Getting Real About What Happens Next in Communities

The change happening in our society is significant, rapid, and unprecedented. In this special edition of TURNING OUTWARD TOGETHER, Rich Harwood discusses how we must get real if we are to make the transformation we need in communities to bring about significant progress.

Transcript:

Hi, I'm Rich Harwood.

Welcome to another special edition of TURNING OUTWARD TOGETHER, our special Harwood Half Hour episodes to help keep you grounded and centered in these challenging and increasingly crazy times that we're, that we're all living through. If you want to find previous episodes, just go to our Facebook page, click on the banner that says turning outward together, you'll see a link to a playlist. And you can find all our previous episodes right there for free. And I hope you'll listen to them.

You know the churn and change that we're experiencing today. In our society, it’s significant. It's rapid. And I have to say it's unprecedented. But the question is, as it unfolds, where is it headed? What does it mean? And what does it mean for those of us who seek to build a more hopeful society and a stronger civic culture that works and includes everyone in our communities?

And so today, what I want to talk about is what I've titled getting real, about what happens next in communities. Shoot me a message, let me know that you can hear me and see me. Tell me where you're calling in from today. Glad to have you with with me.

The question I'd love for you to think about as we spend the next 20 minutes or so together is, what do you think it's going to take for us to get real in the work that we need to do in our communities moving forward?

You know, obviously this change is happening all around us right now. And not only are we facing a whole series of challenges that are happening simultaneously, there are four of them as best I can count. But these crises these four crises are making stark the underlying challenges in our communities and society. And importantly, and why I want to talk about this topic today, is they're exposing the need for change in so many areas in our society today.

Just think about the death, really, the murder, of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And then the protests that have followed in scores and scores of communities all across the country that continue to this tick to this day. And they have crystallized the systemic racism that has plagued our country now for over 400 years. That systemic racism includes, obviously policing and justice systems. That's not new to any of us. But it also exposes the kind of and crystallizes the kind of systemic racism that exists in so many facets of our society and within our communities.

Today, it exposes and crystallizes and makes real, the need for investment in our communities, in education, in healthcare, in housing, in jobs, that is so desperately needed. In so many, really all, of the communities all across our country, this pandemic that we're facing the likes of which we haven't seen in generations, is a public health crisis that is affecting so many people. Well over 100,000 Americans now have died from this pandemic. So many of us have been forced to work from our homes and many more of us have been forced to go to work at great health risk. Not only that, but this pandemic has exposed further disparities in our in our society, because it has disproportionately hit communities of color, people of low income, people of certain geographic areas.

Third, we have an economic crisis. Our unemployment rate is is sky high. The chair of the Federal Reserve just came out today and said that unemployment would remain high for years to come. So many people have lost jobs. So many people have been furloughed. Thousands and thousands of small businesses have closed, large retailers are shutting down stores. It's affecting every community and every facet of life, this economic crisis that we're facing now, and it's not going to end anytime soon.

And then there's a political crisis, this fourth crisis, which is that we have been experiencing for decades now a loss of faith in our institutions, our political institutions, but it goes beyond that to our civic institutions, state institutions, corporate institutions. And now we see in Georgia and in other places that voted yesterday. Problems with voting on claims of voting suppression fear about what's going to happen in November during our presidential and senate and other elections. And so we faced the confluence of these four crises all at once systemic racism, this public health crisis called COVID-19, an economic crisis and a political crisis all at once.

It seems to me that if we're serious about transformation in these different areas, if we're serious about making, transforming progress and change in our society as we move forward from here, which is what the calls are for, then beyond the immediate policies or quick steps that we can take, there's another transformation that we're going to need to do. And that is how we work in communities. We're going to have to transform how you and I and others who all care about communities, who are working in communities, we're going to have to transform how we do what we do in communities.

Now, I believe that needed to happen before any of these four crises emerge, or at least three of them, the political ones been going on for decades. But the systemic racism that has been crystallized now, which has been going on for hundreds of years, the pandemic economic crisis and other political crisis, to really make change, we needed to make change on many of these before these things came together, now moving forward, because of the compliments of them because of the pressure within our political system because of the protests, because of the attention that has been brought to bear on these because they have crystallized so clearly in our lives and they are unmistakable. We're gonna have to transform what we do in communities.

Now I was just talking to someone on the phone, well, actually a Zoom call, because that's what we all do now. I was doing a Zoom call this morning early this morning before the day really got going with someone who said, you know, they wanted to work with the Institute. But she said to me, no, look Rich, I'm under pressure. I've got to demonstrate some quick results. And the quick results she needed to demonstrate really didn't, didn't bring in our work. And so we both agree that now's not the time for us to work together. But what she said to me was, what I really want to do, what I really want to do is I want to work with you because what we need to do is deep change in our community. We need deep change in organizations, we need deep change in our culture. We need deep change on long term issues that we face, we need deep change on the systemic challenges that are confronting us.

We all know that the quick thing, the quick steps that we're about to take, aren't going to come close to addressing what really needs to be addressed. In this nationwide question that we released a few weeks ago that I'm sure so many of you have seen, and I hope many of you got a chance to fill out and send back in. It dealt primarily with COVID-19. But when you read through the responses, they're precious in terms of all the challenges that we're facing right now, across our country. And when you actually just read the responses, they speak to all of these challenges, and they are clear about what we need to do.

There's one person who wrote back and said, quote, we have reached a tipping point of understanding the underlying issues related to equity privilege and justice. Unquote. Another person wrote, quote, I'm hopeful that our community can emerge as one that actually does value the common good. Unquote. And then a third person wrote to us and said, I'm hoping that my community comes together more. We are all different. But we need to work together to heal from this, unquote.

We're analyzing these results now and we'll release it but we'll be releasing them in the coming days. But here's my bottom line point for today's Facebook life. My bottom point today is this, that given the changes that we're experiencing, and people's aspirations for moving forward, we need to get real about what happens next in our communities, because so much of the work we need to do in our country is going to be in our local communities. So what is it that you can do?

I want to lay out four points. But let me be clear. This is not one of those like four or five point strategies to save the world that almost every organization is coming out with now that I'm sure your inboxes inundated with. There are lots of those around you can read them. And as you know, the Institute has developed our work over the last 30 plus years we we have an approach for how we think change needs to occur, moving forward in communities, including the change that needs to occur based on these four the confluence of these four crises that are happening in our country today and in other Turning Outward Together episodes, ones that I've done before and ones I will do in the future. We will continue to talk about what we think that change needs to look like.

But today, I want to do something different. Yes, there are four points. But it's not a four point plan. It's really just four points that I've been thinking a lot about, as I've been both watching these crises unfold, and also thinking hard, really, maybe deeply about what it means for us to move forward. And what are some of the things that you and I and others, I hope, take into consideration that we keep front and center in our minds, no matter what we're doing, no matter what process we're using, no matter how we decide to come together with others, no matter whose, whose approach you use or your own approach, I hope that you have these are just four points that that I hope you keep in mind. I hope you write down too. Today, and keep them on your desk. Because I think that in order to move forward, and importantly, this phrase “get real,” which is really important to me, that in order for us to “get real” about the transformation that we need.

In order to be real with ourselves, in order to be real with one another, in order to be real about the challenges that we face and what it really takes to address them, there are these four points I want you to keep in your line of sight. And that I think this moment calls us to be serious about. So the first one is this. I think we need to get real about sorrow, about the notion of sorrow, the existence of sorrow in our society, you know, In these protests, let's say or in other aspects of our society right now, there is no doubt a sense of rage, a what I think is a legitimate sense of rage, there is anger. There are protests there is this urgent desire for change. But here's what I know, from working in communities now for over 30 years and particularly, in working in places that and with people that have experienced trauma and despair, and who are seeking to move to some kind of healing and hope. That wherever there is rage and anger, which we need people to express. There's also something else that they want to express. There's something that exists just beneath that rage and anger and that is sorrow. The sorrow about what has happened to them the sorrow that what has happened to, for instance, their descendants, the sorrow that has happened to generations, the sorrow that is embedded in the pain that people have experienced, the sorrow about loss, lost time, lost opportunity, lost relationships, lost respect, lost dignity, there is a sense of sorrow. And my sense is that if we want to get real with each other, if we want to get real with ourselves, we want to get real about the challenges that we face. And we've got to get real about making room for people to express not only their rage and anger, but also to express their sorrow.

Now here's the thing, as you probably know, as I'm sure you've experienced somewhere in your life, to hear someone who To hear people express sorrow is not easy. It's painful. They can say things that are hurtful about you. They can say things that are hurtful about our communities, they can say things that are hurtful about our society, about our country. And they say those things because they are hurting, and they have been hurt. And those things need to be expressed. And they have sorrow over them. They will say things about the pain they have experienced maybe by something you or others did to them. Maybe intentionally, maybe unintentionally, maybe. Maybe without knowing it, but it still happened. And at some level, we are still responsible. As I said, last week, we have to own our history.

And so, to own that means to stand in spaces with people, to make room in those spaces and to make time in those spaces, for people to express their sorrow, transforming our communities getting real in our communities to make progress moving forward, means that we each need to step forward in some way and make room for people to express their sorrows, to be witnesses, to become allies, to join hand in hand with one another. So that's number one. Number one, we've got to make room for sorrow. And we can't, we can't ask people to speed it up. We can't tell them to hurry up. We can't tell them to stand in front of a mic and give them 20 seconds. We need to allow them to tell their story.

Number two, at some point, we have to pivot to where we want to go. And so if the first point is about sorrow, the second Second point is about our shared aspirations. Like I said, we've got to pivot from trauma and despair to healing and hope. And to do that there has to be some expression of our shared aspirations, about what we seek to create together moving forward. You know, I have never met anyone who has expressed rage or anger, whether it's in Flint, Michigan, or Youngstown, Ohio, Mobile, Alabama with the Mississippi Delta, or New York City, or wherever it may be. Everyone that I have met in 30 plus years of doing this work, who expresses rage and anger and ultimately sorrow. What they want is to create a better life for themselves, their neighbors, their families, their friends, their community. And they want to be part of something larger than themselves. And so at some point, we need to pivot our conversation to our shared aspirations about what we seek to create together because what most of us will We can only create together, we can only create together.

Now, here's the thing. I could say a lot about shared aspirations, but I won't today, what I want to focus on is this. We need to be careful right now. Because when communities or society reach an impasse, the likes of which we are at now, where people say enough is enough, which is what you keep hearing over and over and over again, throughout our society, and in eulogies for people like George Floyd and others, there may be a growing agreement about what's wrong, and what the problems are. But we often mistake that agreement about what's wrong for where we want to go. Because there often is not large scale agreement about where we want to go, where we assume that there is large scale agreement about where we want to go and there isn't. And so what becomes important about expressing our shared aspirations is that we can come to recognize that while we do not agree on everything about where we want to go, or even what kind of society we want to create, we can begin to identify what we do share in common. And where we do believe action can be taken, and where therefore we can get started.

Because the name of the game is that we're not going to solve all these problems overnight, everyone knows that, to say otherwise is to create false hope, and to be a spreader of cynicism, and more frustration. What we all want to know is can we get on a better trajectory with increasing momentum, and expanding civic confidence that we are truly traveling and getting tackling and getting real with the problems that we face in our society and to do that? To do that, we need to focus on our shared aspirations, and to do that, here's the other thing I want to mention an underscore about this point. We've got to listen to people.

My biggest fear right now is that so many experts and activists and others who are all important to what's happening today and moving forward, that they will get together and set the agenda for us and tell us where we're heading. But they will leave community out. And just because you're an expert and just because you're an activist does not give you license to say that, you know, all that needs to happen. And then you get to set the agenda on your own about what will happen. We have got to engage the folks in our communities, all voices, all people, and make sure that we have a sense of where we want to go and how we're going to get there. And that means we need to authentically listen. And it means we have to take what we hear and genuinely make it inform what we do moving forward. Otherwise, there will not be public will to move forward. Otherwise there will not be the support to sustain action over time. Otherwise, we will once again promise large scale change, only to stall out. And to increase cynicism and frustration and to lose greater hope in our society. That is not something we can afford to do right now. So transformation our communities getting real means that we have to articulate to gather together, what matters to us moving forward, and we can't just leave it to the experts in the activists to make those choices for us.

Third, third, the first one is sorrow and the second is shared aspirations. The third one is we need to confront the inequities in our society. In our work, we have to pay special attention to this special attention to this. These multiple crises have made clear and have made Stark the inequities and disparities that exist in our society. They include systemic racism. They include that many people do not have access to health care. They include that many people have been shut in and lonely have no social networks to depend upon. They include the fact that people do not have access to mental health care. They include the fact that many people who need drug treatment do not have access to drug treatment. The disparities go on and on. They include that people have lost their jobs and they have no job training to go to, to get themselves back up on their feet and to participate in the American dream and fulfill fulfill their God given potential.

This is going to be challenging. That's why I say we've got to get real about this. These inequities that we face, whether they're about systemic racism or about our healthcare system. There's nothing easy about fixing these things. There's nothing easy and even if we pass legislation, there's still work to be done on the ground. We all know that. We all know that. And so we've got to get serious about dealing with these challenges. Now, there's gonna be a lot of talk about these challenges, it's going to be a lot of policy papers that come out, they're gonna be a lot of organizations that raised a ton of money to work on these things. And let me just be really clear, and let me be real about this. I am fearful that these policy papers will amount to nothing. I am fearful that this talk will be empty rhetoric. And I'm fearful that these organizations that soak up more and more foundation funding and government funding and funding from other sources, that that money will go to waste. It'll go to waste, that we will give lip service to really attacking these inequities and dealing with them in a real and significant way.

And so transforming our communities and getting real about the challenges we face means that we've got to address and confront these growing inequities in our society. And one last thing, I just need to say this, we need to recognize that no one size fits all, which is why this work needs to happen. So much of it at least, needs to happen in our communities. Because it needs to be driven by the context of our local communities, the readiness for action in our local communities, the ready capacity to take action in our communities. We can't just dump money and dump programs and dump strategies in communities and expect change to happen. It ain't gonna happen. It's just not gonna happen. So let's get real about this.

So if the first point is sorrow and the second point is about shared aspirations, and the third point is about confronting equities my last point is about a new shared responsibility in our in our country and in our communities. This notion of shared responsibility, I'm just going to spend a few minutes on it, there's a lot to say about it. And I'm going to do an entire episode of Turning Outward Together on it. But this notion of shared responsibility, it's something that the Institute has multiple, multiple projects on right now that we're doing all at once from multiple funders, all coming at this from different angles, to forge a new and tested way that we can think about how we create change together in communities differently. We can work together differently and learn together differently, and build together differently. I think too many of the ways in which we have to work in communities are too mechanistic. They're too driven by just a small handful of organizations and institutions and leaders. They often require way too much money that many communities don't have. I think we need something much different that starts with two fundamental premises. realities. The first one is this, that so many of the challenges that I've talked about today require us to bring our shared resources together in a community to act on them. There's no one individual no one institution, no one organization that can do it on their own. And nor is there just a small handful they can do it on their own. We need to bring our collective resources together in a committee. I'll say more about that in a second.

The second element is this, that so many Americans, I think most Americans, as I travel across country, want a greater sense of control to shape their futures, and want to be part of something larger than themselves. In other words, they want to participate in taking shared responsibility for the challenges and for creating opportunities in their communities to do this To take the shared responsibility to bring our shared resources together, is going to require a change in how we see ourselves in one another. We're going to need to see that we have innate capabilities in our communities that we are not tapping. I am convinced after doing this work for more than 30 years, that we're leaving, like a visit guest but we were leaving somewhere like 85% of our capacities on the table, to work on challenges like education to work on challenges, like mental health to work on challenges, like supporting people with addictions, to work on challenges. Like, like systemic racism that we need to address, that we're leaving 85% of our resources on the table. There are large institutions, yes, that want to work together. But there are also small nonprofits and faith institutions and other groups that are close to the ground that want to work on these challenges to there are individuals who want to come together with others in networks to work on these challenges as well. And I think we have to learn how to come together in these ways by bringing all our resources together.

Now, we saw a lot of this, and we're seeing a lot of this during COVID-19. And how communities are bringing new resources together to educate their kids about how they're bringing new resources together to ensure that shut ins have access to groceries, and their prescriptions and human connections each and every day. While we're social distancing, of course, we're seeing it happen with restaurants banding together with networks of volunteers and other groups to make sure that people get fed and don't go hungry at night. We're building all of these new networks and ways of working together that are small examples of what a greater sense of a culture of shared responsibility can look like in our communities.

And so, I believe moving forward if we want to get real about the change that we've got to create if we want to make significant progress on the challenges that we face, I don't have a five point plan for you today. But what I do have are four points that I'm asking you to keep in your line of sight. That I'm asking you to inform how you think about things that I'm asking you to have them guide the actions and the steps that you take moving forward. And just to repeat these four points. They are to make room for sorrow. They are. They are to focus on our shared aspiration. They are to confront our inequities. And they are to focus on a culture of shared responsibility.

And so, my hope for you today is this in these challenging times. Always, always, always stay in good health and stay in good spirit. And as you do, do not turn away from others, but turn outward toward others, and help us get ready to get real, for what needs to happen next in our communities. Because the change that we need in our country, so much of it is going to have to happen in our local communities, with you and me and others, helping to lead the way and do the hard work. And so, thank you for joining me for another episode of turning out we're together. I'm sorry, our video has gone out but it looks like our audio is still going here, so I'm going to keep going.

So thank you for joining me for another episode of turning outward together. If this message, if these four points today, were meaningful to you, and if you think they can help other folks that you know, if you think they can, they're things that people in your network or in your community should hear, I hope, I hope that you'll share this episode of turning outward together with them. I hope that you'll send me ideas in the coming days for our next set of episodes, I hope that you'll watch for the release of, of our findings from this national questionnaire that we did, which will be coming your way as I said in the coming days. And in the meantime, I hope you stay well. I hope you join me next Wednesday at 4pm Eastern Time for another episode. And until then, be well. Thanks so much for joining.