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Every year, over 1,000 public schools are permanently closed across the United States. And yet, little is known about their impacts on American democracy. Closed for Democracy is the first book to systematically study the political causes and democratic consequences of mass public school closures in the United States. The book investigates the declining presence of public schools in large cities and their impacts on the Americans most directly affected – poor Black citizens. It documents how these mass school closure policies target minority communities, making them feel excluded from the public goods afforded to equal citizens. In response, targeted communities become superlative participators to make their voices heard. Nevertheless, the high costs and low responsiveness associated with the policy process undermines their faith in the power of political participation. Ultimately, the book reveals that when schools shut down, so too does Black citizens' access to, and belief in, American democracy.
Chapter 4 returns to the story of Ms. Leanne Woods from the Introduction and provides a clear example of the negative impact of school closure policy, even on those whose schools remain open. In the long term, communities targeted by public school closure lose faith in the political process as durably changing the status quo appears elusive. These negative perceptions have serious consequences because participation provides one of the only mechanisms in a democracy for poor citizens to have power. And yet, the inability of their participation to produce long-term change pushes those affected by the policy to disengage with politics altogether. This chapter conceptualizes this latter phenomenon as indicative of their “collective participatory debt” – a type of mobilization fatigue that transpires when citizens engaged in policy process are met with a lack of democratic transparency and responsiveness despite high levels of repeated participation – and raises serious questions about the utility of participating while poor and Black in American democracy.
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