wrythings

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.

I’ve had frequent enough occasion to encounter the idea of the illusion or delusion of love…

to which the insight…

respond with Corinthians most widely used as a reading for Weddings:

simply…

Love is patient…

What is this that undergirds patience if not love?

… As for a dialogue on supporting those efforts we collectively value, I am looking forward to an ongoing collective exploration of sustaining the institutions and innovations in our field.

It is certainly a challenge to break frame and offer a new way of collaborating, and finding means of supporting the effort.

In our field we’re actually at the cutting edge of human organization, and we’d do well to recognize that and build on those strengths, as opposed to operating under a mindset of scarcity. We live in a world of plenty, yet despite that people and organizations go without and cannot meet their needs.

We are colleagues in a field, a field that is a movement and in movement. A living movement.

Among us are the paid and the unpaid, the highly degreed and those who’ve learned in the trenches (and both!).

We have the opportunity to consider a new paradigm, that many of us are already reaching toward, and operating within: the network paradigm.

There is a paper I’ve been extolling for some months that I will recommend once more: “Movement as Network” by Gideon Rosenblatt, of ONE/Northwest, an environmental movement meta organization, for want of a better description. This think piece and additional resources are available here: http://www.movementasnetwork.org. (Pay attention to “Three Pillars of Social Source”, also.)

In short, this think piece is a strategic vision paper for the environmental movement as a whole. This is critical. It isn’t simply about one organization or one cut back in staff. We need to take the wider vision that we each claim in our daily work and manifest it at the highest level.

In the case of the environmental movement, the paper opened the frame in this way (I paraphrase): the environmental movement is not an abstract concept, it is a real thing constituted by real relations and transactions between real persons and organizations. The point that follows clearly from this is that with the network perspective we realize that there are weak points in the network as a result of network configuration or structure… Bottlenecks, fragmentation of power, and dilution of effectiveness. This structure is something we can invest in and modify.

With conscious effort we can build the map of our field and come to a position where we can make recommendations that strengthen our movement as network. I don’t intend to suggest that this paper offers the solution to the problems of our field, but I do think it is an effective strategy for developing our own map and plan.

Many organizations are suffering under the current economic and funding climate, and many have had to cut staff or pull back on certain programs, but the need for our services could not be more pronounced. How we link together and support each other could not be more relevant to our capacity to respond to basic human need and to times of special crisis.

In our field we have tremendous assets and there is much wisdom in our networks. The DDN, Community Technology Review, CTCNet, CTC Vista project, Community Informatics Research Network, the many State and local organizations and networks, Somos Telecentres, PCNA, the RTC, the NTAP and Open Source Communities, Community and Independent Media and Media Reform organizations, and the Association For Community Networking. The list goes on!

Let us do something deep and lasting.

Consider this an open invitation to anyone that would like to join an open, working group to explore the ideas expressed in Movement as Network (and associated papers) and in conducting a comparable exercise that will result in an open collaborative vision for our field that nurtures and strengthens capacity of our field as a whole. This is something I’ve wanted to advance since Open Space Austin, and here I am attempting to live up to commitments made there.

Join me at: http://www.digitaldivide.net/community/movement

We’re in this together. And I’m glad you are with me.

Warmest regards, to all my friends and co-conspirators!

I’ve recently returned from the 14th Annual CTCNet Conference, and what follows may require a little presumption on my part, but equal part humility. But I’ll start with a little context.

On April 29 & 30th, 2005, at Open Space Austin a working group discussed social and economic justice and it’s standing as an issue for our movement and the leading national organizations in community ICT.

Collectively we made a commitment, which I’ll paraphrase here:

to proceed in thought and action from a perspective of social and economic justice, and to raise this as an explicit topic and aim for our movement(s).

In making this commitment we hoped to raise the issue in the context of the CTCNet Conference. Timing was not on our side. However, while there is always a sense of urgency when one raises the question of social justice, the committed recognize that these are questions that require an effort over the longest haul.

There are several questions before us…

Is social justice in fact an implicit aim in our movement, or is it explcit? Is it an aim of the movement? Do we constitute a movement? Is it advisable to be explicit about such aims at all times? Why or why not?

How do the leading organizations relate to the movement? What will next year’s CTCNet conference theme be? How can those of us who care about social justice issues best use our time between now and then so that we can share more than the truisms we know and affirm, and which of course bind us in a movement?

I am happy to see the discourse and discussion proceed anywhere, and also in multiple environments and listservs. I have established a community here on the DDN site so that we might have a common repository to pursue these matters.

I selected the DDN site because of its diverse member base, and because of the explicit naming of a divide, however, I am not solely concerned with the digital when I open the question of social justice. The DDN is an open space for us to form communities and to promote dialogue on issues we care about. This function is very important for our movement. (You can tell that I already have a strong opinion as to whether we constitute a movement!)

As community technologists not solely, or principally concerned with technology when raising these questions, we affirm that technology is ever-present and important as a means for accomplishing other aims, and that our efforts really are about those other aims.

The online space I’ve opened for this is here: http://www.digitaldivide.net/community/justice

There isnt much there. This discussion depends upon us all. Let’s begin. Let’s join others promoting social justice. Let’s network our movements: media reform, environmental justice, communication rights, digital literacy, access and equity. If I havent named your cause, you name it. Speak truth to power, speak with a generous heart. Speak in the context of a broad vision and follow that ambition.

I dedicate this post to the working group at OSA:

Ana Sisnett, Sue Beckwith, James Lau, Peter Miller, Michael Gurstein, Fred Johnson, and Jim Forrest

And also to those with whom I’ve made common cause in Chicago and Illinois, who have shared in a commitment to social and economic justice through local and regional organizing.

There are too many of you to name, only because I might leave someone out.

Regards,

Michael