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As a Washington Capitals season ticket holder I've come to cherish the moment at each game when fans are asked to salute guest soldiers, many of whom are being treated at nearby Walter Reed Army Hospital. To a person, everyone rises to their feet and gives our guests an extended standing ovation. It's an amazing feeling to be among 15,000 people expressing such love and respect. But when the applause gives way to life's daily drudgeries, I wonder what happens to those brave soldiers, especially those in need of mental health support? Are we asked to stand up then?

This weekend, The New York Times ran two articles on the mental health of our troops serving in Iraq. One, "Army Is Worried by Rising Stress of Return Tours," detailed how each tour of duty significantly raises the odds that a soldier will return home with "anxiety, depression or acute stress." The second piece, "After War, Love Can Be a Battlefield," told of 19 couples who attended a weekend retreat called "Strong Bonds," to learn how to deal with the enormous stress placed on marriages and families when soldiers return home.

What is our bond to our troops when the applause dies down, when men and women in uniform find themselves sitting alone in their dark living room or around an empty kitchen table, when the demons of trauma will not relent, when there seems to be no one they can talk with? After we ship someone overseas for a tour of duty, what does it mean for us to have "strong bonds" with them when they come home?

Mental health is still a taboo subject in our society, though our ability to talk about it openly has improved dramatically in my lifetime. I remember as a kid, watching my mom help to create "Hammond House," a halfway home for mental health patients who had been "de-institutionalized" by New York State during the 1970s. Hammond House was located just a handful of blocks from my own home. What my mom and others did was pretty remarkable.

I also remember seeing the slim white envelopes among the mail on our dining room table, with the austere black lettering in the upper left-hand corner: "Saratoga County Mental Health Committee." Among his many commitments, my dad served on this committee at a time when mental health issues were often considered shameful to talk about in public.

I still recall vividly the college psychiatrist at Skidmore College, Dr. Mastrianni, approaching me after a speech I'd given, to ask if I would consider working at the county's Mental Health Crisis Center. I quickly said yes, and it was an experience that would help direct my life. My role was to help patients during the many hours when no doctor was to be seen. I remember going home after 12-hour shifts and sitting on the floor in my room hoping to decompress and sort out what I had seen and experienced. I was only 19 or 20 years old. I remember once having to help tie down to her bed a struggling patient; she was someone I had walked to elementary school with, someone I had known for years.

What I came to know from my time at the crisis center was how close to the edge so many people live; how someone can seem to be doing relatively okay one day, and then the next they are pushed too far, beyond what they can handle at the moment. Together with other experiences, my time at the Crisis Center left an indelible mark upon my heart: we must be our brother's keeper.

A visiting rabbi at my temple recently asked some of us when we had felt God's presence, or at least some semblance of genuine spirituality. I've felt it many times, but one is when we Caps fans stand-up together in a show of support of our troops. In my row alone, I suspect there are widely divergent views on the war; but in that single moment, when we all stand, there is something incredibly beautiful that occurs, something that seems larger than any of us. We are together.

I keep thinking of the people I met at the Crisis Center, people who desperately wanted to get back up on their feet; I think as well about the people my parents sought to support in my home town, and how they were willing to stand up for them. Now, when our troops return from a war many people do not want, what will we do? I wish we could find a way to stand up for our troops � not merely by giving out medals, or through recognition at sporting events, or with periodic retreats about how to save one's marriage. We need to stand with individuals who need our ongoing support so that they can get back up on their feet.

The messages of hope and change that dominate our political discussions these days have made many people giddy about the possibilities for public life and politics. But, if we do not wish to slip back into business as usual, we must beware of our own inclinations and proclivities to rely on techniques and process as a substitute for making hope real. Instead, our task now is to reorient ourselves outward, toward the people and communities we serve, or risk squandering the opportunity before us.


In our rush to re-engage people and marshal civic resources, we can fall prey to our own good intentions. Good intentions aren't enough, and alone won't get us where we want to go. In our use of techniques and process, we can crowd out the very judgments we must make to create conditions for hope and change. We can assume a false sense of progress and security, and sidestep the very battles we must fight to produce change.

There's so much to say here, but let me offer a handful of examples of where we turn to technique and process and how they can take us down the wrong path:


My own sense is that many people make a beeline to techniques and processes simply as a way to be "doing something." Others use techniques and process to combat their own internal fears about ambiguity and the unknown, thus providing a tidy step-by-step recipe for action. Still others may be looking for the silver bullet, the quick way to solve the problem at-hand and move on.

Many of us operate with the implicit assumption that so long as we are moving forward, so long as we can say something is happening, so long as we are moving down our task list, we can claim that progress is being made. But is it? The danger is that we become "activity happy, and yet action deprived."

Tools, techniques and to-do lists may assuage our own doubts, may give us a sense of progress, but a completed check list or some such other step won't necessarily lead to change. I worry that our impulse to grab a new technique or process is a way to insulate ourselves from facing difficult truths. We can forget that not every child has access to a good education; that many people are without healthcare; that even as we become a more diverse society, we are turning inward - away from one another. Each of our communities faces its own difficult truths, and we all struggle with how to adequately and honestly address them.

The problem with the tyranny of techniques and process is that it can be a stand-in for our own need to step up and make judgments on how best to make a difference. It robs us of the possibilities for reshaping public life and politics and discarding business as usual. For sure, I believe there is a role for techniques and process, as tools to help us implement our larger ideas and aspirations in public life. But this requires that we have clarity about our intentions and purpose, that our actions create genuine opportunities to make hope real.

So while new techniques, processes and tools have a place, we need something more. We need to reorient ourselves. We need to turn outward to the very people and communities we serve. It's time: please, join me in the fight against the tyranny of techniques and process.

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To learn more about how you can avoid becoming "activity happy, yet action deprived" get your free copy of Make Hope Real.  (Chapter 4)

The last seven days have made a week to remember. We started off with Imus in the Morning, abruptly returned to the Duke rape case, and now find ourselves facing the unimaginable tragedy at Virginia Tech. Meanwhile, troubling scenes from Iraq and Afghanistan of U.S. soldiers (and locals) being maimed and killed, only escalate. All this activity makes one wonder if we have momentarily lost our senses.

• Could it be true, for instance, that a relatively silent but corrosive racism lingers just beneath the surface of society – and that it exists to a much greater extent than we are willing to admit or deal with?

• How was it that a popularly-elected district attorney could hijack a case that put three college-aged kids through hell, while much of society stood by and cheered him on, reflexively assuming the students were guilty?

• How many U.S. soldiers must die – and how many Iraqi and Afghan people must perish – before there is an open and honest debate over a real course for this war. How long will we allow our leaders, news media, and others simply to use the war for rhetorical and political games?

• At what point are we willing to tell demagogues to go home with their belligerent and hurtful words – no matter their political party, race, or religion? When will we tell them to stop polluting our public square?

• What should we say to kids across America about the situation at Virginia Tech? Is it that something in society has gone awry, or are they to believe that such violence – from Virginia Tech to Columbine to 9/11 to the war overseas – is just part of their times?

My own sense is that while most people want to find ways to remain safe and secure, sometimes even withdrawing form the larger society, they believe deeply that events such as those we have witnessed this week require a response. There is a yearning among people to reconnect; a desire to give better shape to our society; a hope that we can take a different course.

To make our aspirations real will require that we reclaim the public square – nothing less. I say this not to promote one particular position or another on some specific challenge. Instead, my point is that changing our path requires that we engage with the kinds of questions I listed earlier – with our kids, with each other, with leaders.

We must know that there is no magic mechanism for easily engaging all of us on such topics; there is no single way to cultivate and harness our public sentiments and ultimately our political will to change course.

The starting point is with each of us – to make these issues our own, to make our voices heard (from discussions at home and in our schools, through polls and town meetings, to call-in shows, etc), and to make clear what we hold to be valuable. Then we can feel more safe and secure, and possibly make sense of these trying times.

We can each start now in our own small ways. Eventually such efforts do make a difference, because eventually they do get heard. That’s how we see movement, however big or small, on such concerns as the war and global climate change and various local issues.

If you agree with me, pass this entry along to others. Talk with them. We can reclaim the public square, piece by piece.

