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Robyn Stegman

Powered by Poverty

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“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” – Walt Whitman

Last week and throughout my Thagomizer posts, I often give glowing reviews to social enterprises. However this week I’d like to look at the failures of many of the businesses I’ve praised. While social enterprise has provided a new way of funding social change, it has not been as effective at producing impact. Sure most social enterprises have positive outputs: shoes provided to the poor, increased availability of affordable health services, microloans for businesses. However while models like Toms Shoes provide a way forward for funding, it also represents a step back in the way we address poverty.

I was reminded of this when watching The #GlobalPOV Project video on “Can We Shop to End Poverty?” As U.C. Berkeley professor Ananya Roy eloquently explains, while our purchases for good make us feel better, they aren’t actually ending poverty; they are perpetuating it.

The point Roy makes is that while opportunities to help people in poverty are increasingly visible while we shop, the root causes of poverty and inequality are hidden. The workers who make the goods we shop, the people helping us at checkout, the farmers who grow the food, are all hidden from us. Toms Shoes is a great example of this. While pictures of their “shoe drops” and founder Blake Mycoskie giving shoes to poor children litter their website, there are no pictures of anyone who actually makes the shoes. On the website you can find pictures of the office staff, of the communities they give shoes out to, but not the people who assemble and create the raw materials for the shoes. Yet it’s in the making of shoes, not in giving of shoes where Toms could have the most impact on people in poverty.

Most of Toms Shoes are not made in the communities they serve. Toms does make sure they have ethical business practices throughout its supply chain by requiring suppliers to sign a Code of Conduct ensuring fair wages and benefits, standards of health and safety, and no child labor.  But giving out shoes made outside of the community has the potential to undercut domestic entrepreneurs.  If they focused on not just giving people in poverty shoes, but giving them the opportunity for a steady paycheck they could do a lot more good. This is an opportunity Toms is now seeing. Mycoskie has even announced that by the end of 2015 they will produce one third of their shoes in the places they serve.

The hazards of giving have been well documented in the world of international aid. The influx of donated rice into Haiti to aid those affected by earthquake hurt domestic farmers who relied on people buying their rice. Toms Shoes might have been innovative in figuring out how to pay for social good but their model of creating social good is outdated. What we need is more support for long-term, systematic solutions but instead most social enterprises focus on immediate results that look good on an infograph.

The narrative social enterprises provide to the consumer is a compelling one, placing you as the hero in someone’s life. However while your purchase may help that person, there is also an unseen narrative. Our wealth is created on the backs of many in this country and throughout the globe. Our purchases perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Until we examine the systematic inequalities, until we zoom out from giving shoes and focus on why people don’t have shoes, social enterprise won’t change the world. We need more social enterprises not just using business for charity but advocating for changes in the way we do business to create a more equitable system. Ananya Roy quotes a U.N. official in her video: “policy not charity is what rich countries can do for poor counties.” I would say the same of social enterprises. It might not make for the best photos but advocacy could change far more lives than a pair of shoes.

Sufferfest for Social Good

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 4 Comments

When Andrew Yang noticed a young employee demoralized by undercompensation and having to scrounge for enough money to pay to attend friend’s weddings, he didn’t rush to the rescue. “In my old company, I would have pushed his pay to market, as he was doing very good work,” he wrote in his post on non-profit martyrdom, “But in the non-profit, I hesitated, thinking that maybe his suffering was necessary, despite my knowing that he was being paid far less than would have been the case in another setting.” This idea that “suffering is necessary” for social good has been part of the non-profit narrative for a long time. We honor people who sacrifice donations and time and expect our supporters to give something up for social good.

The growth in social entrepreneurship is changing this paradigm by giving new options to make an impact without having to be a overworked, underpaid, under-appreciated non-profit employee. This week I ran across a fantastic piece by Leanne Pittsford, founder and CEO of Start Somewhere and manager of the popular Tumblr  “When You Work at a Nonprofit.” She used Google Trends to take a look at changes in search terms people were using to find employment. She found people searching for “nonprofit jobs” (blue line) and “non-profit jobs” (red line) have gone down dramatically in the past decade.

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However when she looked at the people searching for jobs at “jobs social enterprise” (blue line)  and “social enterprise jobs” (red line) both had increased.

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So why is that less people are looking for nonprofit jobs even though there is an increase in people looking for social good jobs? Pittsford believes it is a sign of the sinking reputation of the non-profit industry which has a history of employee mistreatment in the name of a good cause. “Nonprofit is losing bright, motivated, socially-minded people, who now have another option for a career with meaning.” she writes in her blog, “And this option has afforded these bright, socially-minded people the things we have not: innovation, use of technology, well-paying salaries, and growth opportunities.” The story I believe these graphs tell is the promise of a new age of social enterprise and a redefinition of social good, one that hacks some of our more selfish natures to do social good rather then rely on “true altruism.”  Sacrifice is no longer the only road necessary to make an impact.

