Citizen Duties Defined Part 6: What Does the Good Citizen Group Say?

My search for the definitive Duties of a Citizenship list continues.

Not surprisingly, a search for what is a good citizen brings up the goodcitizen.org site. The group has listed as it’s mission to teach young Americans how to be great citizens. It has a 100 Citizen Actions list that is directed to what I am looking for. Let’s see how much of their list I agree with.

Heritage

1. Ask an immigrant about the conditions that drove them from their native country and the hopes that led them to ours.
2. Attend the naturalization ceremony of new citizens.
3. Discuss the responsibilities of citizenship with your children.
4. Hang the flag on national holidays and explain their significance to your children.
5. Interview your grandparents
6. Learn what is being taught about America at your child’s school.
7. Read a book or rent a movie that depicts the sacrifices of war or what people have done to escape oppression.
8. Read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
9. Take a car trip across the country.
10. Take a course on American history.
11. Teach your children some “Americana-type” songs.
12. Teach your children the states and their capitals.
13. Travel to another country.
14. Visit a national or state park.
15. Visit an American Indian Reservation.
16. Visit a war memorial.
17. Watch the History Channel

Democratic Process

18. Ask a friend how they feel about a specific issue.
19. Complete Consumer Surveys.
20. Email the address of this website to a friend.
21. Encourage others to vote.
22. Give feedback to public officials, the media, and companies.
23. Pay the taxes you owe.
24. Place a link to Good Citizen on your personal website.
25. Protest over something you feel strongly about.
26. Pursue injustices, even at personal inconvenience.
27. Serve on a jury, if asked.
28. Sign an initiative or petition you agree with.
29. Talk about current events at dinner with your family.
30. Tell someone when you don’t approve of their actions.
31. Vote.
32. Watch or listen to a debate between candidates for elected office
33. Work at a polling location.

Special Groups

34. Attend a School Board meeting.
35. Discuss the role of the military with your daughter and/or sons.
36. Give credit to individuals who act on behalf of the country
37. Go on a police “ride-along”.
38. Host a Marine For Thanksgiving Dinner.
39. Make a donation to, or participate with, a group with this country as its focus.
40. Provide feedback to the Police Chief and Oversight Boards on positive and negative encounters with Police officers.
41. Seek more pay and better conditions for military persons, veterans, teachers and police officers.
42. Send a care package to servicemen overseas.
43. Volunteer to help out at your child’s school.
44. Wave to a policeman.

Government

45. Attend a city council meeting.
46. Attend a criminal trial.
47. Go on a police “Ride-Along”.
48. Visit Washington DC, your State capitol, or county seat and attend a legislative session.
49. Volunteer in an election campaign.

Community

50. Befriend a neighbor who is elderly.
51. Donate blood.
52. Extend small courtesies to individuals of ‘difference’.
53. Get to know your neighbors.
54. Give away things you don’t use.
55. Keep a trash bag in your car.
56. Make a friend with someone from another race/ethnicity.
57. Participate in organ donor program.
58. Perform a “random act of kindness”.
59. Pick up a piece of trash each day.
60. Recycle.
61. Register to be a bone marrow donor.
62. Start a neighborhood watch program.
63. Start a tradition in your neighborhood of having an annual “pot luck”.
64. Stop to help a bicyclist or driver in need.
65. Visit churches, restaurants, stores and parks located in ethnic neighborhoods different than your own to discover the richness of American culture.
66. Volunteer.
67. Watch America’s Most Wanted.

Individual & Family

68. Be the best you can be.
69. Continue family and personal traditions.
70. Encourage your children to do a good deed and write the story of it as their Christmas or Holiday gift to you.
71. Keep a gratitude journal.
72. Keep in touch with aunts, uncles, grandparents and other relatives.
73. Learn about how your family came to be in this country.
74. Promote Excellence.
75. Replace Your credit cards with a debit/check card.
76. Resist intimidation.
77. Support kids’ entrepreneurial efforts – fundraising, selling Girl Scout Cookies, car washes, lemonade stands, etc.
78. Take a course on parenting.
79. Talk with your children about ways to be a good citizen.
80. Tell the truth

Thoughts:

I absolutely love this list for several reasons.

