Civil Society Leader in Sri Lanka S.Janarthanan, Sri Lanka Member of Parliament Gnanamuttu Sirinesan, Former North Carolina Congressman Wiley Nickel, Human Rights Lawyer Rajeev Sreetharan, North Carolina Congresswoman Deborah Ross and Indian Tamil activist P. Maniarasan sitting on stage at this year’s Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America convention in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Article was updated at 1:20 pm EST on 8/24/25
Ten years ago, former U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel, D-NC, met another father at a playground to supervise a playdate between their two children. The other father told Nickel about how he came to the U.S. in 1995 after fleeing a 26-year ethnic war in Sri Lanka that facilitated the mass murder of thousands of Eelam Tamil people. He also told Nickel that the international community has not acknowledged the act as a genocide.
The father soon became an Eelam Tamil activist in the U.S. He was also one of the key inspirations for Nickel to introduce a bill in May 2024 to have the U.S. government recognize the ethnic bloodshed in South Asia as a genocide, and support Eelam Tamil people’s calls for self-determination. The activist’s identity has been kept anonymous because his safety will be at risk when visiting his family in Sri Lanka if publicly connected with Tamil advocacy.
The father was among many who successfully advocated for his U.S. representatives in North Carolina to introduce legislation on recognizing the Tamil people’s struggles and calls for self-determination. Though all three bills died in committee, North Carolina is the only state to have introduced legislation on this subject three times because of a vocal set of advocates and legislators who have listened to the Eelam Tamil communities within their constituencies. Congresswoman Deborah Ross, D-N.C., told the Fulcrum that she is actively educating her colleagues and building more bipartisan support for future legislation.
The anonymous activist’s advocacy began around 2018 as one of the founding members of the Tamil PAC , though the organization didn’t formalize till 2020.
“I didn't know anything other than the force of full-scale war. Every other day or every day, somebody is killed by shellings … that's the life I lived. And I thought that's normal, you know, because I was born there,” the activist said. “The transition happened when I moved to America, and then it opened up my eyes to how other people live and the opportunities. We need peace. To have peace, we need to work toward a political solution to an independence referendum, just trying to take small steps every day.”
A nationwide PAC now, the Tamil PAC began in North Carolina, and it, along with other organizations like the World Thamil Organization based in North Carolina, is a large part of the reason the state’s lawmakers are the most vocal in the U.S. on this subject.
“This started with just one person on a playground, watching our kids play, talking about Sri Lanka, a place that I'd never visited,” Nickel said in an interview with the Fulcrum. “It just shows you the power of advocacy. It just takes a few people who are passionate about an issue to make real change in Washington.”
“And I think that's what you see here in the [North Carolina’s Research] triangle, is a smaller group, but a very, very vocal group who's demanding change.”
The history of the Eelam Tamil people
The Tamil people are indigenous to South India and what is now northern and eastern Sri Lanka. For roughly 400 years, the Tamil people presided over the Jaffna Kingdom in that region. In 1619, colonial expansion reached the kingdom, and the Portuguese invaded the land. The land and its people changed hands many times, first to the Dutch and then later to the British.
After World War II, the British ended their colonization of Sri Lanka. But, instead of recognizing the previously separate states of the Eelam Tamil people and the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, they merged the land mass that the two groups previously occupied separately, and the state for Tamil people was erased. In the years after Sri Lanka’s independence, the Tamil people in Sri Lanka faced increasing persecution.
From the mid-1950s onward, the Tamil people faced several massacres. During the first ones, in 1956 and 1958 , a total of between 600 and 1,800 Tamil people were killed. Peaceful protests were met with violent suppression, mass murder, brutal assaults, and rape of the Eelam Tamil people. At the same time, Sri Lankan officials turned a blind eye or sponsored and participated in the violence.
In the wake of increasing state-sponsored violence against the Eelam Tamil people, many resistance groups emerged. Among them was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE was born in the 1970s as a Tamil militant organization and resistance group that Western powers and the Sri Lankan government deemed a terrorist organization. But for many Eelam Tamil youth, the LTTE and other resistance groups who were seeking an independent state represented a more effective avenue of resistance, according to Tamil Sri Lankan Member of Parliament Gnanamuttu Sirinesan.
“Because these truths were hidden and injustice was done to the Tamil people, Tamil youth after 1980 felt that dialogue with this government was no longer possible. They believed that only by taking up arms and fighting, could they achieve liberation, and that’s how the Tamil movements and liberation groups like the LTTE were formed,” Sirinesan said in an interview with the Fulcrum. “The reason for this is that, for 30 years, leaders like Thanthai Chelvanayagam , Amirthalingam , and Sivasithamparam fought democratically for Tamil rights, but nothing was achieved.”
