Chip’s journey

Much has been written about community development from the perspectives of community members, educators, activists, local governments, social workers, or other participants. Although each perspective highlights particular issues, common themes run through some very diverse settings.

These themes are highlighted in a 2005 report, Community Development: A Guide for Grantmakers on Fostering Better Outcomes Through Good Process, written by Bill Potapchuk of the Community Building Institute, with Malka Kopell, of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. But the perspective is one I hadn’t considered, namely that of grantmakers, those who seek to foster community development through grants. The report identifies eight elements of good process for community development:

• Requires advocacy, seeking a process that leads to more investment, connection, and authentic participation
• Effectively coordinates, links, combines, and supports various initiatives to ensure that they work in concert, using a shared strategy and supporting a common vision
• Responds to and reflects a widely divergent set of interests
• Is not imposed on people
• Ensures that community residents are meaningfully engaged and have sufficient power to influence decisions
• Creates safe opportunities for authentic dialogue across differences
• Fosters collaborative conversations that become more strategic, holistic, and systemic over time
• Anticipates conflict and seeks to discuss it in ways that forges common ground

We could use these eight elements as a rubric for describing or evaluating community-building efforts. For example, I recently encountered a quasi-governmental organization, which had control over significant funding but distributed that in a very patriarchal way. There was little opportunity for authentic participation, which meant that it was difficult for different initiatives to work in concert, use a shared strategy, or support a common vision. Activities were imposed on people, thus lessening the value of even worthwhile initiatives. Meanwhile, real needs were often not met or even recognized. There was little authentic dialogue across differences or a chance to forge common ground. The net result was that the organization failed to meet its lofty mission statement.

In contrast, I’ve seen at St Andrew’s Resource Centre in Dublin an organization that embodies all eight elements–authentic participation, a common vision, respect for difference, all leading to collaborative conversations that forge common ground–even if they might use different terminology. Similarly, Paseo Boricua in Chicago succeeds in part because it creates that space for dialogue and a respect for each individual.

In fact, it is the respect for difference that enables each of these very different organizations to build a sense of a common purpose. In each case, the realization of the eight elements is both means and end. Engaging participants makes it possible to accomplish specific tasks, but the engagement is itself a crucial aspect of community building. As a result, the sense of purpose and individual worth within these communities enables them to achieve far more, even with limited resources.

The 4th Annual Community as Intellectual Space symposium is being held this week at Paseo Boricua in Chicago, June 13-15. Events will start at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC), 2739/41 W. Division (near corner of Division and California).

This year, the focus is on Aesthetics as Resistance: The Act of Community Building. There will be artist-led tours of the beautiful murals found throughout the neighborhood, the annual People’s Parade, a delicious Puerto Rican dinner, workshops on community-education activities as diverse as urban agriculture and computer programming for children using Squeak, meetings with local Humboldt Park/Paseo Boricua community and government leaders, including Rep. Luis Gutierrez and Rep. Cynthia Soto, and panels on liberatory education. [Click to enlarge the poster or follow the link above for more details.]

Aesthetics as Resistance promises an active dialogue on art, identity, and cross-cultural community building with community leaders, artists, educators, librarians, activists, students, and residents. It expresses the PRCC’s vision to build community grounded in cultural practice, including murals, poetry, music, and the People’s Parade. These practices are both creative and political acts to develop community out of local funds of knowledge.

Paseo Boricua has a motto: ‘Live and help others to live.’ It is known for its multigenerational and holistic community activism around human rights and social change. Education is structured around the belief that ‘the community is the curriculum,’ reflecting the ideas of Paulo Freire and providing a contemporary version of Hull House.

With its many academic partnerships, Paseo Boricua also provides an outstanding example of university-community collaboration in research, teaching and public engagement. For example, last year the community hosted a tour and visit for the John Dewey Society. This furthered dialogue around how the community answers Dewey’s call for critical, socially-engaged citizens, for an active public, and for education as lived experience.

[This announcement is also posted on the John Dewey Society Social Issues blog.]