I love that the list is long. It says 100 items, but I can’t find more than 80 – still a significant list. Up until this point, all of the ‘lists’ I have encountered have been 5, maybe 10 items long. Alternatively, I’ve held the believe that in order to uphold a democracy like ours, it takes a great deal of work, and thus the list in my head has always been much more expansive than what I’ve seen listed out there so far.

I love the breakdown of the items into categories. I love the actual categories. Heritage, for instance, is a category that I feel is not typically discussed in terms of citizenship duties but might be as important as any of the others. As a person of color, with descendants of both African and Native American descent, I feel it’s necessary to support those communities. My view of our ‘Nation’ is not simply the United States. My view of the ‘greatness’ of this country is certainly tempered by the stories my grandparents told me of our people’s plight.

I love that this is a list of actions, and not a list of vague or ambiguous values one is expected to feel. That said, I’m looking not just for actions, but which actions one must take. I am searching for the ‘duties’ required of a citizen of these United States, and possibly a citizen of the world. The things we must do to qualify. Activities we must undertake. Items we must check off of lists. I’m more interested in behaviors than beliefs.

I’m not looking for the attitudes one feels I should hold. I need to know the outcomes a citizen is expected to produce, not the opinions she’s typically asked about. It is my opinion that Citizenship is a verb, not an adjective. Citizenship is a thing you do, not a thing you think.

I love the specificity of the actions. Reading specific documents. Speaking with specific people. Discussing specific topics – with specific groups. Visiting specific places. Doing specific things. This is the kind of specificity that I have not yet found anywhere else. And while I may not find each and every item on this list a ’required duty’ for me or ‘Joe and Josie citizen’ they certainly give me ideas for how to modify this list to come up with my own definitive list. Alternatively, it gives me hope that each citizen can come up with their own definitive list that would be a sufficient checklist to attack.

Here are thoughts and questions on some of the individual list items.

Heritage

• Ask an immigrant about the conditions of their native country and what led them to ours: It is my opinion that American’s need to be far more understanding of the world around them. As the last several years have shown us, we are an increasingly interdependent community of nations. Learning more about other nations makes our understanding of our own country that much more accurate.

• Hang the flag on national holidays and explain their significance to your children: Is this really a duty? A good thing to do, sure. I am not sure this is what I would consider a duty. 

• Interview your grandparents: I would say interview elders, both family members and strangers. History is best viewed through the eyes of an actual participant. Our elders are a priceless resource that we don’t utilize nearly enough. Putting this on a list of things you must do would help remedy that fact!

• Read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence: I’ve heard many people recite constitutional amendment numbers as reasons for individual opinions or political views. Rarely have I spoken with someone who has read the entire text of that referenced law. Almost never have I spoken with someone who understands completely the amendment they reference and the context of how it came to be. The Constitution is technically what our leaders swear to uphold. Having a people with a better understanding of our founding documents would no doubt provide for a more informed and improved voting public.

• Travel – across the country and to another country: “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” Traveling allows you to make informed comparisons of your country and others. Seeing how others ‘do things’ gives you the ability to re-evaluate your own practices, traditions and culture. Additionally, traveling makes you an unofficial ambassador, which hopefully brings our nations closer to others, so long as you are not the stereotypical Ugly American.

• Visit a national or state park: I participate in many outdoor sports, so I have spent a good deal of time in our national and state parks. Because they are one of this nation’s great advantages, I work to support them regularly, so we may maintain and even grow and improve them.

• Visit an American Indian Reservation: While I have descendants of Native American ancestry, I admittedly have lost touch with that side of my heritage. It is a part of me that I have begun to explore and hopefully reconnect with. That said, or native population should be looked upon by this nation as a treasure and ALL Americans should be working to improve the conditions and prosperity our OUR Native Peoples. I believe that should be a sworn duty of all Americans, even those newly granted Citizenship. A nation can and should be judged by her treatment of its own aboriginal peoples.
  
  While I believe a visit is a start, I would expand this duty to include actions such as support, promote, assist and defend those native nations still in existence within the United States today. The dedication to improving the view of our native peoples is one of my of this Project.

• Visit a war memorial: The sacrifice of ones life in service of their country is no small thing, and should be remembered and respected by citizens. While I have visited memorials, I must admit I do not do this on a regular basis nor do I specifically set aside time to do so. This is something I think I will adjust moving forward.