It reminds me of a quote that struck me a few months ago. “The world could eliminate extreme poverty for about $45 billion a year,or roughly the amount spent on movie tickets annually worldwide,” a Harvard economist estimated. I don’t think the nonprofit sector can access that kind of money through altruism alone.  Think how much money is spent every year publicizing a movie, engaging us, and drawing us in. Yet most people wouldn’t know where to begin to give $8 to help solve poverty. What if doing good were as easy and fun as going to the movies? What if we put the fun back in fundraising?

Those of us in the social change world have always been afraid to admit there is a selfish bone in our body. The public wants social good to happen with pure intentions, devoid of the dark stains of capitalism and self-interest. I was having a discussion with a friend about TOMS shoes and she brought up the point that “it would be much more effective if people just gave their money to a non-profit who could buy several pairs of shoes, instead of buying a pair of shoes for yourself where only one goes to someone in need.” That’s true if we lived in a world where we had plenty of money to give and no need for shoes ourselves. “How much money have you donated to a charity that provides shoes to those in need this year?” I asked her, “is it more than what you’ve spent on shoes?” My guess is many of us would answer no to this question. It’s not a bad thing; it’s reality, and new social enterprises allow us to benefit ourselves while benefiting other people as well.

While Pittsford’s graphs focus on how people are seeking on jobs in social good, my guess is that we are also seeing changes in how people are seeking out social good organizations to support with volunteer hours and donations. The social rewards of giving back are worthwhile but your needs should also be respected. As Scott Burkholder wrote in an earlier ChangeEngine blog post on the Tyranny of Low Overhead, “I think society wrongfully assumes that because creating art and social change makes people feel good, that should be sufficient compensation. It is not. If it is valuable to society, society should at least sustain and maybe even reward the change that is created.”  We are beginning to see a new breed of organizations that don’t require us to suffer for our cause and in the end that’s a more sustainable and effective practice. No one can live forever on good will alone.

The Trouble with “Good Schools”

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 6 Comments

If I had a nickel for every time someone called my high school “ghetto” I would be able to retire by now. In truth, our building was written up in Architectural Digest when it was first built and our school had amazing teachers and students. Yet, as a result of changing community demographics our school was no longer thought of as a “good school.” As Graham Couch, a fellow alum wrote:

“It was diverse scholastically, economically, racially, every which way. Its students and teachers were more a snapshot of the actual world than most places could offer…The view from elsewhere, as I often heard it, saw Sexton as a tough building, its diversity not necessarily considered a strength.”

Last week, community members and alumni of my high school gathered to welcome back students after a tragedy. Earlier in the week three students were ambushed and shot in the neighborhood by the school. The incident did nothing to help our reputation, in fact it reinforced many of the stereotypes people had.

When I was reading the coverage of the event I began to compare the narrative of Sexton’s tragedy to other school shootings. Fault for violence in an urban environment is often laid with the communities and people. Yet, rarely in mass school shootings, like Columbine or Newtown, does the media blame the environment. You don’t see people moving out of the suburbs or rural areas because they believe they are “dangerous for their kids.” Yet, statistically, mass shootings are more likely to happen in those settings. As Richard Florida points out in his article on the subject:

“By our accounting, more than 80 percent of America’s 21 worst mass killings identified by the Hartford Courant took place in suburban towns or rural areas, including each and every one of what the paper identifies as the five “worst school massacres in U.S. history.” More than two-thirds of the 61 mass shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 according to a list and map compiled this year by Mother Jones can also be traced to a suburban or rural location.”

He offers an explanation for this trend:

“Urban public schools are much more diverse across racial and ethnic lines. Yes, there is fighting and bullying like anywhere, but kids can view them less as personal attacks and more as group behavior. And often times, kids band together along these racial and ethnic lines. Just the opposite is likely in schools in more affluent suburban areas. Not only are these schools more economically advantaged, they tend to be much more homogenous. Since everyone is more or less “the same,” kids who are picked on are more likely to feel personally victimized. There is little to help diffuse the resulting anger or anxiety, so it festers and feeds off itself.”

Suburbs are incredibly effective at creating social isolation. They are usually absent of shared community space and activities that build a sense of community. Yet rarely do we talk about the “dangers of suburbia” in the same way we focus on the “dangers of the city.”

This media bias has a terrible impact on the lives of city dwellers. The perception of my school as a decrepit, violent, slum couldn’t have been further from the truth, but it started to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The decline of Sexton was accelerated in 1996 when Michigan passed “Schools of Choice,” which allowed students to choose which school they attended regardless of what district they lived in.

Seven miles away from Sexton, just outside of the city limits you can find Holt High School. Inside, the walls sport large flat screen TVs and every classroom is equipped with the latest technology. It’s easy to see why a parent might choose that school over my alma mater where there sometimes aren’t enough textbooks to allow students to take them home. And so Holt got students, active and supportive parents, and funding while Sexton lost the resources they needed to improve education for their students. The disparities between the two widened.