Sirinesan spoke with the Fulcrum at this year’s Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America convention in Raleigh, North Carolina.
People for Equality and Relief in Lanka ( PEARL ) is a grassroots organization of human rights activists researching human rights violations against the Eelam Tamil people, working with representatives, legislators, and politicians from the U.N. to the E.U. to improve human rights conditions in Sri Lanka. They have documented evidence and legal analysis for international organizations like the U.N. and individual nations to officially recognize the 1983 Black July and the 2009 Mullivaikkal massacre as genocide.
In 1983, mobs of Sinhalese people committed a state-sponsored, pre-planned mass murder of over 3,000 Tamil people between July 23-30, and the month has since been referred to as Black July or the 1983 pogroms. The 1983 pogrom occurred right after members of the LTTE killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in an ambush in Jaffna on July 23, 1983. Though the Sri Lankan government cited the ambush as the reason for the pogrom, evidence has mounted proving intent for mass murder prior to the ambush.
The pogrom became the catalyst for a 26-year ethnic war between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government, where the Sri Lankan government routinely bombed Tamil-majority spaces, and the LTTE built a de facto state with a navy and courts, employed guerilla warfare and carried out suicide bombings in their resistance.
Ilangovan Veerasingam was nine years old when his home and his father’s business were destroyed during the 1983 Black July massacre. Veerasingham, who later immigrated to the U.S., expressed frustration with how Eelam Tamil advocacy often gets conflated with terrorism.
“No Tamil is here with the bullet. I mean, the LTTE said we should silence the gun. That's the official communication that came out last, if you go back and check. That's the excuse that Western leaders were portraying: LTTE is holding [Eelam Tamil civilians] as human shields, and all the same narrative you get in Gaza, right? The UN failed us. All the Western governments failed us. I mean, the whole world failed us,” Veerasingam, who spoke with the Fulcrum at this year’s Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America convention in Raleigh, North Carolina, said.
Veerasingam is another Eelam Tamil activist with the Tamil PAC.
The Indian government funded a ship that transported Veerasingam and others from Colombo, western Sri Lanka, to Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka. But as the violence in Tamil-majority areas like Jaffna increased, his family moved around from Colombo to India and back before leaving for the U.S. in 1996.
“I remember when we were trying to go to the school, my dad was going to drop us in his car, and we're just getting the news about some army attack by the LTTE in Jaffna. And now there's a repercussion that is going to happen [by the Sri Lankan government],” Veerasingam said. “That week or two kind of changed my life. And we got our house burned, my dad lost his business.”
What followed was the 26-year ethnic war between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government that culminated in the Mullivaikkal massacre in 2009, where many Eelam Tamil people were funneled into no-fire zones and then shelled by the Sri Lankan military, leaving somewhere between 70,000 to 140,000 civilians dead . The variance in numbers is because the Sri Lankan government has not faced international oversight for the killing of the Eelam Tamil people; many Eelam people still have loved ones who are missing, and mass graves are still discovered.
A recent excavation project in Chemmani revealed skeletal remains, and 126 bodies have since been discovered as of Aug. 2. The site was officially declared a mass grave by the Sri Lankan government. Many Eelam Tamil people believe the Chemmani mass grave holds the remains of some of the still 20,000 people missing.
Sirinesan shared how the murder of an Eelam Tamil schoolgirl named Krishanti Kumaraswamy in 1996 led to an admission from Corporal Somaratne Rajapakse, the man who kidnapped her, in 1998 that hundreds of Eelam Tamil people were buried in Chemmani.
Kumuraswamy was repeatedly sexually assaulted, tortured and murdered by her army captors. Her family and neighbor who came looking for her were also murdered and the military placed their bodies in a shallow grave in Chemmani.
“At that time, this issue was brought up internationally on a large scale, so Rajapakse was arrested, investigated, and given the death sentence. However, he revealed many truths. In that place, 600 people have been buried, it is said, beaten with shovels to death, tortured, and sexually assaulted,” Sirinesan said. “He also revealed the names of the army officers who did these things, but no action was taken against them. They were not punished.”
Such inaction from the Sri Lankan government has led many Eelam Tamil people to believe that the government will obstruct investigations despite the discovery of the Chemmani mass grave.
The anonymous activist said he believes at least three people he knows, Senthilnathan, Anthony Juslin, and Jebathevan, are in the Chemmani mass grave. He wanted people to remember them, know their names.
