Category Archives: Background Reading

Acting from identity

Posted on March 6, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I’ve written before about what doesn’t motivate people to take action, to become part of movements larger than themselves—it’s not about the cookies. We know that relationships move people, and that’s why grassroots organizing works, and has worked, throughout history.

But in Switch, (which is super worth reading) there was a really fascinating insight into why people come to advocacy and collective action, and it has added a new layer to my thinking about how to connect to people’s values. The authors make the distinction between decisions made based on consequences—what are the costs and benefits of a particular action—and decisions made based on identity—what kind of person am I, and what kinds of actions does that kind of person take. And they present findings from psychological studies that suggest that people make these advocacy-type decisions primarily from an identity perspective.

What we have to do, then, is help people forge identities as advocates, because, once they see themselves as the kind of people who take actions like this, then they will. And they’ll be consistently committed to activism, even when the stakes are high, the costs are huge, and the benefits are elusive and in the distant future. Because, well, it’s who they are.

But the most exciting part of what the authors present in Switch is the evidence that identities can be forged. People can be primed to begin to see themselves as advocates, and we can help them to incorporate advocacy into their sense of self. It requires helping people to take actions that are small, at first, to bring them into a network of advocates in ways that are fairly comfortable for where they see themselves today, in a process of expanding their identities to encompass advocacy. Where that starts will be different for different issues and different constituencies, but the process is essentially the same…we stop trying to convince people to do something that’s a considerable stretch for them, and instead work to help people see themselves as the kind of people for whom advocacy is completely natural.

I had just finished reading Switch when I was on a conference call talking about advocacy in the anti-immigrant climate. Two of the people on the call identified their affiliations, as they were, as “community activist” or “community leader.” With this idea of identity-based decision-making fresh in my mind, it sparked a realization: people who define themselves as “activists” are of course going to behave very differently, when presented with advocacy opportunities, than those who lack this identity. But the evidence suggests that people don’t even need to have embraced the advocate identity that thoroughly in order to shift how they see themselves operating within a political context. Even relatively small acts, like signing a petition or putting a sign in one’s window can be the priming that people need to move seamlessly to much larger actions.

I think, really, that we’re part of the reason why this apparently natural psychological transformation gets messed up sometimes, honestly. We make a mistake when we try to talk someone into taking a small advocacy action by prefacing the request with all kinds of disclaimers, about how it’s “not a big deal,” or it’s “just this one little thing,” or “I know you might not have time for this,” because such caveats can push the activity to a sort of marginalized place in one’s sense of self, such that it doesn’t really become integrated into how we see ourselves. They might still do it, but it would be more as a favor to you, or to get you to go away, and that doesn’t shape the way we think about ourselves.

At least, to my non-psychologist’s brain, that makes sense.

I think we facilitate this identity formation when we, instead, invite people warmly and comfortably into a relatively small action, connecting it to the values we know they hold, and making that linkage explicit by saying things like, “I thought that you’d want to sign this petition because you care so much about kids’ access to education.” Or “we’re asking everyone who is committed to ending poverty to come to this forum, so I wanted to make sure you had the information.” Because then they see themselves as, yes, exactly the kind of person who cares about kids’ education or wants to end poverty, and, well, next month, if people like them are writing letters to Congress or attending a house party for a candidate, well, then…

you know us…that’s what we do.

I thought you’d feel that way.

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Enlarging our human circle

Posted on February 23, 2012 by | 2 Comments

This is my last post, at least for now, pulled from the notebook in which I’ve been recording some of my reflections, over the past few months, on dr. john powell’s time in Kansas City. I’m grateful to the folks (including many good friends) at Communities Creating Opportunity for bringing him to town, and for convening people to talk and think about race and justice and how easy it is for us to “other” others.

I hear this a lot, really, in my work with policy impacting undocumented immigrants–the idea that much of this policy is constructed without a basic regard for immigrants as human beings–as though they are somehow non-persons.

