Where We're Going: How to Shift Your Focus

In order to get our communities and our country on a better path, we need to shift our focus. On this week’s Facebook Live, Rich Harwood discussed how one community in Winchester, KY is taking steps to build a new future - and how you can take these four steps, too.

Transcript:

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Hi, I'm Rich Harwood, and welcome to our special election 2020 series, how we move forward from here. shoot me a message and let me know that you can hear me and where you're watching from today. I'm so glad that you could join me for this special series. Once again this week. This is a four part series last week, part one,

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overcoming our nation's impasse this week, where we're going, how to shift your focus. Again, if you're just joining me, welcome to our special election 2020 series on rich Harwood. Glad to have you with me today. A lot of important things to talk about as our country struggles to move forward in it and as our communities work to move forward as well. Let me just start today where I left off last week, when I said that the nation is at impasse. And I urge you to go back and listen to that episode. If you haven't had a chance yet. To hear it. I think it's it's important to think about where we are. So we know how we can move forward from here. But in a nutshell, in a nutshell, here's here's some of the things that I mentioned, particularly about the nation being at an impasse. And as I mentioned this think about whether or not you can feel this, you're seeing this, you sense this.

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Our as our country seeks to move forward from where we are today. And an impasse you often hear people say enough is enough. We can't go on like this any longer. There is a sense of urgency for action. But here's the thing, we often mistake agreement that something is wrong, even if we don't agree on what is wrong, but there is agreement that something is wrong. We mistake that with a sense of agreement about what we ought to do about where we ought to go. And we all know today little agreement exists about what we need to do and where we need to go. Instead, people become fixated on their self interest on the small groups that they belong to on their own grievances. We hear that day in and day out on the news in our communities and conversations that we're having with others. Our public discourse becomes mired in acrimony and divisiveness and turf wars. And it's hard to get anything done. Sound familiar? Sound familiar.

And here's what we often try to do to move out of the impasse. We inflate expectations by announcing grand plans and grand schemes to move forward. But they don't go anywhere. We try to move too quickly assuming that we have agreement and public will for certain actions except we're not willing to work together to move forward yet. We tend to turn our backs on large swaths of the population those who might be in pain, those who are suffering, those who are frustrated those who need our attention, because God forbid that we don't want to be held back and held down by those who are in pain and suffering, we simply want to move forward.

And here's the other thing that often happens in pass which just divides us further and further in the past, we we tend to seek to want to win at all costs. We raise our voices thinking that somehow if the volume increases, more people will join us. We try to guilt people into action as if they feel guilty, they'll come along with us. But when people seek to guilt you what do you do you? Well, we all do. Whether it's in public life, or in our personal lives, we tend to put our hands over our ears, our hands over our eyes, and we hunker down further. We threaten people and try to strike fear into them if they don't join us. But what does that do? It pushes us farther and farther into our respective corners. All of these actions. Each of these actions, whether alone or taking together are a recipe for more impasse. It reminds me of Einstein's definition of insanity we we keep repeating the same things expecting a different result. But an impasse all it does is produce the same result and dig us deeper into a hole.

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If we want to move forward. If we want to get on a better path, then we're going to need to shift our focus. In fact, you're going to need to shift your focus each of us is going to need to shift our focus

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Focus. And it seems to me that we need to do this more today than ever before. It's certainly more than at any other time that I've been alive. We face not one, not two, not three, but four simultaneous crises.

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Today in our country,

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there's this pandemic covid 19. Over 12 point 5 million people are now infected, over 250,000 of our fellow Americans have died. There are over 1000 new deaths a day, things aren't getting better, they're getting worse. And what's even worse than all of this is it has laid bare the disparities in our country. This pandemic has disproportionately, as you know, has disproportionately hit black and brown people. It has disproportionately affected people who suffer from mental illness, it has disproportionately affected those who lack access to medical care or who have pre existing conditions. It has disproportionately it has disproportionately hit those who live in rural areas.

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And so this crisis, this pandemic, is wreaking havoc on our nation, not only in terms of health, but now as a result of the pandemic, there is economic upheaval. Millions of Americans, millions of our neighbors and fellow Americans have lost their jobs, millions more live every day in fear of losing their job. So many of us who are employers worry and are anxious that we may have to lay people off who we so deeply admire, and are so deeply concerned about, in who we so deeply don't want to hurt. But we may not be able to figure out how to make ends meet. We have a third crisis of systemic racism and social injustice. Now.