“They're not here to voice, so I have to [be a] voice for them, so that [their] stories are still heard,” he said. “People think there are hundreds of people in that grave. But, the Sri Lanka government won't do proper investigations.”
The history of Tamil PAC and Ongoing Efforts with U.S. Lawmakers
In 2017 and 2018, Veerasingam, the anonymous activist, and other Tamil people in North Carolina started informally organizing for the U.S. to recognize the persecution of Eelam Tamil people as genocide and their calls for self-determination. By 2020, the organization had formalized. As Nickel learned more about the anonymous activist’s past and the history of the Eelam Tamil people, he helped the activists further their cause among legislators, Veerasingam said.
“Wiley has been the champion … He has been supporting us all the way, introducing us to other legislators. This is a paradigm shift. This must be. This will be a case study. It's only a small group of people, not a large number,” Veerasingam said. “There's always somebody listening to you. Not everybody's bad. Not every legislator is going to turn [their] back.”
Before Wiley was elected to Congress, North Carolina Congresswoman Deborah Ross, D-N.C., alongside former Rep. Bill Johnson, R-OH, introduced legislation in 2021 and 2023 for the U.S. to recognize the struggles of the Tamil minority at the hands of the Sri Lankan government. The legislation never left Congressional committees either time.
Nickel’s May 2024 bill would have gone further in recognizing the Sri Lankan government’s killing of Tamil people as a genocide. However, it also died in committee. Both Ross and Nickel introduced their legislation on May 18, the annual remembrance day for the Mullivaikkal massacre.
Though all legislative attempts to recognize the genocide of the Eelam Tamil people have failed to pass thus far, these lawmakers have persisted in their relationships with their Tamil constituents in hopes of reintroducing legislation with more bipartisan support.
In December 2021, Ross helped coordinate a hearing with the Tom Lantos Commission on Human Rights on 'Accountability and Human Rights in Sri Lanka.’
“The chair of that Lantos Commission, the one that deals with human rights, was a Democrat, and he allowed me to have that platform, but the Republican chairman would not allow me to have that platform,” Ross said. “So what we are trying to do now is have more Republican Congress … because there's no way it will get through committee, or that you would even get a hearing like the hearing I got if the Republicans do not agree.”
Veerasingam said the advocacy for recognizing the genocide and calls for self-determination is something he and his peers see as “one of the important things in our life.”
“We couldn't save the people, but at least for the future generation, you know, it's a cliche. You're leaving a much better world than what you saw. That keeps you going,” he said. “I'm a survivor, but you know, there are people who have gone through hell. So, compared to that, I got out at the right time. Working with many of the other people, we think we are doing one of the important things in our life.”
Atmika Iyer is a graduate student in Northwestern Medill’s Politics, Policy, and Foreign Affairs reporting program. Atmika is also a journalism intern with the Fulcrum .
To read more of Atmika's work, click HERE.
The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. Learn how by clicking HERE. .
Anchor Tuscaloosa participants gain greater knowledge of the area’s economic, social, historical, and political issues and needs.
An initiative designed to encourage college graduates to stay in West Alabama offers another lesson: Democracy grows stronger when students become part of the communities they call home.
“We are excited that you want to learn more about how Anchor Tuscaloosa can support your career development and help you build meaningful connections within our community.”
Those words appeared in my inbox on November 20, 2025, in an email inviting me to interview for the second cohort of Anchor Tuscaloosa. It was a welcome invitation, but one phrase caught my attention: meaningful connections within our community.
As an international student from northern Nigeria pursuing my Ph.D. at the University of Alabama, I have experienced Tuscaloosa through cultural differences, weather, social norms, and everyday interactions. Some things initially felt unfamiliar. Others reminded me of home, especially the importance people place on hospitality, personal relationships, and community.
I came to Tuscaloosa for an education. Over time, however, I began imagining something beyond earning a degree. This city could become my second home, a place where I might build a family, establish a career, and contribute to the community.
That desire to belong was one reason I joined Anchor Tuscaloosa.
Launched in 2024, Anchor Tuscaloosa is a collaborative initiative powered by FuelAL, bringing together the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama, the Tuscaloosa County Economic Development Authority and Visit Tuscaloosa. Its primary mission is to connect college students with professional opportunities, community leaders, and local experiences that might encourage them to remain in West Alabama after graduation.
As local reporting documented when the program launched , participants would have opportunities to engage with business leaders, nonprofit organizations, and elected officials.
