The CivicLab

I’ve started 15 nonprofit enterprises in the arts, community development

and civic engagement. My experience in the arts, education, civic
engagement, and program design allows me to create events off and online
that educate, activate and entertain. I built a unique community arts
program at Peoples Housing in 1993 that blended the arts, training and
microenterprise and engaged over 12,000 people annually. I started
Greater Chicago Citizens for the Arts and the Creative America Project
to get creative professionals to run for local office. I started the
CivicLab in Chicago’s West Loop as a co-working and maker space
dedicated to civics that impacted over 10,000 people. My civic work has
caused me to be invited to present at over 200 public meetings (see www.civiclab.us, www.tifrports.com, www.wearenotbroke.org. My work expands civic imagination and civic possibility for justice.

We are seeking support for the CivicLab. We were (2013-2015) America’s only co-working space dedicated to collaboration, education and innovation for civic engagement and social justice (http://www.civiclab.us/our-work.). We have plenty of commercial co-working spaces and incubators for tech start-ups – but no support or infrastructure for civic disruptors who are fighting for justice and equity with limited resources. We housed 17 civic change organizations, hosted dozens of planning meetings, offered over 80 open enrollment civic built civic tools, held parties and celebrations and incubated several civic groups. The CivicLab was a place of innovation, connectivity, learning and fellowship. We seek to rebuild this space online, and post pandemic, in a Chicago neighborhood with low political power and civic metrics. Democracy is on life support here and across the USA. Social justice needs a hub and home right now!

The CivicLab is a template organization with programming and pedagogy that can be replicated across the USA. Eric Klinenberg addresses this need for “social infrastructure” in his recently published “Palaces for the People – How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization and the Decline of Civic Life” (https://www.ericklinenberg.com). The CivicLab is a new addition to a growing trend around maker spaces, place making, human-centered design, tech/business incubators and co-working facilities. The problem, simply put, is civic erosion and the diminution of democratic values and practices in America and across the planet. This is not a problem that technology can solve. We need to be proximate to one another. We need to be in physical space and be able to co-learn, collaborate, co-fabricate, and act together for justice. Now, with a global pandemic causing social isolation and threatening elections and even civil liberties – we can say that civic engagement for justice and equity needs a home and hub with the greatest urgency. We have the expertise and experience to combine technology and community building with justice organizing. We need to educate and organize online and then get back to space making ASAP.

We seek to strengthen the CivicLab’s online presence and re-open a physical space in 2021. We seek to locate in a street level space in a community that is experiencing civic dis-investment. We operated a space for two years in the West Loop where we had 17 civic organizations working and a wide range of events, classes, convenings, meetings and social events there. It truly was a unique place, unlike any existing co-working or tech incubator that we knew of. Much has been written about the utility of incubators, maker spaces and places for gathering and meaning-making. To our knowledge, the CivicLab remains unique as the only such entity dedicated to exploring, expanding, and accelerating social justice and civic engagement practices. We use a “ladder of engagement” model for civic practice, along with principles of human-centered design, such as “planned serendipity,” as well as best practices for innovation and social justice support and tool building. Our practice: Investigate. Educate. Fabricate. Activate. We believe Chicago needs this kind of space and that what we have already learned – and what we will learn – will be transferable to other cities across America.

Our work serves two broad constituencies. We serve Chicagoans who are doing social change and civic organizing work. We housed some of them for two years, convened classes, meetings, conferences, celebrations, investigations, and tool making efforts. Much more work needs to be done to rack and serve those who serve without much reward or support services. We are very concerned about the health and well-being of those who have dedicated themselves to serving the oppressed and fighting for justice against great odds with little resources. We also serve Chicago’s general public who have an appetite for civic knowledge, skills, and actions. Think of our space as a sort of maker space/lab/school house/play house/clinic/high touch crafts workshop. Our work examining Tax Increment Financing districts (TIFs) and the state of Chicago’s finances have taken us to ever part of the city – with heavy emphasis on Black communities. We’ve been invited to present at over 165 public meetings since 2013. We are in direct touch with thousands of Chicagoans across all spectrums through this work. Our in-person and online civic workshops attracted over 250 people and they guide our selection of workshop topics. We are the most “listening-ist” civic outfit in Chicago! 