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You and I both know that this crisis has been with us for over 400 years, it's part of the original sin of our nation.

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But since the death of George Floyd earlier this year, this crisis of systemic racism and social injustice has crystallized in our nation's mind it has led to social unrest, and protests. And it has laid bare the inequities and the disparities that so many of our fellow Americans live with each and every day in their lives. And it has made clear that we can no longer turn our backs on this crisis that we can no longer turn away, that we can no longer pretend that fellow Americans don't experience discrimination, and systemic racism, and social injustice each and every day in their lives.

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And there is yet a fourth crisis that we face a political crisis. Now, some might think of this just in terms of this last presidential election and the unwillingness and inability of our current president to concede in obvious defeat. Some of you may think of this political crisis just in terms of, well, what's happened in the last four years. But this political crisis is something that I've been following and writing about for the last 3035 years and has existed before then. So many of us have lost faith in political institutions. Too many of us have lost faith in our democracy. So many of us no longer trust our leaders. So many of us too many of us do No, no longer trust our organizations, our civic organizations to pull us together across dividing lines. So many of us have lost faith in religious institutions. So many of us have lost faith in institutions, like the Boy Scouts that now face yet another scandal of sexual abuse at the hands of Boy Scout leaders.

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So we face these four crises today. There are real divisions in our nation today. And here's what I want to make clear.

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We can't simply wish to go back to normal.

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Normal is wasn't all that good. Normal wasn't all that good for black and brown people who face systemic racism and social injustice before George Floyd was murdered.

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Going back to normal wasn't all that good for people who faced mental health illness and couldn't get access to the care they needed. Going back to normal wasn't all that good.

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For people who lacked health care, and access to quality health care, normal wasn't all that good for so many of our kids in our society who had been going to inadequate public schools, in communities clear across our nation.

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No, normal wasn't all that good for people who suffered from loneliness and felt shut in and isolated. And so we don't want to go back to normal, we want to go to something better, to something more promising. And yes, we need national and state action to produce this. But here's my message to you today, we have to shift our focus, because the opportunity, the fundamental opportunity that exists today for us is in our local communities where we live, where we can break this national impasse where we can demonstrate what is possible, again, in our nation.

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And where we can put ourselves on a more just a more equitable, a more fair, a more inclusive,

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and a more hopeful path forward.

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But all of this, if we want to seize this moment, if you want to seize this moment, if you believe that we can do better,

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then we're going to have to shift our focus, you're going to have to shift your focus moving forward. And that's what I want to talk to you about for the remainder of our time today.

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I think there are four fundamental steps you need to take, we need to take all of us need to take. If we're going to shift our focus moving forward, you're ready for steps, four basic steps. Number one,

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we you have to start locally,

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locally why so many people believe we need to start nationally or in our state capitals. And as I have already said, God willing, we will see action from our nation's capital and from our state capitals. But there are some things that only we can do in our local communities that no matter what action is taken nationally, no matter what happens in your state capitol, it may be necessary, but it won't be sufficient for putting us on a better path forward for our nation and our communities, and our individual lives. Why? Because it's only in our local communities. Think about this. It's only in our local communities that we can turn outward toward one another.

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It's only in your local community that we can turn outward and see and hear one another.

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It's only in our local communities that we can afford on a daily basis, the dignity to each other. We give lip service about affording dignity to each other. We think it's, we think we do it, we say we do it. But you and I both know, we don't often do it today. We only afford dignity to people who look like us who sound like us whose color of skin is like our color of skin, whose heritage and ethnicity is like ours who share the same faith as we do.

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My God.

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dignity is a birthright. It's a non negotiable human right? each and every individual who is here in America deserves dignity, no questions asked. That needs to happen in our local communities where we can touch it and feel it and sense it, where we can believe that we're affording it to one another.

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It's in our local communities fundamentally, that we can restore our sense of humanity, that we are in something together that we belong to something larger than just ourselves.

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It's in our local communities that we can focus on what matters to each other, and what we share in common in our daily lives. This is what's happening in Winchester in Clark County, the community that we've been working with over the last few years that sits in between Appalachia and the Bluegrass.

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There they focused on kids not having access to remote learning. And even before the pandemic they focused on kids who felt abandoned, notwithstanding the fact that they were going to Blue Ribbon Schools.

