Posts: 133

1. 

   Talking in Circles

   03.Jun.08, 08:12 EDT
   
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   Last week we got tips from Everyday Democracy program director Carolyne Miller Abdullah on how to get people talking in ways that lead them to take action. Today Carolyne tells us a bit more about how Everyday Democracy (formerly known as the Study Circles Resource Center) got its start.
   
   How did Everyday Democracy develop the dialogue circle as a tool?
   
   It was the brainchild of Paul J. Aicher, whose vision of respectful, inclusive, productive citizen dialogue as a regular practice of democracy led him to create Everyday Democracy as the Study Circles Resource Center in 1989. Aicher, who died in 2002, left the legacy of a powerful vision for a democracy that is alive with the participation and voice of all its people.
   
   Mr. Aicher was a businessman and philanthropist who played a leading role in advancing the idea and practice of civic dialogue on critical social issues in the United States. Throughout his business career, Aicher was involved in community work that would later lead him to become a full-time philanthropist and national civic leader.
   
   In 1982, Mr. Aicher sold his business and established the Topsfield Foundation, Inc., based in Pomfret, Connecticut, to enhance civic engagement and improve the quality of public life in the United States. After Aicher’s death, the Board of Trustees changed the name of the Topsfield Foundation, Inc. to The Paul J. Aicher Foundation.
   
   By the late 1980s, Aicher found himself increasingly eager to advance grass-roots dialogue as the best way to address pressing public issues. Yet he wanted to avoid shouting matches, such as those he’d seen in the peace movement, where hawks and doves alternately talked past and demonized one another — or where activists within a movement simply didn’t reach beyond their core supporters at all. Aicher was eager to foster a new wave of deliberative democracy, a way through which people from all walks of life could meet and have a voice in their communities’ futures.
   
   Aicher found his inspiration for the organization in part from the late 19th century Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle in New York, which provided adult education through small-group discussion. At its peak, the U.S. Chautauqua movement included more than 15,000 “home study circles” meeting on social, economic, and political issues.
   
   The American study circle movement gradually faded, but not before it had taken root elsewhere. Twice, Aicher went to Sweden to learn about the Swedish program. About the same time, Aicher became aware of the work of Leonard P. Oliver of the Kettering Foundation in Ohio, who had written a book called Study Circles: Coming Together for Personal Growth and Social Change.
   
   Aicher turned Topsfield’s focus toward the study circle idea. SCRC began by developing small-group discussion guides to issues of current concern: welfare reform, the death penalty, homelessness, and — in 1991, when the United States was moving toward war with Iraq — Crisis in the Gulf. Everyday Democracy has evolved over time by adapting Aicher’s original vision to meet the needs of communities to link everyday voices to community change.
   
   What makes the dialogue circles particularly effective in getting people to talk to each other?
   
   Many leaders and citizens are drawn to community-wide dialogue-to-change programs because they provide what is usually missing in community life – a process for meaningful, face-to-face give-and-take between people from different backgrounds and views. The community-wide scope of dialogue-to-change programs and the ways they link dialogue to change help ensure that many people from across a community will come to the table, and that their participation will make a difference.
   
   These initiatives can make a unique contribution to strengthening the community and solving public problems, but they are not “the only game in town.” Effective programs value and build on existing community work and resources. They help to multiply and strengthen other community-building efforts. Many communities are finding ways to connect their programs to other civic processes such as strategic planning, visioning, service learning, and shared governance.
   
   What does it take for an organization to start using the dialogue-to-change method?
   
   Identifying a problem that lots of people from different parts of the community want to solve, a commitment to hearing diverse perspectives, and energy and resources to organize an initiative that provides a process for people to have productive conversations and to link ideas to doable action and sustained community change.
   

2. 

   Our Cellphone

   27.May.08, 08:57 EDT
   
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   "We have to stop thinking about 'my' cellphone and start thinking about 'our' cellphone," Joel Ross told me. A pretty cheeky statement, considering that we'd only met a few minutes before.
   