And to be honest, sometimes it sounds kind of outlandish, this concept that the root of the injustice that surrounds us is an inability to see each other as people. I mean, I get it that we obviously don’t see kids in urban school districts as our neighbors, or people experiencing homelessness as our fellow citizens, or immigrants as our equals.

Obviously.

But, not even as people?

Except, you know, it kind of explains a lot.

dr. powell shared some tremendously powerful psychological research about how the brain responds to stimuli around difference, and, in contemplating the end results of the policies we end up with, it sort of becomes the only logical conclusion:

surely we wouldn’t, couldn’t, let these routine tragedies befall other people so regularly…unless we didn’t see them as such.

And, so, unless we can bring people into our circle of concern, who are currently beyond it, unless we can begin to see everyone as just as human as we are, then our tools to push for supportive policy responses–to child poverty, to criminal justice, to mental illness–will be severely limited.

Because what has a heavy application of guilt gotten anybody lately?

But if we can enlarge our circle of human concern so that it goes beyond our Facebook friends and our next-door neighbor (maybe) and the families that look just like us, then we can tap into the decency that still abides in many hearts, motivating American voluntarism and charitable giving, albeit in quantities inadequate to compensate for the abdication of our collective responsibilities.

I don’t have the answer, of course, to the key question: how?

It’s getting harder, evidence suggests, because, as our society grows more diverse, there are more and more people we see as beyond our “circle of human concern.”

There are efforts that seem to be bearing some fruit–like Welcoming America, in dealing with immigrant and refugee issues–by helping people see themselves reflected in each others’ eyes, and by connecting on the level of shared hopes and common fears.

There are policy answers, too-seriously integrated schools and mixed-income housing and the preservation/creation of public spaces–to our tendency to draw a tight and small circle that leaves a lot of “others” out.

And we need to tell stories, because it’s still hard for most of us to ignore the humanity of someone so obviously human, while statistics and even aggregations are too easily lumped beyond the circle.

I guess the key is that we don’t overlook this step, as I’ve done for so long. We can’t rush to the policy solution, scratching our heads or lambasting the culprits, without stopping to ask why it’s so easy to harm those whose pains we can’t see or even comprehend.

First, we need to make sure that those we want to help are fully humanized, since we already know they’re fully human. We have to force those in power to face the “other”.

We have to draw the circle. Bigger.

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When the “enemy” is a structure

Posted on February 21, 2012 by | 2 Comments

My oldest son is really, really cognizant of bad guys.

Everyone in his world, really, is either a “good guy” or “bad guy”–even though he can recognize gradations in his own moods and behaviors, he seems perplexed, at times, by the idea that someone can be simultaneously good and bad, in that very flawed, very human kind of way we all live, and see, every day.

And, you know, I think we see advocacy, and our quest for social justice, in much the same way sometimes.

People, and institutions, are either “with us” or “against us”, as much as we might like to pretend that we don’t categorize that way.

Yes, as social workers, we have an ethical obligation to respect the dignity and worth of every individual, but, really…how often do you hear social workers talk that way about politicians? Or bureaucrats?

I see it in my students, and I feel it in myself: somehow, everyone who isn’t as committed as we are to seeking justice for those we serve (as we define it), is our enemy–an obstacle to be surmounted and a target for our advocacy.

I know. It comes as a shock that I can be sanctimonious. I know.

And, so, part of what was, for me, so morally and intellectually challenging about dr. john powell’s presentation, and the work of his with which I have familiarized myself since, is his insistence that we need to move beyond calling each other racists.

And I have kind of a problem with that, because, well, some people are racist. It’s not just the legacy of racism–it’s still alive and flourishing, and it can’t live except in people’s hearts.

But, after a lot of reflection, I think I understand more about what he means.

Pinpointing the root of racial inequity in this country–or any other–in the structures that perpetuate racially unjust outcomes isn’t about letting racists off the hook. If anything, it heightens the tension, because when we think about racism as only existing in marginalized pockets of “fringe” outcasts, it is trivialized, in some ways, as compared to locating it properly among those who set up the rules of the game and rig it in their favor.

