Home > Blogs > About Rich's Work > Rich's Blog: Redeeming Hope
Printable Version
Tell a friend
-
Do You Have a "Deserving" Family?
This was my reaction when listening to an ad on WFLR 96.7 FM—a Christian-contemporary station—while driving from
It went on to tell listeners about WFLR’s holiday-season partnership with Aspen Heating and Cooling, and that each listener was now invited to visit the station’s web site (myflr.org) to nominate “one deserving family” who would become eligible to win a new furnace from the good folks at Aspen. The web site says, “Nominations are being accepted until November 7, with the winning family announced on November 14.”
- Since when do we anonymously “nominate” poor neighbors to receive such care? Is this some new kind of charitable approach, where if a well-to-do person deems you needy enough, you can receive help? If not, what then? Are you to stay at home shivering in despair?
- What about the next time the station runs this competition: will they choose to pick three “needy finalists,” who will then go on-air to make their case so the rest of us can pick the winner? Is this the new kind of citizen-driven philanthropy everyone seems to be talking about?
- Exactly what does the phrase “one deserving family” mean? As a child, if your family doesn’t get the new furnace, is your family somehow un-deserving? What happens this winter when your family can’t afford to heat your home?
- Then there’s the obvious question about once people nominate a family, and the “deserving family” wins the new furnace, do we just move on to the next issue? Does one’s limited participation in the station contest fulfill their need to look beyond themselves and be responsible for one another?
For as long as I can remember, there have always been raffles and other efforts to support people in need by groups such as Rotary Clubs, Knights of Columbus and others. But have our marketing, public relations, and other strategies to capture people’s attention run so completely afoul that we’ve lost sight of what is required to make society work? When do our attempts to “game” public life blur our very ability to keep sight of the essence of what brings each of us to our work?I know that simply raising our voices and imploring people to care will not bring about the progress we seek. There is already too much noise and fatigue and isolation in society; attempts to push and cajole people only cause them to retreat further from public life. But is the solution to merely give in to those who say that people won’t care, or that people can’t connect their self-interests with the interests of others, or that people merely want to be left alone? I believe such arguments miss the undercurrents of what’s happening in our society.
People do care. People want to be part of something larger than themselves. People know that we must believe in something deeper than simply unfettered consumerism. Trust and hope and, yes, even love, do matter (as does being ruthlessly strategic in our change efforts!). We must not cede the public square to those who tell us that the only way to engage people is to mimic what happens in a shopping mall.
We can’t control what everyone else does. But we can direct our own efforts and help to create conditions in our communities that root out such cheap gimmicks like holding raffles for “one deserving family.” I know lots of deserving families.
-
Dear Barack:
(Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)Last week the Washington Post ran a front page story that Americans may be too angry to embrace your message of hope, and instead are aching for a heated partisan campaign of division and resentment. I think they’re wrong. But I also believe that you and other leaders who care about hope must be vigilant in how you engage Americans on hope. It is too easy to misstep here and for politics as usual to triumph. Thus I’ve listed below five key points for winning the public fight on hope. Know that my concern here is not your election, though I wish you luck; instead it is the task of rebuilding hope in our land.
One of the most searing insights I have gained from my 20 years of work across the country is the centrality of hope in people’s lives – and also its fragility. I say this after tirelessly seeking new ways for individuals, organizations, and communities to address social ills and act on their aspirations. And yet, the surfacing and expression of hope is uniquely beautiful, enabling people to stand up and step forward even in the face of adversity and when odds are dead set against them. But false hope is insidious, a contagion that breeds skepticism and leads to cynicism the likes of which causes people to retreat and disengage.
There’s been enough false hope in our society, we all know that. Nonetheless, many leaders continue to engage in an assortment of unseemly and nasty games in public life at the expense of our common interests. They tell those of us who care about hope that we should toughen up or get out of their way. The upshot is that those of us who pursue the path of hope – whether we are a presidential candidate or a local public innovator – must marry our conviction for change with the ability to be ruthlessly strategic in our actions. For if we fail in our current attempts to pursue hope, I fear we will squander the opportunity to re-engage and reconnect Americans.
Here, then, are five key points for us to consider in the pursuit of hope – you as presidential candidate and those of us who live in communities across the country.
Key Points for the Pursuit of Hope
1. We must always keep in mind an important distinction when talking about hope: the difference between false hope and authentic hope. Anyone who wishes to be a champion of hope must be clear about maintaining their focus on authentic hope. This will require immense personal discipline not to blur lines into false hope in the name of convenience or easy wins, and to maintain the clarity of purpose among those who surround you so as not to be pushed off course.
