How civic assemblies could rebuild trust — and why veterans matter

Holly Burd started with a blunt question: if we promised to defend the Constitution, why aren’t more veterans defending the health of our democracy at home?

She calls herself a civic activist and data scientist, a Marine linguist from Peoria who split time between Iraq and Afghanistan and now spends days trying to make local government intelligible — and more participatory — for ordinary Chicagoans.

A civic assembly is a jury for the city

Holly’s spine idea is simple and underused: a civic assembly is basically a jury drawn by lottery — a representative hundred or so people from across the city who deliberate together about a concrete policy (housing, budgets, the city charter). She first saw it on film and then in person, and both experiences convinced her the format can convert distrust into usable policy.

She points to the documentary Goodbye Politicians, Hello Democracy, which follows a Michigan civic assembly that met over weeks to shape COVID policy. Holly also watched a housing-focused assembly in Akron and saw delegates — some formerly unhoused, some with nonprofit experience — move from strangers into a problem-solving unit.

The point isn’t civics theater. It’s that a well-run civic assembly produces a different kind of information: lived experience and tradeoffs surfaced by people who actually wear the policy shoes. As Holly put it, the person who wears the shoe can tell you where it pinches.

"The more voices, the more people we can get, that's the better we can figure out what this shoe factory is gonna output." — Holly Burd

Veterans as bridges — and the limits of veteran politics

A central thread is how veterans can fill the gap between institutions that beg for trust and politicians trapped in constant campaign cycles. Holly has worked with Alderman Viegas and with Veterans for All Voters. Her argument is not partisan: veterans, she says, have a culture of mission, teamwork and radical collaboration that can prod people past knee-jerk reactions and toward mutual listening.

But Chaz pushed back — honestly and usefully — from the black Chicago veteran perspective. He described why many in the Black community are skeptical: historical exclusion from benefits, lived economic precarity, and too many organizers who never actually show up in neighborhoods like Brownsville or Pullman. Those are practical obstacles, not just rhetorical ones.

Holly acknowledged that and stressed intentional outreach. She described running charter chats across the north, south and west sides, screening films in predominantly Black neighborhoods, and holding events designed to feel inviting for women and people of color. Her point: if participation is going to be representative, the outreach must be too.

What reform looks like in practice

Holly’s immediate policy nails are concrete and consistent: a nonpartisan city charter, civic assemblies, ranked-choice voting, and open primaries. Each is a structural fix aimed at making votes and voices actually count — not just rhetorically, but in how policy gets made.

She’s also working on smaller, tactical things veterans can do now: a veteran voter guide like the one piloted in New York, concrete charter chats in neighborhood libraries, and partnering with local organizers who already have trust in communities. Those aren’t flash-in-the-pan moves; they’re network-building.

Holly is explicit that she’s still learning how to be inviting rather than defensive — an important personal reversal. After the Trump years she went from occasional voter to data-driven activist, using student projects to parse City Council budgets and asking, bluntly, where billions are going. That curiosity turned into a volunteer engine.

Disagreements that matter

The episode keeps its friction: Chaz’s skepticism of some veteran networks and the DSA’s outreach to the Black community, Holly’s insistence that deliberation can soften and channel anger, and both agreeing that money and machine politics still rule many races. Those aren’t contradictions to paper over — they are the trouble that civic reform must solve.

Holly: veterans can convene across ideological lines and demand voting systems that restore confidence.

Chaz: until organizers actually show up in neighborhoods, political promises will ring hollow.

Both ideas can be true at once. That paradox is where organizing work lives.

Why this matters for Chicago

Chicago doesn’t have a city charter. Holly treats that as an unusual political opportunity: when the rules aren’t fixed, you can imagine radically different outputs. She wants assemblies sprinkled around the city, run by trusted facilitators and seeded by veterans and community groups alike.

If the goal is to reduce the cynicism that now powers turnout and to make local policy less extractive, the test will be practical: do assemblies produce recommendations that elected officials adopt? Do reforms like ranked choice and open primaries change which voices get power? Holly’s optimism is practical: try it at scale, measure what happens, and keep adjusting.

Close the loop not with slogans but with one simple standard, she argues: make every resident feel like their vote and voice count. If veterans can help translate that promise into institutions, they’ll have honored the oath that sent them away to fight.

If you want the full conversation, Holly and Chaz spend most of the hour mapping examples, tensions and next steps for veterans and organizers. It’s a useful primer for anyone thinking about how to move beyond protest and into durable reform.

— Read, think, or take someone to a charter chat. The question Holly keeps returning to is small and practical: who’s missing from the room, and how do we bring them in?