After 7 pm on a Tuesday: I'm sitting at the dining room table of Democracy House. I went for a long run with Chris, who owns this place, late this afternoon and in doing so got a bit more acquainted with the city. I clearly haven't seen that much since getting here a week ago, which is at least a testament to the amount of work we've been doing.

The work: We've spent a lot of the last few days defining our priorities and the ways we plan to make them happen, and trying to structure our thoughts about that stuff in such a way that the new arrivals enter into something productive and efficient from the outset. I know, boring. But building a community on the Internet, and an engaged, active and enthusiastic one at that, takes some thought and preparation. And some being boring.

Everything else: On the run today we trotted over to De Waal Park and then down past the Company Gardens and Art Gallery, and then began climbing up the steady incline of the mountain range that forms Cape Town's backdrop. As you climb higher, the homes, unsurprisingly, get bigger and more ornate. The stunning views of the harbour command top real estate dollar. But the view extends as well to reveal the plateau of slums that unfold endlessly from the city's edge out to the horizon.

As far as democracy goes, this dichotomy between wealth and destitution dominates my views of politics and agency here in the same way that Table Mountain, the city's star geographical attraction, dominates the landscape. The desperately poor are everywhere and amount to a massive population. But power is concentrated within a much smaller community. So where do those in the slums fit in, politically? If democracy's goal is providing a sense of agency (and maybe that's not the goal -- I'm just throwing that one out there), how much work needs to be done, and where do things start?

/John