Theoretically, school choice programs are supposed to encourage competition. Yet when one side gets to choose their players and the other must make do with what’s left, how can you compete? Since students elect to go to a school outside of their district, the school isn’t obligated to accept them. That means schools can kick out children for discipline issues, sending them back to their original school. “Good” schools can choose the cream of the crop, which boosts their test scores and furthers the impression that their school is better, which attracts more funding and students.

The combination of policy, media bias, and community perception is harmful to both students who stay in schools like Sexton and move to schools like Holt. Diversity is the strength of Sexton — students benefit from being around people of diverse backgrounds, race, class, and viewpoints. People who move out of the district miss out on that. The media reaction to the shootings at our school furthers the segregation of our educational system and that makes no one safer. As my sister wrote after she learned of the violence, “Sexton is great school full of good kids in a peaceful community. I need to start seeing more news about that, not this.”

This is Your Brain on Wealth: How Money Hacks Your Brain

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 2 Comments

For ages when we talk about wealth inequality we focus on the effect it has on the poor. Yet, this video from PBS Newshour, made me reflect this week that perhaps we need to also start talking about how wealth inequality impacts the rich:

The video cites various studies connecting wealth with a lack of empathy for one’s fellow man. For example, one study shows that people with luxury cars are less likely to stop for pedestrians, while another reveals students from wealth are more likely to take candy from children. The results seem to suggest one conclusion: money turns us into less compassionate, more immoral, selfish people.

A study from Harvard University and the University of Utah showed that simply having money on the mind changed the way participants made decisions. One group was given phrases like “She spends money liberally” to get them thinking about money while another group was given neutral phrases like “She walked on grass.” The two groups were then given a slew of tests that determined whether they would engage in immoral behavior such as stealing paper from the school copier or deceiving a friend for financial gain. Those who were thinking about money were more likely to make immoral decisions to the detriment of their social bonds than those who were given neutral phrases. As one researcher concluded, “These findings suggest that money is a more insidious corrupting factor than previously appreciated, as mere, subtle exposure to money can be a corrupting influence.”

Does this mean we are better off living without money? Money allows us to get everything we need without much social interaction. We no longer need to depend on each other to survive. Wealthy people do not need to rely on social bonds. Perhaps this is why upper class people are less able to pick up social cues and exhibit empathy with others who are suffering as found in research from UC Berkeley. “These latest results indicate that there’s a culture of compassion and cooperation among lower-class individuals that may be born out of threats to their wellbeing,” said one researcher describes. While viewing a video showing a family dealing with a child with cancer, lower-class participants were more likely to lower their heart rate, a sign of compassion, while higher-class participants were more likely to remain neutral. “It’s not that the upper classes are coldhearted,” the author of the study said, “They may just not be as adept at recognizing the cues and signals of suffering.”

While I believe there are other ways of transaction that better strengthen social bonds and build community, I think the real problem is not money, but the abundance of it. What concerns me is the skewed perception we have of wealth and those who have it. The changes that occur in the participants are a result of the power we perceive comes with wealth, a greater power than that of our social bonds. Part of this connection between power and wealth is forged by a strong belief in the American Dream. This national fable teaches us we can achieve whatever we want if we make enough money through hard work. It also teaches us that those who are rich must have gotten there through their own hard work, and not a set of advantages they were born with. One study featured in the video above involves a rigged monopoly game where one participant gets an extra dice to roll and double the money of the other players. Even though this participant is far more likely to win the game, when they were interviewed afterward they would attribute their success to their individual skills and talent. They would feel like they “deserved to win” the game.

Our perception that wealth is created solely through hard work doesn’t take into account the many challenges people in poverty have to face that those with money do not. Just as the abundance of money changes the way the mind works, so does the lack of it. Humans have a limited mental bandwith and when our minds our focused on getting our basic needs, we are less able to focus it on other higher orders of thinking.  A study recently  published in Science showed people concerned about making ends meet made worse decisions, were more forgetful, and were less likely to notice things. The impact of poverty is equivalent to losing 13 IQ points. “All the data shows it isn’t about poor people,” one of the researchers said, “it’s about people who happen to be in poverty.” 

The staggering wealth inequality in the United States creates unhappiness not only for the poor but for the rich. Research shows that the happiest countries in the world are those with the most equality. As the saying goes “money can’t buy you happiness.” Happiness comes from both money and from social bonds. The poor lack money to sustain themselves, yet create a strong community. The rich on the other hand maximize their wealth while destroying relationships. The kind of wealth had by the 1% at the top is making no one happier. Not the haves, not the have nots. A study from Princeton showed that after you reached a salary of $75,000, having more wealth didn’t continue to increase your happiness. Having a ridiculous amount of wealth doesn’t really make any one happier and makes rich people into worse human beings, it’s a pretty raw deal for all involved. It’s seems to me like it is time for a new American dream.