2. When opponents question your motivations, go after you on policy, or attack you personally, you must keep focused on authentic hope. The moment you engage in a tit-for-tat in public discourse, you will erode your own authenticity and your claim to authentic hope. BUT, this does not mean that you should never fight back. Indeed you should and must! But when you do, train your arguments on substantive matters and provide clear contrasts of vision. Do not back down; but nor should you fall prey to playing politics as usual if you want your position to be compelling and forthright.
3. Remember that “hope” is a result of your articulated vision and related positions, not proclamations about hope! When notions of hope become overly familiar – that is, when one makes it their stock and trade – it loses meaning and currency. Hope is not a message unto itself, but over time the byproduct of actions we take and results that emerge. Thus I would urge you and others not to overdo talk about hope; instead, people should see hope as a result of the change you wish to bring about. Otherwise, hope can become an empty slogan.
4. As strange as it may sound, none of us “own” hope. We must remember that hope resides within individuals and communities. Hope is the result of people tapping their own potential to make a difference and joining together to forge a common future. Anyone who talks about hope must know that they are merely a messenger or carrier for something larger than themselves. Therefore, when talking about hope, the focus must be on people, always the people. I know this is difficult because talk of hope can be personally intoxicating; I have experienced this in my own small way. We can mistake people’s response to hope to be about ourselves. When we make that mistake, we can lose our way.
5. We must deliver big on a message of change and authentic hope if people are not to fall sway to heated partisan appeals. This requires that we step forward and articulate a clearly different point of view; hold up a mirror to people so they can see their shared realities; make meaningful entreaties to people to re-engage and reconnect. Some people will aggressively attack you and others who take this path; so be it. But if you and the rest of us straddle the fence in presenting an alternative; if we seem to be accommodating special interests under the cover of new rhetoric; if attempts are made to soft peddle what must be said, then all that will be left is the muddled pursuit of hope. Then people will reach for partisanship and its fleeting comfort of surety rather than our lukewarm hope.
I should say that I admire anyone who steps forward to illuminate possible pathways toward authentic hope. I know that attempts to generate deep change on issues before us will not yield immediate results; but I also know that we can and must place a stake in the ground about what we value and how we seek to move ahead. My own belief is that our task now is to make hope real for people. This too is a long-term endeavor. And no doubt there will be many enemies of the public good who will try to block us along the way. But people are waiting.
-
Why Do We Need Public Innovators?
Many people have written about the talent deficit in the non-profit and civic sector. Today, I want to focus on one big part of it. While the talent deficit is very real, maybe the most pressing facet of it is our lack of public innovators. These civic change agents are essential to helping organizations and communities create change and authentic hope. But we need many more public innovators if we are to make the progress we seek.
Consider the following challenges and think about the kind of person it will take to create meaningful progress:
- Recently,
my colleague
- In
their new book, Come On, People,
Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint
(a leading psychiatrist at Harvard
University) argue that to bring about
hopeful change in people’s lives and
create the necessary daily support
systems, we must create more locally-generated
efforts that involve, engage, and tap
into local people’s voices, talents
and gifts. Anyone who has attempted such
work knows how difficult it can
be.
- The
other day a colleague told me that while
his group has the skills and core
competencies to implement quick, one-off
projects in communities, the
local leadership does not exist to spark
deep and lasting change within
communities. But how can they help
develop that leadership?
- Another
friend who leads a national organization
with hundreds of local affiliates
told me recently that one of their most
pressing challenges is developing and
supporting the talent within communities
to initiate and lead meaningful
change efforts, especially those that
occur long periods of over time.
Each of these challenges requires more than just recruiting more people who can run organizations, make programs work, and manage the books. They demand that we find and cultivate and support a particular kind of civic change agent, one who can help to bring about a certain kind of change. I call these change agents, “public innovators.” Less heralded than social entrepreneurs, public innovators form the backbone of our communities. And our own research suggests that communities need a critical mass of these innovators to help create the conditions necessary for change in our society.
But what do public innovators do? Based on our years of research and on-the-ground experiences, public innovators must know how to gain a deep understanding of the rhythms and conditions of their communities so that they can understand the context within which they’re working. Public innovators must also know how much capacity their community has for action and design initiatives that reflect that knowledge. They must know how to authentically engage people so the community can generate the knowledge, public will, and civic energy to move forward. They must understand that change emerges over time and they must cultivate pockets of change in ways that promising ideas and innovation do not get choked off or dissipate. Public innovators must know how to open up new spaces for discussion, innovation, and learning so that people can get things done – not just talk. Meanwhile, public innovators must be “ruthlessly strategic;” they must know that they cannot afford to become “activity happy” and lose their focus, when fundamental choices must be made to bring about lasting impact.