And identifying the racialized nature of the system brings more of us–those who would never consider ourselves racist but nonetheless benefit in very tangible ways from the injustice of the status quo–into the ranks of the “guilty” too. Because even good intentions can’t excuse racialized outcomes.

And that means that even the “good guys” share responsibility for transforming our systems–economic, political, social–so that they work for everyone.

And that means that even the “bad guys” aren’t really, in the final analysis, all that much worse than the rest of us, just as that pesky “dignity and worth of every individual” clause would have us remember.

Analyzing structures this way isn’t always easy; it can be harder to walk a client through the process of dissecting the systems that impact his/her life to identify the root causes that perpetuate problems than it is to nod when someone talks about caseworkers who have it in for her, or those bums in Washington who only look out for themselves.

And it’s more fun to throw darts at a face than a structure, for sure.

But it’s far more accurate, and ultimately more powerful.

Because we can’t hope to win if we’re not fighting the right fight.

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Seeking transformational solutions in a transactional world

Posted on February 20, 2012 by | 2 Comments

I had the opportunity to hear dr. john powell (sic) of the Kirwan Institute speak at a Communities Creating Opportunity event in Kansas City a few months ago.

There’s something so life-affirming about sitting in a multiracial crowd, struggling together with the reality of “structural racialization” (his term, and my new favorite) in our society, in our organizations, and in our individual lives.

It was a really challenging and tremendously invigorating afternoon, and those ideas have continued to swirl in my mind. This week, I’ve written 3 posts related to aspects of what he spoke about, and how I’ve tried to apply it to my life and to my social work in the weeks since.

One of the parts of the afternoon that struck me the most was the story he related about a mother sentenced to jail for lying about her residence in order to get her kids into a better school. There was a great deal of sympathy, in the room, for her plight, but what dr. powell pushed us to think about was how frequently we take such actions, in our own efforts to cope with systems which are inherently unjust.

And how, in so doing, we’re seeking to change the terms of those unjust transactions, rather than transforming the system.

And that got me thinking about advocacy, and about how often our advocacy revolves around trying to improve a client’s (or clients’) outcomes in a given transaction–advocacy to get someone in a decent apartment, or to make sure that a school district meets a child’s IEP parameters, or to get an employer to give a second chance to an ex-offender.

That advocacy is important. Securing more favorable transactions for those marginalized within oppressive systems can change people’s individual lives, opening doors that were closed and allowing them to access an entirely new plane of opportunities.

And it’s often how we engage with the systems that impact us personally, too; just as the mom highlighted in the story did, we look for ways over, around, and through the obstacles we confront, because, quite honestly, it’s often just too much to try to figure out how to dismantle those barriers entirely.

But, as dr. powell reminded us, only such transformational approaches–those that ask not how can we find a way out of this trap, but who keeps setting traps in the first place?–can reshape the landscape for ourselves and for those who will follow.

It’s a harder lift, obviously.

And, in a world of such structural racialization, with so many injustices woven right into the fabric of the systems, it’s heaping oppression onto oppression to say that this mom, or any individual, is to be blamed for seeking a better transaction rather than a radical transformation.

Because, like the fault in the first place, that’s a responsibility we all share.

Transforming our society by rethinking the systems that govern our lives–asking why and why and why and why–falls to all of us. It’s not enough for me as a mother to want the best for my kid, when I know that I can do something to make “best” within the reach of other kids, too. It’s not enough for me as a social worker to be skilled at getting more for my clients, when I know that more is owed to many.

The best deal isn’t nearly enough.

We need a whole new game.

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Reserving a seat on the justice bus

Posted on February 7, 2012 by | Leave a comment

When I’m registering voters or talking with my students about the importance of their civic participation, I fairly frequently hear this lament:

Why would I want to get involved in the political process, when all that politicians care about is their own reelection, not the issues that really matter to me, or to my country?

That’s a paraphrase, but the sentiment is there, and it’s real.

