Civic Assembly Lottery Selection Night

Description

The lottery event will take place immediately before the regular City Council meeting and will also be broadcast live on the City’s 22 CityView website and cable television channel, giving residents the opportunity to see firsthand – in-person or online -- how the Civic Assembly selection process works. All Cambridge residents are encouraged to attend, and to and join in the excitement as Cambridge continues to advance this important initiative.

At 5 p.m., members of the Civic Assembly team will explain the Assembly’s purpose, the recruitment process, and the randomized selection method. Around 5:15 p.m., lottery balls will be drawn to randomly select the 40 members of the assembly.

The initiative, which is the first municipal Civic Assembly process to take place in Massachusetts and one of the first in New England, responds to a City Council policy order introduced at a special meeting on July 23, 2026, calling for the City to pilot a community-driven deliberative process focused on public safety. The Civic Assembly is being organized by the City Council and City Manager in collaboration with FIDE North America, a nonprofit specializing in democratic deliberation.

During the week of September 7, approximately 15,000 randomly selected Cambridge households (out of approximately 56,000 total households) received Your Voice, Your Cambridge mailed invitations, offering residents ages 16 and older the opportunity to enter the Civic Assembly lottery. Of the households to receive invitations, over 400 entered the lottery. Every neighborhood was represented in the lottery, while additional outreach efforts were conducted to ensure participation from neighborhoods most impacted by gun violence were more represented.