Participate in activities that promote the public good.

When citizens participate in the political process, they make popular government possible. As noted in lesson 6, voting in elections is one of the most important and fundamental forms of citizen participation. In addition to voting, several other forms of citizen participation contribute to a healthy political system and the common good.

For example, the Bill of Rights (see lesson 4) guarantees the due process of law for those who have been accused of crimes in the United States of America. One of the most fundamental rights of the accused is to be tried by a jury of his or her peers. When American citizens register to vote, they also become eligible for jury duty. While it may be an inconvenience to serve when called upon, sitting on a jury and carefully participating in a trial is one of the most important things a citizen can do. Imagine that you were accused of a crime that you didn't commit. What kind of people would you like to sit as jurors at your trial? What if no one bothered coming? Just as with military service, there are laws in place to require individuals to participate even when they are not willing to. However, just as the military is healthier and more effective when the soldiers are willing participants, so the criminal judicial system is much healthier and effective when jurors have a sense of civic duty and serve willingly and attentively.

In myriad other ways, citizens can contribute to their communities and to the broader political system through civic minded service and participation. All across America, people participate in volunteer organizations such as the Red Cross, the United Way, Boys and Girls Clubs, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the YMCA, Parent Teacher Associations, and hundreds more. Tens of millions of Americans also belong to churches that bring them together not only to worship but also to serve others in their communities. These various forms of civic and community participation build “social capital,” a bank account of neighborly goodwill, trust, and cooperation. They also provide critical services and meet needs in communities without government taxation or regulation.

Community service projects, on a large or small scale, make neighborhoods better places to live both directly through the work performed and indirectly by bringing people together more effectively than any election or law ever could. Alexis de Tocqueville, perhaps the foremost observer and analyst of the United States political system, wrote in Democracy in America:

Although private interest directs the greater part of human actions in the United States as well as elsewhere, it does not regulate them all. I must say that I have often seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; and I have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another. The free institutions which the inhabitants of the United States possess, and the political rights of which they make so much use, remind every citizen, and in a thousand ways, that he lives in society. They every instant impress upon his mind the notion that it is the duty as well as the interest of men to make themselves useful to their fellow creatures; and as he sees no particular ground of animosity to them, since he is never either their master or their slave, his heart readily leans to the side of kindness. Men attend to the interests of the public, first by necessity, afterwards by choice; what was intentional becomes an instinct, and by dint of working for the good of one's fellow citizens, the habit and the taste for serving them are at length acquired (Book 2, Chapter IV).