Finding authentic hope: Stories from the Hope Unraveled book tour
Thursday, December 22, 2005
(The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation)For the past three months, Rich Harwood and
members of The Harwood Institute staff have
criss-crossed the country – to 13 different
cities – to engage citizens in a dialogue
about the people’s retreat from politics and
public life, and what collective action must be
taken to forge an alternate path. What we heard
from coast-to-coast, in areas ranging from
urban to rural, wealthy to impoverished, and in
communities of great promise to those in
decline, was that people are tired of leaders
peddling false hope – the kind based on
promises that can’t be kept; unrealistic
goals that can’t be met; and entreaties that
appeal to us as consumers, not as citizens.
In Hope Unraveled: The People’s
Retreat and Our Way Back, Rich argues that
to begin to reverse the people’s retreat, we
must pay much more attention to what engenders
authentic hope in people. Authentic hope is
generated when people seek to create change not
by dropping a boulder into a lake to create a
large “splash,” but rather by dropping
small pebbles – little civic actions – that
ripple out, and in time, overlap. Just as the
overlapping ripples merge to create new
ripples, these overlapping actions create new
norms for collective action in communities.
Here are some stories we heard on the
Hope Unraveled book tour. Each story
illustrates how people in their own small but
powerful way are stepping forward, dropping
pebbles into the lake, and beginning to build
new narratives in their communities based on
authentic hope:
- In Las Vegas, the Nevada Community
Foundation has created a panel of ordinary
citizens who will work together to decide how
to spend millions of dollars in funds for their
community. These individuals are going through
training sessions right now that will help them
think more deeply about how their philanthropy
can have the most meaningful impact on
community life. These people are showing us all
that you can still maintain your individual
spirit and join together to build a common
future.
- In St. Paul, Minnesota Public Radio has
created Public Insight Journalism, which is a
new way to engage citizens in the media
process. The premise is that people in the
communities – ordinary citizens – are the
experts on their neighborhoods and possess
public knowledge that can inform and enhance
news coverage. MPR is striving to fight one of
the key public challenges uncovered in Hope
Unraveled - that the news media fails to
reflect the reality of people’s lives in
their coverage.
- In Atlanta, individuals and organizations
are stepping forward, crossing divides, and
striving to build new ways of working together.
Take Major Gloria Reagan of the Salvation Army
Training College, for example. The campus sits
in a gated enclave in the middle of one of
Atlanta’s poorest neighborhoods, but people
in Atlanta told us time and again that Major
Reagan is working to tear down those walls –
figuratively if not literally – every day.
With each step forward, the Salvation Army
becomes more of a genuine community partner
with those beyond its walls. There’s also
Katrina Green – “Miss Trina” as she’s
called – who left her first home, which she
built with her own sweat equity as a single
mother, and moved to a middle-class
neighborhood, only to return to a poor part of
town because she wanted to make a difference.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is also working
in Atlanta to bring people like this together
so that they can draw on one another’s
strength and work together to start making an
even greater impact.
- Finally, in Flint, Michigan, which has
recently been devastated yet again by the
announcement of more GM layoffs, a small group
of catalytic leaders are helping to write a new
narrative for this community. They include
individuals from organizations like the United
Way of Genesee County, Career Alliance, Salem
Housing, Court Street Village, the Community
Foundation of Greater Flint, the Flint Cultural
Center Corporation, Woodside Church, and
several others. A few years ago, when The
Harwood Institute studied this community,
people could only identify a handful of leaders
they believed held credibility and trust with
the community. Today, citizens can identify
scores of them. These individuals, like Johnny
Appleseeds of public life, are spreading new
norms and a different way of working together
across Flint.