Democratic Process

• Ask a friend how they feel about a specific issue: Discussing important topics with friends was an activity that literally led to the founding of this nation. It is also something that has decreased in recent years. A Pew Research Pol
• Give feedback to public officials, the media, and companies: I like this. I actually might go even further, and add to ask them how you can help. It’s one thing to criticize, it’s another to offer help for the cause.

• Pay the taxes you owe: I love the qualification of “you owe”.

• Protest over something you feel strongly about. As with many things, protest has historically been discussed as a ‘right’ one has as an American. However, one may view protest as not simply a right, but a duty. As with political discussion, this country was also founded on the principle of protest.
  
  Remember, Disruptive protest is a civic duty. The subtitle of this article is eleven words of truth.

• Talk about current events at dinner with your family: Let’s be real. Families hardly even eat dinner together anymore. Regardless of when or where you do it, you should be having these discussions with your family and/or those closest to you.

• Watch or listen to a debate between candidates for elected office: I would go a step further, and say you need to listen to a debate between every candidate you need to vote for. I’ve never done this, which is part of the reason I believe I’m a terrible citizen. My goal this next election cycle is to do just this.

• Work at a polling location: I once thought about it, but I thought it would be something I would do when I retired, because everyone at my polling place was over 60. However, with what happened in the 2020 election, I would say volunteering my time became far more likely.

Special Groups

• Provide feedback to the Police Chief and Oversight Boards on positive and negative encounters with Police officers: This is a very sensitive issue for me. As a black man, who can easily be mistaken for a white man, and has lived in some very bad neighborhoods over my lifetime, I have had many troubling encounters with police. I believe this is an area where a citizen must involve themselves. I’m not quite so sure this is the answer. This one I need to really think about.

Government

• Attend a city council meeting: I have never attended a city council meeting. The closest I have come is attending a meeting for zoning of a property on my block. That said, after attending that meeting, I went to the cities online portal

• Visit Washington DC, your State capitol, or county seat and attend a legislative session: I’ve visited DC, and met with a representative to lobby for vote. I’ve never attended a legislative session.

• Volunteer in an election campaign: If every citizen volunteered for an election campaign, I would bet our voting rates would approach one hundred percent. That alone would make this list item worth it.

Community

• Donate blood: Not sure if this would qualify as something you must do to be considered a good citizen. That said, as I looked into it, COVID caused a sever national blood supply shortage. In this case, until we are back to normal, it might be a requirement to donate if you want to call yourself a good citizen.

• Get to know your neighbors: I do believe that this is a duty of a citizen. Particularly in a world where we are increasingly cut off from our community by technology.

• Make a friend with someone from another race/ethnicity: I believe this might be one of the most important things a citizen can do. If this was a duty everyone ascribed to do, I believe we would not have nearly the amount of racial tension as we currently have.

• Participate in organ donor program: I truly believe this is something every citizen should do.

• Pick up a piece of trash each day: I think this is a valid duty. Again, if every citizen did this, our country would look very different.

• Visit churches, restaurants, stores and parks located in ethnic neighborhoods different than your own to discover the richness of American culture: You need to know and understand people different than yourself if you want to be a great citizen.

This list is very interesting. And while I might not personally include every one of these items on a “must do” list for good citizenship they’re all good things to do. That said, a good number of them should be on the list as must do’s, in my humble opinion. This list is also much more specific and action oriented, uncommon of the suggestions typically suggested on this topic. As usual, there are some presumed, generic actions items (tell the truth) on the list. But that’s ok. This list is certainly a great addition for my list.

Not surprisingly, the list of 100 citizen actions has a significant number of items a citizen should be doing. This list gives me three show new categories of duties. Version 6 of my Citizens List of Duties. (v 006)

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

This list is long. There are so many items that are good to do and I will likely do a lot, but my focus will remain on what must be done. I want the definitive list. I think it’s a nice thing to wave to a police officer, but I don’t think it’s a requirement of a citizen. Interestingly, I believe it’s a citizens responsibility to oversee the police and ensure they don’t overstep their boundaries or abuse their authority. So far, those types of duties have been rarely mentioned. Let’s see if what citizens and groups in other countries say about citizen duties includes these types of actions as must do for citizenship status.