What Does It Look Like To “Be The Change” You’d Like To See In Congress?

August 4, 2011 — Like many Americans, in the past few weeks, I have felt frustrated, angry and helpless as I watched partisan battles suck the energy out of problem-solving initiatives in our nation’s capital. As members of Congress pronounced with certainty that this or that is what the American people want, the American people said, through polls, emails, letters and phone calls, “Actually, what we want is problem solving. Enough is enough!”

We averted default, but not without damage. Damage to our economy and our standing in the world as a model of democracy. And, perhaps, damage to our ability to experience hope about the future. I wonder if the debt-ceiling battle, which has left me, at times, feeling hopeless, will be seen one day as a collective cultural experience of “hitting bottom” – an experience that woke us up to the need to work across differences more constructively.

When such an awakening gathers steam, will we, as a nation, have the capability to work toward a new civic culture? Borrowing a phrase from Gandhi, do we know how to “be the change” we’d like to see? Yes, I believe so. For hope, I look not only to my closest colleagues at the Public Conversations Project, but to all the resourceful, creative and committed people I have met at conferences of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, who generously share their work and their thinking through the NCDD website and on list serves. I think about the people who take PCP’s trainings and then write to us to tell us how they have taken what they’ve learned and created cultures of collaboration in their personal lives, their workplaces and in their civic spaces.

I also draw hope from a group of bright and committed people who changed the civic culture in an economically depressed community in the North Quabbin area of Western Massachusetts. After suffering through some bottom-hitting experiences, like the loss of their high school’s accreditation, they found the will and passion to make fundamental changes in the ways they conducted their business across lines of class, ideology, age, and status as old-timers and newcomers. If you’re looking for some inspiration and insight, you might find it in a report on their work, Building Hope in a De-industrializing Community: Creating a new kind of community organization to mobilize the politically sidelined majority around the issue of building a civic culture of collaboration by Mark Shoul and Philip Rabinowitz. I had the pleasure of consulting to their organization, Hands Across North Quabbin, in 2007-2008 and have followed their progress from the other side of the Commonwealth over the past six years. I have been impressed not only by the shifts in their community, but also by their contributions to our field, as demonstrated by this article which was published in the National Civic Review. (Above: Maggie Herzig and Mark Shoul)

Mark and Phil and their many partners in North Quabbin saw needs and possibilities and acted on them, in a deeply collaborative and effective manner. They worked tirelessly against the forces of polarization that had allowed demonization, blaming and stereotyping to define the culture. They invited into the process those who were ready, willing and able to solve tough problems. Our Congress, and all of the groups in our lives that allow deep differences to block problem-solving, could take a lesson from them – a lesson in living the change we’d like to see.

Maggie Herzig
Senior Associate
Public Conversations Project