I have a visceral negative reaction when I hear about “charity” these days. I’m not sure my reaction is either healthy or wise, but then again it keeps coming up. I can’t seem to escape it as I travel the country. Maybe someone can set me straight. Think about the following: • When I brought my daughter to visit colleges this past week, all the schools talked about “service.” Indeed, at one university, the tour guide proudly proclaimed that a few “needy students” are brought to the campus green every year to paint their desks with the help of college students. She beamed when telling us how great her fellow co-eds feel about the experience. • I am running into more and more people who have taken or plan to send their kids to Costa Rica (or some other destination) to build housing for the poor. • During my recent visit to New Orleans, I was taken aback by the sheer size of that community’s challenge and yet how long it takes for a single group of individuals to rebuild a single home. • A recent Google Foundation study noted that a significant portion of charitable giving does not go to people in need, but supports things like religious organizations (non-soup kitchen-type activities, like a concert I just attended) and people’s favorite local non-profits – all worthy causes, but many support of our own immediate interests and not the most needy among us. These and other efforts lead me to a series of questions that I hope you’ll have something to say about: • What happens when the efforts of volunteers get more emphasis than the people in need? This question is no red herring. Increasingly, for baby boomers and their kids (I’m just barely included in this group!), we’re told over and over that “It’s all about you!” and “We’re working hard to give you a great volunteer experience!” While it may be essential to find new ways to ‘hook” people into volunteering, we must not make volunteering the next new consumer-driven experience. It’s the person in need who should be the focus of our concerns. • When people go to another country to volunteer, do they understand that needs exist right here in their local communities? I’m not saying that having an “international experience” is not useful or important. After all, the Peace Corps is wonderful and has been for years. But as I hear people talk about volunteering, especially for a week or so, it sometimes seems as if they’re going on a travel excursion or vacation rather than going off to help their fellow human beings. At times, we can sound on the verge of creating a culture of “designer volunteer trips.” What’s more, some of the same people who boast about their international volunteering seem to have little knowledge of the needs right next door. • When is volunteering important but not enough – and when should we push for change? Indeed, it seems that we can sometimes use volunteering as a way to put-off larger societal decisions that we need to make. Take the magnitude of the Gulf Coast situation: while individual volunteers are needed (and do incredible work), a larger collective response is required, too, if that area is to combat inadequate public schools, poor housing, and other ailments. I believe that citizen action in areas like the Gulf Coast, and in our own communities, is pivotal to bringing about real and sustainable change; but such action must be more than the kind of volunteering I’ve mentioned above. • How should we think about the impact of our volunteering? Surely, we can talk about the personal and spiritual growth that occurs within each volunteer. I’m all for that; indeed, I have personally benefited from such engagement. But what about the impact on the students with the desks I mentioned earlier – while one or two, or even five, newly painted desks are all for the good, let us not mistakenly think that we’ve licked the educational problem in that or other communities. Nor should building a few homes in Costa Rica allow us to believe that fundamental issues in that area have been resolved. Instead, in our desire to help, in our genuine giving, we must maintain a clear sense of understanding in what we have achieved – and what remains to be done. My concern is that we sometimes allow the very idea and act of volunteering to lull us into a safe comfort zone in which we don’t have to face up to the larger change that is required in society. I’m sure some of us feel that we can’t effect larger change, so we’ll start by painting a desk or two. Then, at least someone is helped. True enough, someone is helped by such acts of kindness. And these acts help to make a better society, in many, many different ways. But when it comes to volunteering, I want us to be more forthright about our efforts and more focused on those people truly in need.

Among the key ideas I find myself emphasizing as I travel the country is the following: I believe people are born with innate goodness and they are in search of ways to express it – especially nowadays. This may seem like either pure pablum to some people or obvious to others. But in my travels, neither is true. Indeed, when I remind people of this notion – when I voice it publicly – their faces quickly show a sign of relief and possibility. What I am not suggesting is that evil or bad things don’t exist; we all know they do. But so too does our innate goodness. Of course, this goodness is seen clearly and convincingly from time-to- time when we are called to respond to a major crisis like Hurricane Katrina, or when we witness it in our individual private lives. But in public life the notion of innate goodness is too often missing or even belittled. It has been crowded out by the acrimony and divisiveness thrust upon us; by a politics which gauges a candidate’s success by their ability to raise record-breaking amounts of donations, even if the candidate fails to reflect our concerns; by an obsession with the personal destruction of opponents and the near-constant questioning of each other’s motivations. The result of these and other trends is to denigrate and cheapen public life. They signal to people that goodness has little or no place in our public arena. They warn people that unless they are ready to do battle under the current rules of engagement, they will be run over or run out. Just when do we say enough is enough? When do we say to these purveyors of mistrust and mischief that they have no right to take over the public arena and make a mockery of people’s genuine concerns and heart-felt aspirations? Last week I visited Hartsville, South Carolina and just weeks before, I was in Newark, New Jersey. I suspect many people would think that these two places could not be more different from each other – here, a Red state and Blue state; a rural community and an urban area; one place in relatively good economic shape, the other still desperate. But in reality people in both places had similar things to say – and most of them are tired of a public life and politics that takes us no place good. I have said much about how to improve public life and politics here in this space; yes, I believe that progress will come by building small pockets of change to propel us forward; by us standing publicly next to good leaders who need our support and for whom we must vouch; by creating boundary spanning organizations that can span across dividing lines and help up us to see each other and work together. But today, what I want to say most of all is what I have come to say over and over again on the road: People hold an innate sense of goodness and it is waiting to be expressed. The task of our leaders and of ourselves is to make room for this innate goodness – to give it space to emerge and find its expression; to harness it in ways that enable people to join together for productive common purposes; and to tell stories that reflect its power and persuasion. But let’s be clear. Emphasizing our innate goodness is not simply about charity or volunteering. It is about our most basic orientations in public life and politics – about whether we hold the belief that we are capable of finding ways to come together even amid our disagreements and dislikes, or whether we will retreat to the sidelines to allow negativity and inaction to win the day.

How is it, I wondered, that we could leave a city in such utter despair and destruction – and for so long? This past week, I traveled to New Orleans for a Hands On Network conference and took two hours to quietly ride through the city. Not too long ago the phrase “shock and awe” was used so cavalierly to describe our military prowess in Iraq; in New Orleans (and perhaps other parts of the Gulf Coast) that phrase applies, too, but only to describe what remains.

What I came to know through news accounts failed to prepare me for what I encountered in person. In some areas, the destruction goes on for block after block. Many homes are about to literally fall down. Boards have been ripped off their frames; windows and doors are gone. Parts of New Orleans are unfathomable ghost towns. Many owners have put their homes up for sale; but who among us would buy these homes?

On occasion you will find a rebuilt house amid the rubble. From time to time, I could see three or four kids playing in the street; where did these kids live? I also wondered what it would mean for people to come back to these neighborhoods. Can you imagine living in the only rebuilt house on an entire street among deserted blocks – for how long could anyone withstand that sense of isolation and despair and loneliness?

Some schools are still shut down, left crumbling, disserted, overrun by trash or weeds. Other schools seemed half open, with the lights ablaze in some dismal- looking classrooms, while other parts of the building appeared cordoned off, as if they had a giant tourniquet to forestall the spread of disease.

Then there are the infamous “FEMA trailers.” Entire parking lots filled with small white trailers, one lined up right after the other, with just enough room for people to park their car or truck in front, with no room for kids to play, spaced out exactly for efficiency in order to squeeze each one in. I drove past a liquor store on the highway with bright neon signs; there, too, were trailers.

When I first saw the trailers all lined up, you could think you’re looking at storage lots for a trailer company, just waiting to ship out their newest model to happy weekend travelers. But these trailers, in these mind-numbing lots, are now home for people. Many other trailers sit in front yards of destroyed houses. The people seem to be waiting, but for what?

I kept thinking about where else I have been witness to such scenes. I have worked in Flint, Newark, Detroit, New York, and other cities as well as many rural areas and I have seen poverty and destruction and much despair. Each time it is heart-breaking.

But here it happened all at once; here we made pledges to respond; here we sent down record-breaking amounts of charity; here we continue to fail to fulfill our promises. Many of the conditions that we now face in New Orleans – such as poverty, poor public schools, corruption, racism, and other issues – existed long before Hurricane Katrina and Rita. And let’s be clear: some of these problems were a result of irresponsible inaction over many years on the part of leaders in New Orleans. Indeed, before the hurricanes I was asked to come down and work in the city – but disagreements slowed that work and ultimately choked it off.

But none of this is an excuse for what is happening now in New Orleans. Recently, President Bush traveled to the city to tell people that he and the federal government would not forget them. Other leaders have made similar claims. But, when you drive through, and you think about the condition of people’s lives, there is little sign that people have been remembered.

Good deeds are being done by many courageous groups in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast. But those acts of goodwill do not take any of us off hook – whether we live in New Orleans or throughout the rest of the nation.

The phrase “Shock and Awe” was probably cobbled together by some overly clever speechwriter or public relations person to help us imagine the destruction that would rain down upon Iraq. Little did we know that we would have to face up to our own shock and awe right here.

Let us respond.