A University of Alabama Blackburn Institute account describes how the inaugural cohort explored local businesses, nonprofit organizations and community institutions.
These activities serve an economic purpose, but I believe they offer something equally important: an opportunity to strengthen local democracy.
American democracy is frequently discussed through presidential elections, congressional disputes and political debates in Washington. Yet decisions affecting everyday life are also made in city halls, county institutions, and state legislatures.
Understanding how these institutions function, who makes decisions, and how residents can participate is part of becoming an engaged member of a community.
For me, one of Anchor Tuscaloosa's most meaningful features is its emphasis on civic engagement.
The program gives students opportunities to interact with local and state elected officials. Our cohort's planned activities include engagement with the mayors of Tuscaloosa and Northport and lawmakers in Montgomery.
These encounters offer something textbooks cannot always teach. Students can ask questions, understand public responsibilities, and explore how government decisions affect their communities.
More importantly, they can begin to recognize public officials as people who should be accessible to the communities they represent.
Of course, meeting a mayor or lawmaker does not automatically strengthen democracy. The real value lies in what students learn from those encounters and whether they continue participating in public affairs afterward.
A program that helps young people understand local institutions can encourage them to attend public meetings, volunteer, engage with community organizations, and take an interest in decisions affecting their neighborhoods.
That understanding is particularly important for students who arrive from outside Tuscaloosa County, including international students.
Our relationship with American civic life is sometimes defined mainly by immigration regulations and academic responsibilities. Yet international students also live in American communities, interact with residents and experience the consequences of public decisions.
Although we cannot vote in federal elections, civic participation extends beyond the ballot box.
We can volunteer, participate in community discussions, learn about public institutions, and contribute perspectives shaped by experiences in other countries.
For me, Anchor Tuscaloosa offers an opportunity to understand American democracy beyond what I encounter in classrooms or national political debates.
Having spent years reporting on governance, conflict, and public affairs in Nigeria, I am particularly interested in how citizens relate to government institutions. My professional experience has taught me that elections alone cannot sustain meaningful democratic participation.
People also need opportunities to understand how government works, raise concerns, and participate in decisions affecting their communities.
American universities play an important role in encouraging that engagement.
They prepare students for employment and professional advancement, but education should also help young people develop relationships with the communities surrounding their campuses.
The announcement of Anchor Tuscaloosa's 2026 cohort described a five-session initiative connecting students with local leaders, employers, and organizations. I was fortunate to be selected following an application and interview process.
But programs like Anchor Tuscaloosa should be assessed by more than the number of graduates who remain in the region.
Are participants becoming more involved in community organizations? Do they understand local government better? Are they developing relationships beyond university campuses? Are they more willing to participate in discussions about public issues?
These questions can help determine whether professional development initiatives are also cultivating long-term civic engagement.
In an era when American political conversations often center on division and distrust, the quieter work of building relationships between communities and institutions has value.
Anchor Tuscaloosa was created to encourage students to imagine a future in West Alabama. Its broader significance, I believe, lies in helping them understand how to become part of that future.
I still remember the promise contained in that November email: meaningful connections within our community.
Those connections have helped shape how I think about Tuscaloosa, not simply as the city where I attend university, but as somewhere I hope to belong and contribute.
Democracy is expressed through elections. It is also sustained when people learn to understand their neighbors, engage with public institutions, and take responsibility for the communities they call home.
Idris Mohammed is a Ph.D. student at the University of Alabama concentrating in Journalism & Creative Media and a fall Fulcrum Fellow.
On July 4, 1776, Americans advanced a revolutionary claim: political power ultimately belonged not to a king, but to the people. Two hundred and fifty years later, we have become quite good at commemorating that claim, but we have not necessarily become equally skilled at putting it into practice in everyday life.
We vote, petition, and debate. Yet in daily life, residents often have little meaningful influence over matters that shape their lives: the price of food, whether a corner store can survive, how to obtain help, and how public resources are used. Perhaps the unfinished work of independence is not to issue another declaration, but to build institutions through which people can act together—and through which their collective action can itself be held accountable.
The Declaration of Independence affirms that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. This is, first of all, a political principle. But consent also has a social dimension: between elections, how do residents participate in decisions that affect them? Who has the authority to decide which needs are most urgent in a neighborhood? And when people disagree, who has the final say?
Part of the answer lies in civil society: associations people form voluntarily in pursuit of common purposes. These organizations are not substitutes for government, nor do they earn the right to represent everyone merely by invoking the word ‘community.’ In the nineteenth century, the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville observed Americans' talent for forming associations. He recognized in it an essential democratic skill: learning to act together despite disagreement.
