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An oxymoron
The Catholic Worker Movement and the World Bank, now there’s a combination; no, really, I mean it! In fact, I just finished two books about them and they prompt me to share some reflections about change. See what you think.
The World’s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations, by Sebastian Mallaby, explores the rise of the larger-than-life bank president Jim Wolfensohn and the bank’s evolving approaches to development. Oh boy, this book is a good read and his presidency (which began in 1995 and ended recently) was quite a ride!
Wolfensohn sought to turn the bank’s operations on its head – placing much greater emphasis on poverty reduction, routing out corruption, environmental concerns, and having more “country ownership” over development. But his efforts were often hamstrung, sometimes by resistance within the bank itself, other times by topsy-turvy external conditions, and still other times by plans that were too unfocused or grandiose.
By the book’s end it’s clear that the bank had to face up to its own limitations about how much change it alone could drive. Long-term success, if there was to be any, would come from a combination of factors which include the need for strong local institutions, stable societies, and clear program goals, not to mention outside aide. Then you need to add in luck.
All this brings me to The Long Loneliness, the autobiography of Dorothy Day, who was the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 (www.catholicworker.org).
Day and her faith-based brethren had goals just as big and audacious as Wolfensohn and his technocrats. They sought to spark nothing less than a fundamental shift in people’s consciousness in order to fight poverty and make real church teachings about works of mercy, grace, and love throughout society.
Perhaps best known for their scores of “hospitality houses” which sprouted up across the U.S. to serve the homeless and those in poverty (some which are still going today), they also launched the influential publication The Catholic Worker, a newspaper that rapidly gained a national readership in its heyday.
But while Day and Wolfensohn enjoyed much success, it’s clear that their resources paled in comparison to the challenges they fought. Which raises the question: Exactly what did they have in mind?
First, in many ways, Day and Wolfensohn pursued radically different approaches to fulfilling their dreams. Day helped give rise to a loose-knit, grassroots crowd of people and small groups scattered throughout communities; Wolfensohn directed the very embodiment of a big, professional global institution.
But what’s also clear in both situations is that Day and Wolfensohn were engaged in a fundamental give-and-take over people’s mind-sets and sensibilities. At issue was whether people were willing and able to adopt a new perspective for how they could see, think about, and engage in their fight for progress and the public good (and both clearly laid out what they thought this meant). Another major challenge they shared was whether their efforts could link passionate individuals to actual systems that would help support and diffuse their work.
Just how successful each was I’ll leave for you to decide; it’s worth getting the two books.
But I will say that it’s easy for us to lose sight of these two points in our own daily efforts: that so much of our collective work goes to the need to engage people on their mind-set and sensibilities and that we must create the conditions and capacity for changed mind-sets and sensibilities to take root and grow.
This work we must continue to do.
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The sneak preview of the American mood
It’s been nearly a week since the mid-term elections. What can we now say about the public mood and the opportunities that lie ahead for forging a different path in public life and politics?
Later today, I will participate in a roundtable at the National Archives sponsored by the Kettering Foundation and the presidential libraries on “Democracy’s Challenge: Reclaiming the Public’s Role”; then, this Wednesday, I will host a teleconference on the meaning of the election for public innovators. What shall I say at these events?
For starters, we must know that this election was a long time coming; it didn’t just happen and we shouldn’t be surprised. People have held deep and profound anger about the state of American public life and politics for years; and that anger has been coupled with a sense of resignation – that people could not affect change. This was, in part, the topic of my recent book, Hope Unraveled: The People’s Retreat and Our Way Back.
Then a series of isolated events in recent years converged – from the ugliness of the 2004 election, to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, to rising uncertainties with the war in Iraq – helping to crystallize people’s views about public life and politics. What we saw in the mid-term elections, I believe, was just a sneak preview of those views.
The signal people are sending is unmistakable: they want a more respectful tone to guide public life and politics and more productive energies put into addressing people’s concerns and aspirations.
But merely depending on a sneak preview can be dangerous. For it’s the whole story we need to know. You see, dealing with the tough issues people want addressed will require that we change how we engage in public life and politics.
But beware, this doesn’t mean that people want a Miss Manners-type public life, where niceties are exchanged and uncomfortable issues are swept under the rug. Nor do they want obstructionist, testosterone-driven tactics employed. No, people want something more robust and vibrant, more focused on looking ahead, something that is rooted in and authentically reflects their daily realities.