   But then the UC-Irvine grad student was not trying out a high-tech pick-up line. During a demo at the second annual HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Sciences, Technology Advance Collaboratory) conference last Friday, he was explaining an effort by his school's Department of Informatics to cut down on the waste produced by the millions of cellphones that are tossed out every year.
   
   As Ross pointed out, there are 3 million cellphones in use at present, each one likely to be tossed out about 17 months after purchase. That makes for a lot of landfill, some of it potentially toxic. Rather than try to cut down on the number of phones, researchers at UC-Irvine are trying to cut back on the number of components that go into each phone by allow users to share features across a network of phones in close proximity to each other -- or what the geeks call "Human Mediated Networking."
   
   So if you have a GPS in your phone, you could share the device with everyone else who has a phone nearby. What's in it for you? Well, maybe somebody else in the network would have a pollution sensor or a Geiger counter on her phone. Everybody could bring a different component that everyone could share across the network.
   
   Wait a minute: a Geiger counter? The happy future where cellphone users share their tools and produce less waste is suddenly seeming a little scary: We're all going to be walking around in a cloud of radiation? If that's where we're headed, then we're definitely going to need to count on a little help from our friends -- and their cellphones.
   

3. 

   Latin Stars Raise Hope

   20.May.08, 10:02 EDT
   
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   Among the shoe shines and magazine kiosks on the sidewalk along Cinco de Mayo Avenue in Mexico City last Saturday afternoon, two children played. A little boy of about four years old climbed on top of his older sister, who giggled and wrestled him away. Noticing a foreigner walk by, the children interrupted their game. The sister pushed her brother out in front of the foreigner, where he suddenly put on a mournful face and held out a tiny hand.
   
   A few feet away, a young mother holding an infant in her lap held out her hand too.
   
   The sight of mothers and children begging in the street is common across Latin America. So common as to seem almost natural, inevitable. Certainly, there's no need to raise awareness about the problem. It's in everyone's face, everyday.
   
   But on this afternoon, where Cinco de Mayo turns into the Zocalo -- the biggest plaza in the hemisphere -- more than 250,000 people were gathering to entertain the idea that it's not inevitable for 32 million children to live in poverty. That, in fact, every child can be fed, clothed, housed, cared for, and school.
   
   Well, really, most people came for a concert featuring 16 of the top pop acts in the Spanish-speaking world. But the message promoted by the concert organizers, ALAS (Latin America in Action and Solidarity or WINGs in English) was that childhood poverty across the hemisphere could be brought to an end in the next six years.
   
   Unlike benefit concerts hosted by wealthy countries, such as Live Aid or Live 8, the ALAS concerts in Buenos Aires and Mexico City last Saturday, did not call for any donations from the public. There was no admission fee for the concert, no drop boxes for food or clothes; no telephone hotlines or internet addresses to make pledges (well, you can donate or volunteer here, dear reader, they just weren't making a big deal about it at the concert).
   
   Instead, at a press conference a few days before, ALAS announced that Carlos Slim Helu  -- the richest man in Mexico and one of the richest in the world -- had contributed $110 million to the cause. As a photo in the Mexican newspaper revealed, he received not only good will, but a kiss on the cheek from hot, Colombian rocker Shakira as well. Kicking in another $85 mil (although maybe not getting kissed), was Howard Buffet, son of billionaire Warren Buffet (whose largess has been destined largely for causes in Africa). Other wealthy folks ponied up a few more millions, bringing the total to more than $300 million.
   
   So the concert was meant to shine a spotlight on their generosity? Or meant to pressure other wealthy folk to give too? Or maybe to put pressure on the various Latin American governments to take up the cause as well?
   
