Jonathan Tisch - Citizen You: Doing Your Part to Change the World

America is a great nation because generation after generation has put forth new ideas to face an increasingly complex and challenging world. Our generation can be no different. Today, we are facing unprecedented challenges, from a worldwide economic slowdown and global climate change to health care and education systems that are failing to serve the genius of our children and prepare them for our twenty-first-century economy. It is time for the next generation of Americans to embrace new ideas, approaches, and innovations to address our problems and seize the profound opportunities before us.

Citizen You is a book for these times. My friend Jonathan Tisch has long been engaged at the crossroads where business, government, philanthropy, and civic activism meet. He has been a leader of the travel and tourism industry, a socially responsible business leader, an advocate for the poor and disadvantaged, a supporter of many of New Yorks (and Americas) most important charitable efforts, an outspoken voice for progressive politics, and a practitioner of creative public-private partnerships. Jon knows the seriousness of the problems our society faces, and he understands our need to search for new solutions. Citizen You is his latest contribution to that effort.

In these pages, Jon and his coauthor Karl Weber have gathered the stories of some of todays most remarkable citizen activists. They come from every walk of lifestudents who are using their classroom learning to shape innovative approaches to social problems; businesspeople who are finding ways to serve both profit and human needs; social entrepreneurs who are creating new kinds of organizations that empower citizens to improve their lives and their communities; and government officials who are breaking through bureaucratic rules to improve services while cutting costs and promoting individual freedom.

Im inspired by stories like these. I know theyre real because were transforming life for the people of Newark through similar alliances among business, government, nonprofit groups, and citizen alliances. Our public-private partnership, GreenSpaces, has brought public parks within reach of thousands of our citizens for the first time in decades. Weve made basic health care and prescription drugs available to hundreds of families through Newark Rx and Newark Health Plus, two more partnerships between the private and public sectors. And with the help of local law firms, venture philanthropists, and a national think tank, weve developed innovative programs that are helping ex-offenders build new lives and contribute to their communities.

In times like these, we cant afford to waste a single mind. Everyone has something to contribute to solving the daunting challenges we face. Citizen You is a powerful introduction to some of the many ways individuals are changing our world for the better. I hope it will be read by people all over our country, and the planet, and that many will be inspired, like me, to join the movement it describes so eloquently.

Cory A. Booker,
mayor of Newark

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Fresh Thinking Shakes Up the World of Civic Activism

W ere living in an extraordinary moment in historya time when the world is calling out for a new corps of citizen activists who are prepared and willing to tackle the global challenges we face. In response, were seeing the birth of a new model of civic engagementa model of active citizenship, being shaped by thousands of individuals and organizations that are exploring new ways of addressing social problems. Its an exciting explosion of practical creativity that is already demonstrating how seemingly intractable problems can be set on the path to solution through innovative thinking that breaks free of old constraints.

The emergence of this new activism couldnt be happening at a better time. We live in an era when millions of people are eagerly searching for new sources of meaning and purpose in life. These questing individuals include young people, the estimated seventy-six million members of the Millennial Generation who are coming of age in a troubled world and are filled with the idealism of youth, yet lack the clear political and economic purposes that motivated early generations of Americans; members of the middle cohort, Generation X, who are struggling to find their role in a world where the economy is struggling, resources are scarce, and rewards seem to be restricted to a lucky few; and the vast numbers of baby boomers, now nearing retirement, who are looking back on their turbulent, promising early days in the 1960s and 1970s and wondering what happened to their dreams of reshaping the world.