February 2009

Clarity sharpens each day.  President Barack Obama is taking America on a remarkable journey.  His historic agenda will change our country.  The first leg, moving the pieces through Congress, demands enormous outside citizen pressure.  The Obama army recruited during the campaign is stationed across the country and poised to act.  Battle strategies are unfolding.  Whether shaped by political or community organizing is key.

A political campaign may run out of everything from money to enough votes but the supply of experts is endless.  Whether the person who walks in to buy a lawn sign or the caller with the perfect policy concept, experts stretch beyond the horizon.  I’m one of those people.

My own run for Portland City Council in 1992 (a race equivalent in size to running for Congress) and political volunteer work, including full-time on the Obama campaign in Oregon, does not make me an expert.  However, I have a perspective.

Obama for America is the best national campaign in history.  Efforts to elect candidates in races local to national will be influenced for a very long time by what it taught us.  Cohesion and brilliance at the national level fueled success at the local.

Political organizing is fanaticism made possible by a short time line-it ends Election Day.  Any desiring a military experience without enlisting need only be hired by a national campaign.  There is a clear chain of command-crystal clear (is there any other kind).  There is a deep loyalty to the cause expressed in 14 to 16 hour workdays seven days a week.

The relentless target:  voter contact.  From getting volunteers to knock on neighborhood doors to making telephone calls, campaign workers are valued by the numbers they produce.  That which does not grow the numbers has little value.

Clear objectives are also part of community organizing-keeping Wal Mart from building a store in your neighborhood, or seeking fairness for tenants.  Strategies are more relational-you get to know those you recruit.  Learning and planning is a more inclusive process.  From group wisdom come the best tactics.

I was most marked in my 8 months on the campaign by Barack Obama’s work to blend community organizing with the political version.  10,000 citizens, trained in a fused version of organizing, spent summer 2008 as full-time Obama for America volunteers.  One was a San Francisco psychologist who set aside his practice for the summer to live his commitment.  The pain of his struggle over pressure to produce numbers versus building relationships to foster stronger volunteer foundations was profound.  Both participants and paid staff judged the results of the Obama Fellows Program mixed.  It does not diminish the power of the concept.  Or its meaning now.

Achieving President Obama’s sweeping national agenda won’t happen in a short, definitive time line.  The power of personal connection and group wisdom is required for our longer, shared journey.  President Obama said often during his campaign, “If all we accomplish is winning an election, we will have failed.”  I believe he understands that San Francisco psychologist.

After many years of individual and group work I see a cornerstone for leadership:  an ability to step into the moment and understand its context.  To the cornerstone you add building blocks-capacity for complexity, effective process for decisions, inclusion, respect, ability to communicate.

It’s so long since hearing a President carry the tune of leadership we almost miss one with perfect pitch.  The last time we heard this music was election night.  It’s back on every channel.  President Obama took command of center stage last night the political equivalent of Luciano Pavarotti.

But hold on.  Don’t declare victory.  Don’t pop the champagne corks.  Leadership 2009 has another prerequisite:  us.  President Barack Obama conducts from the score of a working Democracy.  The sound is sweet only when we join the performance.  Not just as followers for our work requires leadership too.  President Obama builds the frame; we paint the picture.  Some colors applied by elected representatives while some come into view only with outside pressure.

“This is not about me.  It is about you.”  At first refrain candidate Obama sounds almost mystical.  As the fog now clears so does the symbiosis.  He is our inside out power when we are his outside in power.  We confront the next step on the revolutionary path to America’s founding ideals.

“We have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, the next election.  A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.  Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market.  People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway.  And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.  Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.”

American Democracy requires constant construction.  We see the beautiful house called America.  Pick up the hammer and we can live in it.

It is the behemoth of Oregon State Government.  Covering the waterfront between pre-natal and post mortem, the Department of Human Services employs 10,000.  It touches the lives of all Oregonians—nearly a third in direct services.  Human failure, death, and deep tragedy are part of its story.  Sacrifice, human kindness, and heroic efforts to protect and transform also shape DHS.

Politically, poverty generally delivers a zero sum gain.  The perspective:  human suffering is a black hole not likely to be filled by spending any sum of money.  Governors don’t want to waste political capitol defending mistakes in the delivery of complicated social services.  The cloud surrounding a child’s death in foster care has no silver lining.  Department leaders often work from a defensive posture aimed at deflecting criticism.

Programs designed at the federal level to grapple with poverty, child welfare, seniors, the disabled, drug abuse, health and mental health compose DHS.  In the design, each program functions in isolation.  The parts are disconnected from the sum of the whole.  Since the late 1980s it has been clear that the imposed structure works against the people it serves.

Studies of clients and services, small project examples, workshops with hundreds of social workers and their partners define the failure.  Client needs cross organizational structure.  Simultaneous interventions involving multiple programs produce the best results.  Pilot projects artfully configuring services yield stunning results.

DHS consumed my work life from 1989 to 2007.  In the mid 90s, I joined the effort to restructure DHS to conform to the new reality.  With this post serving as a primer, I’ll write articles from time to time on facets of the work.  The journey passes through many stops.  From bitter to sweet, from modest gains to failure the telling will be my own.  Integration a destination so elusive it may have been a mirage.