   Standing among the 250,000 people in the audience on a rainy evening, it was hard to tell. Between acts, MTV-style videos played, highlighting the plight of children with hip speak and hip graphics. More important, the videos suggested, we can end that plight: "We can accomplish in six years, what could not be done in 100" and
   
   Ricky Martin, as always, the most engaging showman on the bill, announced: "I'm happy because I feel like I'm part of a historic movement."
   
   Maybe. But it's a strange movement, too. As Ricky explained:
   <blockquote>We, the artists, have done our part. Now it's time for the governments to join us. Let's give a big hand of applause for the governments of Latin America, because I know they're watching, so that they will say, "Count me in."</blockquote>So, forget about a violent revolution, where the poor overthrow the rich. And we're not really talking about voting out governments that don't respond to the people's demands. Instead, Ricky and Shakira, and a whole host of other stars will cajole the powerful into doing right by kids. And the public will be there, by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions, to witness it all.

4. 

   Root Out Hunger

   01.May.08, 10:04 EDT
   
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   By declaring the current food crisis a "silent tsunami," UN World Food Programme head Josette Sheeran appealed to the global community's tendency to give money at a time of emergency. That's because, with food prices rising, the WFP reportedly needs $700 million this year to supply the world's hungry with the same amount of food as last year. By all means, if you have any cash to spare to feed a fellow human being, do so here.
   
   Taking a longer view, WHY (World Hunger Year) recognizes grassroots organizations that promote lasting solutions to the conditions that lead to hunger. Last year's winners include the National Farm Worker Ministry in Saint Louis, Missouri, which took consumers on tours of migrant labor camps to raise awareness about the conditions of the workers who produce our food.
   
   Then there's the Unity Barn Raisers, of Unity, Maine, whose help Community Farm Share program helps low-income families get their hands on fresh produce.
   
   And the East New York Farms, who bring neighbors together to plant community gardens and support local farmers by organizing a farmers' market.
   
   If you or someone in your community is involved in helping people feed themselves, then be sure to apply for the 2008 Harry Chapin Self-Reliance Awards by June 16. You could win a $7,000 grant to help in your efforts.

5. 

   7 Bedrooms, 8 Baths

   01.May.08, 10:03 EDT
   
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   Last night, something unprecedented happened at the Miami Bridge youth crisis center: Every kid at Do-Gooder's Monday evening session was a repeater! Given how much turnover there is -- with kids coming and going from foster care, their families, the courts, the streets -- consistency is the last thing we expect.
   
   And it's mostly what the teens are looking for. We've been exploring this idea for the past month, as we've been torturing the Taking Heads' song "Naive Melody (This Must Be the Place)" at the start of every session. We beat out the bassline on the table and belt out the words, especially the final "ooh," which last night the group sustained for well over a minute.
   
   Because the group already knew the song and knew each other, we hazarded a bit more team work than we usually dare attempt. The group took turns reading out loud from the Sandra Cisneros book The House on Mango Street, where a woman looks back on her childhood and remembers where she used to live. (I would give you a few quotes, but one of the teens asked to keep the book.)
   
   After we talked about the passage for a little while, we spread out a big roll of paper and asked the group to each draw a house: either a house they remember from the past or the house they want to live in in the future.
   
   Turns out, for most of these teens, the future looks a lot like MTV Cribs. Their dream mansions were on South Beach, with multiple bedrooms and baths, and in one case, a Lamborghini parked out front.
   
   One young lady we'll call Penelope claimed her mansion in the present tense, as she told the group that her family lived in a five-bedroom house in an affluent, historically African American neighborhood south of Miami. Protests erupted around the table. Her account of her family's mortgage payments were challenged.
   
   Despite the efforts of my partner and I to intervene, the debate escalated. Other instances where Penelope told tales that strained at the truth were recalled. Penelope shouted down the doubters, unleashing a stream of profanity directed at her main persecutor. She used that word that rhymes with "rich" several times before we could break in, deriding the young woman who challenged her, who we'll call Leann.
   
