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• Finding Authentic Hope in a Miserable Mess

  Oct 28, 2005 Posted by Rich Harwood      Add your comment
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  Today, Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, was indicted. Those on the political left are calling for heads to roll. Yesterday, those on the political right made their claim to the Supreme Court by undermining the nomination of Harriet Miers, who finally withdrew.
  
  Meanwhile, the national debate over “poverty” in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina is now nowhere to be heard; finger-pointing and blame-placing are the new order of business. And while we can’t seem to rebuild the Gulf Coast, more and more people are wondering how we can continue efforts to rebuild Iraq.
  
  All of this tumult led a reporter on National Public Radio yesterday to say that President Bush is close to being a lame-duck president, if he isn’t already, only some 300 days into his second term. The Democrats, the so-called opposition party, seem only to know what they are against: They are anti-Republican. It is less clear what, if anything, they stand for.
  
  Why am I going through this litany of bad news about our political state of being?
  
  It is not to pile on. Believe me, I have heard clearly and documented at length people’s dismay over the state of politics and public life in our land (see Hope Unraveled: The People’s Retreat and Our Way Back). When people look out into public life and politics, they do not see their reality reflected; worse yet, they feel it has been distorted. That is the bottom line of all of these recent fracases. People have thrown up their hands in disgust and retreated into close-knit circles of family and friends. Who will lead us out of this miserable mess? My answer is plain and simple: We will. By that, I mean there is no one leader who can right our course. Instead, leadership must come from people scattered across our country – from non-profits and community foundations; from United Ways and from faith-based organizations.
  
  It must come from everyday people who make their voice known; who say they want to pursue an alternate path for politics and public life. Believe it or not, the very first step is one of expression – people articulating what they want and believe to one another; people raising their consciousness about the need for a different path; people letting their voices be heard so that their sentiments can bubble up through public opinion polls, talk shows, letters to the editor, and through other venues.
  
  Let me be clear: I believe that the American people would welcome, for instance, a real debate on poverty in the aftermath of Katrina. People sense that something went awry in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast – that so many people were left behind, that so much work must now be done. The question is how can we move ahead? The debate that followed Katrina is a national disgrace – a farce of political discourse and problem solving; a ruse of addressing real issues in America; a hoax of political statesmanship.
  
  Let me be clear: authentic hope is what people seek in politics and public life – not the false hope that so many political leaders, pundits, and pollsters peddle.

  • Authentic hope comes when we engage with one another, even when we sharply disagree, but despite our differences stay devoted to figuring out a path forward.
  • Authentic hope comes when we recognize that change will take time, but that we persevere in our pursuit of the public good.
  • Authentic hope comes when we cross the boundaries and dividing lines that people have drawn and insist on maintaining for their own narrow gain, which only keep us separated from each other under false pretense.
  • Authentic hope comes when we express clearly our convictions – not as a way to push others away or to denigrate and demonize them, but rather to be clear on our own beliefs and where we stand – all as part of an effort to engage with others, even win for our position.

  Such authentic hope might seem nearly impossible to find on days such as today in our current madness of politics and public life. What has the far right been up to on the Miers nomination? Maybe she was not the best nominee, but to what extent have they made a contemptuous claim on this Supreme Court seat, as if their narrow interests reflect that of all of America? Still, where have the Democrats been, seemingly twiddling their thumbs on the sidelines, offering no leadership?
  
  Authentic hope is what people seek. And its demise is not only to be found in our nation’s capital, but all across America, in towns big and small. People are frustrated over the state of politics and public life.
  
  It is we – people of goodwill, people of the public good, people of civic faith – who must get out of our spectator seats, step forward, raise our voices, and act within our daily spheres of influence to change our course. Real change will take time; but that time will not come unless we make a start. That time is today. Let us begin so we no longer have to reside in this miserable mess.

• Thoughts on Our Way Back – Dateline Pittsburgh /Portland

  Oct 18, 2005 Posted by Rich Harwood      Add your comment
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  I want to return to a topic I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, and which keeps coming up in my travels across the country: the trap of becoming mechanistic in our public work.
  
  Last week, I was in Pittsburgh to talk with state directors and senior staff of the national organization Communities in Schools; this is an incredibly dedicated group of people working to make sure that all kids are prepared for their futures. For the last two days I have been in Portland.
  
  CIS, like so many groups, is wrestling with how to scale up their ideas (thought not necessarily their organization) in order to expand and deepen their positive impact in the lives of children. And the pursuit of their dreams requires them to make a host of very difficult decisions and trade-offs.
  
  In the past two weeks I have found myself talking about the need for those of us working in public life to understand just how mechanistic we have become in our efforts. Part of this dilemma is that the more we undertake, for instance, “strategic planning” exercises, the more removed we become from our work. We can get lost in going through the motions to produce the plan. Oftentimes we must embrace a new language of planning. We end up talking more about our plan than we do about the very essence of our work. This is never the intent of such planning, just the unintended consequence at times.
  
  Indeed, at the end of such planning, we can feel comforted by our lists and charts and Power Point presentations; yet somehow we can miss the forest for the trees. We can miss truly figuring out the small number of actual levers that are necessary to bring about change; instead we target various activities, but just how strategic they are remains an open question. We can pretend to see our future targets for our work, but never really articulate any kind of rigorous notion of change. We can fail to hold a clear sense of the kinds of catalysts that are necessary to get change going and then to sustain it over time; instead, we have a collection of things we “DO.”.
  
  What’s more, when it comes to taking action, our instincts can be to gather up “best practices,” “replicable” approaches, and various kinds of easy “plug and play” programs that can be used. On its own, there is nothing inherently wrong with such efforts; we need to determine how best to diffuse our work and produce positive results.
  
  But what can happen along the way, often without us even taking notice, is that these initiatives come to exist outside the context of particular communities in which we live and/or do our work: We fail to understand the stage of a community’s development, its readiness for action, and its capacity to support action. We do not always understand how people in a community define their concerns, as opposed to how we or various experts define them. We do not adequately take into account a community’s norms and culture and how they shape the community, the narrative it tells about itself, the meaning and implications and possibilities for change, and the time frame in which that chance is to occur.
  
  I wish to repeat here what I have been saying across the country: I believe we have become too “mechanistic” in our civic work – forging strategies and actions that may sound good, but may not make the difference we seek; instead, I believe we must move in two seemingly opposite directions at once.
  
  

  • First, we must become more ruthlessly strategic. We must develop the sensibilities and practices that lead us to consider the types of points I mentioned in the paragraphs above. Otherwise we become activity happy and action deprived.
  • Second, while we are being ruthlessly strategic, we must also work to engender authentic hope in ourselves, in our communities, and in our larger society. Without hope, people will not step forward or engage or even believe that change is possible. I cover this topic in-depth in my new book, Hope Unraveled: The People’s Retreat and Our Way Back, which I urge you to take a look at. I believe we risk spending a great deal of time dreaming up new programs, or replicating old ones, without paying adequate attention to what it means and takes to generate authentic hope through the work we do – and to spread such hope.

  For me, the challenge of becoming more ruthlessly strategic and engendering more authentic hope sits at the center of making progress on our collective concerns and dreams and to ignite a sense of possibility that progress is possible.

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