Sara Roberts McCarley: Keeping Democracy Healthy Through Participation, Florida

In early 2020 (just weeks before the pandemic), Smithsonian staff and their storytelling partners at the Peale, Baltimore, traveled to multiple states in the U.S. to ask residents of those states about voting experiences, the current state of American democracy, what issues brought them to the polls, how they made a difference in their communities, and what Americans' civic responsibilities were, among other complex questions.

Sara Roberts McCarley: Democracy, to me, is a living, breathing thing. It takes all of us working together toward a common goal of being successful as Americans. So for us, I think what we try to do in our programming is emphasize the Constitution, how it applies to all of us, why it's important, and why the nimbleness is important. It is written in stone, but not really. It's for us to interpret. It's for the courts to interpret. And it's really a living, breathing thing.

(00:28) So for us, democracy is all about participation, engagement, and we're only good as what we put into something. So what I've also told constituents in my role as a commissioner is I'm only as good as my constituency. I can't fix a pothole if I don't know about it. I cannot talk about homelessness unless you're willing to listen. There are lots of different pieces, but it takes skin in the game. So democracy, to me, is something that we are honored to have here in the US, but it's only as good as we are.

(01:00) So we have the Randy Roberts Foundation, which was founded in 2009 at the untimely death of my husband. And he had worked for a big supermarket chain here in Florida, and he and I had always been really involved in youth and helping youth be civically engaged.

(01:14) So after his death, we decided we had an outpouring of support and we wanted to galvanize that, and we built a foundation that works to cultivate Florida's future leaders. We do it in three ways. We do it through a scholarship program for high school students going into college. Any type of community service is how they can apply. So they might be involved with their community theater, they might be involved in politics, they could be involved in the environment. It could be any myriad of what their passion is. We support that and support them going into college.

(01:42) Then we also have a congressional classroom program where we take anywhere from nine to 20 students to DC every year. We visit the Smithsonian quite often, and we teach them about the inner workings of government and the accessibility of it. So one of the things though we do encourage for our students is to understand the local level first, of, "How do local civic engagement impact your everyday life?" We tease them, "The President doesn't care about your garbage, but your city commission does."

(02:11) So if your water doesn't turn on in your home, that's a city issue. If your garbage isn't picked up, if there's a pothole or your sidewalk's not working. So we really try to bridge the gap of, "This is what we do as an organization, is we just want to make you not only ... We're not trying to build politicians. We really want to build public servants." And we really want to give them an opportunity that they can follow their passion in any myriad of things, and public service, and we want to encourage that.

Asset ID: 2022.37.03.a-b
Themes: Democracy, Education, Participation, Engagement, Community Action, Service, Civic Engagement, Youth, Leadership, Randy Roberts Foundation, Government, Local Government, Public Service
Date recorded: January 9, 2020
Length of recording: 0:02:41
Related traveling exhibition: Voices and Votes: Democracy in America
Sponsor or affiliated organization: Polk County History Center, Bartow, Florida, in conjunction with Florida Humanities
More information or related assets: https://polk-county.net/events/event-details/2020/10/23/history-center/new-smithsonian-institution-exhibit-opens-voices-votes-democracy-in-america. See also, https://www.polk.edu/news/three-polk-state-distinguished-alumni-featured-in-smithsonians-voices-and-votes-exhibit-traveling-the-nation/; In addition, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDiNuWHLHCw