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March
Collective Action: A missing element in
the green movement
Amish farmers, working in Lancaster, Pa, follow a
centuries old tradition of corporation action going
back to Western European roots. The good news is
this picture was taken last year. The bad news is
that 99% of the action of barn raising or home
construction or any kind of neighborhood
construction is done by “paid experts.”
The individual owner of the building lacks
emotional and spiritual ownership because the owner
is excluded from the task. The larger problem is
that we have turned over our health care,
nutrition, child care and financial independence
and our marriages to “the paid experts. The
paradox here is that while cherishing our
individuality, we have disempowered our selves by
turning to experts to handle many domains of our
personal existence.
Richard Niebuhr and his brother Reinhold
Niebuhr, two of the most prominent Protestant
theologians of the 20th century, wrote extensively
about the problem of “individualist
overemphasis.” They considered it in
“the big four sins of Western
culture—along with racism, militarism and
economic imperialism. My experience as a writer on
environmental causes for thirty years and two years
in the Transition Movement is that “the
greens” by and large are tone deaf and
visually impaired when it comes to seeing the
absolute for corporateness and team action. More
recently the books of Scott Peck address this issue
in contemporary culture.
There is a huge briar patch out there which is
thorny and hard to navigate. Four primary parts
making up this briar patch of difficulty s are the
following:
FIRST, the breakdown of intergenerational bonds
within each gender line making cooperation between
older and young males more difficult. The same is
true to a lesser extent for women.
SECOND, is the tension and distrust between men
and women which makes corporate team action by men
and women working together on a team more
difficult. This is the residual shadow of feminism
and a still partially unresolved patriarchal
culture.
THIRD, is racial distrust and vast cultural
differences. Denver, for example has a vast Native
American population. I am told there are 30,000
Navajo in the Denver metro and many Lakota people
and other tribal groups. The engagement of these
populations within the green movement is almost
non-existent.
FOURTH is the fear driven quest for maintaining
middle class life styles which cuts the nerve of
volunteerism and financial giving to non profit
causes.
Notwithstanding all of these briar patch issues,
there is no way into the future without corporate
action. I say this in light of the darkening clouds
of our future rooted in depletion of oil and gas,
climate change and accelerating economic
instability.
What I mean by corporate action is a team of men
and women showing up on the ground at a specific
day and time. They are on the same page. They see
the need and they do the deed. They share the same
core values and they are friends in the best sense
of the word. In past essays I have addressed the
issue of movement building. See
transitioncolorado.ning.com/members/forrest craver
for numerous bog essays on Building the Movement.
Not only the transition movement but many
nonprofit and voluntary groups do the first stage
of movement building –Awakenment –fairly
well. New people come to an event and see a new
paradigm image for sustainable community and they
get excited.
But then the local green group fails to step
into stage two of movement building
–formation. FORMATION is about forming people
into task forces, committees, pods and work teams
formed through personal affinity – that is the
people self select their specific mission for
future engagement. People work together mainly
because they enjoy and like the people they are
working with. In the awakenment process, the
standard wisdom is that “openings close.”
In other words, if awakened individuals are not
followed up with, they turn away and find something
else to engage their time. In the Gospels, Jesus
alludes to this issue by saying if he casts out all
the demons, and the person, previously possessed,
does not step into the New, and embody the New
Paradigm of transformed living – he then ends
up worse off than before.
I often tell the story of Lifespring, a training
group across the USA which did in depth
consciousness trainings. Lifespring had 800, 000
grads of weekend, six month and other trainings.
And two years ago they filed for bankruptcy. My
wife, son and I did the entire Lifespring process.
And my wife, Susan was on the national board of
trustees of the Lifespring Foundation.
What happened with Lifespring is illuminating
for the Green Movement and for the trainings on
heart and soul the transition movement is now
doing. The breakdown in Lifespring which led to
its extinction is that everything was always about
Lifespring. Unlike Rotary International which turns
outward and takes on eradicating polio and smallpox
worldwide, Lifespring always made their mission
about recruiting more people to take their
trainings. They never got to the third stage of
movement building – DEMONSTRATION.
Demonstration is about putting an inclusive
model on the ground in a specific neighborhood
where people can come and see the New. The
majority of middle class folk in our country will
not go “dark green” unless they can see
the new model of human settlement, the new and
better way of living, the new and healthier way of
growing local and buying local. Your neighbors have
to see your retrofitted house, your hoop greenhouse
where you grow thousands of seedlings to plant with
your neighbors.
They need to get a personal witness from you
that you are saving money on your fuel bills, that
you are eating better and healthier with your
backyard organic garden, that your children are
engaged with you and the entire family in planting
and harvesting wonderful veggies, fruits and herbs.
Nothing can ever replace the power of direct
personal experience. This is the key learning from
the field of accelerated learning, open space
technology and leadership groups from the field of
organizational development.
So then what can we do about reclaiming
corporate action in our time? I believe from forty
years as a volunteer, participant and consultant to
many social movement groups that the answer is
already present is we are willing to heed the
wisdom of the past. The four keys to building
corporate action come from great social movements
and from the fields of group social work, marketing
and fundraising.
THE FIRST KEY IS RECENCY. This principle means
that your activity and productivity on a team is a
function of how recently you have been involved.
People who are creating a community garden are most
motivated if they are currently engaged in the
work. As the weeks go by without their engagement
they become much less motivated. I was part of a
national men’s organization which studied
attrition and fall off in hundreds of our groups.
We found that groups meeting weekly had the very
highest retention rates. The rates dropped for
groups that met twice a month. And most groups
that met only monthly went out of being within
three years.
THE SECOND KEY IS FREQUENCY. This principle is
highly correlated with recency. It means that the
more frequent your engagement in a local green
group, the more likely it is that you will deepen
your engagement in on the ground action, in
participation on task forces and in giving money to
your local group.
THE THIRD KEY IS SEASONALITY. Earth Day USA got
this right by picking April 22nd for its thousands
of local earth day celebrations. People give the
most money to causes between Thanksgiving and mid
January due to Easter and other religious and
cultural celebrations. People give the least money
from June 15th to Labor Day when most of us kick
back, put our nonprofit mailings aside and go on
vacation. In the green movement with its focus on
being outside growing food, retrofitting houses,
the spring, summer and early fall are the very best
times to advance the movement.
THE FOURTH KEY IS SEGMENTATION. Did you know
when a new book arrives at Borders bookstore; there
are two and sometimes three or four different and
distinct book jackets. The publisher is using
segmentation and testing of the marketplace to see
which book jacket attracts the larges number of
buyers. Within the green movement, segmentation
could be used to build task forces based on
affinity – for example middle school children
and their teachers and parents creating a school
garden. Or another example would be creating a
task force of women on Preserving and Canning
fruits and vegetables. Segmentation relies on
affinity “birds of a feather flock
together”. A good example of this is African
American worship. Although racism has been
significantly reduced in religious denominations,
the reality is that even in highly integrated
neighborhoods, most African Americans prefer to
worship in black churches led by black pastors.
Style and culture often seem to us to be invisible
– but they are as hard as steel.
In conclusion, how is your local green group
showing up in terms of attendance at meetings?
Formation of task forces? Sustained engagement?
How are your team members doing in terms of
enjoying working together? Are you retaining
loyalty of volunteers and financial donors to your
cause? Your comments and feedback are welcome.
Send them to forrestecraver@gmail.com.
And good luck as you move forward in building the
movement for a better world.
©2010, Forrest
Craver
* * *
Man becomes great exactly in the degree to which
he works for the welfare
of his fellow man. - Mahatma Gandhi
Forrest
Craver has been doing men’s work for more than
20 years. He was senior interviewer for Wingspan:
Journal of the Male Spirit for many years. He has
led or co-led more than 40 retreats or workshops
for men including The Mankind Project, Men in
Recovery, and regional clergy retreats for United
Methodist and ELCA denominations. He is a lawyer
and a nationally recognized fundraising consultant
for nonprofit groups. He is the author of a short
book of Spiritual Poetry entitled “This Well
Has No Bottom” and is finishing a book about
intergenerational breakthrough approaches for boys
and men in American culture. His websites are
cravercreativeservices.com/and
transitioncolorado.ning.com/profile/forrestcraver
or eMail.He
lives and works in the Denver metro
area.
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