The Roosevelt Institution
* Community Development * Democracy * Justice *
2007-2008 challenges:
The Challenge: promote responsible community development.
Strong communities are central to the progressive vision of America. An individual can only develop through the diverse contributions of a whole community, including healthy physical, human, and economic landscapes; and without the opportunity to participate in and contribute back to the community the individual cannot be truly fulfilled.
Community development involves building community resources and leveraging them to provide affordable housing, safe streets, good schools, efficient an environmentally-friendly transportation, opportunities to find employment and build assets, safe and useful public spaces, a clean environment, and access to resources like clinics, grocery stores, and childcare.
The Challenge: improve civic participation, and improve the electoral process.
The United States rest upon the idea of representation. We select our leaders because if we didn’t, our government wouldn’t reflect our values. Today, millions of Americans don’t vote because their vote isn’t reflected in policy, and their values are misrepresented. And when some of us are misrepresented, all of us are misrepresented. When barriers stand in the way of American voters, barriers stand in the way of truly “public” policy. When the electoral process is imprecise, the government is imprecise. Before we can effect real change, we must make our votes count. The Roosevelt Institution seeks the
The Challenge: ensure that the criminal justice system strengthens our communities and delivers justice for all.
Crime is an incredibly destructive force in our communities -- particularly drug crime, with crack in the cities and meth in the countryside ravaging economies and destroying families. Unfortunately, too often the criminal justice system helps, rather than hurting, these problems. Harsh incarceration policies do not treat addiction, but they do separate parents from children, suck up budget dollars that could be spent on education or crime prevention, destroy career opportunities for incarcerated individuals, and exactly in the process of eliminating their other opportunities it gives them the cultural and social prerequisites for a life of crime.
At the same time, the justice system itself is filled with injustice. The death penalty, unequal access to legal aid, judicial elections financed by those with interests before the court, unequal sentencing laws, and racial profiling, are just some of the unfairnesses within the system.
* The Energy Crisis * Access to Higher Education * Working Families *
For the academic year 2006-2007, using public policy as their vehicle, the Roosevelt Institution challenges students to . . .
Past Proposed Challenges
2007 finalists that were not chosen
Other 2007-2008 Proposed Challenges
2007-2008 proposed challenges for the MacArthur social contract project
Other 2006-2007 Proposed Challenges