Why would we sully ourselves by venturing into an environment laden, so the story goes, with greed and arrogance and raw ambition?

I used to try to counter this with my normal blend of righteous indignation, cheery optimism, and Protestant guilt.

We should vote, and pay attention, and agitate, because someone needs to have our collective best interests at heart, because there are always ways to make things better, and because, well, because it’s our duty.

And, perhaps not surprisingly, that never worked too well.

So awhile ago, in the midst of one of these same lopsided arguments with one of my friends, a social worker who used to be pretty politically involved but has now largely retreated, I tried a different tack.

I just told a story.

I told a story about my friend David Adkins, a now-unfortunately-retired-from-elected-office former Kansas state senator, who, while as imperfect as all the rest of us, is, I think, one of the more compelling examples in recent history of an elected official who put policy above politics and virtue above ambition.

And he did it on behalf of arguably the most marginalized of populations in today’s political debate: gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered individuals seeking the protection of their core human and constitutional rights, in a system bent on denying them.

He stood up, essentially alone, against the proposed constitutional amendment barring gay marriage in our state, and he did so by constructing a passionate and procedurally solid debate that, ultimately, allowed his colleagues to avoid a recorded vote on this most contentious issue. In the process, he made compelling arguments about the wisdom of equality and about the inevitable march of justice. And he also, when asked, looked right into the TV cameras and answered another senator’s question (“Does the Senator support ‘homosexual marriage’?”) with a firm “yes”.

His vote, and his statements, attracted threats and effectively ended his elected career. But his actions also provided hope and inspiration to GLBT individuals in the state, who saw someone use his power to stand up for them, and to be willing to stand beside them.

And, when I contacted him recently to tell him how what he did that day, and on this issue, continue to provide a counterpoint to the perception that individual participation doesn’t matter in the scope of the political process, and that there is no longer any room to stand on principle, he responded in a way that, for me, provides new motivation in a landscape where, even I’ll admit, it can be hard to find spots of hope.

He said that what he said that day was true–you can’t stop the march of justice. “It wasn’t all that courageous to hop on the bus before all the good seats were taken.”

That’s modest, of course.

But it’s also true.

I’m in the state where Brown v. Board of Education originated. In 1953, there were a lot of seats left on the school desegregation bus. But time shifts opinions, and justice marches on.

Today, we see a lot of empty seats around us, and it can especially feel lonely to jump into the electoral process, wrapped in our social work values, when we don’t see many others who share our commitments.

But we are not totally alone, as this story shows.

And, if we want a good seat, we must mark our stance today, taking comfort in the fact that, eventually, right wins, and others will join us.

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Making Social Justice Personal

Posted on January 31, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Last week, the Sunflower Foundation Advocacy Fellowship had our session on grassroots organizing. Its inclusion in the year-long advocacy development program is one of my very favorite things about the initiative and, indeed, one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Sunflower Foundation’s approach to nonprofit advocacy.

I love, love, love that the Foundation understands that organized constituencies are our most vital resource, and that the Fellows are encouraged to think critically about how their organizations can meaningfully connect with those they serve, so that, together, they can create the future we so desperately need.

There’s something incredibly hopeful about starting an intense discussion about nonprofit advocacy with a focus on those we serve–and how we can win victories for justice only by releasing their full participation and their latent power. We start with strategies and the tactics that should flow from them, and think about how to organize so that those tactics work. Only after we’ve built plans to engage our grassroots do we turn to legislative advocacy and message development and even organizational capacity-building.

It’s “begin where our clients are”, translated for macro practice and supported by Foundation resources. And that’s pretty awesome.

But it’s one particular moment from last year’s grassroots organizing session that reverberated in my mind during these past several days, making it clear that it had a tremendous effect on me.

And so I’m repeating it here, and figuring out how I might weave it into my work with social service organizations trying to develop grassroots strategies, and with social workers who are struggling to understand why power is so essential to the realization of our visions, and how we can not only get comfortable with it, but, indeed, embrace it and its pursuit.