The dilemma we now face is that we do not have the civic muscles to exercise this kind of public life and politics. So here are just three steps I think must be our focus if we are to have any chance of pursuing an alternate path for politics and public life:
1. We must focus our discourse and engagement on the search for the public good, and not fall prey to cheap and easy tactics to sell people on solutions that merely say to them, “Go ahead, focus only on you’re own good!” Self-interest is an essential element of human nature; that we cannot change. But we can ask people to see themselves more as active citizens and doers, connected to something larger than themselves, than as passive, isolated, me-first consumers.
2. We must take this opportunity to build the capacity of our communities for change. Wherever I go, I find many organizations and individuals doing good work, but by necessity they often focus on small niches. We need more boundary spanning, catalytic organizations that can bring people together across (purported) dividing lines; that can incubate new ideas; that can hold a mirror up to a community; that can create space for genuine collaboration. More and more I am finding organizations that want to step into this role – from United Ways, to community foundations, to community colleges, to public broadcasters, to others; moreover, there are new opportunities the online world offers to us. Now is the time to act.
3. We must focus on pursuing authentic hope and stop peddling false hope. I have written a great deal on this topic. All I will add here is that the mid-term elections created a new opening to engage people. But those who seek to pursue this engagement must be careful not to fall into old traps of pushing false hope by setting goals that cannot be met, exaggerating mandates, and failing to fulfill basic promises. In people’s lives, playing with hope is like playing with fire.
Over the past twenty years there has been any number of opportunities, akin to the recent mid-term election, to begin the process of changing the direction of public life and politics. Nearly every time, we have stepped forward to seize the moment, only to re-embrace practices that have deepened people’s sense of frustration.
Today, we are witnessing another opportunity.
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Election day hubris?
Today, news of the impending “Democratic wave” – a big nationwide electoral sweep – surrounds us. But if this victory comes, what will it mean? My biggest fear, and greatest hope, is that Election Day hubris isn’t the ultimate victor.
Remember the 1994 mid-term elections when Newt Gingrich swept into office with his Contract with America? I wrote at the time (I believe for MSNBC.com) that Gingrich had sorely misread the American electorate. While people didn’t like how President Clinton was governing the country, they didn’t intend for Gingrich to grab control of the steering wheel, change the direction of the country 180 degrees, and floor the accelerator. Soon enough, Gingrich would learn this ugly lesson.
I remember 2004 as well. The day after the election I sat in a small conference room in Madison, WI waiting to go on Wisconsin Public Radio for post-election analysis; there I watched President Bush give his post-Election Day victory speech and claim a broad and deep mandate for his second term. Enough said.
My travels across the nation tell me that people want change; just not the kind our politicians so arrogantly claim. The desire for change Americans’ seek does not fall along partisan lines.
Instead, go into any community and talk to people about the issues that concern them, and usually you cannot tell the difference between who is a Republican and who is a Democrat; in fact, lots of people don’t even identify with either party at all!
Thus I believe that while our politics is polarized, people are not. There is much more that binds us together than that which divides us. Many pollsters are even reporting this week that a broad swath of the American electorate still hasn’t made up its mind about tomorrow’s election.
So, beware Democrats. While you may pick up control of the House of Representatives, and maybe even eek out control of the Senate, don’t misread the meaning of this election.
It’s not simply that many people are upset with one issue or another, or that they support one political party over the other, or that they are unhappy with current conditions. No, the origins of people’s misgivings about politics and public life go much farther back.
People’s concerns have been bubbling up and taking shape for over fifteen years now. These concerns go to the heart of the meaning of politics and public life in people’s daily lives – whether it reflects their reality; whether it provides any sense of possibility; whether it engages people as citizens who belong to something larger than themselves who can focus on the public good, or are they simply isolated consumers merely concerned about their own good.
My most recent travels for the Hope Unraveled book tour have taken me to Topeka, KS and Binghamton, NY – two relatively small to mid-sized regions, one supposedly in a “Red State,” the other a “Blue State.” But when I sit back and replay the voices of people I met in those communities, I don’t hear the polarized politics we’ve been seeing lately. Instead, I hear people who want to improve their local public schools, revitalize neighborhoods and downtown areas, and deal with the growing gap between the haves and have-nots.
So, let’s hope that when the election results are tallied, a touch of humility and authentic hope is the order of the day. There’s been enough hubris already.