I have often wondered what it would be like if we were all moving in one direction, now I know. Brenda Dizon, Guest Blogger

How does one convey to a broader audience the potential that exists in the public library to transform community?  This probably sounds at first like a pretty big assumption for what many people still see as a rather passive institution.  But stop to consider the library's assets.  Public libraries tend to be institutions that are trusted.  This is huge in today's world where there is a tendency to question the motives and intent of private and public institutions.  The library has been able to retain this trust in part because it has been able to preserve its heritage of providing service that is very individualized.  At the same time it has adopted technologies that enable it to reach a wider mass audience.  It's not uncommon for libraries to boast of the fact that more people pass through their doors than many of the most high profile events in their community combined.  Libraries tend to be places that all aspects of the community visit on a regular basis and concurrently. 

When people think of libraries, they tend to think of books, of tables and quiet study spaces.  These places still exist in libraries.  This is part of their heritage that works and that is being preserved as new technologies and forms of media are being added.  But people tend to think less often about what libraries are increasingly doing in the way of early childhood education and technology training.  They tend not to think about how the library uses its knowledge to aid non-profits seeking funds or how individuals use the institution's resources to prepare themselves for new careers. 

I have spent a great deal of effort engaged in activities that have helped me to understand the broad needs of the community in which my library rests.  Rarely has there been a community challenge that was not susceptible in some way to being aided by a library asset.  The biggest challenge for libraries is not figuring out how to be relevant.  The biggest challenge is where to focus its relevance.  The institution stands in a position where it often has needed resources.  But, like any organization, its capacity is limited by time, talent and energy.  It must be strategic in applying its assets.  For those working in libraries, this means they must be engaged in the life of the community to the extent necessary to understand its priorities.  And they must understand the assets of their institution well enough to know how they can be most effectively applied.

Carlton Sears, Guest Blogger

In thinking about electronic forms of communication and the implications for civic life, it is important to think about the socialization patterns of today's youth, human development, and the function of community.  First of all, today's youth is very different from times past.  Where back yard games were once played out with the negotiation of rules and the determination of who was safe and who was out decided by one's peers, we now have organized leagues controlled by some form of adult authority. In truth, children are rarely unsupervised these days. They need day timers to keep track of their schedules and no schedule is made without parental involvement and the guarantee of adult supervision.  Whether it is soccer moms or football dads, parents are out there or at least making sure that someone is out there providing "proper" supervision.  This means that the determination of who's out and the rules of play are no longer negotiated between peers.   This means that the creation of rules of interaction, social norms, and values are externally controlled by adults.  While the significance of this can't entirely be known, it is important to think about the skills and attitudes that are no longer realized through childhood play.  The ability to argue, to make a point, to see difference, to work through that difference toward an agreement, to believe that one can solve a problem through communication might be some of the possibilities.  Thankfully there is space out there that is not dominated by adults, the Web.

Today children's unsupervised domain is the Web. Granted limitations need to be made over which sites are visited but some of these sites provide children with the opportunity to learn through interaction with others.  They can create fictional characters in these online games and learn how to negotiate and trade goods to develop points allowing greater privileges in the game. They can learn who to trust and what it means to break trust. They can learn how their desire to be successful is often tied to others and to external cooperation. These are the skills, attitudes and perceptions that might help them when their own self interest calls them into the broader realm of civic life.

Now not all games provide this potential for civic learning but why couldn't we try to promote such games.  Why can't we use the opportunities of the Web to enable students to hear different perspectives and to learn different uses of language to express the world in ways unfamiliar to them? The technology is there and student motivation is there.  We need only to promote the uses of these technologies toward a better end, an end that is not limited solely to entertainment.

Of course, the creation of virtual communities and learning through electronic forms of communication is limited.  In the online world, one can change identity, use inappropriate language, and have no stake in civility.  It is only in the face-to-face world where consequences for behavior, good or bad, take place.  It is only within a physically interactive social context that any moral order can be determined through a process of defining and redefining our norms.  It is only in this context that children learn the harder lessons of difference and the importance of negotiating these differences in good faith.  It is only in this environment that behavior can lead to real tangible benefits as well as punishments.

In the end however, it may be the ability to connect these two worlds that hold the greatest potential for building community and developing the skills that can be used when and if civic life knocks on the door.  In online classes, it always seems that students are willing to say more and to reveal themselves, blemishes and all. In the online world we can reach beyond our neighborhood, our geographical community, and what we think we know.  In these spaces we can seek out those with whom we share some commonality. While these are important to the development of who we are as human beings, they are not sufficient.  It is still the genuine idea of community in which real consequences occur for what we do or fail to do and in which we can properly define ourselves that ultimately leads us to our role in the civic enterprise.

Peter Sawyer, Guest Blogger

Since my childhood there has always been an impalpable but very real tether binding me to libraries. Though I read often and widely as a child, it was not so much the books, but the physical space that libraries offered—a Bermuda Triangle for the mind of sorts, where readers could unapologetically get swept up in stories and daydreams—that compelled me. I remember my grandmother and I making weekly pilgrimages to the public library. The rows and rows of volumes seemed infinite and in my frustration with the improbability of ever being able to read them all, I would sometimes walk along the shelves lightly toughing the spine of each book as if comprehension could occur simply through osmosis. Every week I read a book that made me want to be something different when I grew up, one week a detective, the next week a fashion designer. In the library I could read about and try on so many lives.

The library offered a space for dreaming and for learning how to make those dreams come true.  In the midst of a south Los Angeles neighborhood that had been seemingly politically and economically abandoned after the riots of the late 1960’s, the library offered hope against a backdrop of vacant lots and scorched shells of buildings that served as evidence of the outgrowth of hopelessness.  

That I would eventually pursue a career in librarianship is neither accidental nor a surprise. Having worked in libraries in communities on both coasts, and having visited as a consultant, libraries across the nation; I am still amazed at the social capital that public-focused, mission-driven libraries can leverage in their communities. I have seen libraries that nurtured small businesses by providing sole-proprietors and family-owned businesses with the human and information resources necessary to identify and implement new ideas. I have witnessed whole neighborhoods become invested in and reinvigorated by libraries that worked with community members and stakeholders to offer relevant programming that reflected real need and highlighted existing assets. On the other hand I have also seen libraries that failed to connect with their communities and in missing that critical connection lost both public support and resonance.

I come to this institute because as someone who believes and is invested in libraries and their potential impact on the communities they serve, I want and need to expand my bag of tricks, as it were, as both a library and information science practitioner and now, as educator and administrator. Few callings are as noble as public service. If I can learn how to innovate in my role as a librarian, the time I spend here will have a personal and an exponential impact.

Tracie Hall, Guest Blogger

Are you a public innovator? If you’re reading this, I suspect you are. And I want to engage you on 10 questions I hear from public innovators repeatedly. I’m sending these questions to you just one week before the next Harwood Public Innovators Lab, which we sold out! See what these questions spur in you and write back.

1. How can I position my organization so that it not only provides worthy services or programs, but is catalytic and creates systemic change in the community?

2. How can I genuinely engage other people to see why I’m pursing the path that I am in my work – and when do I decide to keep moving forward despite their resistance?

3. How do I move my organization or group to focus on the tough, underlying questions at hand rather than to reach for the easy answers? And how do I avoid watering down our mission?

4. How do I keep our efforts aligned with the reality of our capacity, so that we have a chance to achieve results, and avoid doing things that sound good but ultimately won’t make a real difference?

5. How can I place my work in a larger conceptual framework – so that it’s possible for me and others to see the bigger picture of what we’re trying to do and why?

6. How can I sustain people’s engagement over time, especially when things get tough or move too slowly?

7. How do I take effective action when oftentimes there is limited capacity for action within our community?

8. How fast can I expect progress to come, and what should I do when everyone around me expects change seemingly overnight?

9. How can I engage my funders and supporters who don’t want to take the time to truly understand what we’re trying to do?

10. How can I keep myself going as I pursue my path?

These and other questions pervade almost every conversation I have with public innovators. I have heard them from leaders of large, fast-growing national organizations to individuals who lead small community-based groups.

What do you think? Print out the list of questions and try answering them yourself. Send in one or more of your responses so others can benefit, too.

In the meantime, I’ll be posting some thoughts on these as well as some of the individuals who are attending our Public Innovators Lab.

Be well.

"The Drum Major Instinct" is one of my favorite Martin Luther King, Jr. sermons. It asks, “What does it mean to step forward to lead and serve?” This is especially important for any of us with a burning desire to create change in our society.

So, what is the nature of your own path?

It's no accident that I waited until the day after official events ended to write about MLK. I often worry about national celebrations like MLK Day – the hoopla, the commentary, the speechifying, the parades. I suppose that's how things in mass culture unfold.

