Blog
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Obama's Notre Dame Speech
This past Sunday I flipped on the TV only to hear President Obama’s much awaited Notre Dame commencement speech. I was stopped in my tracks, only to be immensely moved. The president’s message is not new, and that is its very power.
Obama’s message is one I encounter daily. It is one of love and grace and holding our hearts and minds open long enough so that we may see and hear others. Only then may we actually learn about others, even ourselves. Only then can we make progress in our communities.
Of course, the need to see and hear one another is often trumped by our own reflex to dominate, win at any cost, gain attention, and turn inward. It is not that we want to operate in this way; rather, it is that we get caught up in, sometimes swept away by, forces we believe are beyond our control. But things don’t need to be this way.
Take the “controversy” over Obama’s visit to Notre Dame. I had listened to various TV commentators and read numerous articles all dissecting whether Notre Dame, a Catholic university, should have invited Obama, a pro-choice politician, to their graduation ceremony. These very debates often had the markings of closed hearts and intolerance, on both sides. It’s not that people should relinquish their beliefs or argue their case less forcefully and less passionately.
Rather, the trap is that the very sense of “love” and “grace” and “hope” they seek to protect – no, actually which they profess to be spreading – is missing from their own words and deeds. How can that be? Is there no mirror in their homes for them to see their own actions? Do they not have ears to hear their overheated rhetoric? Have their hearts turned to stone? Obama observed yesterday that sometimes people have irreconcilable differences, that we cannot “fudge” certain divisions. True enough. Put any two people together and such differences can be found. Put millions of people together under a single roof, and call it the US, and those differences are seemingly endless.
Essentially what Obama was suggesting yesterday is the old “80/20” rule: don’t let the 20% of things we can’t agree on get in the way of the 80% we can.
He was also suggesting that we actually need each other. On this point, Obama quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. who said that we are each part of a “single garment of destiny.” But as I suspect MLK would say, merely embracing the sentiment is not enough; work is required. And this work is often highly uncomfortable for us. We may not like the others involved, their words may hurt us, their passions scare us, but we must stay engaged.
And we must bring with us a sense of openness and grace that keep our hearts open, and which afford us the possibility for the inexplicable or unimaginable to occur; or, more mundanely, simply create the conditions for common ground to be forged.
I urge you to read the Notre Dame speech, and to think about its message for our common work to repair breaches in society and make hope real for each and every person. The change we need begins with each of us.
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Ten Ways to "Live United"
About one year ago the United Way of America unveiled its new brand and tagline, “Live United.” This week United Ways from across the country are reconvening in Detroit, and the question is: What does it mean to Live United in tough times?
I remember sitting on stage with four colleagues during the opening session of the United Way of America’s annual conference last year in Baltimore. As moderator of the panel, my job was to shine a light on the challenges inherent in the Live United approach. Brian Gallagher, head of United of Way of America wanted folks to see what it would take to move the needle. I admire his vision and willingness to put tough issues on the table.When I returned from that conference I wrote a piece entitled, “The Top 10 Ways to ‘Live United.’” In the past twelve months times have changed; the challenges we face have become only more difficult to address, with fewer dollars to go around.
Nonetheless my counsel for United Ways, and other public-spirited groups, remains. So, here, I repeat the Top 10 ways to “Live United” and in doing so I ask all United Ways and other groups to use these 10 points to see how much progress you’ve made over the past year, and what remains to be done. Engage yourself and your staff, boards and supporters on these. Let me know your thoughts once you do.1. We must help people in our communities to see and hear those individuals who are different from themselves, or who live in other parts of the community. At the heart of living united is the ability to see beyond ourselves so that we can begin to understand and work on common challenges, or support others who face challenges different from our own.
2. We must root our work in the public knowledge of our community - for instance, in how people see and define their concerns, the values they wrestle with, the aspirations they hold for themselves, their neighbors, and their community. This public knowledge then must be used to inform the ways in which we do our work internally and the how we shape our programs and initiatives
3. We must act as boundary spanners in our communities, working to bring people and organizations together across real and imagined dividing lines. Too many efforts these days are fragmented, isolated, or even redundant. We must find ways to work across boundaries and leverage one another's efforts.