The Oregon Department of Human Services has responsibility for health and social services pre-birth to death.  Working on its reform I experienced brick walls capable of pounding learning through the thickest of skulls.  Example:  experts, the knowledge holders, the true insiders of a system are rarely agents of its radical change.  They have a perspective, an understanding critical to design reform.  For them to use it is an un-natural act.

The lesson haunts as strategies to save our economy unfold.  Heavy investors in the system we previously knew are asked to cure its fatal flaws.  By definition, radical strategies are required.

The word radical “relates to or affects the fundamental nature of something.”  It is characterized by departure from tradition.  In medicine, radical is “thorough and intended to be completely curative.”

Stated strategies for a reformed economic system aim at partial cures.  Salaries and bonuses controlled in the short term are easily abused in the long.  The debate on stimulus obfuscates.  Necessary focus on how much success requires that we spend circles the verbal drain of “pork.”

The consequences are defined:  the future may hold a catastrophic economic failure.  We push back from its edge with what growing intuition screams is inadequate.  Without pretending the expertise to write the details, a truth seems apparent.  Previous keepers of the status quo will miss the radical requirement fundamental to essential change.

When Abraham Lincoln joined numerous anti-slavery forces to establish the Republican Party, the Democrats were a regional entity.  Embracing the nation’s original sin, Democrats devolved to a Southern party.   150 years later that history knocks on the door of the elephant.

The Republican gang wars triggered by the ‘06 and ‘08 elections leave the radical right holding the party deed.  The story’s prequel was told in Oregon several years ago.  The once proud home of Republican giants Tom McCall and Mark Hatfield burned to the ground.  Like the race riots of the 60s, Republicans torched their own neighborhoods.

The first genuflection of the last person standing in a Republican primary is to the radical right.  Only when the geography of a campaign is small enough to match the Republican capacity for thought can they find happiness in a general election.  Statewide, anyone with an “R” after their name goes to bed early.  The hold the nose and vote strategies common in American politics no longer work.  Voting Republican now requires a HAZMAT suit.

There are some exceptions.  Ex-Senator Gordon Smith combined his personal fortune with a simple formula-be conservative to the applause of the base the first four years of the term and moderate the two years before a re-election effort.  Smith twice was an asterisk to an otherwise Democratic statewide vote.  In 2008, he melted in the Obama sun symbol.  Oregon turned its toss-up standing to blue.

Democrats may enjoy the shrinking elephant.  The celebration could be short-lived.  Our Constitution created the crucible through which our arguments journey to consensus.  Two national political parties are a crucial part of the infrastructure.  As it stands teetering on the rim of regionalism, Republicans reject the stimulus capital necessary for reconstruction.

President Obama’s desire for bipartisanship results from his understanding of the systems that power America.  The objective isn’t nice.  It is required.  His quest should be ours.

While it may not be here nor there, I know and like Sam Adams.  I feel pride in Portland’s choice of an openly gay Mayor.  That an untruth may have helped produce the result plunges our community into political purgatory.  Community consensus defines a betrayal of public trust as original sin.  Exacting just punishment produces community conflict.

At the resulting intersection I struggle with which way to turn.  I’m not even clear there is a right choice.  A sadness pervades this city we love whichever direction is taken.  Poised to confront a challenging new agenda for Portland, we instead keep company with deep nagging doubt.

Three things roam my thoughts:  the most damning aspect of the case is not that Sam lied but that he was willing to capture the young man in his web; if the Attorney General’s investigation discovers violations of law, Sam Adams should resign; and finally, we must find a new community standard for personal life issues regarding public officials.

In our culture we each own a very big toolbox to struggle with truth.  While important, it is not absolute.  Standards differ depending on who is involved.  Most would not tolerate Sam’s behavior in a teacher, coach or social worker.  Dispensation for sexual sin is granted those in sports and entertainment, and often for those in politics.

Public officials are responsible for a precious set of community building blocks.  Hope requires their public conduct exemplify our best.  It does not require that they surrender the right to privacy.  Living involves confronting the challenges of our human definition.  We must find community agreement that individual stories of legal sexual choices between consenting adults is private.  Public officials should adopt this standard.  Community gain with a public struggle does not match community loss.

Must we just pull out our recipes for lemonade?  Is more really before us?  What we individually and collectively conclude will make more than another pitcher of a sweet/sour drink.  We define not just community in Portland, Oregon, but ourselves.  The soul grows in the company of deep nagging doubt.

(Please read Paul Krugman’s New York Times column for today.)

There are rare moments in history where action is urgent and we can clearly see the necessary action.  We live in the middle of such a moment.

I plead for our alleged Congressional leaders to put away their violins.  For extra credit this plea is bipartisan.  Senators and Representatives you played those instruments long enough the past eight years.  You need to stop.

Democrats, stop following Republicans down the rabbit hole.  Your training over the past eight years was so effective your response today to their tired reasoning is Pavlovian.  Granted, Republicans are desperately concerned with recovery, but it’s their political fortune not repairing the country’s economy that they chase with the passion of a rejected lover.

We stand on the precipice of economic catastrophe.  Paint the picture it will:  job loss, absent health care, hungry bellies, crime, measurable human anguish.  This time does not call for further discourse and debate.  If our national capacity was up to it, perhaps.  But it isn’t.  The word for this time is action.  Pass the stimulus bill.

Fellow citizens, stock your memory of today’s Washington D.C.  You will need to draw from it in 2010.