Part of the problem is the vocabulary.

I live in a community. So does everyone. I buy food, pay bills, etc. as an adult. Children are in school.

Exactly who is not "engaged". -- I know well that your rarified vocabulary is selected to specificially articulate and enunciate quantifiable social behavior for the purpose of making impactful change upon our behavioral norms. However, if you talk like that, you paint yourself into a corner. The people you need to reach don't talk like that.

If you want to talk about voter registration and turnout for 18 to 25 year olds, do so without a more complex vocabulary.

If you want to talk about volunteer board participation such as Friends of the Library, the Children and Youth Commission, the Planning Commission, etc. - do so in concrete down to earth language.

As long as you talk about these issues in a manner requiring an advanced education, you will have limited success.

Why is it "discouraging" that, among other things, more people are living alone? Isn't that at least in part because more people can live alone, and isn't that option being available, on balance, a good thing? Or are we to revert back to the days when marriage was perceived as the only viable option for a majority of women? Personally, I'm encouraged by findings that people are less connected to religious groups, given the religious underpinnings of so much bigotry and racism, past and present.

One thing I hope liberals and progressives will consider as a factor in whatever disengagement exists is the disengagement that results from excessive concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. People's habits of political participation have declined as more and more political power has migrated away from local governments and to Washington. Liberals bear the lion's share of responsibility for this migration. It's awfully hard to be engaged when more and more of the decisions that affect your life, your family, and your community rest in the hands of a precious few elected officials and the lobbyists who have access to them. Yet liberals tend to treat "federalism" as a dirty word. When a state like Oregon has to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to validate a legitmate statute like the assisted suicide measure passed by voters, there's a problem with our system of government. It's no wonder "every-day folks" feel largely powerless to affect change and disengage as a result.

I hope the conference also examines the economic influences on "involvement," however defined.

While there are obviously still many people living in poverty, the vast majority are not. For these folks, the conventional view is that life is too complicated -- too many things to do, too much clutter, too much "stuff." They are not worried about the basics -- food, clothing and shelter. They are overwhelmed with choices of consumer goods and services. They don't think they have room for much more "involvement" in their lives.

I wonder: is this the inevitable result of a consumer society that's reasonably successful economically? Does capitalism sow the seeds of its own destruction by enabling people to consume far more than they "need" and in the process using up more non-renewable resources than could possibly be sustained by the rest of the world?

A case could be made that people in general are reasonably satisfied economically and are therefore not motivated to rock the boat. Just a hypothesis.

It's not too hard for those of us who are engaged to see that some major changes are needed to avoid serious emergencies in environment, raw materials, health care, etc. To speak out risks being labeled as Chicken Little. It's a terrible conundrum, no?

Another issue to consider is clique-ishness within specific groups. I volunteered with quite a few different groups in Oregon in the 8 years I lived there, and with one excellent exception - Albina Head Start - my time was usually wasted. There was invariably a close-knit group of insiders who really used volunteers as windowdressing. When I moved to a mid-West city, I right away plugged into a group starting up a major civic project, one that's been rewarding for me and for the city, and is already expanding. Much as I miss Oregon in many ways, I could never have had this experience there.

To Anonymous in mid-west: thank you for belling the cat.

I was for yrs a volunteer organizer in Deep South, in no moment conveyed anything but humble gratitude to worker bee volunteers or potential volunteers we kept accumulating year after year after year. If a potential volunteer contacted me, I was damn near ready to write THEM a check, I was so grateful.

Alabama, Chicago, Michigan, Florida... nowhere -- ever -- have I found self in a locale w/ attitude like Portland's: at present at least, consistently prides itself on grassroots activism while just as consistently throws up disinterested walls vs. potential volunteers.

After moving here over 2 years ago, I was alert to requests for volunteer help in various venues. Again and again and again I responded to pleas for volunteers precisely as stipulated -- left phone messages, sent e-mails, responded via websites.... I went to publicized fundraisers, where I wrote checks as donations then stood watching my contact information carefully recorded.

Most of 18 months during which I got not one response -- ever -- to my queries about volunteering?? Never once an acknowledgement of donations I'd made?? Not once added to a mailing list or e-mail list of local chapters or organizations to which I'd donated? While I ongoingly saw in local periodicals stories about worthy up-hill work and dire needs... of the very organizations to which I'd donated????

I was finally puzzling aloud to acquaintances here about the diss-connect between publicized need vs. actuality of non-response. I learned quickly that it's a cynical dynamic I'm far, far from alone in having noted. I gathered it's just accepted, do-gooder nonsense. I know it's by even most minimal organizing measure patently unacceptable.

Damnedest thing I've ever observed, so pervasive it still fascinates me. I've of course let it go, happened to benefit from experience and history so didn't for a minute take personally that which I knew as organizational dynamics. (What's not widely known is that recently a dear woman who relocated here a year ago, tried and tried to get callbacks about volunteering, determined to involve herself... she committed suicide.)

I stopped before I got sour. Why go there? The silence was at first curiously baffling, the accumulation of silences finally fascinating. And the non-response to donations plain STUPID.... Felt as if I'd spent many months tracking and mapping a FEMA model for Portland non-profits.

Even here I'm embarrassed admitting it took me so long to get the message from Portland. I'm there.

I have no clue if the problem in Portland is about cliques, volunteers as window dressing... I don't doubt those things are true here and signify. But I suspect those are symptoms, upshots of dysfunction -- ineffectual leadership is most often the prime suspect. Ineffective leaders eventually operate out of fear of being exposed as ineffective, MUST dominate, keep death-grip on what happens, who's allowed and who's not. I doubt cliques and window-dressing volunteers are a matter of anyone's conscious intent. People well-led, people kept busy and focussed seeing selves as what they are: crucial parts in an engine pursuing expressly clear, shared destination and goals... Organizing means organized. Keeping people proud of selves, ongoingly acknowledged for their help and work and donations. That's the only model I've seen work. Frankly, Portland has taught me something important: I have no toleranc for volunteer involvements that don't make at least a lick of sense.