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• Thoughts on Our Way Back – Dateline Newark

  Nov 15, 2005 Posted by Rich Harwood      Add your comment
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  Yesterday, the headline of USA Today’s top story read, “Katrina inspires record charity.” That’s great – but as I sit in Newark, NJ, I know it’s not enough. We are a society that is awfully good at charity, but not nearly good enough at change.
  
  I have long believed that Americans are a generous and compassionate lot. Our response to 9/11 was heart-warming. Now, after the Asian Tsunami and then Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, as well as other tragedies, we have demonstrated that we will step forward and provide relief to people in acute need.
  
  Indeed, Americans are apt to respond when they see a concrete problem, when there is something they can do, and when they believe the problem is relevant to their lives.
  
  But I have a concern – a burning one. Just last night I did an event here in Newark, and just last week I was in the Twin Cities. No matter where I go, I hear people lament that we cannot generate meaningful change in our communities.
  
  Too many substandard public schools still fail our children; too many people remain in poverty; too many communities are unable to figure out how to mange their burgeoning growth. New Orleans is fast becoming the symbol of our inability to come together and address our common concerns. We can do better – in the Gulf Coast and throughout the nation.
  
  But to do better will require that we not confuse charity with change. Again, charity is both necessary and good. But we must see that in order to generate change we need to build the capacity of our communities to bring people together, focus on strategic levers for change, and marshal our collective will and resources. And we must be able to do this work over time, not just episodically.
  
  You see, too often charity asks us simply to write to check or to enter the public square for just a moment in time. Change requires that we bring our full selves to the public square and that we give the challenge at hand our full attention; that we stay committed even as the work becomes difficult; that we work together. Even if we are not on the front line of change, we must be willing to face the challenges at hand, to support those who are at work, and to think about the public good and not just our own good.
  
  In too many communities that I visit, there is thin capacity for change among non-profits, faith-based groups, and other organizations; there are too few leaders whom people trust and who will work together; there are norms of acrimony and divisiveness that pull people down and make them stay home rather than engage; there are narratives that suggest that “change can’t happen here” and thus oppress people’s sense of hope.
  
  No doubt, charity can help us see a new path for our work together; but, alone, it will not enable us to go down that path. For that, we will need to develop the capacity required for change and tap the courage required to engage in such work.
  
  Everywhere I go, people are proud of our collective charity; now, they want us to focus on change.

• The Enemy of the Public Good

  Nov 3, 2005 Posted by Rich Harwood      3 comments      Add your comment
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  At a recent Independent Sector conference, Sterling Speirn, the new president of the Kellogg Foundation, asked: “Who is the enemy of civic engagement?” I have an answer.

  1. The enemy is the various mechanisms for manipulation in public life that we have turned into a perverse science. Everyday we employ panoply of marketing and market-segmentation techniques that pin-point messages to different audiences and manipulate people’s fears. We use the techniques because we believe it is the way to WIN. But I believe these techniques are the enemy of the public good. They make our public discourse devoid of meaning and give rise to meaningless sound bites; they separate us into warring camps, rather than seek ways to build a common future.
     
     
  2. The enemy is the way in which we seek to monetize the public good at every turn in our society. Here’s one example: at a recent conference on aging, someone asked me and the other speakers if the government should provide tax credits or incentives to newly retiring baby boomers to entice them to volunteer and engage in community life. But equating engagement with money only cheapens the notion of engagement, and depletes the meaning that is created through our involvement. Not everything in our society merits a financial reward; and money can not be the answer to every challenge.
     
     
  3. The enemy is the mechanistic responses to civic and community challenges that we see across our nation. We falsely come to believe that if we have identified best practices, or employed the use of the Internet, or found new ways to scale up our efforts through quick and cheap replication, that somehow we have acted in the name of the public good. But in many instances nothing could be farther from the truth; our efforts can merely add up to empty activities and little change if we ignore the need for real strategy and the humanity that is vital to so many of our efforts.
     
     
  4. The enemy of the public good is the consumer mindset we have embraced in our nation, which tells us that we can get what we want, when we want it, at the highest quality value and at the lowest cost. We spend more time in the shopping mall than in the public square. But to be a consumer at every turn can result in the public good having meaning only when it serves our own interests. We must be more than consumers if we seek to imagine and act for the public good. We must see ourselves as citizens, too, and as part of something larger than ourselves.

  Each and every day the path that is pursued in politics and public life diminishes the sense of possibility and hope that so many people seek – and that so many people need nowadays.
  
  So, who will take on the enemy of the public good? In my last piece, I gave a clear response to that question: We will.
  
  Change occurs when people of good will decide to step forward and give of themselves. It happens when we are able to see different ways to move ahead, different paths to take, a different vision to pursue.
  
  Isn’t that what Rosa Parks came to symbolize in our nation? She found a different seat on that bus – a seat that required her to step forward in a different direction and with a different intent. She envisioned in her imagination a different outcome and, in doing so, she triggered ripples of change through her actions.
  
  At the Independent Sector conference, Sterling Speirn was urging those of us in the audience – and people everywhere – to think more deeply about the obstacles that stand in the way of meaningful progress. He was right to do so.
  
  The enemy of the public good is all around us; sometimes it is even within us. Let us use our energies to bring down the enemy of public good, rather than to feed it.

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