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They're focused right now on people who are going hungry, on families who are falling prey to stress and isolation in these hard times. They're focused on people trying to prevent people from being evicted from their homes because they can't pay their mortgage or they can't meet their rents. And they're focused on people who are experiencing loneliness in their daily lives.

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It's in our local communities where we live,

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that we can touch each other,

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that we can work together, that we can come together. And so if we want to get on a better path, if we want to get the nation out of this impasse, if you believe that we can do better and get on a more hopeful path, a more inclusive path, a more just and equitable and fair path, then you've got to shift your focus. And number one is we've got to start in our local communities, where we can see and hear each other and afford one another dignity and focus on what matters. So that's number one. Here's number two. Here's number two.

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Talk is not enough.

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Talk is not enough. We need shared action. We need shared action. Now.

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You've probably heard is I've heard so many of our fellow Americans say, I've heard enough talk already, that I'm tired of talk that we in communities all the time I hear people say we've talked all the time, and I don't see any change happening, I don't see any action occurring.

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And so in Clark County in which I serve in Clark County, which I was just telling you about, when the pandemic hit, over 60 organizations, and leaders came together, and community residents came together to take action together to take shared action to take action to ensure that kids had a way to learn remotely and that they had access to the internet. Homeless groups and housing groups came together to ensure that people wouldn't be evicted from their homes because they couldn't afford their mortgages or meet their rents.

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Mental Health groups came together and work together where they once worked in isolation from one another. And they trained educators and they train business owners. And they train families how to recognize and deal with stress and mental illness challenges. So that no one felt alone.

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community residents and schools and restaurants and others came together when kids were no longer getting meals from schools that had shut down. And they ensured that no child and no family would go without a meal. And no family and no child would be hungry at night. They came together and they did these things. And you know what?

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What's so important about the actions they took in Winchester and Clark County, which so many other communities are doing as well is this that no one organization?

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No one leader, no one community resident could pull off these shared actions on their own.

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That we need each other, that you and I need each other that we need our neighbors, we need the organization down the street, we need the church or synagogue or mosque down the street, we need the business owner down the street, we need the educator down the street. We need the mental health provider and the health care provider down the street. And we need to come together. And we need to join together to take shared action.

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But you know what?

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There's even more because these shared actions they produce something beyond just the actions themselves.

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It's by taking shared actions by actually taking these actions by coming together to take these actions that we rediscover one another's talents, that we rediscover relationships and trust that we rediscover our basic humanity.

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When we come together and take these shared actions, we rediscover that we have innate capabilities that somehow were laying dormant that somehow that we had overlooked, that somehow we began to feel weren't all that important, because some other institution, some other group, some other leader, was going to take care of it for us. And in doing so we had forfeited our opportunity to come together with others not only to take action, but to rediscover that we actually have these innate capabilities.

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And that we actually can rebuild trust between ourselves and among ourselves, that we actually can come together and re recognize, recognize a new our humanity, our shared humanity.

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And that by taking these shared actions by coming together and making these rediscoveries

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we

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begin to change in our minds and in our hearts and in our souls, individually and between and among us, we begin to change what we believe is possible.

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And we begin to understand that we can achieve more than we ever dreamed before. That we can come together in unexpected ways, in unimaginable combinations to produce unpredictable actions. And then in doing so, it all comes from taking shared action together just one step at a time.

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So if my first point you about how you need to shift about how we need to shift is that we must start in our local communities where we live. And if my second point is that talk is not enough, we need shared action.

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Then my third point is this.

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We must take action that also invests in a renewed civic culture in our local communities.

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And by extension in our nation.

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You know, when I was talking to you about what happened in Winchester in Clark County about how the 16 groups came together, and then they ignited community residents and others to come together with them to take action, in all the different ways that I had mentioned.

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One might think that somehow that happened magically, or that that simply happened spontaneously.

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But there's actually a backstory to what happened in Winchester in Clark County. And it's an important one. Because, you know, when we started working with folks there three years ago, that community much like our nation today was stuck. They were mired in acrimonious and divisive discussions, people lacked belief that they could actually come together and create change, there was a whole lot of talk, but not a lot of follow up action.

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There were divisions by race, by geography, by religion,

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by income and economic status. The community, much like America today, was stuck in place, their best days were behind them, or so they thought at that time.

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And so, what's important to know about investing in our civic culture is that

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as important as programs and strategies and initiatives are, and believe me, they are important, that's the form our work often takes.

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They're never enough on their own.