Investing in the Leaders of Tomorrow

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | One Comment

A bad credit history was the only thing keeping the 19-year old James Ward from attending Howard. Ward had been homeless for most of high school but had worked hard and managed to get into a large university. However his mother’s bad credit made him unable to get student loans that would financially enable him to go. So, showing a spark on ingenuity, he found a different way to fund his college education. Ward started a campaign called “Homeless to Howard.” Using only a Tumblr blog and Paypal account he was able to launch an online campaign that helped him raise $12,000, enough for his first year of college.

Access to credit is one of the many “poverty traps” that exist today, mechanisms that create the cycle of poverty and limit inter-generational mobility. Having no credit is just as bad as having bad credit and it is hard to start credit if no-one in your family has good credit. Today, credit can affect your access to everything from an apartment, utilities, cell phones, and as in the example above student loans. Not having credit excludes you from accessing affordable services and loans that allow you to work your way out of poverty.

Luckily new ways of financing are starting to evolve. In the developing world where a student loan system doesn’t exist, microloan systems are coming in to fill the void. Vittana allows people to make $25 loans to students across the world to pay for their education. Graduates make on average 2.8 times more than before and thus there is a 99.8% repayment rate. Two years ago, Kiva, a well known global microlender announced it would start providing small, no-interest loans for student’s education in countries across the globe. Kiva got in the business because they recognize that financing student loans are not appealing to most lending institutions interested only in return. Students have no collateral, require long terms and grace periods, and often have no prior credit history. Making student loans is more appealing to a organization like Kiva where investors are more focused on making social change than getting a financial return.

Lumni, which now operates in the United States asks investors to think of students like start up companies. Through Lumni, investors fund student’s education and those students must promise to give investors back a percentage of the income they make for their first ten years out of college. A deal like Lumni means investors care not only about whether or not the student can pay back the student loans, but how successful they become. They become stakeholders in the student’s future and will do more to make sure they succeed.

student-debt

Cartoon by Jeff Parker

American students today leave college with massive amounts of student debts. My generation has seen first hand what happens when you come out of college with loan repayments to make and no good job in site. When faced with a choice of taking a low paying entry-level job at a company that will be an in to your career and a slightly higher paying job at Starbucks, many graduates must chose the latter so that they can start making repayments. Furthermore during their first years, they often shovel so much back into paying off their student loans that they don’t save anything which can cause further financial instability and could result in more debt if any other emergency or need arises.

In contrast a new system, in which loan makers are invested not only in getting a return, but also in student success could not only increase access to funding for education for students like James Ward, but create a system that ensures better success and financial stability for our college graduates. Instead of investing in immediate returns, these social enterprises invest in the future. This allows students to have a grace period to make decisions that will set them up for further success in the long run. It’s a triple bottom line approach that could ultimately lead to larger profits both monetarily and socially for all involved.

Whose Art is It Anyway?

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Over the past few weeks I have been following the debate about the sale of the Detroit Institute of Art (DIA) not only because it an institution dear to me but because it reveals a fascinating look at the difference in opinions of who owns art and what its value is. Among logical points that visitors of the museum bring in more money than what would be gained by selling the pieces or that the sale of the art would not relieve Detroit’s debt, was one argument that shocked me: Detroit should sell its art because the city doesn’t deserve it.

This was the central point of “Detroit’s Van Gogh Would Be Better Off in L.A.” where Virginia Postrel argues art does not belong to the people of Detroit but the world at large.  “Great artworks shouldn’t be held hostage by a relatively unpopular museum in a declining region,” she wrote, “The cause of art would be better served if they were sold to institutions in growing cities where museum attendance is more substantial and the visual arts are more appreciated than they’ve ever been in Detroit.” In the end she believes the sale of Detroit’s artwork would allow more people to see it and better serve the cause of art.

Postrel seems to owe an intellectual debt to Richard Florida, that apostle of urbanism whose 2010 book, The Great Reset, appalled critics by arguing, in so many words, that some cities deserve high culture more than others,” Nora Caplan-Briker points out in her rebuff of the article, “Essentially, cities where the arts are already blooming deserve them, and all those other gloomy, faded backwaters don’t, as evidenced by their failure to nourish them thus far.”

Virginia Postrel’s inflammatory piece also hints at a part of the debate that has not been talked about in the open. Over 80 percent of Detroit’s population is African American while attendance at art institutions like the Detroit Institute of Art has remained primarily white. Only 5.9 percent of art museum attendees are African American even though they make up 11.9 percent of the U.S. population. The debate around the sale of the DIA, seems to me to spring at least in part from the division that still exists between historic institutions of high culture and communities of African American, Hispanic, and other minority artists that have developed separately and often times remain separate from these institutions.

Ethnic and cultural arts institutions are the fastest growing category of cultural institutions in the country. Beginning in the 1970s in Detroit, there was declining funding for the DIA while funding was being increased to other cultural institutions, namely the Museum of African American History. This was partly seen as a symptom of Detroit’s evolving demographics.

So do Van Gogh, Rembrandt, and the other European treasures at threat of being sold off have more value to the people of Detroit then the money gained from the sale?  My opinion is best summed up in this quote from Ben Davis’ piece on diversity in the art world:

“It would represent a huge failure of vision, however, if art were to remain confined to just the cultural group that originated it.”

