On March 8-10, the Guiding Lights Network will host the Guiding Lights Weekend, an interactive conference on creative citizenship in Seattle, Washington. In time for the event, Democracy launches its Spring 2012 issue this week, featuring “Reclaiming Citizenship,” a symposium on progressive first principles to reinvigorate civic life.

The Guiding Lights Network was founded by Eric Liu, a member of Democracy‘s editorial committee. In the issue, Liu contributes a piece titled “Sworn-Again Citizens,” in which he calls for the cultivation of a stronger civic character:

American exceptionalism in this age of great tectonic shifts does not depend on our forever having the largest economy or the mightiest military. It does depend on our having the planet’s most adaptive and resilient concept of citizenship, one that rises above land and blood, that commits us to a national lifetime of striving, failing, renewing, striving again to dedicate ourselves to our proposition.

The Guiding Lights Weekend will feature, among others, Van Jones, Lawrence Lessig, and Jose Antonio Vargas discussing civic education and engagement. “Reclaiming Citizenship,” Democracy‘s centerpiece symposium in the new issue, will appear online the evening of March 8.