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They're never enough on their own. The reason why Winchester and Clark County was able to move forward was not because they simply had new ideas and new programs and new strategies, new niches, heck, they had those before they had tried them before, they had tried them many times before. And they weren't producing results, what changed.

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What changed is that they began to invest in their civic culture. They changed the conversations they were having together to no longer focus simply on people's problems, or on utopian visions, but on people's shared aspirations for what they wanted to create, co create. together.

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They began, organizations began to examine themselves and they turned outward toward their communities. And they started to bring people together across dividing lines as opposed to simply trying to survive or act in their own self interest. new leaders arose out of the community in these leaders had the best interests of the community, at at their heart,

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even when they disagreed with people. And these leaders sought to bring people together into shared action. And to create progress.

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The community began to create new networks, new ways for different groups, different actors, different organizations, different leaders, different community residents to come together, to share what they were doing to learn from one another, to innovate together to spread and grow what they were producing together.

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And so

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by not simply developing new ideas and strategies and programs, but investing in their civic culture in these ways,

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they were able to gain more traction, they were able to gain a greater sense of common purpose, a greater shared purpose. They were able to act with common cause and a sense of common purpose in a common direction, marshaling their common resources.

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You know, there isn't a day that goes by not a single day. that goes by that I don't get a phone call or a number of phone calls from people in cases

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communities that tell me that they can't get their communities to move forward that somehow they are stuck that they feel, in many cases today that they're moving backwards.

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And one of the things I want to emphasize to you today in making the shift that I'm talking about these communities that they that call me each and every day, it's not for lack of ideas. It's not for lack of strategies. It's not not for lack of initiatives, or even an initiative to move forward. Tech, I talked to a community in Tennessee today about this very thing,

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what they lack, they tell me, and what's important for you and I, to be thinking about today, what they lack is the Civic culture, and the ability to create the right civic culture, so that their community can begin to move forward on a new trajectory with a new sense of possibility, and hope. You know, I often say to people, how we do the work is as important as what we do.

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How we do the work is as important as what we do. And that definitely applies when it comes to renewing our civic culture in our local communities. And as I said before, by extension in our nation.

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So if my first point was that we must start our work in our local communities. And my second point was talk is not enough, we need shared action. And my third point is that we must take action, to invest in our civic culture, to renew our civic culture in our local communities. My last, my fourth point, is this. Hope you're still with me here, you still with me? My last point is this. And this is important for you, for you as an individual,

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you must use your civic energy judiciously.

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You must use your civic energy judiciously.

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Now,

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the people who I said call me every day or the folks who are working within local communities, or the regional roundtables, the five regional roundtables we just held nationwide over the last few months.

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Over and over again, I'm hearing the same thing, from folks all across our country, from all walks of life in all types of professions.

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In all different areas of society.

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People are telling me that they're exhausted. I don't know maybe you feel this way. Maybe you came into this, this Facebook Live feeling this way today that you're exhausted maybe like other people I've talked to you came in feeling tired, maybe you came in like the other folks who I've talked to feeling that you had this responsibility to take action, maybe you came into this, this episode feeling like so many people I talked to each and every day that you need to be all things to all people.

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Maybe like other people I talked to you came into this episode of Facebook Live feeling that you can never do enough that it is never enough that you are always falling short.

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And that somehow, someway, you want to do more, you want to do more.

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You know, we can think of our civic energy as being infinite, that somehow we are like superheroes. And we have an infinite amount of civic energy. It's just infinite. It goes on and on and on, no matter. No matter how tired you are, no matter how exhausted you are, no matter how fatigued you are, no matter how beat up, you feel

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that your civic energy is infinite.

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But here's the truth.

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Here's the hard truth. And you know it and I know it, but none of us want to hear it.

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Your civic energy? Well, it's not infinite.

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We're only here on this earth for a certain amount of time, a limited amount of time. There are only a certain number of hours in each day. And there are only a certain number of hours in each day that you can fully exert yourself, or even halfway exert yourself.

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And let's face it, there are only a certain number of hours each day that you can even be awake and be attentive and be productive.

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Know your civic energy is not infinite.

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It's finite.

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It's finite.

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And so where are you going to put your civic energy when you do this work in your local community. When you take

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Shared action with others, when you invest in our civic culture, where are you going to put your finite civic energy? What's most important for you to work on? What's within your sphere of influence? Where can you gain traction? Where do you have allies that you can work arm and arm with? Who do you trust that you can begin to work with, as opposed to taking on the hardest of the hard situations? And the most cynical of cynical people, and those who are resisting you the most, which will use up all your finite civic energy.