While a young African-American student might not identify with Van Gogh, it doesn’t mean he can’t connect with his work. While there are huge historic cultural barriers that prevent the Detroit Institute from being accessible to a wider population, that doesn’t mean that these barriers can’t be torn down. However, if we follow Postrel’s advice and move the works of the DIA to a city where they are “better appreciated,” we deny the people of Detroit even the possibility of experiencing these works.

Fallen City Looking for a Hero

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 2 Comments

By now everyone is talking about Detroit’s bankruptcy and the problems that have led to its decline.  Michigan’s economic decline has long been a battlefield of political ideologies. In our history we have both stories of the success of capitalism — the boom of industry that once made Detroit the fastest growing city in the world — as well as its failures — a history of inequality and violence which birthed our strong unions.

Depending on your ideological leanings the “death” of the Big Three could be due to unreasonable demands by the UAW, money grubbing executives moving their shops to Mexico to make a larger profit with the help of NAFTA, an industry that had turned its back on innovation as it continues to produce gas guzzling SUVs during times of soaring fuel prices, or the failure of the state government to provide economic incentives for companies to stay. Corruption, racism, corporate mismanagement all play a role in the failure of Detroit’s government. I could spend days debating the varying autopsies of the once great city, but I won’t.

Among many unknowns here is one known: Detroit cannot be saved without an economic revival.

While understanding the problem can provide us the means to uncovering the solution, I think the game of pointing fingers that has unfolded on the national stage of late is not helpful at all to the city. Instead the question that racks my mind is not how Detroit came to these crossroads but how do they get out. The city has been promised renaissance after renaissance and has been left wondering: what if things never get better? What if Detroit goes from being the largest city of bankruptcy to the largest ghost town, a decrepit corpse of the boom and bust of industry?

Detroit is not the first city to be visited by dark times. Other cities have lived to reinvent themselves: New York, San Francisco, Boston, Pittsburgh. As a recent Washington Post op-ed pointed out:

“In 1971, two Seattle realtors posted this funny-dreary billboard: “Will the last person leaving SEATTLE — Turn out the lights.” Employment at Boeing had plunged from 100,800 in 1967 to 38,690…But the losses weren’t fatal. The Seattle area now has Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks.”

So what does it take to reinvent a city? Well, that’s the subject of a new series of Thagomizer posts.

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 Part I: Embracing Change

Let me start by what I think won’t bring back Detroit: the auto industry. Much press that juxtaposes the bankruptcy of Detroit with the slow recovery of the domestic auto industry fails to realize that Detroit is no longer the motor city. Only one of the Big Three has headquarters in Detroit and only two plants remain in the city limits. The rest have fled to the suburbs or other parts of Michigan, Canada, and beyond. In fact there are more casinos in Detroit then there are automobile factories. Chrysler, famous for its “Imported from Detroit” Super Bowl ad is actually headquartered in a suburb and none of the three cars featured in that ad, the Chrysler 200, Chrysler 300 and Chrysler Town & Country are actually made in the city.

Pittsburgh has long been thought of a rust belt success story. In many ways it is connected to steel in the same way Detroit has been connected to the auto industry. It was not just a part of their economy, it was and continues to be a part of their history, culture, and identity. However Pittsburgh’s success came when they looked at the hard truth: steel was never coming back. Instead they invested in new industries, in technology and healthcare and put money in higher education and retraining to help workers transition to these new economic power houses. Economic resiliency means constantly changing and having a workforce that can change with you.

Detroit has been held back by clinging to the auto industry, fighting imports under the assumption that the auto industry will return the city to where it was a half decade ago. Letting go of that hope means not only looking at new economic mainstays but also providing opportunities for people to shift careers. It’s a tough job convincing people that they will have to retrain to succeed, but this nimbleness is necessary to revitalize Detroit. It also means changing the education system for youth to prepare them for innovation not stagnation.

Detroit is seeing some new business in the area. Quicken Loans has brought in new money into the city and is helping to build a tech industry downtown. Unemployment is dropping and the tax base is rising in Detroit. Perhaps the bankruptcy will finally allow Detroit to shake off the cloak of the past and embrace a new future. Fast Company puts Detroit’s failure in a new light:

The tech world has a word for Detroit’s bankruptcy filing yesterday, and it’s not fiasco, fatal, or doomsday. It’s pivot. If something fundamental isn’t working–the business model, the core technology–you make a dramatic change, despite the risk and short-term pain. It’s a gambit for the long-term survival of the enterprise.

However, the city has to be able to transition its residents to these new fields. This means Motor City dwellers have to be able to admit that factory jobs are not returning to Detroit and take a risk on job retraining to seize new economic opportunities. It’s a change that requires a drastic shift in identity for the people and city, one I do not easily prescribe.