4. We must focus on undertaking "galvanizing projects" - efforts that by their very nature bring people together and demonstrate that we can step forward and work collectively. In these efforts, impact is less important than galvanizing people's sense of connection and momentum. We need early wins and they must visible to everyone.
5. We must orient ourselves toward the "public good," which in practice means seeing people as citizens not "consumers." Too often our volunteer programs become more focused on the "volunteer experience" rather than creating positive impact for communities.
6. We must be incredibly hard-nosed about selecting the right partners to work with. Well-meaning partnerships and coalitions often die from too much talk, too little action, and overblown promises. Stay focused on who you can run with.
7. We must not confuse our desire to imagine a better world with the need to root our work in the daily realities in which people live. False starts or false promises made because of our own hubris or fantasies will only bring about more cynicism and lead to further retreat from public life. For us to live more united demands our willingness to face up to the hard truths of reality.
8. We must tap the energy and enthusiasm of young Americans, who bring into public life a sense of tolerance, can-do spirit, and a practical bent. Thus, our challenge is to redefine "public service" for this new generation, rather than trotting out warmed-over ideas from the past.
9. We must learn to tell stories of hope and change - what might be called civic parables - so that people can see themselves in public life. But this requires us to reject the usual hype and glossed-over public relations, and instead turn to authentic reflections of people's journeys around change, including why they started out where they did, how they progressed, what went wrong along the way, and what worked. Then maybe more people will step forward.
10. We must be willing to take on enemies of the public good - enemies like inertia, cynicism, mechanized responses to human problems, false hope, distorted reality, and superficial efforts to take on real challenges. Bringing about hope and change was never easy, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that our current time will be any different.
Use these 10 points to help you propel forward. Let me know how you came out on them, and your thoughts for moving forward.
The Harwood Institute joins the United Way of America in holding its key events in Detroit. June 2-5 the Harwood Public Innovators Lab will be held in Detroit. -
The School Bus Incident
This morning I came upon a yellow school bus that had stopped to pick up kids, with its red lights blinking, signaling all cars to stop. And yet one driver insisted on going around the bus. But before he could pass, a woman, with a dog in tow, stepped out in front of his moving car, put her foot on his fender, and proceeded to lecture him. I sat there and wondered what would I have done?
A school bus full of kids is a good test for any of us when it comes to standing up for community norms. We all cherish children; they're often innocent bystanders to events around them, and our role as adults is pivotal in protecting them and helping to raise them. This guy who attempted to bypass the bus was in clear violation of a long-standing norm we all know.
Indeed, he could have simply looked around to see that other cars had stopped for the bus. But he either didn’t care, or didn't take the time to look. Either way, his judgment was off.
Last week I wrote about the first 100 days of President Obama's term. This week I wonder how the rest of us are doing. So many people face tough issues in their daily lives -- a lost job, uncertain health care, trouble paying bills.
In times like these, it's easy to keep our heads down and focus only on ourselves and our own needs. But what I hear people around this country (and elsewhere) saying is, now, more than ever, they want to be part of something larger than themselves. They want to make a difference in their communities. They want to act on their aspirations, not simply their fears.
This urge to make good on our desire to do good existed long before Obama's election, but it was certainly crystallized and amplified since. It exists just beneath the surface of our current troubled economic times; in fact, to get through these times we must tap into it.
That's why I was so taken by what I saw this morning. The stopped bus, and the moving car, created a flashpoint -- a concrete manifestation of both the challenge and opportunity we face. It would have been easy for the woman who stepped out in front of the moving car to turn away, to simply act as if nothing had happened.
Instead, she did just the opposite: she turned toward the moving car. She made the decision that the blinking red lights atop the yellow school bus meant something. She stepped forward in that moment and did something.
As the bus left another women in a car rolled down her window and called to the women who had stopped the car, "Did he just do what I think he did?" He had. They talked for a brief moment, and both went their ways. But in that exchange they cemented a long-standing community norm. They named it. They declared it real. And I saw it all, which made me it real for me, too.
Much of what we are doing in our nation nowadays is to reclaim space for interacting with others, for working together, and for resetting the norms we care about. No doubt, part of this occurs through actions taken in Washington, DC, but more of it actually takes place in our daily lives.
I ask you to consider the yellow bus when you encounter similar situations. Remember the woman with the dog in tow who stepped forward.