The trainer was Rudy Lopez, from the Center for Community Change, and the exercise was this:

Rudy had us close our eyes and think about the one person in our lives that we care about the most–the person whom we most can’t stand to think about being harmed. (This is part of the reason that this exchange sticks in my mind, I think, because I immediately thought about my oldest son, and it’s kind of odd that he’d so quickly come to mind, more than my other kids.) He then prompted us to think about something bad happening to that person, which, for me and for others, was a terribly difficult assignment, even for a few hypothetical seconds.

And then the kicker:

Rudy asked us to imagine that we had the power to stop that pain from happening to the special person in our minds. What would we do with that power?

It sounds simple, I know, but what ran through my mind instantly was this, “I need that power, to keep Sam safe.”

And what I didn’t realize, I guess, without the advantage of months of mental simmering, was that this moment catapulted me into not just being comfortable with power but really craving it, for the “right” reason of wanting to help someone else. Yes, it’s on a very personal level, and, yes, maybe it’s easier to relate when it’s a child you love instead of a community of strangers…but maybe not.

The next step, of course, is to build relationships so that we love, even deeply, beyond our more intimate circles. Then, we’ll reach for the power that would let us protect and serve and support them, too.

Because, the truth is, there is real pain threatening those we love, every day.

And we seldom have the power we need to do much about it.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

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Go Ahead, Raise My Taxes

Posted on January 23, 2012 by | Leave a comment

It’s a good thing I’m already pretty comfortable with controversy.

Because this one is even unpopular with my own husband, who’s rather notorious for being SUPER easy to get along with (convenient, hunh?).

I am completely okay with paying more taxes.

I’ve actually told a financial advisor that I don’t appreciate his advice about how to shift investments to minimize our tax “burden”. I once delayed buying clothes for my daughter until after the sales tax holiday had ended. And I got into a long discussion with my oldest son in the Lego aisle of the toy store about why sales taxes are included in the total cost of the purchase, and why we have to account for that in deciding how big of a set we can get for his birthday.

This year, with all of the discussion in the Kansas Legislature about eliminating the income tax and “replacing” it with an increased sales tax, I’ve only increased my resolve about the inadequacy about my current tax rate. To me, paying taxes is an investment in the kind of society I couldn’t hope to buy for myself–safe roads, good schools, wonderful libraries, vibrant public parks–and also a reflection of the success my family didn’t necessarily earn but somehow still enjoys.

Because, in a truly progressive tax system, paying more taxes should be a mark of achievement.

How is that a burden?

And my final reason for being totally okay with my tax responsibilities? It’s a sort of extra license to complain, I guess. I certainly don’t agree that only those who are net taxpayers have a right to participate in collective governance–democracy shouldn’t be ‘pay-to-play’–but I do feel quite justified in articulating my opinions about how public funds are spent, because some of those public funds are mine. How would I have time to advocate effectively if I was busy trying to find ways to weasel out of my financial obligations to the commons? And, yes, it does feel like weaseling to me.

Of course I wish that I had more disposable income.

I just don’t wish that nearly strongly enough to walk away from my principled belief that there are many goods in our society that would not be nearly so “good” if not shared in common.

I’m proud to play a part, albeit smaller than I wish, in funding that commons.

So, not in my name, Kansas Legislature. Not in my name.

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2011 in Charts, and What they mean for real people

Posted on January 12, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I do love a good chart.

And these, from the Economic Policy Institute’s 2011 year-in-review, tell a very important story.

But, since I’m a social worker, it’s the human side of that story that interests me the most.

So I looked through these charts with an eye towards how they would look if they could walk into our offices and ask for help.

Because, in some way, they do.

So that “job seekers ratio” becomes the person with what used to be an adequate level of education (maybe a high school diploma, maybe a few years of college, maybe even a college degree) who now finds him/herself competing against three other people, some more experienced, for the same job, and who, in the meantime, struggles to support a family. And the desperation and depression that sets in after months of unsuccessful job searching.

The more than 18% of kids who had at least one parent unemployed or underemployed in 2011? Those are the kids wearing clothes that don’t fit, and staying after in our recreation programs in hopes of some extra food. They’re the kids with anxiety attacks because they’re worried about how their parents are going to make the rent, and the ones who have a dim view of the future, already, at age 9.

The data on too few job openings? Those reflect the mothers receiving TANF who have to go through the motions of searching for jobs that just aren’t there, in order to receive the money on which their children depend. They’re the ones we’re sending the message that jumping through hoops is more important than spending time with their kids.

When your clients tell the story of their own economics, what statistics do they represent? And how can we help people to see their fortunes as connected to economic structures, and forces, in which they are absolutely not complicit? And why does untangling those data–making them visible and making them real–matter?

What can we do, in this new year, to make these charts breathe, so that policymakers understand the urgency of the lives they represent?

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When we fall into the same old traps…

Posted on January 10, 2012 by | Leave a comment

In this second post for Organizational Transformation week, here at Classroom to Capitol, I’m tackling an ugly reality of nonprofit social service work and, in the interest of full disclosure, my parenting, sometimes, too.

Because the truth is, sometimes the ways in which we interact with those we serve (or parent) serve to replicate the same power imbalances against which we rail, when we view them on the “outside”.

You’ve seen it, no doubt:

  • Eligibility rules that are ambiguous and seemingly arbitrary, the sort of institutional equivalent of “because I said so”
  • Organizational cultures that afford greater prestige to men, and to those higher in the hierarchy (like when we refer to the Executive Director as Mr. SoandSo but the receptionist as “Maria”)
  • Programmatic requirements that force everyone to attend the same classes, fill out the same paperwork, not because those activities actually contribute to the amelioration of the social problems that prompted a particular individual to seek services, but because that’s how people prove that they “deserve” help

    We fall into these patterns of power and oppression not because we’re bad people, of course, but because we’re people, and people tend to seek comfort in regularity and predictability and status, and those pursuits are not necessarily compatible with the promotion of maximum empowerment for those who have historically been marginalized and oppressed.

    But I promised you that this wasn’t just a post about how you should change what you do in your organizations, right? I understand that changing the way we view those with whom we work, in every way from using language like “constituents” instead of “patients” to authentically making room on decision-making bodies for the full participation of those we serve, isn’t easy.

    I understand not just because I’ve been there, as a nonprofit leader and as a consultant to the same.

    I understand because I fight the same internal battles at home, too, where parenting offers opportunities every day to choose to live power imbalances that put me purportedly on top, versus a challenge to figure out how to make our family a sort of laboratory for empowered living.
    On a daily basis, that means that I can’t change the rules without accountability, even though I’m the mom. It means that the kids’ preferences on little things matter just as much as mine, and that, even on the big stuff, I can’t disregard their views without an honest discussion and a full examination of my own rationale.

    It’s not a democracy, exactly, any more than a nonprofit organization is. That’s what people often fear when we talk about transparency and participatory governance in nonprofit organizations, but it’s more like an excuse to duck our obligations to social justice than a valid concern.

    We’re not a 1-person-1-vote family.

    We’re something more, and better, just like our organizations need to be, too.

    Because avoiding the temptation to fall into the same old bad patterns means starting from the premise that power is only as valid as the way in which we wield it, that we can’t decry the abuse of authority in others without being willing to own it in ourselves, and that our relationships will be stronger when they are based on a presumption of equity than when reinforced through hierarchy alone.

    Ultimately, turning our organizations inside out like this should make us stronger advocates externally, too, because we’ll gain an empathy for those targets against whom we’re arrayed when we understand the universality of the temptation to oppress, at least in subtle ways. It also restores some of our moral authority and reduces our vulnerability to charges that “you do it, too.”

    But, more immediately and much more importantly, it will turn our organizations into places where people learn how to relate fully and equally, as agents in their own rights.

    And that’s what I remind myself every time I so want to say, “because I’m the Mom.”

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