Today we possess remarkably sophisticated systems for advertising products, collecting data, and delivering goods. Yet we lack equally effective—and equally accountable—mechanisms through which people living on the same street can understand one another's actual needs and connect those needs to resources already available.
Consider San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. Households know which essentials they can no longer afford. Small merchants know what they can supply and at what price. Nonprofit organizations understand gaps in services. Public agencies possess resources and carry legal responsibilities. This knowledge is scattered; it does not automatically become cooperation. Street Equity and the Community DataBank, which I have proposed, seek to test a modest question: can genuine needs be connected to dependable supplies and services, with results that can be verified rather than merely promised?
But we must first acknowledge a difficulty: residents, merchants, and landlords do not necessarily share the same interests. Low-income families want less expensive food. Merchants must keep their businesses viable. Landlords may seek higher rental income. Inviting all three into the same meeting room will not make these conflicts disappear. If a neighborhood initiative is to claim democratic legitimacy, it must begin by acknowledging that its participants do not possess equal resources or equal influence.
I therefore propose that, before any Tenderloin pilot expands, participating residents and legally accountable partner organizations jointly establish a public charter. It should state which decisions residents can vote on and which must, by law, remain with agencies responsible for procurement contracts, benefit eligibility, or personal safety. It should explain who may make proposals, how reasons are given, how dissent is recorded, and when someone must recuse themselves because of a personal interest. Resident representatives should be selected through comprehensible, accessible procedures—not handpicked by the project founder. Tenants, lower-income residents, people speaking different languages, and those with limited mobility must have practical ways to participate.
When interests conflict, one principle should be clear: no party should acquire a final veto over collective decisions merely by possessing capital, owning property, or controlling the database. Before a group purchase goes forward, the goods and their quality, the actual delivered price, delivery charges, supplier-selection criteria, and alternatives should be made public. Merchants may submit bids, explain their costs, or decline to participate; households remain free not to buy. Decisions involving government funds must still be made by legally authorized public bodies, subject to existing public oversight. If a project cannot resolve a dispute, it should narrow its scope, pause, or end—not conceal disagreement beneath the language of ‘community consensus.’
The risks of data must not be obscured by promises of efficiency. A database that records family incomes, purchasing habits, health difficulties, and requests for assistance may improve services. It may also become a tool for targeted marketing, exclusion from benefits, or discriminatory pricing. Whoever designs the forms, determines how information is classified, and controls who can see it may also influence how resources are allocated. Data governance itself must therefore be subject to oversight by residents and independent professionals.
The first pilot should not build detailed dossiers on residents. A public directory of resources can draw on verifiable information that organizations choose to provide; surveys should gather only the minimum information needed to deliver a specific service. Anonymous feedback must be kept separate from identifiable service records. Access and editing rights must be restricted, with defined retention periods, access logs, correction procedures, and ways to withdraw. Participation must not automatically expose personal information to merchants, landlords, or investors. Any new use requires explicit authorization, compliance with the law, and independent review. Aggregate findings may be made public, but not in ways that allow individual households to be identified.
More important still, residents must have the power to correct the organizers. The initiative should disclose its service rules, use of funds, supplier relationships, complaint procedures, and methods of measurement. Complaints should be reviewed independently of management, with errors and corrective actions reported regularly. If organizers stop answering to residents, the charter must provide a procedure for replacing representatives and terminating partnerships. Equity shares, local investment vehicles, and promises of ‘community ownership’ must remain longer-term proposals—not accomplished facts—until their legal and governance arrangements have been properly reviewed.
Where should this work begin? Perhaps with an idea so small as to seem almost inconsequential: find a merchant willing to give a firm quote for one basket of everyday essentials, compare its price with a realistic alternative, and invite about ten willing households to try one actual delivery or pickup. Before proceeding, a responsible coordinator must verify the products, payment and refund arrangements, supply capacity, pickup location, privacy protections, and complaint process. If these basic conditions are not in place, the project should neither collect payments nor gather residents' contact information.
Then, over a limited observation period of roughly ninety days, record how many people received a complete offer, how many voluntarily accepted it, how many orders were fulfilled as promised, what the actual costs were, whether households truly saved money, how much real revenue local merchants received, and how complaints were resolved. Without a credible price comparison, we cannot claim that families ‘saved money.’ Without completed delivery, an intended order cannot be counted as a success. Only if the experiment works, costs remain manageable, and residents want to continue would gradual expansion be justified. A larger cohort of one hundred households is a possible goal—not an achievement already made.