Our work is about infrastructure building for justice and transformation. The CivicLab was built with the help of 100+ people and activated hundreds of volunteers. See http://www.civiclab.us/our-work. We helped train people who were already inquisitive and critical and inclined to serve and solve and we equipped them do more and go further. We had so many great projects going, including cooking classes, a terrestrial radio station, citizen science projects (with the Public Lab in Boston), workshops, took building, celebrations, research projects, and more. We are all about creating smart, inquisitive and equipped leaders to do democracy and challenge injustice.

The idea for the CIvicLab came from my fight (2009) to derail Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics (www.nogameschicago.com). There was virtually no push back on this city-wrecking plan from academia, think tanks, civic “watch dogs,” the media or elected officials. We needed some PLACE to do social justice-informed policy research, education, and build tools for civic engagement. When I got the initial idea to start the CivicLab in 2012 I visited BucketWorks in Milwaukee and the founder, James Carlson, gave me a tour (see https://vimeo.com/44288024). In June I organized a Design Hack at the Read/Write Library with 60 artists, coders, activists and educators in order to explore the idea of a CivicLab and what it might look like, offer and do.  A core team was formed and we scouted locations and landed in an old fire house in the West Loop, opening on July 1, 2013. We recruited volunteer architects to help us build out the space using the wonderful book “Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration” from the Stanford Institute of Design, (https://tinyurl.com/Make-Space-Stanford). My co-founder, Benjamin Sugar, was very inspired by maker spaces he encountered in Cambridge, particularly the Artisan’s Asylum (https://artisansasylum.com).

I’ve been doing civic engagement work since high school. My first voter registration campaign was in 1973. I was an anti-war protester and activist in the early 1970’s. I am a life-long believer in peace, justice, and civic participation. I have been a student of the Radical Right and Big Capital. My analysis of what we need to move social justice forward in the USA compels me to advocate for spaces for civic gathering and making that we do not currently have. IN 2013 the business sector has thousands of incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces but the social justice sector had none. I believe the CivicLab was America’s first such space and it operated for two eventful years (see http://www.civiclab.us/our-work). The critical distinction is we need space and resources for the voice of opposition and leadership development to move justice agendas. I’ve started or led 15 nonprofit enterprises in the arts, community development and civic engagement. My background in the arts, education, civic engagement, technology, and program design make me the ideal maker of space for civic engagement, leadership development, and powerful organizing efforts.

I have a long track record in conceiving, building, and operating programs that educate, engage, entertain, and transform. In 1986 I created the Chicago Young Playwright’s Festival at Pegasus Theater. Over 15,000 teens have written one-act plays for it! I built a unique community arts program at Peoples Housing in 1993 that blended the arts, training and microenterprise and engaged over 12,000 people annually. I started Greater Chicago Citizens for the Arts and the Creative America Project to engage creative professionals in public life and to run for office. I co-founded Protect Our Parks in 2008 to stop the privatization of Lincoln Park (www.wesavedlincolnpark.org). In 2009 I was a co-leader and spokesperson for No Games Chicago which worked to derail Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics (www.nogameschicago.ocm). That successful campaign was a masterpiece of under-funded but brilliantly executed mass civic engagement on two continents that literally saved Chicago from bankruptcy and civic disaster. I started the CivicLab in Chicago’s West Loop as a co-working and maker space dedicated to civics that has impacted over 10,000 people. My civic work has caused me to be invited to present at over 200 public meetings (see www.civiclab.us, www.tifrports.com, www.wearenotbroke.org). I’ve taught classes on leadership, creativity, organizing, civic engagement, and public policy at six local universities. I’ve designed and delivered dozens of workshops on civics (see www.powerinstitute.us) I was NewCity Magazine’s Public Activist of the Year for 2015. I am a master at civic innovation.