This May, I feel connections to Mary Harris Jones, who was born in 1830, possibly on Mayday, in Cork, Ireland. She was a prominent labor and community organizer in the US, best known as Mother Jones. Her birthplace is in one of my favorite counties in Ireland and her burial place is not too far from my home in Illinois in the Mount Olive Union Miners Cemetery. That cemetery is also the home for coal miners killed in rioting associated with strikes which she had led.

Mother Jones’s legendary work during her 100 years of life is an inspiration. Her concern for working people caused her to be at odds with union leadership at times, as well as with companies or government. This combativeness led to her being called many things, including the “Miners’ Angel.” Another labor organizer described her as “the greatest woman agitator of our times.”A DA called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” because she could inspire supposedly contented workers to demand their rights. When a Senator denounced her as the “grandmother of all agitators”, she answered, “I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators.” She herself said “I’m not a humanitarian; I’m a hell-raiser.” I can’t pretend to or even fully imagine anything like the life she led, but I still admire her courage and caring.

Mother Jones magazine

Beyond place and dates, I feel a connection to Mother Jones in that I find the magazine named after her, to be one of the best sources for insights into current events. It probes deeper into issues than mainstream news services such as NY Times, BBC, or Deutsche Welle and has more factual content than most blogs or opinion magazines.

A good example, and what I started to write about today, is an article called Irony Man, by Nick Turse. It’s in part a review of the film Iron Man, but is really more a review of America’s disastrous foreign policy and how its most enduring harm may be to our own psyche and culture.

An excellent report from Christian Aid Ireland has just been published. It paints a graphic and disturbing picture of the global economic system and the devastating impact of policies sustained by transnational corporations (TNC) and the governments that serve them. Have any of the US Presidential candidates even mentioned issues such as this?

The report, Death and taxes: the true toll of tax dodging, shows how the global taxation system allows the world’s richest to avoid social responsibilities while continuing to under-develop much of the world. This system costs poor nations far more than they receive in all the governmental and private aid. It’s essentially a relentless mechanism for taking money from the poor to give to the rich.

As the report says,

This is in part to do with super-rich individuals. It is also to do with governments, including the UK government, who have let this situation develop and persist. But it is mostly about the world’s transnational corporations wielding their enormous power to avoid the attentions of the tax man – with devastating results.

The situation is stark and urgent. We predict that illegal, trade-related tax evasion alone will be responsible for some 5.6 million deaths of young children in the developing world between 2000 and 2015. That is almost 1,000 a day. Half are already dead.

Corporations “avoid…the tax man” in various ways, including setting up legal schemes for tax-avoidance and demanding tax concessions and low royalty rates on output. They also use false accounting, such as fake invoices, mispriced transfer of goods, services, and finances, and illicit transfers of cash.

Research by Raymond Baker, a senior fellow at the US Center for International Policy, says that 7 per cent of global trade involves the illicit movement of capital between countries by TNCs and other business entities. Transfers of goods and services within a TNC are mispriced to take advantage of differing tax rates and to minimise profits where they are high. Accomplices in unrelated companies issue false invoices to disguise the profits made in a transaction and reduce the tax liability. Baker says:

For the first time in the 200-year run of the free-market system, we have built and expanded an entire integrated global financial structure the basic purpose of which is to shift money from poor to rich. [It is] the ugliest chapter in global economic affairs since slavery.

The Death and Taxes report provides much more detail on the real, immediate, and personal impact of what may seem to be an obscure or esoteric issue. It also offers recommendations for what can be done about it. The data and analysis support the efforts of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development to regulate tax havens and end the secrecy. They also show the urgent need for an international accounting standard that requires companies to reveal country-by-country accounting.

Aid from organizations such as Christian Aid Ireland is vital in today’s world. But the bottom line on the accounting here is that if wealthy nations abandoned all their aid programs they would be more decent partners in the world than they are now, if they simply acted honestly and fairly with others.

Last Monday night, we visited Square Louise Michel at the foot of Sacre Coeur in Paris. The park and the nearby streets of Montmartre are a living history book, with every cobblestone suggesting times of struggle, hope, fear, and disillusionment. Staying there for a few days makes me feel that I just have to share some thoughts about the Paris Commune and Louise Michel.

There was a time when I knew very little about the Paris Commune, which held Paris for two months in the spring of 1871. It wasn’t part of my history lessons in school, nor did it enter into political debates or everyday conversations. As I read, I began to see references to it—”the democratic and social republic!”, the petroleuses, the horrible siege prior to the commune, which led to the eating of zoo animals, the Federales’ Wall, early establishment of rights for women, why Sacre Coeur was built—but these references were disjointed, so that much what I did know was confused and contradictory. It took living in Paris for a year to help me understand more of what it was about.

I knew even less about Louise Michel, one of the heroes of the Paris Commune, and as I’m learning, much more besides. But I feel a shiver now whenever I think of her. I’m amazed by her passion and ideals, the violence in her life, her writing, her work as an educator in many senses of that word, and her life fully lived.

For a long time Michel was the only woman other than saints to have a Paris métro named after her. The recent renaming of the Pierre Curie métro to Pierre et Marie Curie makes two (or one and a half). Schools all over France bear her name as well. She comes alive in books such as Édith Thomas’s The Women Incendiaries (reprinted by Haymarket Books, 2007; original in French in 1963). I think of her when I play Le Temps des Cerises, a song often associated with the commune and with Michel, even though it was written five years before the Commune.

I’ve also learned that she was an early practitioner of what I’d call inquiry-based teaching and learning. She was a continual learner, inspired by the works of Charles Darwin and Claude Bernard. As a school teacher, she used methods promoted in the progressive education movement (which came much later): interaction with objects such as flowers, rocks, and animals, studies outdoors, and scientific methods. She declared,

The morality I was teaching was this: to develop a conscience so great that there could exist no reward or punishment apart from the feeling of having done one’s duty, or having acted badly.

After the Commune fell, Michel was deported to New Caledonia. Unlike her jailers and many of the other Communards, she befriended Polynesians. She gave lessons to one in “the things whites know,” while he taught her his language. Later, she ventured deep into the forest to work with and study groups still practicing cannibalism. She collected their legends and music as a modern ethnographer might do. When there was a native revolt, Michel joined the side of the Polynesians. Throughout, she wrote poetry, prose, and letters on behalf of prisoner rights.

Later, she opened a school in London for the children of political refugees (The International School). There was a statement in the prospectus taken from Mikhail Bakunin’s God and the State:

All rational education is at bottom nothing but this progressive immolation of authority for the benefit of liberty, the final object of education necessarily being the formation of free men full of respect, and love for the liberty of others.

As infed says, there were no compulsory subjects, teaching was in small groups, and there was an emphasis on rational and integral education. Often, groups of children would bring their own ideas about what to study. Michel wanted students to learn to think for themselves, just as she did herself and encouraged others to do throughout her life.

Louise Michel was a complex person whose every year might fill the life for someone else; a blog post feels totally inadequate. Also, one might criticize the Commune and her participation on many grounds. Nevertheless, her commitment to social justice, her caring for all life, her passion for learning and teaching, her striving for women’s rights and democracy in general, her unselfish work on behalf of others, her strong moral stance, and her unfailing courage set a mark to inspire anyone.

The Youth, Media and Democracy conference concluded yesterday at Dublin Institute of Technology. There was an excellent program, with presentations from youth groups using a variety of media–film (documentaries, personal stories, what-ifs), comics, hip hop, remix (VJ-ing, web video mashups), object animation, radio, and more. There were also interesting talks about the Fresh Film Festival, media policy, the 5th World Summit on Media for Children held in Johannesburg, the Story of Movies, Digital Hub FM, and much more.

I was also impressed with the Dáil na nÓg campaign to encourage mainstream media to provide more balanced coverage of youth, especially to show the diversity of youth activities and not just negative images. A small group of Dáil na nÓg representatives has conducted this campaign, called Fairsay. They’ve had multiple meetings with media and policy makers, assisted by Anne O’Donnell from the Office of the Minister for Children.

Dáil na nÓg means “youth parliament”. Young people come as representatives of their local area to tell decision makers in Government what they think of issues that affect their daily lives.

The young Dáil na nÓg representatives gave excellent presentations and participated fully in panel discussions, demonstrating by their presence how young people can learn social responsibility, communication skills, and connected understanding through active civic participation.

So, it’s ironic that the Fairsay work is only partly sanctioned by the schools. For example, when they were waiting for a media callback they had to have their mobile phones on vibrate during class. When a call came it had to be taken down the hall in the study room. The classroom might be a place to teach about government or media, but not to actively engage with it.

Any teacher knows the many distractions available today for young people, mobile phones being near the top of the list. Still, it’s unfortunate that we can’t find better ways (this applies to US schools even more) to make actually participating in democracy take precedence over just talking about it. The young people at the conference showed how they could use media in diverse ways to move beyond the spectator role to become active participants.

In about an hour, it will be Dublin’s turn to participate in Earth Hour. The event started last year in Sydney when residents and businesses turned off their lights for one hour as a statement about global warming. This year, 28 cities will participate, each at their 8 pm on March 29. The event is described as a way to highlight “simple changes that will collectively make a difference.”

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I thought this was a good opportunity to post some Dublin at night photos before we have to turn off the lights here. They’re beautiful scenes, but also remind us of the energy demands of modern cities.

I hope that Earth Hour will live up to its expectations, but fear that it may turn out to be no more than another fun event and a way for all of us to feel good, without addressing the fundamental changes needed to treat our planet and our children more kindly.

The photos are not my own, but are used under Creative Commons licenses. On the upper right is the Custom House by Jimmy Harris. It’s near to where I work. The O’Connell Street bridge at the left is by Hans-Peter Bock. And on the bottom right is the Spire of Dublin, further up on O’Connell Street, by Peter Guthrie.

Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday (full text and video of the speech) was an historic moment, the most direct attention to race and racism from any major Presidential candidate. Speaking in the way he did was an intelligent, courageous, and moral act in an atmosphere of sound bites and back-biting. I don’t know whether it helps or hurts his campaign, but it should help the country.

I saw three main points in the speech, with my comments in brackets:

1. “Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.” [Prejudices against those who speak different languages, profess different religions, have different values, or simply look different, are a major problem. However, the legacy of slavery, segregation, and continuing discrimination against Blacks has made that form of racism a defining feature of US history. It's our biggest challenge, one no other country faces in the same way.]
2. “Not this time.” [Racism in its historical forms not only continues to undermine our best impulses; it spreads and poisons other issues such as how we address immigration or how we interact with other countries. We need to move the discourse forward this time, to transcend race in a deep way, if we are ever to form "a more perfect union."]
3. “We cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together.” [We can't do #2 if we don't address #1.]

Some people express what they know about the pernicious effects of racism in ways that are divisive or factually wrong. In so doing, they fuel the very ignorance and hatred that underly racism. By not acknowledging the possibility of change, they effectively block it. That was Obama’s response to some of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s comments.

Others ask, “why not just be color blind?”, essentially ignoring the reality of racism. In response to that, Obama said that race is an issue; we need to work to make it not so, but that requires understanding and facing it.

Obama’s speech wasn’t a scholarly critique, but he managed to show for those ready to listen why we need to understand and confront racism. Only then can we work together to build a different kind of society, and bring the focus to issues such as education, health care, and the economy.

Be sure to read Part I: Stepping into a photo story, before this part.

In a recent classroom visit, I saw many of the benefits of digital storytelling: The students were active and deeply involved in learning; they were developing literacy and technology skills; they were building confidence in themselves as learners and as responsible young people. It was a contemporary version of a Froebel classroom. But something happened on one visit that’s made me think again about how we all inquire and learn.

As I described in Part I, the students were asked to write about their first memory. Their stories involved family, religion, play, travel, money, holidays, toys, and other elements of childhood today. As I went from student to student I saw some interesting variations, but nothing too surprising. Then, I encountered Z.

Who is Santa?

Whereas other students had written several lines already and eagerly allowed me to photograph their texts, Z had written nothing. I aksed her whether she had a memory to write about. My paraphrase loses the full force of her story, but perhaps conveys the spirit:

When I was four years old, I heard my parents talking about Santa, but I didn’t believe it. So the night before Christmas, I waited until they’d gone to sleep, then went downstairs. I unwrapped all of the presents, including those meant for my brothers and sisters and played with all of them. Then I took the presents upstairs and hid them in my wardrobe. The next morning my Ma and Dad came and said that Santa didn’t come because I’d been bad. “And where did you put all those presents?!”

Z went on, and I wish I could have recorded her performing. I told her she had a great story, even though I secretly thought that hers might not be as faithful to the truth as the ones her classmates were writing. So, I encouraged her to write it down as the others were doing: “Let me know when you have something written and if you like, I’ll photograph yours as well.”

As L and I went around the room, we talked with each student and photographed their writing. Meanwhile, Z seemed to do the same. She was up and about more than she was sitting writing. She’d be talking to a friend, looking at the photos on their laptop, or generally enjoying herself.

I came back to her several times to ask about her writing. She assured me that she wanted to have it photographed, and I promised that I’d do that as soon as she’d written something. But each time there was animated talk, but very little writing. By the end of the class she had written some (see photo), but it was less than that of most of her classmates and certainly didn’t do justice to the oral form.

What kind of camera is that?

One time she stopped me:

Z: What kind of camera is that?

Me: It’s a Canon. Why do you ask?

Z: My uncle has one like that. Have you seen the kind with the picture that comes out the bottom?

Me: Oh, you mean a Polaroid? Those are fun because you get the printed picture right away.

This conversation continued into different kinds of cameras, how cameras work, and why we have different buttons on the cameras. It was genuine inquiry growing out of lived experience, as Dewey might have described. But it didn’t reside in the classroom inquiry frame. The classroom story line was that students were inquiring through the photostory activity and that I was there to document what they did. They and the teacher were the performers on the classroom stage and I was the spectator, using my notepad and camera to speak to a larger audience. Our roles were clear:

students: photostory activity and materials

L and I: observing activity with notepad, camera

But Z would have none of that. She was just a sometime participant in the photostory activity and like Bertold Brecht, felt perfectly at home “breaking the fourth wall.”

What are you doing here?

Once I came back to see her and she asked:

Z: Why are you here? What are you doing here?

Even more than with the camera incident, I felt that she was challenging our assigned roles, breaking the fourth wall again. I was the spectator, the questioner. She was supposed to be the performer, the respondent. Who was she, a ten-year-old, to disrupt that established order?

But Z deliberately disrupted, albeit in a gentle way. It was genuine questioning, as Socrates or Mme. Curie might have done. No other student had questioned my presence or activity. They accepted as in the natural order of things that a stranger could be observing them and their teacher, asking questions, and taking notes or photos. Whether they didn’t think to ask or were inhibited from asking, I can’t say, but it’s interesting to note that by the age of ten, we’re nearly all so ready to accept that kind of surveillance. But not Z.

me: I’m here to look at this kind of activity and to see what children learn from doing it. Are you learning from it? What do you think you’re learning?

The standard answers to my question here are as I’ve suggested above: Becoming deeply involved in learning; developing literacy and technology skills; building confidence and learning to be responsible. Many ten-year-olds are able to articulate ideas along those lines. But Z was different.

Z: I’m learning to improve my memory.

Reading the world

Well, of course! The day’s activity was framed in terms of “your first memory.” Writing about it and looking at photographs was obviously a way to reinforce and enhance that memory. I just hadn’t thought of ten-year-olds as needing to improve their memories, even though, on reflection, I believe that being able to articulate and express memories is something we do learn how to do. Z had moved to the heart of the activity. Moreover, her compelling oral rendition was her own way to do that improvement.

The photo story activity helps fulfill Friedrich Froebel’s vision of educating the whole child by enlisting imagination, the body, and all of the senses, as well as the mind, in exploring the world. Children participating in the photo story activity did this in a way that would have pleased Froebel. But Z did it even more, by stepping out of the photo story.

Was it the fear of having more Zs enter the world that made the Prussian court in 1851 issue a ban on Froebel’s kindergarten idea?

I’m not sure what this all means. Z’s inquiry is situated, reflective, critical, and connected to experiences in her life beyond the school. It’s also rebellious. Imagine a classroom full of Z’s. Her teacher says she’s a handful. Would anything ever get done? Imagine a society of Z’s. Would so many things go unquestioned?

“Ζει” in Greek means “he lives.” It’s a protest slogan referring to the democratic politician Gregoris Lambrakis, whose assassination in 1963 inspired the novel and film, Z. Whatever one might say about our Z’s writing or her ability to focus on the classroom task at hand, it’s indisputable that she lives and that her inquiry is attuned to the world in way that could be a lesson for any of us.I’m of course intrigued to see Z’s final product and wonder where she’ll go next.

Yesterday was International Women’s Day. Among the many events worldwide was the Feminist Walking Tour of Dublin. It sounded interesting when I heard about it just the day before, but I was hesitant to go: It had been an exhausting week between my mom’s recovery from a hip fracture and my preparing a lecture on education and community for Wednesday evening. The weather forecast promised rain; there was a Six Nations rugby match (best not discussed after yesterday); and I wasn’t certain I’d be welcome on the tour, not knowing anyone else there.

Fortunately, and without any doubt in the end, I made the right decision. It turned out that there was not only an enlightening and enjoyable tour, but soup and sandwiches afterwards at the Teachers Club, short movies, a distro (books, zines, and other publications), music, and lots of good discussion.

I had the impression that the organizers expected 20-30 people to show up. But there were at least 120, maybe up to 150, not counting various people who joined in for brief times along the way. What was planned as one group turned into two with an impressing display of organization on the part of Choice Ireland and the RAG collective. One organizer pointed out that their non-hierarchical structure made it easier to respond to unexpected events.

My group was led by Carol Hunt, a history postgraduate student at Trinity and writer for the Irish Independent. She was an excellent guide, leading us from St Stephen’s Green, to the Mansion House, Trinity College, O’Connell St, the Garden of Remembrance, and other spots, each being important sites for women’s history in Ireland. At various stops, others presented on issues such as immigrant rights or women’s centers masquerading as offering full reproductive counseling while in fact proselytizing. I learned far too much to try to convey here, but you can see the tour map and background information in a beautiful and very well-designed booklet, which should still be available in hard copy or pdf.

The tour was bracketed by two precipitations. In the beginning, we were standing next to the seat honoring Louie Bennett and Helen Chenevix. Bennett, a novelist, pacisit, and labor organzer, helped found the Irish Women’s Suffrage Federation, played an active role in the Dublin lockout, helped found the Irish Women’s Reform League, and was active for years in the Irish Women Workers’ Union. As Carol began talking, we had a brief burst of hail. Someone called out that God was a male and He was not pleased!

Then, at our last stop, someone threw potatoes from an upper story window, injuring one of the people on the tour. It’s amazing how cowardly some people can be and how afraid they are of others simply trying to learn.

After the tour, there was a social event in the Teacher’s Club at Parnell Sq. We saw two short films, including The Future of Feminism, by Cara Holmes and Breaking the Silence, by Katie Gillum. There was good music from Heathers, some of which you can hear on their Myspace site. I’m still working to complete all of the exercises in the activity booklet for children designed by Aileen Curtin!

I include the video below only because it gives a taste of the time of Countess Constance Markievicz. I learned on the tour that of all the great women in Irish history, and of all the many statues in Dublin, she is the only woman to have one. All of the other statues of women are of fictional characters or the Virgin Mary.

Markievicz was second in command of the St Stephen’s Green Citizen Army force during the Easter Rising of 1916. Court-martialed afterwards, her potential execution was commuted to life imprisonment because of her gender. She famously replied: “I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me.”

See more, with photos.