Nor does any of this mean asking volunteers to shoulder duties that government has failed to fulfill. Qualified service providers, paid coordinators, public benefits, and responsible government cannot be replaced by an elegant spreadsheet. A neighborhood organization can help identify service gaps, improve referrals, and scrutinize outcomes. It must not become an excuse for government to abandon its obligations.
American history itself offers a warning. The Declaration's language of equality coexisted with slavery, women's exclusion from political power, and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Later reformers had to challenge these exclusions repeatedly before that promise could be more fully realized. If today's neighborhood initiatives listen only to those with the most time, money, or organizing power, they may reproduce a similar contradiction.
The problems facing the nation are enormous. Why attempt such a small experiment? Because freedom is not merely proclaimed in speeches. It also lives in everyday details: whether someone can object, refuse to have information recorded about them, understand a bill, hold a manager accountable, and see their needs answered fairly.
The 250th anniversary of American independence calls us to remember not only the courage of the Declaration, but also the responsibility that follows it. Digital tools may connect scattered information, but they do not automatically produce democracy. Democracy begins when people are willing to acknowledge disagreement openly and build institutions in which anyone who exercises power must answer questions.
A declaration can proclaim freedom; a neighborhood capable of holding its own power accountable can begin to give freedom a tangible form.
John van Sicklen Maeck II is a San Francisco writer whose work spans memoir, poetry, theatre, and reflective nonfiction. His civic writing focuses on resident participation, community development, and accountable neighborhood institutions. He has proposed Street Equity and the Community DataBank as ways to explore practical cooperation among residents, local businesses, and public agencies.
Scarcity drains mental bandwidth and can depress voter turnout. Explore the research and how human ecology education can build civic knowledge and agency.
Access to food, stable housing, healthcare, and socioeconomic security shapes more than daily life. Material insecurity can also limit the time, attention, and stability people need to follow public issues, evaluate candidates, organize, and vote. Research on scarcity and political participation helps explain these connections .
In a 2014 American Psychological Association article, the authors of the book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much , Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan, suggest that scarcity consumes mental bandwidth, leaving fewer cognitive resources for planning and problem-solving. The article reports that this cognitive burden can produce ongoing deficits and reinforce self-defeating behavior.
These pressures do not make people deficient citizens. They can, however, make civic participation harder. Legal citizenship and voting rights do not ensure that everyone has an equal capacity to participate. Voting requires time, information, skills, health, and transportation. Unequal access to resources affects civic participation, which also depends on income, education, and an individual’s stability. Disparities in participation can, in turn, produce unequal political representation.
Human ecology education raises a related question: whether practical knowledge can help people navigate the systems shaping daily life and participate more meaningfully in their communities.
A 2024 article in the journal Political Behavior examines how unemployment, eviction, loss of health insurance, and other personal crises affect political participation. Although people experience these disruptions personally, the authors argue that their causes and consequences are also political.
Across several large surveys, the researchers found that personal crises were generally associated with lower turnout but sometimes with greater participation in other political activities. Highly politicized crises, including those related to COVID-19, were associated with greater participation across all forms measured in the study. As crises accumulated, the associated decline in turnout approached the size of established gaps by race, ethnicity, and education.
Residential mobility can also disrupt civic ties. In the five-city Moving to Opportunity experiment, some families living in high-poverty public housing were offered vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods. A 2024 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that adults assigned vouchers voted at lower rates for nearly two decades. The researchers attribute the decline to residential mobility itself, noting that moving can disrupt social ties and require people to register again.
Various psychological theories provide context for how material insecurity can influence political behavior. Abraham Maslow’s 1943 theory of human motivation offers a familiar framework, commonly called the hierarchy of human needs, for considering how unmet needs can compete for attention. It identifies physiological needs, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization as basic needs, but they should not be treated as a universal sequence or as indicators for how a person engages with the political process. For this article, it serves only as a bridge to explain the relationship among material security, personal agency, and civic participation.
Psychologist Albert Bandura defined self-efficacy as a person’s belief in their capacity to act toward a desired outcome. He identified four principal sources: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and physiological and emotional states. Insecurity involving food, housing, healthcare, income, or physical safety may weaken these foundations by limiting opportunities for successful action, increasing chronic stress, and reducing access to supportive models and encouragement.