Many organizations claim to develop leaders who are able to do these and other things. Oftentimes they create ways for local leaders to connect with one another (“meet and greets”) or provide training programs that teach a specific skill or a process for dealing with conflict. But learning a new process or skill is not the same as learning a new sensibility about one’s work or how to be “ruthlessly strategic.” So, while many of leadership training efforts have value, they do not cultivate and support public innovators and fall short in helping us meet the kinds of challenges described in Come On, People, or those described by my friends and colleagues.
To address these problems and challenges we must cultivate more public innovators.
- Recently,
my colleague
-
What Would Lincoln Say Tonight?
Today’s Republican debate is a vital test to see whether any candidate is willing to authentically engage voters – to step forward and speak to us honestly. Just over a week ago the top-tier Republican candidates skipped the Morgan State/PBS debate focused on African American and Latino concerns. I have returned to issues surrounding the
Weary of the acrimonious and divisive nature of politics and the lack of adequate progress on a host of issues, people yearn for leaders who can pull us together, get things moving in a positive direction, and engage with the realities of our lives—we are searching for a “new breed of leader.”
I wrote about a “new breed of leader” in my essay, Make Hope Real. Unlike many of the “outsider” leaders who emerged in the 1990s and spoke about a hostile takeover of government, disparaged public service, and exploited wedge issues, today’s new breed is highly pragmatic on policy issues, seeks to make public life and politics work instead of tearing them apart, and actively engages people in coming together to solve problems. Instead of dividing us one from another, this new breed of leader believes in calling upon people to come together to improve their lives.
As I travel the country I sense the slow but steady growth in the number of such leaders. I see a new breed of leader emerging all around—the mayors of
However, when the top-tier Republican candidates skipped the Morgan State event they sent an unmistakable message: they value fund raising over rebuilding communities, politics over people, and have little regard for those with little money or political clout.So the question for today is: Will any of the Republican or Democratic candidates for president emerge as part of the new breed of leaders? Tonight’s debate provides an opportunity to gauge the kind of leader that each of the major candidates for the Republican nomination will be. When the candidates debate in
- First, they should make sure the issue is on the table. If a direct question is not put to them, then they should raise the topic themselves, no matter the time limits, ground rules, or angst they create.
- Second,
when talking about
Click here to download a set of questions to consider as you think about these candidates' answers to questions about Morgan State
-
Would Lincoln Have Gone?
Last week a stunning event occurred: Republican presidential candidates were invited to
I write to neither support Democrats nor undercut Republicans, but to shine a bright light on the need for authenticity and hope in public life and politics. People have had enough of acrimonious and divisive politics and now yearn to find ways back into the public square. Authenticity and hope are essential for any candidate who seeks to reconnect and re-engage with Americans and cut through prevailing conditions in society to foster a new can-do spirit.
To engender authenticity and hope requires candidates to step forward and show their face. They cannot achieve this simply by hiring consultants to carefully craft commercials and slick web sites. Rather it demands that candidates reveal something of their true convictions; that they recognize that campaigns are really not about them, but about people and their lives. It takes candidates who are truthful about the conditions of our country and the lives of our citizens. Authenticity and hope come from candidates who call each of us forward to help create a sense of possibility about our shared future– something we can only create together.Is this a tall order for any candidate? Yes, of course it is, and it should be. I have come to believe that it is not perfection from candidates that people seek, only their real engagement. We do not expect them to have all the answers, but we do expect to hear from them. Thus, when it comes to opportunities like
Exactly what calculation led the major Republican Party candidates to forgo the
Only a few days after the
No doubt,
We have had enough division in this nation – from Red States vs. Blue States, church goers vs. non-church goers, blacks vs. whites. It’s enough already. Central to promoting authenticity and hope is that we see and engage in society with a renewed sense of affection for others. This doesn’t mean we will all agree with one another; or that we will all like one another. But it does ask us to open ourselves up to see and hear and feel things around us. It does require us to be present so that we can engage with others. Neither the nasty politics of division nor a timid Miss Manners-style civility give us the tools we need to make hope real.
We need leaders who are willing to be present and fully engaged at
It can be done.