But amid all the activity I was reminded of The Drum Major Instinct, the beloved sermon about our own desire to be in front of the parade, to lead, to be recognized. I found myself gravitating toward it all weekend. So, I reached for the sermon and re-read it, yet again, much like I would read a familiar prayer, once more, able to find new meaning as I recited the words, as if for the first time.

I have selected a few lines from the sermon for you to consider. No, the fact is that I really don’t want you to “consider” them at all; I want you to engage with them – to open yourself up and let them touch you. I urge you to do so alone; then maybe find some other people to sit with. Examine your own path.

So here are three segments from The Drum Major Instinct and some questions I’ve posed to each of us:

1. "…deep down within all of us [is] an instinct. It's a kind of drum major instinct – a desire to be out front, a desire to lead the parade, a desire to be first." Is that true for you? If so, what's motivating you?

2. "I guess that's the most damaging aspect of it: what it does to the personality." King said that the desire to be out front can lead people to be "boastful," even "lie," to engage in "activities that are merely used to get attention," to "push others down in order to push himself up," for "snobbish exclusivism" and to justify "prejudice." What does the desire to be out in front of the parade do to you? What damaging aspects can you identify within yourself?

3. "If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice… for peace… for righteousness." So said King about himself; list three things why you're a drum major – and don’t worry, they can be big or small.

Some people might say that my own desire to focus on the drum major instinct misses the point in today's rough-and-tumble world. Our focus must be on winning in partisan politics, enacting government ethic laws and campaign finance reform, creating some new technology.

I don’t doubt that these and other matters are important. But I also know that if we are not clear on why we’re leading then we will not reach our own aspirations or fill the breaches that now exist in society.

Self interest will always be a part of us; we cannot wring it out of our nature. But we can be drum majors, where our words and actions are filled with purpose greater than just our own good. Let us use MLK Day to renew our own instincts to lead the parade in the right direction. If not now, then when?

This weekend I heard the news that Cole Campbell, dean of the school of journalism at University of Nevada, Reno, was killed Friday when his car overturned on an icy road. Every once in a while you realize we’ve lost someone special who made a true impression on the world, someone who will be remembered for years to come. Cole was such an individual. He was a good friend.

During the 1990s when the newspaper industry heard the call to change its ways, Cole was at the forefront of change. I worked with him during his leadership at the Virginian Pilot and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Some people are smart; he was brilliant. He always ran to embrace the toughest issues – such as the nexus between the role of newspapers and civic health; between the noble traditions of journalism and their applications to Web 2.0; between ethics and winning. Recently I was on a panel at the National Archives which Cole moderated. No one I know could cut through the maze of chatter and create a sense of meaning faster or better than Cole. For me, Cole stole the show that day. So many people came up to me afterwards to talk about his performance. But for Cole his engagement was neither unusual nor a performance. Indeed those in attendance were witness to just the very tip of his talents.

Cole also had a strong current of integrity running through him.

But, of course, some people were more ready to see his foibles. He pushed for change so hard that he could overwhelm people he worked with. He ended up in a relationship with a direct report at one paper which cost him dearly. It was said sometimes that he was too conceptual, too smart for his own good, too far out in front of colleagues. After Cole left the Post-Dispatch, finding the right job was not easy.

And yet each of these experiences made his sense of integrity even more alive and real. You see, Cole deeply understood the meaning of integrity. He knew it from growing up as a preacher’s son. He knew it from being tested by the mistakes he had made and then quietly searching for personal redemption. He knew it because so many people had told him that change was not possible; but he discovered that it was if he would stick by his convictions.

A lot of time is spent by people in our society trying to conform. We all do it. But in Cole Campbell we found that rare individual who was willing to step out of line and reach for his aspirations. That doesn’t always make for an easy ride; but it does make the journey ever more worthwhile.

You will be truly missed Cole Campbell.

“MyCivicSpace”…you have to admit there’s a nice ring to it. It gives rise to the potential that you, me, and anyone else can create a civic space and own it; we can even customize it to reflect our own personal whims. Makes sense given the times we live in. We have been conditioned to believe that each of us should get what we want, when we want it. But is the idea of MyCivicSpace what we really want – or need?

When I talk with people in communities across the country they express a deep urge to create more connectedness and sense of community in our society. Too many of us are fragmented and isolated from one another. So much of what needs to be done to improve our individual and common lives, requires a collective response (e.g., strengthening public schools or improving safety).

But for every time someone raises this point, notions of MySpace, FaceBook, and made-to-order Starbucks drinks are invoked. The underlying belief: our response to current conditions must be personalized and customized – that is, “made just for you & me” – and that most of us may never pay attention, engage in something bigger than ourselves, or even care about others beyond our immediate close-knit circles or community of interest.

Consider this example: at a recent meeting on the future of libraries in the U.S., the argument was made that libraries must transform themselves in ways that enable people to see the library as their personal library – “MyLibrary!” as a number of people put it.

But not so fast: for libraries are one of the last truly public institutions that remain close to people. The focus of libraries is on knowledge and learning. They ought to be what I like to call “boundary-spanning, catalytic organizations” – entities that help us in our communities to transcend dividing lines, bring people together, hold up a mirror to ourselves, and see our own experiences and the possibilities for the future in the context of understanding the past.

There once was a time in my work, maybe 15 or so years ago, when many people I encountered often wanted to erase or expunge any notion of self-interest among individuals, as if each of us could be altruistic angels. Now, we see a move toward the other extreme, where the impulse is to personalize and customize people’s engagement. Every situation is open to becoming branded and fulfilled as MySituation.

Thus the public library turns into MyLibrary; the local United Way is MyUnitedWay; the community foundation becomes MyCommunityFoundation; the public broadcasting station evolves into MyPublicBroadcasting. None of this is that far fetched; just listen to all the promos, ads, and solicitations from various groups. You’ll hear echoes of this point.

Like many of us, I am worried that too many people have retreated into close-knit circles of families and friends; that for many people, public life and politics is not relevant to their lives. I believe that if we want people to engage in community and public life, then we must start wherever they start. But our work doesn’t stop there.

For if our goal is to forge a common response to individual and collective needs, then the measure of our efforts is not simply whether we have built audience, generated buzz, created more name recognition, or even enticed more people to volunteer once-in-a-while. Our task is to foster conditions in which people can create their own pathways back into community and public life – where they can connect, work with others, find meaning, and engender authentic hope. And these pathways need to be sustainable over time.

I was once asked if I believe there is an enemy of engagement. Yes is my emphatic answer. Indeed, one such enemy is the seemingly growing belief that when people retreat from public life and politics our impulse must be to engage them as atomized individuals who hold a single-minded consumer orientation. But that will only lead to one sure outcome: each of us occupying our own individual spaces.

The question was, “Should I laugh or be bitter?” while I watched this past Saturday Robin Williams new movie, Man of the Year, in which he plays a Jon Stewart-type character who runs for president.

During one telling scene, two of Williams’ aides are found talking about why he’s done so well with the electorate. One aide responds by saying that candidates usually can’t be heard during campaigns because they all sound the same; Williams, he said was heard by people because he genuinely sounded different.

But what did he say?

Williams’ character spoke the truth about big money, special interests, silly ideas, and misleading rhetoric. He came clean with himself about his own motivations to run and ran because he was willing to lose. Compare this to our current election cycle. Oh yes, I know, many of you are delighted the Democrats might win big on Election Day, while others are concerned about just what that victory might bring.

But Williams’ movie is clear and compelling satire on our current state of public affairs regardless of who ultimately wins next week. Candidates from both parties have brought political conduct to new lows of ugliness and vacuous ideas. Their ads and debates are devoid of substance – and hope.

Just this morning on the radio, when driving into work, I heard one political consultant say that the only way a candidate can break through these days is to “go to the extremes.” To me, she was saying, “Go ahead and make a mockery out of the process in order to win!”

But as I’ve traveled the country and talked about the possibilities for a different kind of politics and public life, the response has been overwhelming. People want someone to stand up and engage people on a notion of the public good, not just their own good. They are longing to be brought together on their basic concerns such as education, safety, good neighborhoods – maybe even the war in Iraq. There is a deep desire within people to focus on authentic hope, and to put an end to the peddling of false hope.

Our political leaders and their handlers seem convinced that the only way to win is to sure up their base and then strike fear in enough other voters about their opponents to squeak out a victory.

But in Man of the Year they got the message just right: people want something more. And in this way our entertainment world is reflecting back to us our most basic aspirations for what we want in reality but cannot yet seem to create.

Before Election Day I urge you to go see Man of the Year. Maybe it will help all of us collectively articulate what is now missing from everyday life -- a politics and public life that matters. Then maybe next Tuesday in our momentary euphoria of victory, or despair in defeat, we will keep our eye on the need for real change and maintain our vigilance in seeking it.

When do you or I have a voice? Usually this question comes up in relationship to public officials – do they hear us? I’ve spent much of my professional life addressing this challenge. But today my hope is to address you personally – can you hear your own voice?

Wherever I go, this powerful and deeply personal question emerges. Just last week when I was visiting Binghamton, N.Y. a young student at Broome Community College said that it wasn’t until she took a recent debate class that she ever truly felt she had a voice.

She was trying to tell those of us in the room something basic and important. It is the same point I hear from older people who are high-paid lawyers, stay-at-home moms and dads, non-profit chiefs, and many others. They each say something similar – something very personal.

What does it mean to have a voice – at work, in the public realm, with others? Is this challenge we each face simply about gaining power; for instance, is it something you can secure by gathering up grant dollars, claim by the position you hold, or create by making enough noise?

There are moments when each of us speak and still feel we have little or no voice. We may utter words, proclaim research findings, assert a position, or perhaps make a demand. But, still, we feel that our own voice is not present. Somehow the words we speak do not come from deep within ourselves; indeed our words fail to capture the sentiments that give meaning to our life. We find that our true intentions and purpose go un-reflected.

At a Barnes and Noble book event I did in Binghamton, a storeowner in nearby Johnson City told a story of how she and fellow merchants had been waiting for the local government to create change in their downtrodden downtown. Ultimately, she told us, the local merchants got tired of waiting and formed their own partnership to clean-up their main street and bring people together.

What, she asked me, should be her next step? I told that she had already taken it. By stepping forward in the bookstore she was doing something that so many people wish they could do: gain and spread newfound confidence and faith in themselves and others.

Gaining our own voice doesn’t necessarily mean that we must solve a local community problem or take a debate class. Rather, first and foremost, it seems to me that we must step forward in our own way to know something about ourselves. How do we see things? What do we feel? What do we believe? What’s more, to know something about ourselves often means knowing something about others, too; our voice exists in relationship to others.

I told the Broome Community College students that I believe cultivating your own voice is one of the most important things they could do, especially in relationship to public life; otherwise, even in our discussions we remain oddly silent. Thus I urged them to try out their voice in different settings – in their classes; in the papers they write; in private journals that no one else may ever see or hear. They must try out their voice if they are to find it.

In our own ways, this is something we each can do. For I hear so many people say that they wish they had more of a voice. Maybe to be truly heard we must first find our own voice.

Hands-down this is my favorite time of year, when the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur come around. The long services are filled with moving melodies and highly repetitive prayers that penetrate my every being. It is a time for renewal, remembrance, and atonement.

Growing up in a small town in upstate New York, there were very few Jews. One of my fondest memories is of my dad serving as our temple’s cantor when he wasn’t working his day job. Each High Holy Day he would stand before the congregation and his lovely heart-felt voice would quietly emerge.

Even after all these years, even as I attend my own temple’s services here in Washington, D.C., I can still hear his deeply moving voice. I can still see his gentle leaning into each note, seeking to locate just the right intonation and feeling. He never seemed to try and suggest a sense of sacredness; rather, in those moments, he was sacred.

I remember him giving of himself in such a way that made me so incredibly proud. “That’s my dad,” I would sit there and think. Now, approaching 80 years old, he is still singing, as he did this past Rosh Hashanah weekend, still a member of the same upstate N.Y. temple.

In person, my dad is a quiet, reserved, sometimes shy man. But when I was a kid growing up, listening to him in temple was one of those rare moments when I could see the depths of his soul with absolute clarity right before my eyes.

To this day I know his is a good and mighty fine soul.

This year my 16-tear old daughter was asked by our temple to sing the 23rd psalm on Yom Kippur, which will occur in a matter of days. I already know that it will be difficult for me to keep my composure as I sit in the sanctuary and listen to her sing.

Indeed, I will sit in my temple as a proud dad, as my daughter’s angelic voice emerges; and I will be there as a proud son, too, as I hear in the distance once more the sound of my dad’s quiet voice.

I don’t usually write about sports here, but what the heck, I’m a crazy sports fan and I simply can’t pass up shining a bright light on Andre Agassi’s last moments at the U.S. Open this weekend. He lost his match, but in the end he won – big time. He found something we all need.

If you haven’t been following the U.S. Open, this was to be Agassi’s last. Throughout weekend TV coverage of the tournament, which by the way takes place in Queens, N.Y. just across from Shea Stadium (the home of my red hot N.Y. Mets!), it was “All Agassi All-the-Time.” Then, after he lost to Benjamin Becker, he took to center court to say these few words to those in Arthur Ashe Stadium and viewers at home:

“The scorecard said I lost today, but what it doesn’t say is what it is I have found. And over the last 21 years, I have found loyalty. You have pulled for me on the court and also in life. I’ve found inspiration. You have willed me to succeed sometimes even in my lowest moments. And I’ve found generosity. You have given me your shoulders to stand on to reach for my dreams, dreams I could never have reached without you. Over the last 21 years, I have found you and I will take you with me for the rest of my life. Thank you.”

When Andre Agassi came onto the world tennis scene, sports’ observers characterized him as brash, obnoxious, jarring, self-absorbed, even a punk. Over the years his aggressive style of tennis remained consistent and true, an approach that dictates up-tempo, take the ball early, put pressure on your opponent, attack at all times, go for winners – and never play it safe.

But what’s changed about Agassi is… well, Agassi. He has changed – through adversity, in suffering injuries, when his world ranking plummeted, as new young players emerged, when cortisone shots were required for his ailing back so he could simply stand up and make his way back on court.

I found two things compelling about Agassi’s comments this weekend. First, was his choice of words. Anyone who has read this blog knows I love language. So, I urge you to take a moment and go back and read once more his post-match comments. Pull out for yourself key words.

What you’ll find are sentiments we too often fail to hear in public spaces these days, and perhaps that we ourselves too often fail to say and practice either in public or private.

Loyalty. Inspiration. Generosity. Dreams.

Second, too often we believe the only way to know ourselves is to talk about ourselves. Sometimes that is necessary. But it is also true that there are times when we can only come to know ourselves in pure silence – as we listen to others speak, only then to see and recognize things about ourselves.

Agassi made his way in tennis not only by blazing his own trail but, as he put it, by what “I have found.” What he discovered – what he now treasures and shared with the rest of us – he found in others first, and only then in himself.

I found his comments so moving because just at the moment when he was to talk about himself… when we expected him to talk about himself, well, he turned to the crowd and talked about them – what he had learned from them, gained from them, indeed, what he found in them.

The face of the young child from the Gulf Coast on the cover of this Sunday’s The New York Times Magazine is haunting. The eight year-old boy looks traumatized, alone, bereft. Inside the A-section of the paper another picture, this one of an animated marching band in New Orleans, along with the caption, “Spirit has returned to much of the city.”

As I read the massive number of articles this weekend on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I was left with a decidedly mixed feeling – perhaps more aptly said a decidedly empty one.

Americans response to Hurricane Katrina broke all records for charitable giving. That’s simply amazing – more money than in response to the Asian Tsunami; more even than in response to 9/11. In the meantime, our political leaders declared that we would make the Gulf Coast our new battleground to fight poverty, racism, inadequate schools, and other social and political ills.

Indeed, post-Katrina, it seemed that we had made an implicit deal with ourselves: give enough money, deliver declarative proclamations, and the problems would somehow go away.

During 9/11 we made a similar deal, if you recall: then, too, we gave money, lots of it, plus we sang patriotic songs, adorned cars with flag decals, and expected the problems to dissipate.

The empty feeling I have this morning is that progress and innovation in the Gulf Coast, or in any other community (or, for that matter, in any country), takes more than our modern-day approach to change.

First and foremost, a certain kind of truth-telling must occur.

There are no quick fixes to these dilemmas. Money cannot replace the web of relationships and civic-minded organizations and engagement that is required to reconstruct norms, people’s place in the community, and authentic hope.

What’s more, our attention span must transcend events and timetables that mark progress in our own lives and communities. Places undergoing rebuilding and transformation have timetables all their own; if we are smart and fortunate and a bit lucky, we can speed up progress, but we cannot hold out the false promise that change will be easy or quick.

So, this morning, I have fixed in my mind the eyes of that eight year-old boy and the members of that marching band, and I wonder what happened to them after those pictures were snapped. Where did those individuals go? What did they have for dinner that night? Was anyone nearby to give them a word of comfort and hope? Were enough steps, in the right ways, being taken to truly improve their lives?

Truth-telling, when coupled with authentic hope for progress and change, can replace feelings of emptiness, even when efforts get stalled or derailed. Of course, this would take pursuing a different path on which a different conversation would occur, one that lays bear the challenge and asks each us to step forward and engage differently.

The little boy’s eyes – this is the message I take from them.

Shockwaves from the Lieberman fallout continue. Public officials, pundits, and pollsters keep trying to predict the political meaning of the public’s mood. We’ve been here before, they got it wrong then, and I’m afraid they will again.

Political observers and handicappers can’t control themselves in analyzing the Lamont-Lieberman results. They tell us that the Iraq war will be the defining issue in the 2006 mid-term elections; that an air of anti-incumbency is sweeping across the nation; and that politicians must now choose between a politics of civility and a politics of hard-edged partisanship if they are to win.

What utter nonsense. Where have they been?

Indeed, on Friday, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne on National Public Radio said that the only real reason political shockwaves are moving through America nowadays is because of people’s increasing disgust with the Iraq war. No war, he said, no discussion of citizen unrest!

And yet, there have been a series of such shockwaves in recent memory, which would serve us well to remember. They’re all part of an important emerging narrative about American politics and public life.

For instance, one can go back to Ross Perot in the early 1990s, when people said they were fed up with politics and public life. Remember, Perot promised to check under the hood to find out what was wrong and fix it! Fast forward then to 9/11; then to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; and now to the war in Iraq, not to mention what is happening in the Middle East.

In each instance, we Americans were told that as a result of these shockwaves our politics and public life would change for the better. And in most cases, individual Americans stepped forward to help pitch in at the time.

But nothing changed over time. In fact, with each passing shockwave, people could see our politics and public life further deteriorate. People were left holding dashed hopes from a series of broken promises. Thus, people began to retreat from the public square into close-knit circles of families and friends; there they could exercise a modicum of control over their lives; there, they could turn away from the mess we call politics and public life.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that the arc of this retreat, and its causes, are detailed in my book Hope Raveled: The People’s Retreat and Our Way Back. Take, for example, 9/11, after which all sorts of pronouncements were made that the tone of our politics would become more productive, news media coverage would become more serious, and more citizens would become more involved. When I interviewed people across the country on this matter, many said that after an initial surge of activity, conditions had only worsened. It was a “false start” to something better.

After Hurricane Katrina, we experienced about eight days of a discussion about poverty, education, rebuilding communities, and other underlying issues. That discussion quickly fizzled, degenerating into finger pointing and blame placing.

Indeed, what we are seeing in people’s unrest today is not simply about the shockwaves from the Iraq war or the Connecticut primary results; nor is it anything new. Rather, what we are witnessing has been emerging for some time now and has become deeply ingrained in our body politic.

If we are to address people’s real concerns, then we must see and understand this larger story. We must come to terms with its underlying meaning. And we must decide that it’s time to take a different path in politics and public life – one fundamentally guided by a notion of authentic hope, not false promise.

What if more and more of us went our own way in public life to pursue our own personal agenda? What if each of us was to find our own news, only to forgo that which doesn’t resonate with us? What if you and I began to see ourselves primarily as individual consumers, with little connection to one another?

Crying wolf about such trends won’t cause any of us to take notice or do anything. But something is happening in our society that we must know. In so many ways – some big, others quite small and almost imperceptible – we are moving to a new individualized society. Think back just five years or so ago; our society is a much different place.

It is not merely that our society has tended to commoditize everything, from charitable giving to volunteer service to even selling naming rights to public school buildings. It’s that the very notion of aggregated consumers is becoming a misnomer as well; we now live in a “micro world” in which each of us acts as a sovereign individual – a kind of free-agent unto ourselves.

Take, for instance, FaceBook and MySpace, which enable kids to proclaim their individuality as if they are new corporate entities or celebrities. Or, think about how we can customize products as if we own our own showrooms.

Or, take how we can create our own news products – aggregating stories that fit our distinct personal profile and interests. What’s more, new “news” products are focusing on what publishers call hyper-local coverage. I had one such product come into my home just last week. But rather than offer news, the reality is that it’s more like a high school year book in which neighbors and their kids are prominently highlighted. There’s barely any news copy other than the captions under the pictures.

At each turn we are now able to create our own world, even though there are more and more people who live around us. In fact, the larger our surroundings become, the more we opt for closer-knit circles.

On one level, trends for giving people more control can be for the best. They definitely tilt power away from large, faceless institutions, the likes of which I have railed against for much of my professional career.

But I also believe we must concern ourselves with these trends. They can deftly play on people’s narcissistic tendencies – the desire to “see and hear and celebrate me!” Moreover, there can be a kind of sense of exclusivity, even smugness – “I’m okay, who cares about you?”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with individualism or with customizing consumer products. But I often hear a kind of dismissive tone taken to the concerns I have raised here; a belief that all will work out if we merely aggregate each person’s whims and wishes.

But determining the public good requires more from us than merely going our own way. We must see and hear more than our own mere customized desires. We must open ourselves up for public business too.

I don’t know Warren Buffett, but his words and actions this week are worth remembering, and not merely because of his $31 billion gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

It’s true that $31 billion is a lot of money, no matter how you cut it. And what’s more Buffett didn’t give the money to a foundation that bares his name (he did make much smaller gifts to various family foundations). His sheer generosity is breathtaking.

But I am also struck by Buffett’s comments in news accounts. Here are just some of his quotes from a Washington Post story on Tuesday:

• On a sense of obligation: “We (those who have made money) really owe it to society to give back.”
• On turning to someone else to manage his funds: “If you’re accumulating wealth, it’s very natural to go to someone you know can handle it better than you can.”
• On other wealthy people following in his footsteps: “I would hope they act now” and that they “might pick up on this model.”

For me, Buffett is doing the exact opposite of what has become the prevailing norm in society. We’ve become accustomed to people stepping up to the podium, making loud pronouncements and promises, and beating their breasts publicly. Ultimately, and unfortunately, their actions fall significantly short of their rhetoric.

But Buffett has seemingly stepped forward with a clear and unmistakable action; even more, his tone reflects a deep respect for his endeavor and his words connote a sense of humility and obligation.

I’ve been writing a lot recently about leaders – or, better put, about all kinds of individuals who are demonstrating leadership. My own sense is that there is a promising, if nascent, trend in society of more and more individuals who are exhibiting a different kind of leadership in public life and politics. They are tired of the finger pointing and needless acrimony and people’s exaggerated sense of self-worth.

For instance, I remember writing awhile ago about Ms. Trina, who showed a brave and humble kind of leadership in her own Atlanta neighborhood, which had fallen on hard times. I also remember that I met her at the local Salvation Army campus, where the motto, “Do the Most Good” could be seen displayed on walls.

For most of us, doing the most good will never entail giving large gifts of money. But for each of us, our words and actions can be rooted in sensibilities that reflect both a greater sense of authenticity in what we say and do and a higher degree of accountability in how we go about our business.

This will require a toughness and clear sense of purpose; there’s no easy path. Moreover, it will require clarity about our own self-worth. In Buffett’s case, it was not merely his $31 billion (thought that’s a lot of money!) but why and how he acted which must be remembered.

Warren Buffett is today’s example; tomorrow someone else will step forward.

Wow! The news today is that we Americans broke yet another record last year in charitable giving to disaster relief. I believe that such giving demonstrates that we are a compassionate and generous people. But charity alone will not enable us to reach our aspirations or achieve the society we all seek.

And yet I fear that we are coming to believe that charity is enough.

My goal today is not to deride charity. So much good comes of it. But I do believe we can be lulled to sleep by our charitable giving and the messages that the come from charities. We can believe that our charitable efforts get us off the hook for further engagement in the world around us; for applying ourselves to situations that are hard to resolve; for giving of ourselves beyond our checkbook.

It is “change” – and not charity – which is fundamentally required in our communities and nation if we are to ensure, for instance, that all kids can get a good education or that people live in healthy neighborhoods. Merely think of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast for a clear picture of the difference between charity and change; consider such matters as the public schools, health care, poverty, infrastructure, and race and relations.

If we are to act on the real challenges before us, then we need change in our civic and public systems, in our relationships, and in our very notion of faith in one another. Make no mistake: Writing a check or going to a local soup kitchen are steps along the path of our engagement. But such steps must be viewed as initial ones along the way; we must not stop there. More is ultimately required of us.

I could write for some time about this topic. But I simply want to give voice to one simple message today. As you hear the great news about our charitable giving in America, use the occasion to consider the differences between and charity and change. Let’s keep giving; and let’s also start changing.

Al Gore is in the news again. But this time he’s not being roundly criticized for donning earth tone clothes or for his wooden speechmaking. Rather, we’re witnessing his civic redemption, and it’s worth noting for the insights each of us can gain.

After Gore lost the 2000 presidential election, he reappeared on the public scene masked in a heavy beard and some additional weight. Many pundits found much to mock in him – from his comments about “inventing the Internet,” to his poor campaigning style, to his new look.

But to his credit, Gore went off and found inspiration in a collection of activities that called him to step forward anew. He launched a TV initiative as well as joined the boards of intriguing companies. He put together a series of hard-hitting speeches on critical issues of our time. He responded to the crisis of Hurricane Katrina.

Most recently, he is gaining attention for his new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, about the perils of global warming, which has received its own warm reviews. Now, some people are even pining for him to return to elective politics in 2008.

Maybe Gore, the man once belittled for losing the White House to George W. Bush, is showing his true colors. Perhaps we saw the first glimpses of this even amid his crushing defeat, when he found a way to be gracious and compelling in his concession.

For me, Gore’s story is a kind of modern-day fable. Here is a man who was expected to reach great heights and did. But when he reached for the prize, he stumbled badly, only to be ridiculed before millions of people.

What would each of us do in such circumstances? Many of us might retreat and hide, become deflated and cynical. It would be easy to stand up and rail against those who defeated us as a way to console our own shortcomings or prove our own mettle.

But we now know that the former vice president took a different path. He seems to have stopped long enough to hear his own voice, about what truly motivates him, which inspired him to step forward in a new way. Yes, Gore has recently acknowledged that he would still love to be president; but he knows, at least for now, that there are other ways to serve his country. And the path he has chosen does not seem to be invented out of whole cloth; nor does it seem concocted by a public relations guru. Rather, Gore seems to finally be himself.

After years of ridicule, people are giving Gore another look. Maybe he has finally come upon the credibility and trust he has been pursuing for a lifetime. Strangely enough, he had to take a different path to find it.

As a funder involved in neighborhood transformation and family strengthening, Rich’s concept of 3 A’s for public innovators – authority, authenticity, and accountability – is invaluable. To be both authentic and accountable while at the same time speaking with authority that comes only from a deep understanding of the neighborhood is the gold standard that neighborhood-based funders should seek to uphold. Communities deserve no less from us.

The accountability covenant requires us to make promises that we can keep, to make claims of success that we back up, to celebrate the milestones along the journey, and to put our contribution in perspective

The authenticity covenant requires us to keep the work deeply rooted in the desires and experiences of the people – not linked to the cause of the week. Community residents have a keen sense of what rings true and false – we need to seek out and trust their instincts

The authority covenant is two-fold – we should seek a deep understanding of the community and accept the responsibility for putting that knowledge to work.

Taken together, the 3A’s are a more intentional and thoughtful approach to our everyday work. If we insert the discipline and consciousness of accountability, authenticity, and authority in our decision-making, we should expect better results and broader and deeper support. Fulfilling our mission requires us to learn, share, persuade – and the 3A’s will help us do all those things.

Gail Hayes is the manager of the Atlanta, Georgia, civic site for the Annie E. Casey Foundation. She is a participant in this week's Harwood Public Innovators Lab.

The headline on the front page of this Sunday’s New York Times Week in Review section roared “Outgrowing Jane Jacobs.” The piece suggests that Jacobs’ view of community life is outdated, even quaint, and not so relevant anymore. While part of this argument may be right, the heart of it is wrong.

I still remember when I read Jane Jacobs’ classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I was an undergraduate at Skidmore College; I read it again in graduate school. Now, every so often, I take my weathered copy off the bookshelf to re-learn another point.

Jane Jacobs, who recently passed away, detailed the vibrant and interconnected lives of people in neighborhoods, and helped a generation or more of people interested in community to think hard about what brings about and sustains community life.

So here comes Nicolai Ouroussoff, who suggests, rightly so I believe, that “the threats facing the contemporary city are not what they were when [Jacobs] first formed her ideas, now nearly 50 years ago.” Suburban sprawl, booms in urban population, homogeneity of communities, large-scale projects – these and other challenges cannot be fixed, the reporter says, “simply through the incremental growth in existing neighborhoods.” Jacobs was a kind of “small is beautiful” proponent.

Indeed, I have made a similar point to Ouroussoff elsewhere in my blog and work: that communities have undergone such great change that we need to rethink how we view them and create new mechanisms for people to shape their communities and engage with one another. The scale, size, and shape of our growing and often fragmented communities present new challenges for us today. I routinely see these challenges in places like Tampa where the region has busted open at the seams; any kind of regional solutions are hard to come by as most people live in, and identify with, small pockets of the community. And yet, how can we deal with county-wide public schools?

In Las Vegas, one of the fastest growing regions in the nation, a new community performing arts center is being built, the kind of big initiative that Jane Jacobs might have scorned. You may be wondering why a community that has the “Strip,” which is already a world-class entertainment district, is moving ahead with such an initiative. Because by building an arts center for the community, not tourists, there is the possibility to create greater community identify and cohesion. So, here’s a big-time project that might help people’s sense of community.

But, where I think Ouroussoff got it wrong is to dismiss the very heart of Jane Jacob’s perspective: that people want to be connected to one another. In fact, I wrote a report on Las Vegas with my colleague Jill Freeman, On the American Frontier, in which the people of Las Vegas told us that the No. 1 challenge facing them is how to build a sense a community when people are pursuing their own individual, customized American Dream.

Indeed, no matter how the size and shape of our communities change – in fact, because of how they are changing – a basic aspiration of people remains how to feel connected to one another. This is not about community planning; it is about human nature.

On that score, Jane Jacobs got it right.

It’s no secret that measuring progress presents fundamental questions about what we value. The problem for me is that too often we rush through these questions because they raise imbedded conflicts, make us incredibly uncomfortable, reveal different world views – or because we miss them.

David Hooker, the vice president for community building at the Center for Working Families in Atlanta, raised one such dilemma in his comments. He asked,

“What if the measures we can make and the measures that are acceptable to funding sources either don’t inform our work or, worse yet, are fundamentally incompatible with the long-term success of the community?”

I suspect that his simply asking this question has many of you jumping up and down, exclaiming, “Yes, what if…!” Part of the issue here is how different people define progress. Indeed, can we articulate what is most important to each of us in making progress?

More to the point is the matter of how we even conceive of progress – what might it look like and what is the nature of the pathway forward we can imagine? I consistently find that we need more rigorous and explicit thinking on these questions.

For instance, there is often an assumption that the path between different points is relatively straight or clear; but what if it is more likely to be circuitous? If it’s the latter, how do we account for that and reflect it in our work? Over and over again I find that our own assumptions must be revealed and aired out.

This leads to Nancy Wilson’s helpful thoughts. Nancy is the director and associate dean of the University College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. She starts off her comments with insights from her dad (they never leave us, do they?), someone who has studied what makes managers effective, and she reminds us that to measure anything, we must first be clear on our goals.

Easier said than done, which is precisely why her point is so important. In my own work, I find that people tend to bypass fully exploring notions of “purpose” and “goals,” skipping right to the implementation phase of their work.

Why? Maybe it’s because so long as we’re in motion, we feel OK. But I find that if we focus more clearly on understanding and knowing the essence of what we seek to do, then we can actually cut out much of the activity that consumes us.

Nancy also wrote the following:

“There is one trick, however. As in any community venture, the prime goal is rarely the only goal. And, secondary goals are sometimes easier to measure. So the trick is to keep the focus on the prime goal, while still counting and reporting and examining the consequences of other outcomes – families sheltered, children nurtured, symphonies performed – without losing the focus on the prime goal: building community.”

So, here we have another key to this work – understanding the interdependence of different factors. We need to be clear on what those factors are, how they relate to one another, and how they need to evolve and develop in order for us to fulfill our purpose and goals. For me, this takes understanding the complexity of the work in which we’re engaged and identifying the right levers for generating change in that complex system. And at all times we must be searching for clarity of complexity, so we don’t lose sight of the end-game.

There’s one more essential point to make today, which is raised by Reggie Lewis, the executive vice president of the United Way of Essex and West Hudson in New Jersey. Among his comments, Reggie puts before us a key word to consider: “legitimacy.” Here’s what Reggie said:

“After all, I must have built-in legitimacy since I am a trained professional who hails from the very community I serve, right? Prior to the Nevada experience, I would have never raised a question so profound. As I continue to reflect on the experience of the conference, I move forward knowing that perhaps legitimacy must always be earned (if not demonstrated) when attempting the kind of community engagement that inspires folk to want to talk and create change in the first place.”

I couldn’t agree more with Reggie. In today’s world, none of us can claim legitimacy simply based on our title, or position, or education level, or any other such dimension. And yet, as Reggie points out, this can be a blind spot for many of us. We can fail to keep his notion in front of us in our daily words and deeds or, worse yet, his point never truly emerges on our radar screen.

But it is precisely this challenge – the one of legitimacy – that will enable us to engage with and ultimately answer the very questions of essence that David and Nancy ask us to consider. It is questions like these that call us to think hard about what we do and why, and that will increase the likelihood that we can make real progress on the challenges before us.

My recent participation in a two-day discussion in Nevada on a unique opportunity to convene a community to deliberate on the use of charitable dollars led to some unexpected soul-searching. Just how does one have authentic conversations in a given community? How do you invite a representative group to a table with the premise that all will have equal say and enjoy the ability to act as equals?

The Community Conference, co-sponsored by The Harwood Institute and the Nevada Community Foundation, in March provides a useful framework to consider for any community faced with similar questions. In responding to these questions, I offer my insights gained from the experience.

First, one must be prepared to have a real conversation in a community, particularly with those most affected by challenges and issues of concern. A conversation is “real” or authentic when the sponsors of the discussion want to listen and hear the views represented in a community, even if such thinking does not coincide with one’s own. Moreover, a real conversation is one that is “legitimate” in that the sponsor/facilitator does not come to the table having already reached a conclusion on the issue at hand. Such conversations require parties to thoroughly listen and engage in mutually-beneficial ways, leading to new and more relevant levels of understanding.

Legitimate (authentic) engagement must be truly representative of community. Beyond the all too often “scan” of sectors and leaders, full representation necessitates bringing folk together within and across boundaries who otherwise would never meet. As such, the roster of participants must delve deep to identify the traditional and non-traditional “players” to bring to a table. Hence – some of my soul-searching: Just how often do I bring in the head of the chamber of commerce along with the local tenant association leader?

Yet, failing to ensure that a broad, cross-section of individuals are present can often lead to missed opportunities to gain a critical understanding from those outside of one’s comfort zone – perhaps the very perspective needed to leverage meaningful support to change a condition or circumstance.

Finally, legitimate (authentic) engagement must ultimately lead to a form of give and take that culminates in the sharing of power and authority. So, more germane to the second question above – it becomes a table among equals when each individual can equally weigh in on the direction of resources and dollars usually left to a small, select (often well-intentioned) group of individuals who profess to know what is best.

Well, sometimes I do think I know what’s best. After all, I must have built-in legitimacy since I am a trained professional who hails from the very community I serve, right? Prior to the Nevada experience, I would have never raised a question so profound. As I continue to reflect on the experience of the conference, I move forward knowing that perhaps legitimacy must always be earned (if not demonstrated) when attempting the kind of community engagement that inspires folk to want to talk and create change in the first place.

Reginald Lewis, guest blogger, is the executive vice president for community impact at the United Way of Essex and West Hudson, Newark, NJ.

My father has spent a career exploring what makes managers effective. The quote of his that rings in my ears is, “Without a goal, you can’t plan. Without a plan, you can’t manage.” And, in my 20 years of for-profit and non-profit work experience, management and measurement go hand in hand. The question for me from the Las Vegas Community Conference isn’t “to measure or not to measure?” The question is, “What to measure?”

By all means they need to measure, and the starting point is their goals. After informing themselves on the many challenges faced by their rapidly growing city, Community Conference members seemed to identify one goal as the first among many priorities, and that is to build the sense of community that will allow the community to understand itself, to care for itself, to make tradeoffs for itself. The assumption underlying their goal setting is that shared values and commitment to sense of community is the sine qua non without which all of the other problems cannot be solved, no matter how much money or time everyone invests.

In that light, their management need is to measure sense of community and strength of community. Happily, there are many proxies for community capital – levels of citizen participation in elections, in neighborhood gatherings, in school events, in sports leagues, and more; surveys of how many neighbors people report knowing; surveys of attitudes about community; charitable giving for community related organizations; and the list goes on. I’m sure there are items that would be most relevant to Las Vegas, and the Community Conference can define those things.

In addition, as it makes funding decisions that prioritize community building, the conference can engage their funding partners in identifying their own measures of success – not in how many symphonies performed, or even in how many families are housed, but in how many people gathered before or after the symphony to mingle and how many neighbors lent a hand to the family in need.

There is one trick, however. As in any community venture, the prime goal is rarely the only goal. And, secondary goals are sometimes easier to measure. So the trick is to keep the focus on the prime goal, while still counting and reporting and examining the consequences of other outcomes – families sheltered, children nurtured, symphonies performed – without losing the focus on the prime goal: building community.

Nancy E. Wilson, guest blogger, is director and associate dean of the University College of Citizenship and Public Service, Tufts University.

Rich, I fundamentally agree with everything you have said and the concerns you have raised. I actually want to expand on those concerns. During my 20+ year career as a conflict transformation specialist and community convener, I have often argued that there must be some (I would suggest high) value placed on process measures — transparency, efforts at collaboration, values driven processes. And yet, good process is never a substitute for process.

What impressed me at the Nevada Community Foundation’s Authentically Community Advised Funds Conference was the constant struggle with the questions concerning what to measure and how to measure it. But there was another question that has concerned me even more since I left the conference: What if the measures we can make and the measures that are acceptable to funding sources either don’t inform our work or, worse yet, are fundamentally incompatible with the long-term success of the community?

This is an example of what I mean: In a community building effort, where a marginalized or previously disenfranchised community is trying to organize in the face of rapid (and often aggressive) gentrification, demographic measures, which are practical and often acceptable, are uninformative at best, and possibly deceptive. While an increase in percentages of home ownership, high school and college graduation, and constant employment among residents may actually reflect improved conditions for the previously disenfranchised populations that are the focus of the work, it is equally likely that the improved statistics reflect the depths of gentrification.

Without attention and good intentions on the part of the funding source and those with oversight responsibility, it might be possible to allow the community builders to declare victory and go home without having ever improved one life. Often we measure what we can and the measures are uninformative and/or deceptive.

The second issue is a more systemic question. Often the acceptable and practical measures of success and the standards of program and process evaluation are ways of comparing the disenfranchised or marginalized community with the general population and establishing strategies to equalize the marginalized community within the same paradigm and framework as the dominant culture.

My question arises from my experience in a collectivist communal context or from my theological position arguing for a beloved community. Often the measures of success of the dominant paradigm – accumulated wealth, property ownership, consumptive capacity – are actually measures of the willingness and success of those participating within the exploitive and oppressive systems that created the marginalized communities in the first place.

Increased homeownership is important; however, large homes with high heating and cooling costs and large yards contribute to (sub)urban sprawl, environmental degradation, and reinforced glorification of excess consumption. In order to allow greater numbers of people access to this life style, we have to acknowledge that both in our back yard and on the other side of the globe, we will of necessity contribute to someone else’s exploitation and environmental degradation.

So my question is this: In our Metrics “R” Us organization, do we have a place for a values and standards committee that reminds us that just because we can measure it does not mean that it is for the up building of the kingdom or the eventual repair of the breach?

David Hooker, guest blogger, is vice president for community building at the Center for Working Families, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia.

Here’s the conundrum for us. Suppose someone were to give you a pot of money to work on a key challenge in your community. How would you know you’ve made a difference? How much change would you be willing to bet could be created in maybe two to three years?

Every day we are told to be successful. We hear this relentless mantra in TV ads, magazine stories, even from Donald Trump and Martha Stewart. Indeed, we’re expected to create change seemingly overnight, and all with aplomb. In the world of civic change, the notion of metrics – of being able to measure success – is everywhere. The guardians of money want to know they’re getting a big bang for their buck.

I’ve long condemned the metrics mongers who oftentimes demand unrealistic results from change efforts. But I have been equally critical of those who say that outputs from civic work cannot be measured because somehow we’re engaged in “God’s work” – endeavors too important to be put to the measurement test. To such folks I would offer this retort: It is because our work is so important that we owe it to ourselves and others to gauge our efforts. Without clear measurements, how else will we know we’re on the right path?

But what are clear measurements? Recently, The Harwood Institute co-hosted with the Nevada Community Foundation a national convening on a new community-driven funding system called the Community Conference. One might argue that the Las Vegas Community Conference would be successful if it helped to improve public schools, health care, or some other pressing concern through its small grants.

But what if we were to say the Community Conference would be successful because of how it did its work – for instance, because it spreads to other groups new ways to think about civic engagement; or entices new funders to come forward who otherwise wouldn’t; or generates new trust in the community because it acts with transparency; or finds ways to amplify the community’s voice on key concerns?

And lo and behold, what if the Community Conference did all these things and still didn’t move the needle on public schools or health care or any other community concerns? What would we say then?

Our task is to find the right balance between two seemingly competing goals that are in reality inextricably intertwined and interdependent. Here’s what I mean. In our efforts to build more connected and vibrant communities, we must never lose sight of pressing concerns that affect people. For me, I’m in this wo