Political efficacy has two components : internal and external efficacy. Internal efficacy is the belief that one can understand and participate in politics; external efficacy is the belief that the political system responds to citizens. Both are associated with political participation , although the relationship is stronger for internal efficacy. Successful political participation may strengthen confidence in one’s ability to engage. When people participate but see no institutional response, they may begin to doubt that participation matters and withdraw.
Human ecology education is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how people live within—and navigate—the natural, social, cultural, built, and technological environments that shape daily life. It connects practical knowledge about food, housing, health, finance, transportation, relationships, and community life with the institutions and systems people navigate to meet those needs.
Human ecology grew partly from home economics, which combined scientific research with public education about food, health, housing, and family life. Home economists at universities, extension services, and government agencies carried this work through World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. Cornell played a significant role , establishing the New York State College of Home Economics in 1925; it was renamed the New York State College of Human Ecology in 1969 as its academic scope broadened.
Civics education generally focuses on government and citizenship, while career education prepares students for employment. Human ecology complements both by connecting personal, professional, and civic life to the public systems and markets that shape everyday decisions. A continuous K–12 program can deepen that understanding as students mature and their lives become more complex.
Maslow’s categories can help organize a human ecology curriculum without assigning children to fixed developmental tiers. The curriculum would expand as students gain independence and encounter more complex relationships, institutions, and responsibilities.
Early Years: Food, Health, and Home
In the early grades, a human ecology curriculum can examine food, clothing, housing, health, safety, and household routines. Lessons can introduce where essential resources come from, how daily choices affect personal and environmental well-being, and which community institutions help people meet basic needs. The purpose would be to build practical awareness—not hold children responsible for conditions beyond their control.
Middle Years: Relationships and Community
As students’ social worlds become more complex, human ecology education can explore communication, culture, relationships, transportation, public health, and community life. Students can learn how families and communities use shared systems, resolve problems, and create belonging across differences.
Adolescence: Independent Life and Civic Participation
By adolescence, the curriculum can address income, employment, personal finance, housing, healthcare, law, consumer systems, and public institutions. Students can connect daily decisions to career possibilities and public policy while practicing the judgment, communication, and social skills needed to participate in professional and community life.
Human ecology education can strengthen the practical knowledge people use to navigate daily life. Whether that knowledge supports civic participation also depends on material security and responsive institutions.
US Census Bureau data show that 66.8 percent of citizens age 18 and older voted in 2020, the highest turnout of the twenty-first century. In the bureau’s family-income table , reported turnout among adult citizens rose from 47.1 percent for family incomes under $10,000 to 63.1 percent for
30,000–39,999 and 80.5 percent for 100,000–149,999.
Three civic design principles follow from this account:
1. Treat personal security as part of civic infrastructure: Policies that reduce economic volatility may also reduce the cognitive demands associated with material insecurity.
2. Make participation consequential: Participatory budgeting processes, public hearings, and other public forums should provide clear ways for people to influence decisions and see how institutions respond.
3. Create local opportunities to participate: Schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and community groups can provide regular places for people to address shared concerns together.
Democratic participation depends on more than formal rights. People also need the material stability, practical knowledge, social connection, and confidence to act on those rights. Human ecology education can strengthen practical knowledge and personal agency, but it cannot replace the economic security or responsive institutions that make participation possible.
Sandra Ericson is an author and retired educator. She chaired the Consumer Arts and Science Department at City College of San Francisco for nearly three decades. She is a contributor to the Observatory .
This article was produced for the Observatory by the Independent Media Institute and is republished with permission.
“Acquaint Walks” – a small group walks designed to get communities walking and talking together.
Roberto arrives five minutes early at Heritage Park. A small group has already gathered in the shade by the entrance. He recognizes four of the six faces; a few months ago he didn't know any of them. They talk about autumn plans and neighborhood history until one o'clock, when everyone opens the same app to see who they've been paired with. Roberto's screen says: “Your Walking Partner: Ken.” Then the group sets off down the path above Lake Washington.
Roberto learned about Acquaint Walks months earlier while exploring job and volunteer opportunities on Linkedin. The post said, “Take a Walk with Us: Join us in Testing a Nonprofit App for Organizing Local Walks!”
Roberto later shared, “An active life is my priority, and it’s a great way to get to know other people.” Throughout the summer of 2026, Roberto joined over a dozen “Acquaint Walks” – small group walks designed to get communities walking and talking together. He kept showing up, despite what turned out to be a difficult summer: A leak forced Roberto and his wife to leave their home. He flew to Mexico to attend his mother’s funeral. He became an empty-nester when his second son left for college. All the while, he kept searching for the right job opportunity.