In 2009 I was a co-leader of the No Games Chicago campaign to defeat the bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. My work led me to question the bid and to connect with other volunteer activists. Mayor Daley threw all his power, connections, and resources into pushing the bid and terrorized Chicago’s collective civic eco-system to remain silent. There was no public discussion on the bis. Local foundations ponied up $6 million and local businesses $84 million. Even media companies contributed money and services. Several local university presidents were on the organizing committee. Local sports and entertainment stars pushed the bid. The strategy and organizing work to pull together an effective counter to this massive machine of lies, power, money, and visibility was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I concluded that we had to run an election campaign targeting the members of the IOC and all our work should be aimed at persuading them to vote “No” on awarding Chicago the Games. We were frightened and our fight was lonely and mostly unreported. We took strength from the magnitude of the fight and our solid research that told us the Games would destroy our city. We supported one another.

I was a leader in the Protect Our Parks (www.protectourparks.org) and No Games Chicago (www.nogameschicago.com) campaigns. Those efforts placed me front and center as a vocal, visible, and effective opponent to Mayor Daley and his corrupt political Machine. I did so at peril to my career, livelihood, and personal safety. That work led me to examine and expose the rip-off known as Tax Increment Financing districts (TIFs) via the TIF Illumination Project (www.tifreports.com) and that work has led to 79 public meetings. I’ve become one of the most effective and visible critics of the neoliberal construct of Chicago and its racist and unfair public policies over the past ten years. The TIF work led me to organize and publish “Chicago Is Not Broke. Funding the City We Deserve,” a collection of short articles by local experts describing a total of $5 billion in progressive and sustainable revenue solutions for the city. That book has triggered 66 public meetings. In 2017 I co-founded the POWER Institute (www.poerinstitute.us) which has conducted 24 in person civics workshops covering civic context, organizing, TIFs, and how to run for local office. 

Frankly, this fixation on “innovation” does democracy a disservice. There is no easy way to “fix” America’s dysfunctional and under-performing civics. There is no tech fix or app for this. This is a high-touch, people-intensive enterprise that can and has used technology and new media solutions to connect and educate. The innovative thinking underneath the CivicLab is the way we have combined a wide range of proven and effective practices to bring people together in order to deepen democracy, civic engagement, critical thinking, and oppositional actions against unjust policies. We are students of place/space making and understand how to build a place that is welcoming, full of utility, and supports civic work. We are seasoned organizers who have won victories, tasted defeat, know the field, have deep connections, and are deeply concerned for the health of our fellow fighters. We are tool builders who know how to make things from scratch (on and off line). We are master trainers with a considered pedagogy and framework (see next section) and collectively have taught over 300 workshops and training sessions. We are students of innovation and human-centered design. I’ve designed and taught a class on creativity for an MBA program here and have been innovating in the nonprofit field since 1985. We understand the dance between entertainment, engagement, self-actualization, coaching, and direct action. We know how to move people up the “ladder of engagement and co-creation” that we believe is the secret sauce for a robust democracy focused on justice and equity.

Decency, justice, equity, and the environment have been pummeled and corroded in America by a set of forces - Cheap Labor Republicans, the Religious Right, and NeoFascists – their playbook or pedagogy is expressed in a warped reading of the Christian Bible and a desire to return America to the 1830’s – with chattel slavery, no strong central government, no regulation on business, women chained to the loom, and no sense of environmental stewardship. Our pedagogy is based on Bobbie Harro’s Cycle of Liberation with elements of “Studio Thinking – The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education” (Hetland, Winner, Veebema &Sheridan) with “Driving Social Change” (Paul Light) and the lessons of Ella Baler, Saul Alinsky, Eric Mann, and the 60+ years of the Highlander Center in Tennessee. Throw in the pedagogy of Paulo Freire and the insights from IDEO (Human Centered Design Toolkit) and you get a sense of how we operate. But all this is meaningless. What is the theory of change of the Koch Brothers? They have billions to back their vision of America and this is starkly documented in Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money” and Christopher Leonard’s “Kochland.” A grim world view backed by unlimited money patiently and strategically spent over decades has moved America to a place of disunity and civic chaos. As the COVID19 pandemic ravages the planet, our country flounders and is failing to lead or provide services and supplies needed to save lives. The powerful and influential Republican strategist Grove Norquist said ““I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” (listen @ https://soundcloud.com/civiclab/norquist-quote) He and his allies mustered the money, infrastructure, and paybook to make that happen. We are asking the Elevate Program to help rebuild civics in America based on a framework of racial and environmental justice, civic creativity, generosity, sustainability, empowerment, and love. THAT is our theory of change. We have the theory and the experience you and your allies have the money and connections to make it reality. 