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Where can you begin and begin to get traction? Say you can create a new trajectory of possibility and hope.

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And here's the thing about this.

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There are some people are going to tell you that

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you can't admit or acknowledge that your civic energy is finite, that somehow that's a defeat, there are some people are going to tell you that you should create the largest and most comprehensive, most complex plans, because you need to assume an act like your civic energy is infinite. There are some people who are going to tell you, because you have come to recognize that your civic energy is finite, there are some people who are going to tell you that your action,

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that your shared actions are too small that they're too inconsequential, that they don't hold enough significance that they don't create enough impact, that they're not big enough, they're not complex enough. They're not shiny enough.

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And here's what I want you to leave with today.

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ignore those people.

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Just ignore them.

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Don't let them get you certainly don't believe them.

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We need all the shared actions we can get today, no matter how large or how small, no action is insignificant. Remember,

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the shared action is producing change in its own way. But it's producing even something more than that. It's helping us rediscover our connections to one another. It's helping us rediscover our innate capabilities in ourselves and in one another. It's helping us rediscover and reignite the spark within ourselves. and by extension in others. It's helping us rediscover our shared humanity. Don't tell me that you need to take a big shared action for it to be significant or meaningful, or impactful. We'll take what we can get, we'll take what we can do.

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And your civic energy, well, it's finite, it's finite. Use it wisely. Use it judiciously use it with intentionality. And when you do this, I can guarantee you, you will have more impact that is more relevant, and more significant than if you thought your civic energy was infinite. And you went off half cocked in a million different directions. And we're all things to all people, but in turn, was nothing to anyone.

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So those are my four points today.

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Now there are those who say that what I'm arguing for is not possible.

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It's just not possible. But think about it.

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Think about the history of our nation.

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It always started all the great change in our nation always started at the local level. At the American Revolution was a bunch of folks coming off of farms. They didn't have fax machines, emails, mailing lists, telephones, the internet, none of that was folks coming off farms and from small towns, who joined together from 13 different colonies who didn't even agree with each other on a whole lot of stuff. Who wanted to fight against the tyrant King George and declare freedom

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that started in our local communities and grew from there.

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But the abolition of slavery started not in Washington, DC, but in our local communities, civil rights, voting rights. They all started in our local communities, women's rights, Child Welfare laws, all started with movements in our local communities.

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We all know or at least I hope we know or at least let me just say

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that we have a long way to go to fulfill America's Promise.

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We have fallen short in so many ways despite the great things that we have done. We have so much more to do to ensure that

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Each and every American has the potential to fulfill their God given potential and, and abilities and to have a real shot at the American dream.

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And so the fundamental task before us today,

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the fundamental task is not to go back to normal.

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But it is to restore our belief in one another that we can come together and get things done together.

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This is going to take reimagining and recreating our lives, our communities and this nation, we need to begin again, much like we have begun a new so many times before in our nation's history. And you and I, and those we know, we've got to join together in our local communities and to see each other and to see ourselves as builders in this process as partners in this process, as co creators in this process.

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Only then

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only then can we get on a more just a more equitable or more fair, a more inclusive, a more hopeful path.

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So as I do each week, let me leave you with my hope for you today.

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My hope for you today is that you, you just you will step forward and turn outward toward others.

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And that you see yourself as being critical to helping us break this national impasse into bringing out the best of us and the best in us. So that we can get on a more hopeful, inclusive path moving forward so that we can move closer and closer to fulfilling the promise of America, not just for some of us,

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but for all of us.

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So I thank you for joining me today. I thank you for coming back for another edition of Harwood half hour.

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This is the second episode of four of this special election 2020 series how we move forward from here.

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I'll be back next week at 4pm. Eastern time with our third installment of this of this four part series, which we'll look at four modules for how you can take action for modules for how you can take action.

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Until then, if you want more information on the Harwood Institute, I urge you to go to our website, the Harwood institute.org. If you haven't read a copy of my latest book stepping forward, please go to our website or Amazon and order a copy for yourself. If you have read the book, order a copy for someone you know and share it with them.

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And until next week, same time 4pm Eastern time. I hope you stay in good health. I hope that your loved ones are safe. And I hope you remain in good spirits. Thanks for joining me be We'll see you next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai