Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to you because we believe you have much to contribute to the
conversations surrounding what we are calling “Writing Democracy.” The first
conference of Writing Democracy took place at Texas A&M-Commerce, March 9-11,
2011. Over 150 scholars, students, and community members convened to explore
existing and possible ways we can "write democracy" in the United States. We heard
from John Duffy (Notre Dame University), Michelle Hall Kells (University of New
Mexico), Nancy Welch (University of Vermont), David Alton Jolliffe (University of
Arkansas at Fayetteville) Jerrold Hirsch (Truman State University), Elenore Long
(Arizona State University), and David Gold (University of Tennessee), as well as
many others from across the country at concurrent sessions. Inspired by the Federal
Writers' Project in the 1930s and calls for ethical discourse responsive to local
conditions and global realities, conference participants looked at place, history, local
publics, and popular movements in an attempt to understand and promote
democracy through research, writing, and action.

As part of the project of writing a "new roadmap for the cultural rediscovery of
America" as the Federal Writers did 75 years ago during the Great Depression,
Writing Democracy is committed to helping to create rhetorical space to combat
what Welch terms "la lange de bois" (wooden language) of neoliberal policy.
Together we decided that our first task is to explore, discuss, and debate what
Writing Democracy looks like as we encounter the new realities of the 21st century,
including the unfolding disaster in Japan that hit on the final day of our conference.
As we sat in conference rooms in rural Commerce, Texas, bringing together local
stories of change spurred by an alliance of students and community members
"writing against" racism in the 1970s, the global news of the earthquake interceded
through our smart phones and iPads. Confronted by an uncertain future threatened
by environmental and economic crisis, we looked to our past, our present, and each
other to imagine how we as scholars, students, and citizens can contribute to
reinvigorating democracy through research, writing, and local and global
engagement. We saw many models of democracy in action across the country--here
and there, then and now--that will inform the ongoing discussion we hope will take
place through Writing Democracy. 

As Featured Panelist Tim Dawson (Carnegie Melon) explains in his post at the blog
cited below, “I am excited by the vision of an interdisciplinary focus on supporting,
documenting, and researching public academic work that springs from and in his
embedded within strong university-community partnership. Grounding this
initiative in a focus on public work inspired by the felt and expressed needs of
community partners may help to distinguish this effort from other initiatives in our
many disciplines. With this in mind, I propose that we need our community partners
involved in helping to articulate a visions for what the Writing Democracy initiative
can be.”
We do too. Indeed, what does Writing Democracy look like? What can the Writing
Democracy initiative be?

It is our profound hope that the conversations described above will continue long
past our March 2011 meeting. We hope you will join us in these efforts by
participating from the ground up in shaping a project—national, perhaps
international—that might achieve some of what the FWP achieved in the 1930s. To
that end, here are a few announcements:

 The Writing Democracy website has been updated, the conference archived,
and the Project announced: http://writingdemocracy.weebly.com/.

 A blog has been created and the first post by Tim Dawson (Deliberative
Democracy) uploaded. Accessible through the website, it can also be accessed
at http://www.writingdemocracy.org

 We will be meeting at CCCC in Atlanta at 8 p.m., Friday, April 8, in the

Local Committee Chair Mary Hocks’ suite in the Marriott (room to be
announced).

In addition to the above venues for continued conversations, we hope you will make
use of the conference proceedings scheduled to appear in the Fall 2012 issue of
Community Literacy Journal entitled “Writing Democracy” and co-edited by Shannon
Carter and Deborah Mutnick. For additional details, please see the complete “Call for
Submissions” at writingdemocracy.org.

We encourage you to forward this invitation to others you think may be interested
in the Writing Democracy project. We know there is so much to learn from the
amazing work already well established for rich university-community partnerships
across the country.

Yours truly,

Shannon Carter Deborah Mutnick