   This brought on the most dreaded consequence.
   
   "Penelope, I'm going to have to ask you to leave," I told her. "But you'll be welcome back next week if you can treat others with respect."
   
   "Oh, no, miss, I'll be good," she promised.
   
   The rest of the group settled down too. No one likes to see anyone kicked out, not even sworn enemies. But we needed to reboot. I asked for someone to turn off the lights, leaving the room in half-darkness. Then I asked everyone to stretch their arms over their heads.
   
   There was some resistance, but one by one they complied. Penelope was the last holdout, furiously scribbling a poem in her notebook. The rest held their hands in the air patiently and waited until she came around. We breathed, we stretched, we shook out the tension.
   
   Before turning the lights back on, I reminded the group: "In here, we don't worry about whether what someone says is true or maybe not true. We don't care if the person talking is someone we like or don't like when we're outside. In here, we can believe anything we want to. We're part of a group. Anything is possible."
   
   That said, each member of the group revisited their fantasies about their futures: In addition to the mansions, there would be marriages, and children, and careers as pediatricians or lawyers. (Or strippers, the group considered, as a last resort.)
   
   Only Leann, Penelope's nemesis, had a hard time thinking about the future. With her 18th birthday fast approaching, the future was distressingly close at hand. She worked the crowd for laughs: "I'm going to have 12 kids and leave them all in foster care while I dance."
   
   When the rest of the group left, my partner stayed to talk with Penelope about her poems and her desire to be a writer. I asked Leann to stay behind with me.
   
   "Did you joke about your future because you're scared of what might happen to you?" I asked.
   
   She nodded solemnly, her bravado gone.
   
   We started to talk about the GED, about her strengths, and what she might accomplish. She talked about how she didn't like being in the shelter, but added: "The past is worse."
   
   "I'd like to write a book like this one," she said, pointing to Mango Street. "I'd like to write about Haiti, and St. Maarten's, and Haiti again, and here. There is so much to say."
   
   Penelope, who had been listening to my partner tell her how important observation is for writers, overheard.
   
   "Leann, can I help you write your story?" she asked.
   
   "Yes, please," Leann answered, moving around the table to sit next to her former enemy. Now she had another plan for her future: "The two of us can split the money from the book!"

6. 

   Earth Day Reading

   01.May.08, 10:01 EDT
   
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   If everybody's Irish on St. Patrick's Day, then everybody's green on Earth Day. At least the media is, anyway. Seems like every magazine has a special "green" issue to mark the occasion. The really good news: You can read most of it online, so no trees have to die. Here's a round-up of Do-Gooder's favorites.
   
   New York Times Magazine: Last Sunday's issue is packed with green goodies. My favorite is Michael Pollan's essay, "Why Bother?" After dealing with all the excuses people (and pundits) make for why individual action isn't enough to tackle the climate crisis, Pollan argues against what he calls the "cheap energy mind" that convinces us that our problems can only be solved by experts. As a small step toward helping the planet and a giant step toward making ourselves more independent, he calls for planting a garden. Benefits: great food, near zero cost, lots of exercise, and real solar energy (you know, cuz the sun makes plants grow). Also fun: the web-only word game with hints on how you can act, eat, invent, learn, live, move, and build.
   
   Time Magazine: Apparently there's been some "controversy" about Time's adaptation of the famous Iwo Jima flag-raising as a tree-planting. But if you believe that the climate battle will be as decisive for our generation as WWII was for our grandfathers, then the image is actually an homage. Our fave feature of Time's enviro issue is the list of top 15 green websites. MOLI content partner Treehugger is right near the top, along with Do-Gooder must-read Grist. Props too to the not-so-guilty pleasure of celebrity green-gossip hound Ecorazzi.
   
   Vanity Fair: We would rather have seen someone like Wangari Maathai than Madonna on the cover, but what can you expect from VF? Anyway, we love the web exclusive (and very sad) pics from photographer Steven Kazlowski's The Last Polar Bear. Also from the it's-so-terrifying-you-can't-look-away department: three doses of future shock on what Las Vegas, Cairo, and Baffin Island, in Canada's Northwestern Territory, will look like a few decades hence, courtesy of Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us (2007).
   
   Enjoy your day reading. Then get out and tend your garden!

7. 

   This Must Be the Place

   29.Apr.08, 08:36 EDT
   
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   For months now, on Monday nights at the Miami Bridge youth crisis shelter, we've been starting our weekly sessions by reciting the poem "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks:

   
   

   We real cool. We
   Left school. We
   
   Lurk late. We
   Strike straight. We
   
   Sing sin. We
   Thin gin. We
   
   Jazz June. We
   Die soon.
   
   This is fun to say, especially the way we do it: Each person recites three words, marking the beat by passing a huge magic marker from one hand to the other and playing up the syncopation (or pause) in the rhythm by passing the marker to the next person on the third word. It always takes the next person a beat to catch up: Presto! Syncopation. Next time you're with a few friends, try it!
   
   Fun as that exercise can be, though, the words are a bit of a downer. Sure, it can get a great conversation going about the kinds of activities that might land a kid in a crisis shelter, but some teens get a little creeped out about saying "We/die soon."
   
   So the past two weeks I've tried a different session opener: "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)," a chestnut from the Talking Heads released long before these kids were born. I've always found the song soothes me in hard times. I've sung it as a lullaby since my son was born 15 years ago. My favorite line: "I'm just an animal/looking for a home/share the same space for a minute or two." I built a workshop for the homeless around the song a few years back. Why not see how the teens like it?
   
   The first week I introduced the routine I'd developed at the homeless shelter: an easy-to-follow contemporary dance made up of gestures that vaguely go with the lyrics (helps busy minds remember the words). A 12-year-old girl jumped right in, turning herself around, hitting herself on the head as the song suggests. The rest of the group was less animated, but I could see them all mouthing the words. A tough gang-banger stayed slumped in his chair, but nonetheless moved his hands down and up whenever we said, "Feet on the ground/Head in the sky."
   
   I did all this a capella, trying to get the group to whistle the guitar parts that introduce each verse. Turns out, the group was not much for whistling. It didn't matter to me, though, if the kids did the whole song and dance in our session. I saw this more as a comfort song they could take with them and sing to themselves whenever adversity set in.
   
   "Never for money/always for love," a 15-year-old girl we'll call Angie repeated. "I like that."
   
   After we'd sung the song through a few times, we sat down to write about home. This is a fraught topic, to say the least, for kids in a crisis shelter. We had to go back to the song a few times to see that "home" doesn't have to be that place where your biological family or your foster parents or whoever did not, in fact, "love me until my heart stops" lived. Home can be any place where you feel safe and loved.
   
   A 16-year-old we'll call Flora wrote a poem addressed to parents about how they should let kids make their own mistakes, no matter the cost: "Let me get drunk at the party/If I get raped/I will not drink again." Harsh as this consequence seemed, it was met with a round of approval, except for a girl at the opposite end of the table who said, "Oh, no. Let's not talk about that subject."
   
   Angie started out writing about the unpleasant circumstances in her birth home and the foster homes that followed. Finally, she scratched all that out and wrote about the home she imagined: "If you find foster parents who care for you/you must respect them."
   
   "You must be grateful," another teen interjected, suggesting how rare the group considered such good fortune to be.
   
   "'Grateful,'" the poet echoed. "I like that word."
   
   *****
   
   Last night I tried bringing in a recording of the Talking Heads performing the song. I hesitate to bring in records, because I feel that restricts the group's sense of what they can do. But the group last week requested the record, so I obliged. Only two young women returned from the week before: Angie and another 15-year-old we'll call Dakota.
   
   Dakota spent the last session too caught up in flirting with the boy across from her to pay much attention to writing poetry. She was happy to hear the song, however, and show the rest of the group her status as a veteran. This time I dropped the choreographed gestures. Instead Dakota encouraged the rest of the group to bop and wave to the bouncy bassline, making for a Dirty South version of the Talking Heads. All the while, the group looked intently at the lyrics, engrossed by the images of someone in search of a home.
   
   They were not as impressed with David Byrne's voice.
   
   "He sounds awful," complained Angie.
   
   "He's so bad, he needs to be slapped," added the sole boy in last night's group, who we'll call Devon. Even so, Devon loved singing along with the last "ah-oooo" of the song. "That's where it gets all Wu-Tang," he noted with approval.
   
   After we listened to the song twice through, I asked the group to beat the bassline out on the table as we sang without the record. A girl we'll call Natasha proved to be the rhythm master, keeping the group on track. We sang the piece through three times with gusto, relying on Devon to come through at the end with his Wu-Tang wail.
   
   This time, instead of the vexing exercise of writing about "home," I asked the group to pick any line they liked from the song and build a poem around that. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the adolescents all chose to focus on romance with their peers rather than their troubling family relationships. The poems were all variations on the theme of people loving them until their hearts stop, and hugging them, and kissing them, and drying their tears.
   
   All except Devon's. He turned away from the group to better concentrate on his writing and did not make a sound until the shelter staff announced that the group had to end. Just before we were shooed out the door, he read his poem about being an animal.
   
   "I am a tiger," he wrote. And a "serpent." And a "dove." He found an animal for every mood and attribute: powerful, sly, peaceful, and "smooth as a swan."
   
   The rest of the group, looking up from their roses and romance, roared with applause.

8. 

   What Shade of Green Are You?

   10.Apr.08, 09:23 EDT
   
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   What shade of green are you? Here's a handy schema for figuring out what motivates you to do right by the planet -- as heard at the Congress for the New Urbanism XVI in Austin, Texas last weekend:
   
   Ethicist: believes treating the planet right is a moral duty
   Representative: Al Gore
   Emblem: Polar Bear
   
   Trendsetter: committed to helping the planet, as long as it doesn't hurt too much
   Representative: Leonardo DiCaprio
   Emblem: Prius
   
   Opportunist: eager to help the planet -- and earn a profit
   Representative: Richard Branson
   Emblem: Windmill
   
   Survivalist: it's too late to save the planet, so dedicated to saving self
   Representative: Top Secret
   Emblem: Underground Bunker
   
   (Adapted from the "four types of sustainable thinking" laid out by New Urban planner Andres Duany, of the firm Duany Plater-Zyberk, during a panel on marketing the green message.)

9. 

   Cover Girl Culture

   03.Apr.08, 09:44 EDT
   
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   When I was 13, I was a huge fan of Seventeen magazine. My friends and I used to line up covers featuring our favorite model, Phoebe Cates, and vote on our favorite shot. I even went to a modeling workshop hosted by the magazine in my hometown of Cleveland. I remember the speaker telling us that to model we had to wear a size eight or a size ten. The average model back then wore a size eight.
   
   Nearly 30 years later, models must starve themselves down to a size 0 or 1. The teens and tweens poring over magazine covers today face a much more daunting task if they attempt to look like the women and girls on those pages. That’s the dilemma explored by former model Nicole Clark in her documentary, Cover Girl Culture: Awakening the Media Generation.
   
   Last Saturday, I moderated a panel on the documentary following its world premiere during the Women’s International Film Festival in Miami. As a former editor of a men’s magazine that featured beautiful women on the cover, I’d seen the production team digitally manipulate the models’ bodies: thinning faces and thighs and even, in one case I’ll never forget, augmenting the curve of one young woman’s behind.
   
   Clark does not focus on the manipulation of women’s bodies, but of our minds. She interviews a number of editors from Teen Vogue and Elle magazine ab