{"id":799,"date":"2019-09-22T12:47:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-22T16:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/?p=799"},"modified":"2019-09-22T12:47:22","modified_gmt":"2019-09-22T16:47:22","slug":"citizen-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/2019\/09\/22\/citizen-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizen Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think many people who read Cheryl Mabey\u2019s article would be upset. For so long, people in our country have become disenfranchised with our leadership and continually blame the system and elected leaders for failing them. We have given so much power to our leaders that we allow ourselves to feel helpless and that our country\u2019s issues are beyond our control. We continue to wait for some magical superhero leader to swoop in and make everything perfect. I\u2019m inclined to agree with Mabey that this is a cop out.<\/span><\/p>\n

By giving our leaders so much power, we do ourselves a disservice. In believing that we aren\u2019t smart enough or resourceful enough or rich enough to fix the problems within our communities or our country we are thinking too little of our abilities. As Mabey states, \u201cthe persistent belief that \u2018professionals\u2019 or \u2018experts know more and should tell others what to do paralyze many community initiatives\u201d (315). When we think about it, who knows our communities better than we do? We are the experts and we must learn to challenge this idea that someone else can do a better job than we can.<\/span><\/p>\n

But how do we do this? Firstly, we redefine what it means to be a leader. As noted by both Mabey and Gardner, we often conflate authority with leadership. You don\u2019t need to have an official title to be a leader. There are informal leaders in so many places that are way more influential than the people we think of as leaders just based on their title. Secondly, we learn how to be a citizen leader. As citizen leaders, we must be knowledgeable about what we\u2019re advocating for and how the system we\u2019re working within operates. Then, we must take that knowledge and put it into action. Mabey summarizes it well: \u201cknowledge is insufficient without action\u201d (316). We have become complacent with complaining about our problems instead of taking action to fix them ourselves and we can\u2019t afford to do that anymore. It is time that we recognize our potential as citizen leaders and utilize our potential to enact the change we keep expecting someone else to. The reality of the situation is that no one person will be able to solve all of our problems; we need to step up and do it ourselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think many people who read Cheryl Mabey\u2019s article would be upset. For so long, people in our country have become disenfranchised with our leadership…<\/p>\n

Continue readingCitizen Leadership<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4446,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104805,103392],"class_list":["post-799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-104805","tag-12-04","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4446"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}