and then later aired as a television news special entitled Univision News Presents: The Moment is Now - The President, Hispanics and Education. The Town Hall will be held on Monday, March 28, 2011 and hosted by Univision's news anchor Jorge Ramos at the following location: Bell Multicultural High School 3101 16 Street, NW 9405 Washington, DC 20010 The Town Hall event will give President Barack Obama the opportunity to engage with students, parents and teachers about education and Hispanic educational achievement. The event will also focus on better preparing students for college and 21st century careers, greater parental engagement in education, and the politics of reforming the educational system according to a Press Release. The Town Hall will be taped at Bell Multicultural High School from from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. EDT and will air without commercial interruptions at 7 p.m. EDT/PDT, 6 p.m. CDT on the Univision Network, and closed-captioned in English on CC3 where available. The event will also be streamed online at www.EsElMomento.com in English and Spanish as well as simulcast on Univision Radio in Spanish. PRESS INFORMATION: Beginning at 8 a.m. EDT although subject to change, pre-registered members of the press are invited to cover and will have access to wi-fi, a mult box and feed to the Town Hall taping. In addition, refreshments will be served. It is asked that all media RSVP by Saturday, March 26. RSVP/CONTACTS: Carolina Valencia - (646) 673-6494, cvalencia@unvision.net Paula Alvarez - (347) 268-7408, pmalvarez@univision.net ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: In the lead up to the Town Hall, students, parents and teachers will have the opportunity to submit an education-related question for President Obama. Questions can be submitted to Univision until Sunday, March 27, 2011 thro

The purpose of this article is to examine the authors' experiences while trying to enter and engage local communities in bottom-up literacies through participatory action research (PAR) toward the community's own collective self-development. In trying to enter five different communities, I have found several challenges and roadblocks such as mistrust of 'university people': legacy of the conventional outside-in and top-down research procedures for working in communities; power struggles with community 'gatekeepers', including 'building keepers'; and bureaucratized project-driven community work. I consider that under the current neoliberal educational policies that are plaguing the world, for example, No Child Left Behind in the USA, self-development projects promoted through PAR can be viable ways to defy these policies and their fatalist thinking. School children's parents and their communities are nowadays in a better position than teachers to fight for reclaiming local control of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

When political actors and international relations scholars invoke 'the international community', the term is commonly framed very loosely. It is used either as a reference to the norms of international politics or, according to its composition, as a coalition of concerned actors. This article, by contrast, argues that it is the interplay of image and practice of the term's invocation that shapes its multi-faceted character. 'The international community' can be used by many different groups, state and non-state alike, to locate their political goals in the context of a wider array of values. Usually, these norms are state related and can be used to simulate political relevance. Conversely, actors defying widely accepted values can be excluded and policy against them legitimized. Addressing domestic as well as international audiences, the claim to be acting as, or on behalf of, 'the international community' is mostly virtual but has definite political consequences.

Everyday use of communication technologies within social networks for civic and civil behaviors The structure of people's social networks predicts democratic engagement. However, the relative contribution of different types of social ties to civic and civil behaviors is unclear. This paper explores the role of core networks - bonding social capital - to the role of overall network diversity - bridging social capital - for participation in formal civic institutions and informal civil behaviors. Emphasis is placed on the possible role of heterogeneity within core networks - political disagreement and the presence of nonkin ties - and on frequency of interaction, in-person and mediated: mobile phone and the Internet. This study finds that overall network diversity is a more consistent and substantive predictor of civic and civil behaviors than the size or heterogeneity of the small number of ties that make up the core network of most people.

"Recently, theorists have sought to justify transnational democracy by means of the all-affected principle, which claims that people have a right to participate in political decision-making that affects them. I argue that this principle is neither logically valid nor feasible as a way of determining the boundaries of democratic communities. First, specifying what it means to be affected is itself a highly political issue, since it must rest on some disputable theory of interests; and the principle does not solve the problem of how to legitimately constitute the demos, since such acts, too, are decisions which affect people. Furthermore, applying the principle comes at too high a cost: either political boundaries must be redrawn for each issue at stake or we must ensure that democratic politics only has consequences within an enclosed community and that it affects its members equally. Secondly, I discuss three possible replacements for the all-affected principle: (a) applying the all-affected principle to second-order rules, not to decisions; (b) drawing boundaries so as to maximise everyone's autonomy; (c) including everyone who is subject to the law. I conclude by exploring whether (c) would support transnational democracy to the extent that a global legal order is emerging."

"The past three decades have seen the resurgence of China's civil society through the blossoming of NGOs that campaign for various marginalised interests, including environmental protection. Many studies have examined the co-evolution of the Internet and China's civil society. This paper examines the role of the Internet in strengthening grassroots environmental activism, taking into consideration the corporatised character of Chinese NGOs. Through a detailed ethnographic case study of a leading grassroots environmental group, the Global Village of Beijing (GVB), I argue that Internet technologies effectively empower resource-poor activists in their self-representation, information brokering, network building, public mobilisation and construction of discourse communities. The Net therefore contributes to the nascent formation of a green public sphere in China by fostering a discourse that counterbalances rapid economic development. Also discussed here are issues that hamper this process, including resource limitations, the fragmentation of online discourse communities, and the marginalisation and "caging" of environmental discourse."