I remember when Michigan built cars; everyone I knew growing up had parents whose jobs were in some way tied to the auto industry. We’re asking people to give up a way a life — yes, a way of life that is not sustainable, but one we’ve always been proud of. However if we learn from Pittsburgh, changing careers doesn’t mean they can’t still root for the Steelers, but they can’t wait for the steel mills to return to rebuild their city. If this bankruptcy symbolizes anything, it is that the city of Detroit can’t wait either.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor Part II

By | Silo-Breakers, Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | One Comment

Whatever your views are on this weekend’s verdict, there is no denying that the Zimmerman case has revealed the daunting reality of the silos that exist in our country. The case has shown a light on our divided communities and the fear, violence, and mistrust that continues to thicken the walls that separate us. In my last post, I discussed how silos can be created intentionally to keep out hatred and protect the community within. In light of recent events I want to take a look deeper look at why our country is so divided and return to the question of how we begin to break silos, instead of refortify them.

Even though our melting pot nation is filled with a variety of cultures and viewpoints, neighborhood diversity is becoming a decreasing commodity. Shortly before the 2008 election, Bill Bishop released the Big Sort about how American neighborhoods are becoming increasingly segregated. Bishop began to realize that in his neighborhood in Austin there were practically no republicans, while others in Texas existed with no liberal in sight. “In 1976, only about a quarter of America’s voters lived in a county a presidential candidate won by a landslide margin. By 2004, it was nearly half,” he pointed out in his book. Upon closer inspection he found that America wasn’t just sorting by political persuasion but by what we eat, how we pray, where we shop, even what shoes we wear. American neighborhoods, churches, and stores were ever-increasingly filled with people who have the same views.

His theory for the cause of this segregation is that America lost its national narrative in the sweeping changes of the 1960s. The fear, turmoil, and uncertainties of that time, led people to create “island communities” to give them a sense of security with people who look and speak like themselves. Faith in the old institutions that bound us crumbled, trust in the government declined as did political party membership, newspaper circulation, and church attendance. In it’s place we created new communities personalized to our preferences, homogeneous, and comfortable. As Bill Bishop concludes:

We have built a country where everyone can choose the neighborhood (and church and news shows) most compatible with his or her lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this segregation by way of life, pockets of like-minded citizens have become so ideologically inbred that we don’t know, can’t understand and can barely conceive of “those people” who live just a few miles away.

Photo by George Brett

Photo by George Brett

Silos are at their worst during times of unrest. Zimmerman was prompted to start his neighborhood watch group after a rash of break-ins. Here in Baltimore, the Canton community has been dealing with the difficult question of how to respond to a crime spike in their community. “I’m becoming a worse neighbor,” a friend who lives in Canton admitted to me over lunch, “I’ve become suspicious of anyone who looks out of place, I reach for the phone to call the police when anyone comes my door who I don’t know, and I keep a wary eye on anyone even remotely approaching my house.” Unfortunately in many communities “looking out of place” often has racial connotations and the steps communities make to protect themselves makes their neighborhoods more hostile to outsiders which in turn makes those “outsiders” more hostile to them.

What the Zimmerman case reveals is that these silos have dangerous implications for our country and there is no time better than now to begin to examine how we begin to dismantle them. As President Obama said in his remarks on Sunday:

The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy.  Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America…I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son. And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities…We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.

In our moment of calm reflection, we need to examine the silos we have built in our hearts. If we want to break down silos, we’ve got to dig deep within ourselves to forgive, empathize, and accept the role every one of us plays in creating silos. It means reaching out to people we feel have wronged us but also recognizing that others have been wronged by us too. It’s an internal process of breaking down walls as much as it is an external process. We are all part of the ecosystem that builds and causes the building of silos and that history affects our effectiveness in breaking them down now. Silos are complicated messes of people, emotions, memory, and history. We carry the legacy of history and culture that makes it hard for us to go beyond the fortresses that provide us comfort. Silos weren’t built in a day and will not be easily torn down either. I think we forget what a huge mental lift it is because it seems as easy as showing up for an event, having a conversation, sharing an idea.

I have been to far too many meetings in various cities that ask why they aren’t diverse, but not enough willing to start the slow and long process of examination and action it will require to remove, stone by stone, the walls between us. I see a lot of events that are about getting the community together to share ideas but not a lot of events about how we create that community in the first place. Diversity is an afterthought; once the event has begun we look around the room and say, “Gee, it’s all white people.” We need more intentional discussions, programs, and efforts to address this serious problem. Tearing down silos requires herculean empathy and constant consideration.

The beginning of the end of silos will come when we begin to unravel the silos that exist in our minds and hearts. It requires us to get uncomfortable, find new collaborative ways of ensuring safety, create new inclusive narratives, and most importantly listen to people whose perspectives and viewpoints are so vastly different from our own. We will be required to see the greyness in every situation, admit that our own perspective is not the definitive one, and see that other people see and are shaped by the world in remarkably different ways. We will be required to face a history of mistrust, fear, and violence and admit our role in creating these silos.

