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Fighting (and Winning) City Hall Without Selling Our Souls

An idea worth spreading

DISCUSSED AT BIL 2012: Creating a Self-Organizing Community of Practice (CoP) for Good Governance and Engaged Citizenry.

In an era of corruption--from small Southern California towns to Wall Street--grassroots community builders are applying new change models that address serious governance issues, without succumbing themselves to the non-transparent and command and control tactics they are confronting.

Signal Hill Community First, http://www.signalhillfirst.org/ was formed about a year ago by a group of residents intent upon policy and cultural change, in their small city that is surrounded by Long Beach, California. Richard Harris, one of its founders, will share Community First's short history and its guiding principles, and then lead a small-group interactive discussion mining the ideas and experiences of the participants. One objective of the discussion will be to create the foundation for a continuing on-line dialogue on the issue.

Talk to me about

Facilitating self-organizing systems that inspire and empower citizens to engage in city affairs.

People don't know that I'm good at

I'm a pretty good guitar player.

My TED Story

On the populist sidelines with BIL, the "unconference."

Comments

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• A comment on Conversation: How do we get back the neighborhood?

  Apr 3 2012: ... continuing. But what I'm finding out is that our time and energies are consumed by our watchdog activities.
  
  I'm asking: Can the two--watchdog and community-building--be combined?

• A comment on Conversation: How do we get back the neighborhood?

  Apr 3 2012: I'm hoping this conversation will continue. Regarding the use of technologies to build community, I suggest Etienne Wegner's "Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities." http://amzn.to/Hduubt
  
  I stand somewhere in the middle between Ziska and Pat on the debate re. "shared experience for community building" vs. "goal-setting imperative." In the extreme, they are both simplistic. In fact, as you move toward the center of these two extremes, you arrive at a less fluffy and less rigid understanding that shared experience needs a unifying purpose, goals will come and go in the dynamics and evolution of your neighborhood-building efforts. That said--and to get back to earth--this is a very difficult position to operationalize, as we've found out at Community First. http://www.signalhillfirst.org/
  
  What is it that animates community participation? In Community First there are a few individuals--among them an attorney and former professor of Public Administration--who, when they dig deeply into city operations become outraged by the what they see as dishonest and unethical behavior. They have been leading the fight on a number of issues you can see on our website, and which generated outrage, in turn, by the powers that be and their allies.
  
  So we've generated some animosity, and the large majority of the population is "ho-hum" or turned-off as this is being "politics as usual;" while we see it as an important function of the organization to play this "watchdog" role. (The latest battle is around the city's efforts to expand its eminent domain powers in the wake of the state-mandated dissolution of the redevelopment agency; an esoteric but potentially significant turn of events, not fully appreciated by most of us.)
  
  A few of us in Community First are trying to figure out how to reach out to the community in more "positive" ways, to add a "community-building" component to our "watchdog" role.

• A reply on Conversation: How do we get back the neighborhood?

  Mar 30 2012: How could I use these tools when I meet my neighbor when out walking our dogs? Do they require a formal meeting, or could they be used small, informal, spontaneous gatherings of neighbors?

• A comment on Conversation: How do we get back the neighborhood?

  Mar 30 2012: (This is meant to reply to the question by Pat Gilbert, below.)
  
  Purpose, yes. You'll see the mission of Signal Hill Community First on our website. http://www.signalhillfirst.org/
  What you'll see is an emphasis on our "watchdog" orientation. This has stimulated a lot of interest over the last year.
  
  We are evolving, however, and 2012 will be a watershed year. What you won't see on the website--not quite yet--is much reference to our community-building role, an essential ingredient in our dual track design. Nor will you see any reference--again, not quite yet--to C.F. being a self-organizing system, informed by the literature regarding communities of practice (CoPs). http://www.ewenger.com/theory/ Other helpful resources are found in the work of Margaret J. Wheatley ("Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time") and Peter Block ("Community: The Structure of Belonging.")

• A comment on Conversation: How do we get back the neighborhood?

  Mar 30 2012: Neighborhoods everywhere have resources like ours! The challenge is how to animate them.
  
  Getting back the excellent original question, "So, how do we get back the neighborhood?", I love telling our own story--and will continue, more fully and in more detail, if there is sufficient interest--but this TED Conversation needs to continue, and we need more of an exchange among real-world neighborhood development practitioners.
  
  As you, Ziska, pointed out earlier, and as others have pointed out in the course of the discussion, this neighborhood focus, this bottom-up orientation, is a critical part of the City 2.0 initiative. Others have their own story to tell.
  
  As this conversation nears its end, I'm prompted to ask: How can we continue and how can we expand the participation?
  
  Food for thought...
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  A comment on Conversation: How do we get back the neighborhood?

  Mar 30 2012: (This is meant to respond to comments below by Ziska Childs and Pat Gilbert.)
  
  Well, our Guidance Committee, and the organization in general, is non-partisan, comprised of a couple of labor activists, a GOP Central Committee Member, an attorney, a former professor of Public Administration, a mother of four whom she home-schooled, a real-estate agent/local business owner, a 90-something former machinist with a Simon for Governor bumper sticker still on his pick-up truck, and me, a former budget director of the County of Orange, CA. So, no "bent;" we try to keep focused on our mission.
  
  We have gatherings, not meetings and our organization chart is three concentric circles, each becoming increasingly porous as you approach the outer ring.
  
  Though this may sound a bit "California Woo Woo," we are actually pretty pragmatic, and like the "does it work" criterion. The model is pretty well thought-out, based on a lot of research and experience in community organizing here and abroad. And we're having fun!
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  A comment on Conversation: How do we get back the neighborhood?

  Mar 29 2012: Fun is important. While in Barcelona last year, we came across a local community project that was asking people to tell/show on paper (that got displayed in innovative was in an old plaza) what Barcelona meant to them, We're thinking: block parties, hotdogs, seed packets (of the Signal Hill city flower-zinnia), and the Barcelona model of getting input in a fun way.
  
  Trying to reach out in ways that respond to your comments above.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: How do we get back the neighborhood?

  Mar 29 2012: Hi Pat, (This is meant to respond to Pat Gilbert's question about metrics.)
  
  Great question. Admittedly, we have a ways to go in terms of the quantitative and systematic gathering of data to measure success--my understanding of "metric." But in our first year we deemed our efforts successful by: Surveys and polls taken--number of responses. Policy issues affected--City established new procedures abiding by the State open meetings act. Citizen participation--Council chambers packed to unprecedented levels on two occasions. Community First name recognition--number of times name is used by others in public meetings. Organizational rhythms established--Guidance Committee meetings monthly, special meetings to address specific issue intervention. Leadership dialogue (rich communications environment)--high number of email messages.
  
  As we add more community-building activities to our now established "watchdog" activities, we will be challenged to come up with more (and realistic) metrics.
  
  I'll be interested in your observations.
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  A reply on Conversation: How do we get back the neighborhood?

  Mar 29 2012: I am a real fan of the open data movement, and here in California we've seen a lot of progress toward transparency associated with it, and with our long history of "sunshine law" enactment.
  
  But, in my experience, there is still a fundamental weakness here, if we want to build vibrant and empowered neighborhoods--it doesn't really get at the assumption, held by the power elite, of the citizen as consumer of services, rather than seen as an essential resource and stakeholder in the public policy process. All that "open data" is of minimal value if there isn't a strong and engaged community--independent of government--to be reckoned with.

• A reply on Conversation: How do we get back the neighborhood?

  Mar 28 2012: Hi Ziska,
  
  Wenger's thesis--and our guide for how to go about our business--is, I'm told, a bit too theoretical for our website which, yes, is on Wordpress.... if I understand your question correctly.
  
  As Facilitator of Community First, my focus is on organization design and internal communications--the superstructure upon which the responses to issues addressed in our website are built. Sounds a bit too high-falutin, but its at that organization level where I think a dialogue on policy-related, community building can most effectively occur.
  
  We are talking about a change in civic culture which begins with BEING the community we desire; but also within real-world, political context. A challenge, as you can imagine.
  
  There may be some similarities with the Occupy Movement and, perhaps, even Burning Man. (At least according to some we met at the BIL "unconference" where we presented recently.) But we, by contrast, are a bunch of old fogies.
  
  So, if anyone is curious about what we are up to, the theoretical foundation and practical issues that arise as we move forward, i.e., expand our "core" and focus more on community-building (to supplement our "watchdog" role), perhaps we can continue to dialogue.
  
  Ziska, you did such a great job of formulating the original question. Perhaps now you can prompts a new, more focused, practical discussion. We need your ideas and perhaps a few of ours might be helpful to you.