Aimed at reinforcing the democratic values of freedom of speech and increased diversity in civic access to the means of communication, this paper examines the concept of democracy within an information and communication technology-mediated context. Discus

Broad and diverse civic participation is essential to a democratic society. Studies of opinion leadership show that politically active citizens report that Internet information and communication helped increase civic involvement by enabling them to keep u

What if we listened to issues with the same level of attention we bring to music? What if we participated in our democratic forums and processes like practiced musicians? Using music as a model, are there ways we could improve the quality of discourse in our communities and our country?

"Dual/multiple citizenship has become a widespread phenomenon in many parts of the world. This acceptance or tolerance of overlapping memberships in political communities represents an important element in the ongoing readjustment of the relationship between citizens and political communities in democratic systems. This article has two goals and parts. First, it evaluates dual citizenship from the perspective of five normative theories of democracy. Liberal and republican as well as multicultural and deliberative understandings of democracy deliver a broad spectrum of arguments in favour of dual citizenship. Only communitarians fear that dual citizenship endangers national democracies. Nevertheless, empirical evidence and national policies largely contradict these fears. The second part of the article reverses the perspective and shows that most theories of democracy do not only legitimate and facilitate the acceptance of dual citizenship - the phenomenon of multiple citizenships induces innovation in democratic theory in turn. A second look at the relationship between dual citizenship and theories of democracy reveals that dual citizenship stimulates refinements, expansions and reconceptualisations of these theories for a transnationalising world."

The progress of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in post-Socialist countries is characterized by uneven economic and technological development, thus leading to contradictory results. Both industry and the social/cultural policies of these

Based on ethnographic research conducted with the Network of Healthy Communities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this article examines how grassroots leaders have sought networks and partnerships as a strategy to amplify and strengthen their work, particularly

Introducing certain correctives to Beck's `cosmopolitan manifesto', I explore the complexities of second modern communicative agency and the constitution of the reflexive, socio-technical subject.

The Labour government's stated commitment to shifting the balance of power to communities, citizens and users has been expressed in numerous initiatives to promote participatory governance in the local state. In this context achieving reliable ways of lea

ASEAN's new November 2007 Charter constitutes an effort to move beyond sovereignty protection to economic, political-security and socio-cultural communities by 2020. The Charter also commits its signatories to democracy (for the first time) and human righ

SANTIAGO, Apr 10 (IPS) - Over 70 percent of community leaders in Chilean shanty towns are women. Their average age is 42, and most of them do not identify with any political party. Forty-five percent believe that the prevailing economic system makes the r

Although history has shown us that the church plays a role in the political liberalization of non-democratic countries, the nature of the church's role and how it participates in politics has yet to be fully revealed. By revisiting the Polish Church's historic role in the collapse of communism, I argue that we have overestimated the church's effect on political liberalization in that case, which has led us to neglect or be prematurely disappointed in its role in the remaining communist countries such as in Cuba. Drawing from the Polish case, I conclude that the church's moral, self-limiting, and transnational character needs to be recognized and incorporated into a general theory of democratization. It is this aspect of the church that has helped it to remain active within remaining communist societies, and provide the moral support that is an integral part of political liberalization processes.

"Although much prized in daily conversation, good listening has been almost completely ignored in that form of political conversation we know as democracy. Practically all the attention has been paid to speaking, both in terms of the skills to be developed and the ways in which we should understand what enhancing 'inclusion' might mean (i.e. getting more people to speak). The argument here is that both democratic theory and democratic practice would be reinvigorated by attention to listening. To ask why listening has been ignored is to inquire into the very nature of politics, and to suggest a range of ways in which listening could both improve political processes (particularly democratic ones) and enhance our understanding of them - including where they do not always work as well as we might want them to. Four ways in which good listening can help achieve democratic objectives are outlined: enhancing legitimacy, helping to deal with deep disagreements, improving understanding and increasing empowerment. This leads to a discussion of the difference between good and bad political listening, before the question of 'political noise' is broached (i.e. what we should be listening for). Finally, the listening lacuna in Habermas' theory of communicative rationality is pointed out, leading to a discussion of the potential analytic power of listening in relation to deliberative democracy in general and one citizens' jury case in particular."

"Climate change has come to hold a central position within many policy arenas. However, a particular framing of climate change and climate science, underpinned by modernist assumptions, dominates policy discourse. This leads to restricted policy responses reflecting particular interests and socio-political imaginaries. There is little public debate concerning this framing or the assumptions underpinning approaches to climate policy. The implications of this are illustrated by considering the ways in which UK planning policy has adapted to reflect commitments to mitigate climate change. It is shown that the importance attributed to climate change mitigation has had negative impacts on democratic involvement in planning processes. Given the uncertainty and high stakes of climate science (typical of post-normal science), value may be gained by incorporating the views and perspectives of 'extended peer communities', to question not only the processes and findings of climate science but also the ways in which the science is interpreted and responded to through policy."

"The article proposes an interdisciplinary introduction to the notion of the political world as farce. More exactly, it advances the argument that, despite experiencing the world as a joke of cosmic proportions, an individual can still create meaning even in the most meaningless conditions (concentration camps, totalitarian societies, etc.). The article traces the presence of the topic in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Primo Levi's Se questo è un uomo and discusses the particular case of Milan Kundera, for whom the historical world appears as nothing but a cruel joke. The treatment of the topic is framed in relation to the theologia ludens tradition, the theatrical elements of Communism, as well as the process of meaning creation in conditions of meaninglessness."