For the next year: If we can get the backing for the CivicLab we plan to the following:

• Strengthen our administrative and internal abilities, paid staff and increased community outreach and listening work
• Create data visualization rendering space for our collected TIF data
• Expand our research capacity to do in-depth investigation and data visualization of all of Illinois’ 1300+ TIF districts
• Build out our website with membership and self-organizing capacities (see https://www.socialpinpoint.com, https://www.onecause.com, https://www.giveffect.com)
• Curate a roster of online civics training experiences with local and national experts to create an online civics “Kahn Academy”
• Expand Zoom programming for informal meetings, debriefs, celebrations, and other programming that can quickly respond to chaotic times
• As COVID crisis dissipates, investigate new physical home in a community where political power is low and injustice metrics are high – convene planning team to imagine what the space would look like and hold
• Revise “Chicago Is Not Broke” to reflect civic reality since 2016 publication, translate into Spanish and undertake first real marketing and systematic outreach for the book across the city 

For the next five years:

• Recruit and network to open CivicLabs in at least two other US cities and two cities abroad
• Plan and launch research, sharing, collaboration for NeuroCivics – the blending of neuroscience and civic engagement research
• Plan and launch of CIvicLab Media – original investigations and programming for audio and video platforms (we have already tested these concepts – see http://www.civiclab.us/the-civiclab-show and http://www.civiclab.us/civiclab-radio

Our greatest obstacle is lack of resources. We believe our work is solid, effective, and speaks to the heart of the literature about civic engagement, popular education practice, social justice movement building, grassroots leadership development, building public policy vision from the community, and even the future of journalism. However, our work has an oppositional flavor and is grounded in social justice and liberation pedagogy and takes a very critical look at local power. Chicago is, in some ways, very parochial and conservative in its civic ecosystem. There is a tight circle of former Daley senior staff, local foundations, banks, law firms, construction companies, big developers, academia, and the media. Since I challenged the Daley Machine successfully three times (opposing land based gambling in 1994, suing over privatization in 2008, fighting Olympic bid in 2009) and then continuing to challenge the Machine with our TIF and “Broke” book work – I believe we have become untouchable here. We’ve been turned down 35 times by local and national funders. The related obstacle is a lack of understanding for the need to patiently fund civic infrastructure to advance justice and change. Despite reams of words in op-ed pieces in the “Chronicle of Philanthropy” I believe America’s foundations are a big part of the problem regarding the state of our civics and the state of racial justice. We need more money and love for the fighters and justice champions who do what they do with little resources and no health care or pension plans.

We need respect and a powerful champion for our work. I sometimes feel like a master craftsman from the 1500’s seeking a Medici to bankroll a workshop with artisans, apprentices, and tradespeople – all producing useful, beautiful, and innovative works that find their way into the mainstream culture – first being used by a limited number of people (backers/subscribers/early adaptors) and then into a larger population. I know what we do and how we do civics works. By any metric one can use in looking at civic engagement, social change, movement building, opposition to oppressive and corrupt regimes, grassroots leadership development, popular education, and local public policy formulation our work has been remarkable effective and lasting. All this despite a complete lack of resources and staff. I need – this work needs – some serious entity like the Elevate Prize to “bless” it – to lift it up and give it a chance. Believe me, I track how major Chicago foundations fund civic engagement and how they drip out pennies while Rome burns. They also lavish millions on out-of-town groups and in some cases actually lend major support to the local political Machine (see http://chicagocivics.org/landscape.html). I welcome the opportunity to present our case in greater detail.

