wrythings

With news that Chicago would move to the next stage in the 2016 Olympic bid, Dan Bassill asked that we take the field for social justice with equivalent passion and dedication. Simply stated: let’s have a Gold Medal for work to end poverty. The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Give and Take blog gave this challenge a controversial spin. What follows is my comment in reply (with a few additional links).

Dan’s challenge is posed for all of us. It’s great that his post is getting attention. If we look for controversy everywhere we are sure to find it even when it isn’t present.

What can the Chronicle do better in this regard? I think there are lessons to be learned in the positive media movement.

I’m not a Pollyanna. There are likely some significant factors regarding the Olympic bid that deserve critical exploration/attention.

The Olympics should bring out our best. Dan’s call should rouse in us that aspiration for addressing the most pressing circumstances in our society.

April 20 the eChicago Symposium was convened at Dominican University, April 20-21 a conference was convened by “A View from the Ground” at the University of Chicago on the 8 blocks of public housing known as Stateway Gardens, and April 21-22 Chicago hosts the Green Festival.

Each event has a deep and conscious grounding in questions of social justice. It feels like many of us are waking up and coming together.

Chicago presents itself as a global city, and aspires to being the greenest city. Calls for sustainable living, living well together and building the Chicago we want are bringing our attention to our institutions and to questions of social justice.

Philanthropy can take a more prominent role in this blurring of the lines between Environmental, Media, Technology, and Social Justice movements.

This convergence of movements is happening anyway, so let’s come together with Olympic aspirations in all that we do, whether we’re in Chicago or not.

Thank you Dan for challenging us to challenge ourselves in the Olympic spirit.

The results of the NetSquared vote are due today. Without needing to know the outcome… I want to give a big thank you to CompuMentor, TechSoup and the NetSquared team … they really brought excitement to the field of socially conscious developers! Or at least they opened a space, invited us in, and made that space warm and productive and safe, and we brought the excitement together.

I personally needed that positive networking. I have felt it often in open space, but haven’t felt it to this extent online - not with so many groups and individuals. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Tutor Mentor Connection: “If you want peace, work for justice”

Dan Bassill writes:

My final meeting was with a senior at Northwestern University who is interviewing for a fellowship. His essay started with the statement, “If you want peace, work for justice.” (Pope Paul VI).

He wrote that at first he did not understand the meaning of this. But after doing a 2006 internship he realized that “if you really want to improve the world you need to give all people the same opportunities.” He concluded, “Denying someone justice did not mean prohibiting access to the courts, it meant not allowing them to reach their full potential given to them by God.”

The Pope’s words certainly resonate for me, but the young man’s further interpretation warranted a citation.

Aside from the plenty that we may squander in material things or nutriments, our actions and inaction on other matters in life have just as dire consequences. We all too often squander our power to do good things - we abdicate our power and responsibility over many small things - we’ve made them small in our mind or never learned their significance. We take so much for granted and we allow accretions of power and it is this disparity and disconnectedness from ourselves and others and how natural we make it seem that implicates us in our suffering and the suffering of others.

We have a question before us: how can a (would-be) philanthropist (WBP) engage meaningfully with grassroots organizers in advancing the World We Want?

Let’s start with a contrast… if you want something done, you can DIY, or you can employ someone else. Simple enough. Except that employing others brings it’s own responsibilities.

Spending money is work, and employing others to do good things is work too. The Greeks called that higher work Leisure, and the purpose of all work, but we can go into that another time.

Organizers, and others ostensibly “doing good work” might like the WBP to just ‘gis the money. After all, we know what to do with it. (So the story goes, so we have convinced ourselves)

As quick as fools and money are parted, we aren’t looking for foolish money. We’re looking for a relationship, we’re looking for community. We want wise money, don’t we?

And that has been the problem all along: wealth exercised without enough care or cognizance of it’s ramifications, or sometimes with so much care over these things it becomes absurd in it’s ineffectiveness, inhumanity and insufficient vision.

Let’s stir men’s souls. We’re speaking from Chicago after all: the City that works, the city of broad shoulders and all that Jazz.

In between DIY and ‘leave it to the hired hands’ is a roll up your sleeves philanthropy.

Yes, we all know the symbolism and rhetoric of the boss who can get in the trenches and work along side the common man. Be we can also tell the difference between PR-fanfare and the real thing, and the symbolic effect would not be there if it didn’t speak to us of something real.

Let’s get at what is real in this. We don’t need a boss or a WBP ready for a photo-op where we use them just as much as they use us. We need to sit down and decide what work we are going to devote ourselves to and get moving. And each one of us had better bring themselves fully to the problems we face collectively.

There is great wisdom in the parable of the talents. Much is required of us. All of us.

We’re among friends, aren’t we? We’ve been wanting a different, better world, realizing that we’d have to be different, better ourselves.
Phil Cubeta cites a lineage for three points for a transformation of philanthropy tracing back to Drucker:

1. Fund extraordinary people, not institutions.
2. Build on islands of health, not problems to be solved.
3. Get big or get gone. Scale up to the size of the need, not down to the resources available.

I’ll refrain from exegesis of these three statements.

Dream of being extraordinary, and do. Don’t settle for the problems we have because of the resources we don’t have.
Karoff’s statement that the “World We Want starts with the Community We Want - so let’s talk” is a refreshing invite to the conversation we need. Let’s advance the conversation.