We will need to have discussions, some which will make us angry, some which will challenge our assumptions, some which will touch open wounds, and others that will be insightful and delightful. We will have to hear the record scratch and watch the room turn as we walk into places where we are not yet welcome. Most importantly we will have to work on this every day. Silos were not built with speed or ease and turning the tide and uniting our communities will neither be a fast nor simple process either, but I have faith that we have the ability to break through.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 3 Comments

Growing up I lived in an amazing community. The kind of community where you knew your neighbors, could walk down to your friend’s house, play in the street, and always had a space at anyone’s dinner table. We had a pool and all the neighborhood kids knew when our big American flag flew out front anyone was invited for a swim. We knew, loved, and talked to our neighbors. We had that Norman Rockwell, grand-old-American community most assumed was absent from the Robert Putnam world of the late 80s and 90s.

My perception of this community radically changed when I was in high school. My parents had divorced when I was in elementary school and my mother had lived away from the neighborhood for years. Hoping to reconnect with the community she had loved once too, she moved four houses away from our original home, where my sister and I lived with our father. She became friends with her surrounding neighbors and when we were with her we would go and hang out in their yards to sing songs, share jokes, and laugh.

Quickly she formed her own community around her, one to which my dad wasn’t invited. Yet it wasn’t until the Great Northeast Blackout of 2003 that I realized our neighbors had completed ostracized my dad. Our block had lost power for a day and someone had the idea for a block party cook-out to get rid of some of the food and enjoy company. As the party was in full swing more and more neighbors came out, eagerly invited to join the fun. Yet when my father came out to offer ice, a commodity not available anywhere in our city, my neighbors accepted and thanked him, but no one there offered to allow him to join the fun

It might seem like a small gesture but it marked the turning point in our family. Annually we skirmished with one of our neighbors about the 4th of July. We were one of the families that fired off our own fireworks which she felt were too loud. Each year she would come and knock on our door early in the evening to complain. In the beginning we’d always have a negotiation, (“We’ll end at 11pm, if you let us fire off until then”) but once she joined the group that excluded us and stopped being our friendly curmudgeonly neighbor it became more of a shouting match (“It’s the 4th of July! We’ll celebrate how we want!”).

I recall it now because this is how silos are built, through a narrative that describes how some member of the community is no longer one of “us.” The community I knew as a child may still be there but our part in it is gone. Just as our neighbors were building a silo to keep my father out in deference to my mother, my father and I created a reactionary silo to keep out no longer welcoming neighbors. Certainly, what resulted was no Hatfields and McCoys battle of curses, tears, and blood, but it is a microcosm of how silos can be built, brick by brick with mistrust.

Photo by SJ Carey

Photo by SJ Carey

I thought of this story when I was reflecting on Adam Conway’s call to break silos. I realized that some silos aren’t created by lack of awareness or collaboration, but are intentionally built to keep people out. Many of the silos around us are created by a cause and effect, a Cold War of power and fear. Over the years there have been several groups in the United States who have been excluded from the dominant narrative. These groups create reactionary silos with their own heritage, traditions, and system of power. The fear of these counter silos often results in the building of bigger silos (white flight, gated communities, and so forth) which strengthen the walls of both sides until they begin to look more like well-fortified castles then a structure built for storage of harmless crops.

It’s impossible to start a conversation about breaking silos without understanding why they were built in the first place.This is why I love Rodney Foxworth’s call for muscular empathy and request for Baltimore changemakers to “grapple with the historical, political and social realities that would foment a black empowerment perspective.”

In order for us to break silos in Baltimore, we must first understand what it took to create them and realize “what looks to be a renaissance to some, might feel like a takeover to others.” Silos aren’t easily broken because silos aren’t easily built. Silos can remain as memorials to the wounds that built them. It takes courage to break silos, but I would add that it also take tremendous courage to allow a silo to be broken.

Next Time in Part II: A Cozy Silo of the Mind… 

 

The Hon Paradox and the Grail of Weird

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 2 Comments

We come to the last phase of my look at the Keep Austin Weird campaign where I’ve asked three questions:

  1. What is your name?
  2. What is your quest?
  3. What is your favorite color?

No, sorry we were looking at something completely different. Here are the three questions that have guided our quest so far:

  1. Who gets to define weird?
  2.  Who benefits from weird?
  3. How can we celebrate a weird economy?

So, we reach the final chapter where I’ll give a vision for a better way to celebrate weird in our cities. On our epic quest for the holy grail of weird cities, we’re going to be tested by what I’ll call the Hon Paradox.

Baltimore recently celebrated HonFest, a weekend festival dedicated to the “Baltimore Hon,” a caricature of working class women with beehives, outlandish clothing, big horn rimmed glasses, and pronounced accents who “warsh” their clothes with “wooder” in “Bawlmer, Murlan.” Generally Baltimore residents either hate it as a cartoonist charade or enjoy the celebration of an historic Baltimore culture. This controversy was apparent when a friend of mine opened up the Charm City Pandora’s box by daring to ask on Facebook, “Is there anything more Baltimore than HonFest?” “Everything else ever in the history of the place,” a commenter shot back. “Hampden on any other day of the year.” another wrote.

So why is HonFest, which on the surface seems to be the perfect celebration of Baltimore’s quirkiness get so much hate? In this blogger’s opinion the answer is simple: It’s comfortable. If you harken back to my first post in the series you’ll recall that the real separation between the brand of weird celebrated by Keep Austin Weird and our own Baltimore-based weird is that our weird is uncomfortable. It’s found in the gutters, the hustle and bustle of markets, and hawking on corners. True weird dares us to break out of silos as Adam Conway suggested in his blog earlier this week, and experience a culture truly different from our own.

On second thought, let's not go to Bawlmer. It is a silly place.

On second thought, let’s not go to Bawlmer. It is a silly place. (Image credit: pauls95blazer,)

Baltimore Hons were working class women, wives of dock workers. My guess is most of the people who flock to HonFest would feel uncomfortable in any of the haunts frequented by modern-day hons. HonFest has turned into a celebration of a caricature where you can go the entire day without having a conversation with any real working class person from Baltimore. It’s Hon Disneyworld, a commercial enterprise that harnesses Baltimore quirk to sell beehives as quick and easy as Mickey Mouse ears. The whole endeavor has been a successful example of packaging weird and selling it to the general public.

In fact founder Denise Whiting, owner of the Cafe Hon, got into hot water for trademarking “Hon” to use exclusively in her store and restaurant. The controversy over who owns a symbol of a community’s culture reminds me of the Keep Austin Weird campaign. In 2003 Outhouse Designs trademarked “Keep Austin Weird” to use on apparel. The move outraged many people in the community but when asked about the proposal from the community to leave phrase in the public domain, the owner of Outhouse Designs responded it was, ”honorable but a bit idealistic.”

The more popular weird is, the most enticing an opportunity it is for entrepreneurs. Driven by profit, they need to appeal to a larger audience which means they have to make weird appealing by cutting out the uncomfortable and destroying true weird. By celebrating weird we are often inviting outside capitalists to come in and take advantage of the very people we are trying to honor. Welcome to the Hon Paradox.

So how do we defeat these problems with nasty, big, pointy teeth to begin a transformation to a new movement for a new economy that supports the cities we love? Here are five ways I propose we start:

1. Redefine weird to include all communities and cultures. We need to encourage all entrepreneurship that builds our community including hustlers, corner markets, and street vendors. This means rewriting laws to make it easier for these informal businesses to thrive and thinking beyond brick and mortar establishments when we support local business.

2. Start thinking big about being local particularly to employ those displaced by deindustrialization. Our current local economies cannot support those unemployed by the death of automobile and steel industries. We need to start creating large-scale, people-friendly businesses that can put people back to work.

3. Come up with a new standard for ensuring your purchase power benefits people on the ground. Buy local is too narrow. Perhaps some of IFAT‘s Fair Trade Principles might offer us a new direction:

  • Capacity Building: is this good helping to build the economies of where it is made and sold or is it holding those economies, workers, or consumers hostage in some way?
  •  Payment of a Fair Price: is each person in the process of making and getting this good to me paid a fair price in the local context agreed through dialogue and participation?
  • Working Conditions: is each person in the process able to work in a safe and healthy working environment?
  • The Environment: is each person in the process of making and getting this good to me using and encouraging better environmental practices and responsible methods of production?

4. Find new ways to traffic in weird where we can make money while helping our community. One way to protect weird is to be the first to capitalize on it. If a local business alliance trademarked Keep Austin Weird instead they may have been able to use profits from merchandise to funnel into loans for new entrepreneurs. In South America you see a lot of new ecotourism industries that are able to capitalize on the influx of travelers with businesses owned, operated, and benefiting native cultures.  HonFest has found a way to market the celebration of weirdness in a market of increasing homogenization. It’s powerful and perhaps we can harness that to support the communities where Hon was born and bread. The paradox is a tricky line to walk but there are ways to bring weird to a larger audience while supporting the original founders and keepers of the culture.

5. Celebrate uncomfortable by going to see weird in the wild. Addressing the Hon Paradox may be the hardest challenge because it stems from the larger public’s unwillingness to be uncomfortable. We have a culture that encourages convenience and safety and we must either change everything to suit current needs or seek to change the culture. We will never break down silos if we don’t start being uncomfortable. We need education programs which expose children to new environments, we need ambassadors willing to explore the foreign lands found right down the block, we need to love and embrace the sketch, the strange, the awkward moments that come from being a fish out of water. We don’t need an annual festival to celebrate a weird culture, but regular pilgrimages outside our own network, neighborhood, and the people we call home. 

To celebrate true weird it requires us to understand the vast human geography of our city, celebrate differences, and voyage outside of our comfort zone. To build a local economy to support our weirdness we need to think inventively about how we harness our assets to create new businesses that harness the market to benefit our communities. Instead of Keep Austin Weird, we need a brand that supports a wider range of weirdness, while celebrating common principles for ensuring that our purchases go to keep our city the strange, incredible, sketchy fantastic mess that is.