We are partnering with Mi Villita Community Organization, the Pilsen Alliance, and the People’s COVAD19 Response to get $1.2 billion in public dollars being held by Chicago to be released for public health services and support (see https://tinyurl.com/Peoples-COVID-Response-Demands). We are working with a collation of youth serving (and youth led) organizations on building capacity for civic engagement – the lead agency being Free Write Arts & Literacy (http://freewriteartsliteracy.org). That effort is funded by the Burns Institute for Justice, Fairness & Equity (www.burnsinstitute.org). We are leading a city-wide effort to abolish Tax Increment Financing districts (TIFs) – see  https://tinyurl.com/Peoples-COVID-Response-Demands. Over the past year we’ve worked with the following organizations: DePaul University Steans Center, the GCE Lab School, the Chatham Alliance, The Wicker Park Committee, National Louis University, Adler University, and the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers. We provide training and workshop resources and programming, organizational consulting, public education forums, research and thought leadership to our partners. Our TIF research is used extensively across the civic landscape: the Chicago Teachers Union. The Grassroots Collaborative, Chicago Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, candidates for alderman and mayor, sitting aldermen, the media, and local academics. Our book, “Chicago Is Not Broke. Funding the City We Deserve” (www.wearenotbroke.org) has become a staple of local civic discourse here. Between the TIF work and the book project, we’ve been invited to do over 160 presentations or forums across the city (since 2013) in front of over 8,500 people.

We need to drop this “business model” language which borrows concepts from the marketplace and the world of profit. After all, how has this slavish devotion to being like a “business” and obeying the laws of the market worked out for the planet and the poor? Rather, I propose speaking of a “sustainable eco-system” that is composed of piece parts that interlock and nourish and interact with one another. In this way of looking at things, money and members are the sustaining elements or essential infrastructure of the eco-system, and meaning and purpose serves as the sunlight or energy source. One way to imagine this system is the “NPR Model” where we get people who value our work to help pay for it on a subscription/donation basis. Like NPR we produce content and make it freely available. Then you add a layer of products, workshops, entertainments, and publications that are available for purchase. In this model we are driving people to view our work, attend our events, learn with us, get trained, and become content producers and co-leaders, who, in turn, create and lead on their own. Another path is the “Koch Brothers” Model in which a rich Medici simply adopts us and fund us with patient money. Wealthy patrons have long adopted artists who created workshops which served as hubs of learning, artifice, commerce, and experimentation. We ask the Elevate Prize team to help us find our Medici. We may very well turn out the “Mona Lisa” of democracy!

Since the CivicLab was founded in 2013 we have earned a total of $265,199 from a robust mix of sources. When we operated the co-working space (2013-2015), we earned revenue from rent, special events, space rental, workshops, and parties. At that time, and going forward after the space was closed, we have realized revenues from individual contributions, membership donations, crowdfunding campaigns, consulting services, speaker fees, open enrollment workshops, online workshops, publication sales, and foundation grants. Over 800 people have donated to us. We’ve sold over 3,500 copies of “Chicago Is Not Broke.” We’ve been invited to present at over 160 public meetings. Over 300 people have attended our workshops. Over 210,000 people have viewed my presentations at SlideShare. Over 2,000 people have signed our various online petitions. All this is remarkable because we’ve never has a paid staff – and since July 2015, no office. As sketched above, our path to sustainability will include at least one “Medici” – some one or organization willing to place a bet on us to capitalize us for the first two years. We will be able to add revenue streams over time as we have been doing for seven years. We will grow our user/subscriber/customer base by creative and aggressive outreach and messaging. The need for our work is strong and growing. Our approach and successes are powerful and compelling. We need a boost to take this work to the next level!

As sated above, we have raised funds from individual donors – in forms of memberships, one-off gifts and through crowd funding. We have received revenue through co-working rents, workshop fees, space rental, special event production, consulting services, and publication sales. We’ve received a small number of private foundation grants. In 2019 our revenue was: Grants: $18,000, Contributions: $2,824, Workshops (TIF Illumination forums, open enrollment civics workshops, customized workshops for specific client): $6,393, “Chicago Is Not Broke” book sales: $1,270. We have no staff or office.

We seek to build out our core team in 2020 in order to launch a major organizational development effort for 2021 and going forward. This application is part of that process. We seek to raise about $100,000 in 2020 to hire key personnel to make our part-time volunteer efforts a full-time and powerful operation. These positions would be the CEO, the Chief Organizing Officer, the Chief Development Officer, the Chief Content Officer, and paid interns. We also are budgeting for modest costs in programming and communications. We will using the following avenues to raise this seed or start-up funding: (1) crowdfunding, (2) Individual donations, (3) foundation grants, (4) publication sales, (5) consulting contracts. But, as stated before, we need some significant entity to take a chance on us – to “bless” our work, as it were, in order to signal to other funders and donors that our work is not as risky as they may think it is. We are hoping that receiving support and recognition from the Elevate Prize will help us break through to a national audience, which, in turn, will help our local fundraising efforts enormously. Sadly, there is a long-standing situation in Chicago where local efforts get honored out-of-town BEFORE they are rewarded here.

