For Communities to Work

In For Communities to Work, David Mathews presents a broad framework intended as background for civic organizations that want to look at the state of the public in their communities. He explains how private individuals become public citizens and how publics form. The process of reinvigorating citizens in communities requires generating the political will for “public work,” or the work of citizens with each other.

David Mathews, secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Ford administration and a former president of The University of Alabama, is president of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.