The walks didn't solve any of these challenges. However, on the walks, an opportunity to share and face our challenges together emerged. As a new parent, it was great for me to learn about Roberto’s parenting journey and for him a time of reflection. Most of us experience fewer of those moments to connect with the community than we used to.
Disconnection as a societal problem is receiving increasing attention. Some leading voices describe it as a shortage of places to meet or things to do together. Yet opportunities to connect are everywhere. Take walking for example. Per the CDC, nearly six out of ten Americans walk for leisure. Yet we walk past each other without interacting. What’s missing isn’t just proximity. It doesn’t feel like a good use of time to try to connect with the person next to us.
Acquaint Walks is our effort to fill that gap. The invitation isn't "come make a friend." It's "come help build a neighborhood where people know each other" — which is why we call everyone who shows up a volunteer. We get a lot of questions about how this is volunteerism and the short answer is that, just as our physical environment needs care, so do our communities and each of us can help. The walk isn't just for you. It's for the community around you.
Acquaint Walks are structured to eliminate barriers to connection. Volunteers are paired at random into groups of two or three, and everyone follows the "anyone commitment": walk and talk with whoever you get paired with, regardless of age, culture, personality, or any of the filters we might apply when sizing up a potential friend. Friendships do happen. They just aren't the stated purpose. Instead, we try to focus on the value of showing up – something we can control – rather than outcomes that can’t be forced.
Organizing anything can be a barrier to it happening in the first place. Having an app helps with the logistics — finding walks, keeping groups small enough to avoid disruption, and pairing people once everyone arrives. Then we put our phones away.
Several dozen volunteers joined Acquaint Walks across King County, Washington this summer to test the program and helped get the app approved in the Apple and Google Play stores. People joined the walks without anyone needing to host or organize them. And more than two-thirds of volunteers who joined one walk returned for another. Coming from many different backgrounds, they all had one thing in common: they already walked regularly. They took something they were already doing and used it as a way to build community.
The walks themselves tend to be filled with surprises and interesting stories. On his walk with Ken, Roberto discovered that they had spent years working in the same building but never met each other until now.
Many of us have some version of this: people we've been near for years and never spoken to. Asked to imagine striking up a conversation with a stranger on their morning commute, riders in Epley and Schroeder's study expected the worst: an awkward ride with a seatmate who'd rather be left alone. Riders actually assigned to do it reported the opposite — a more pleasant trip than those who kept to themselves.
Although my work revolves around trying to create better ways to build community, I find it challenging to connect with new people. As a regular walker myself, I had always been content to either walk with my husband Alex (Acquaint’s other Co-founder), or alone with my headphones. I’ve spent years passing neighbors on the sidewalk every day, not knowing their names. Working with Acquaint was previously all virtual – we’ve run a program since 2021 called “Global Conversations” that connects people from across 110+ countries for 1:1 audio conversations.
As meaningful as that work is, we realized we were forging connections with people around the world, but not with our own neighbors. Then in 2025, our daughter was born. We decided we needed connection to our community, both for her and for ourselves as parents. So, Acquaint Walks has been as much of a personal endeavor as a professional one.
One challenge: Alex and I are busy, socially anxious introverts. We aren’t exactly who you might picture when you think of outgoing community-builders who host parties and organize neighborhood events. Moreover, our apartment is small, a bit cluttered, and filled with toddler toys – not exactly the easiest place to prepare for guests. So we’ve tried to create Acquaint Walks to make community-building easier for people like us. A structure where anyone can propose or join a walk without too much coordination, and people get matched by the app instead of nervously trying to decide who they should talk to.
But how easily will it grow? Flyers, newsletters, Nextdoor, word of mouth — we're still learning what reaches people. Two new people joined a walk today: one found us on Nextdoor, and one we'd handed a flyer to three weeks earlier. The app has been live for two months and we have no funding behind it. What we don't know yet is why some decide not to join. Maybe the faster path runs through organizations like libraries, employers, and congregations that can hand the invitation to people who'd never find us on their own.
The walk at Heritage Park ends with some bittersweet news: Roberto landed the job he'd been searching for all summer. It's on the other side of the country. We'll really miss him when he moves this month. Though in a neat coincidence, his new job is near Baltimore, a few minutes from where several of our family and friends live. He's mentioned wanting to start walks there once he's settled. That's what we’re hoping for: walks starting in other neighborhoods, including yours — a few people who were already out there, walking together instead of past each other.
Katherine Mahon is Co-Founder and CEO at Acquaint.
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