We estimate our 2020 expenses will be as follows:

CEO - $20,000

Chief Organizing Officer - $20,000

Chief Development Officer - $20,000

Chief Content/Education Officer - $20,000

[all on consulting basis – no benefits]

Trainers - $15,000

Marketing - $4,000 [includes web services] Printing - $1,000

Total = $100,000

Chicago has many wonderful and unique aspects to its physical, cultural, and civic landscape and ecosystem. It is an affordable (for the most part), friendly, and beautiful place to live. But it also has a set of barriers to equity, justice, and civic innovation. There is a closed shop around civics and acceptable civic solution-mindsets as a result of the stranglehold the Democratic Machine (the Daley Legacy) and a tightly intertwined set of financial, legal, academic, and nonprofit leaders. Chicago is the most corrupt city in America – see https://tinyurl.com/Chicago-Most-Corrupt and this makes civic innovation around challenging power extremely difficult. My story is not unique. I need, we need, the support of a major national entity like the Elevate Prize to break through the logjam here. In 1997 I tried to get a job for the Chicago Park District after doing major cultural development consulting work and was told by the Number 3 person there not to bother applying as I was known “Daley basher” for my work opposing a  land based casino for Chicago. And that was before we sued the city in 2008 and my leading the opposition to bid for the 2016 Olympics in 2009. Now, it’s two mayors later but I know there is a blockade on the work of the CivicLab here. Your headline says you want to recognize and reward risk-takers and innovative change makers who are “engines for social good.” I am exactly that person and I seek your support.

We seek civic experts and successful social entrepreneurs to review our work and pedagogy. We would love to be able to network with operators of civic spaces and university based civic and social justice programs to share our insights and learn about how social justice work is moving forward in these impossible times. Frankly, I feel the Trump Administration is a danger to democracy, civic cohesion, and America’s physical health. I worry that America’s nonprofit infrastructure – of which I and the CivicLab play a minuscule role – is simply not up to the task of repairing and replenishing our democracy and making a just and sustainable economy possible. We need major funding and exposure to do the democracy building that is vital for the future of our country. We need powerful partners to join our board to help us build out what we think the CivicLab can become.

• NewProfit (https://www.newprofit.org) + New Media Ventures (https://www.newmediaventures.org)
  – for funding and systems thinking counsel
• DEMOS, NYC (https://www.demos.org) – same as above
• The Roosevelt Institute, NYC – (https://rooseveltinstitute.org) –– for teaching, research, networking, and advisory services
• Tufts University Tisch College of Civic Life (https://tischcollege.tufts.edu/about) + Samuel Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University  - (https://socialequity.duke.edu) 
• Center for Civic Innovation, Atlanta (https://tischcollege.tufts.edu/about) – they are an actual civic lab!
• Civic Hall, NYC (https://civichall.org) – successful civic space
• Chalkbeat (https://www.chalkbeat.org) – National reporting on TIFs and the impact on public schools
• ProPublica, NYC (https://www.propublica.org) – same as above
• Poor People’s Campaign (https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org) – National reporting and organizing around TIFs
• National PTA (PTA.org), National School Boards Association (https://www.nsba.org), American Federation of Teachers (https://www.aft.org), Journey For Justice Alliance (https://j4jalliance.com) – organizing around TIFs and issues of economic justice, grassroots community development
• Participant Media (https://participant.com) – Partnership and co-production for reporting, documentaries, webcasts, printed content
• Verso Press (https://www.versobooks.com) – and other progressive publishers – to develop imprint of manuals, civic reporting
• DemLabs (https://thedemlabs.org) – Partnership for online training, civic tool building 
• Higher Ground Labs (https://highergroundlabs.com) – same as above
• Credo – or other progressive product provider – for joint marketing, placement in our physical space
• Kennedy School of Government, Stanford Design School – same as above
• American Psychological Association (+ university based research centers) – collaboration around neurocivics, that is, connection of neuroscience and civic behaviors