“ALL” MEANS ALL
BUILDING SOMETHING NO ONE HAS SEEN
APRIL 4, 2017
John Johnston
Katy, Texas
“ALL” MEANS ALL
BUILDING SOMETHING NO ONE HAS SEEN
CHAPTER 1CHANGE 3
CHAPTER 2CHALLENGES 6
CHAPTER 3A NEW MODEL10
CHAPTER 4TRANSFORMING PINE RIDGE13
CHAPTER 5THE NINE TRANSFORMATION STEPS18
CHAPTER 6RURAL COMMUNITY TRANSFORMATION34
CHAPTER 7FREEDOM TO LEARN37
CHAPTER 8NEXT STEPS48
CHAPTER 1
CHANGE
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
A. THE THREE CHANGE QUESTIONS
Three questions drive every significant change effort. WHY is change necessary? WHAT would be better? HOW will this alternative be put in place?
Answers to WHY questions generate the most passion and energy, but generally are given only limited attention in papers, books, articles, presentations, discussions, plans, and program designs. Answers to WHAT questions are given the most attention. Answers to HOW questions are given the least attention. These priorities are misplaced.
Roughly 11% of the Chapters that follow are answers to WHY questions, 22% are answers to WHAT questions, and 66% are answers to HOW questions. This focus on HOW is by design. Answers to HOW questions do not automatically follow answers to WHY and WHAT questions. Wishing does not make it so. People need to know in detail HOW to make change happen. The more HOW ideas and suggestions they have to choose from the more likely they are to find HOW answers.
B. WHY IS CHANGE NECESSARY?
These soaring words from the Declaration of Independence are an important part of American history, but they tell only part of the story. These truths may have been self-evident in 1776 but less than half of the population enjoyed the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. There were exceptions, but generally only colonists who were free, adult, male, landowners, and members of the dominant church could vote and hold office. Only they had an expectation of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness that involved any degree of security, comfort, and respect.
There have always been Americans who believe that all means all---that all Americans should enjoy the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. People have been working to make this happen since 1776, and they have made substantial progress, particularly in the years from 1946 to 1976. However, the unintended consequence of those thirty years of vision driven success has been an increasingly powerful push-back that started in the early 1970s, and has steadily gained strength.
This push-back is now so powerful that government at all levels now serves the interests of wealthy people. A commitment to the common good has largely disappeared. The hopes and dreams of low and middle income families are increasingly ignored. Serious and growing environmental problems are not being addressed. War has become the solution of choice for foreign disputes, and violence for domestic ones. Justice is not blind. Economic opportunities are shrinking. And, ominously, the number of Americans who enjoy the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness is shrinking, not growing
C. WHAT WOULD BE BETTER?
It is time to create a new model that is different enough and powerful enough to reverse the major U.S. economic and political trends of the last 45 years. Instead of focusing on changing the people who have the most to lose financially and in terms of political power, it is time to focus on changing the people who have the least to lose. It is time to work at the levels that low and middle income Americans have always relied on in times of economic and political distress---their families and neighbors---but particularly the latter. With families now scattered, neighbors and neighborhoods are more important than ever before.
It is time to transform urban neighborhoods and rural communities. This is the best, most direct way to insure that all Americans enjoy the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. It is not necessary to begin this work at zero. Urban neighborhood and rural community transformation models are emerging across the U.S. and around the world.
To be different enough and powerful enough to make “the existing model obsolete” these transformed neighborhoods and communities must serve five ends. They must defuse the fear, stress, and anger that people are feeling. They must encourage a broad and growing commitment to the common good. They must involve and make effective use of the residents of urban neighborhoods and rural communities and the groups and organizations that work there. They must be designed in a way that other urban neighborhoods and rural communities can use this new, transformation model successfully.
D. HOW WILL THIS ALTERNATIVE BE PUT IN PLACE?
At least some key organizations involved in a transformation effort will need to progress through five increasingly sophisticated levels of treating everyone with dignity and respect, and doing the right thing right, the first time every time. Moving through Level 1, Competence, and Level 2, Excellence, will defuse the fear, stress, anger, and frustration, hostility, and need for scapegoats that people are feeling. This will energize and motivate everyone involved in this effort, and give their work a positive image. Moving through Level 3, Freedom, will allow residents and the people working in transformation efforts the freedom to open themselves to new ideas and new ways of thinking about and addressing transformation challenges. This, in turn, will make Level 4, Neighborhood Transformation, and Level 5, Neighborhood Control 5, initiatives possible.
Transforming an organization and neighborhood requires hundreds of ideas and insights. It also requires the will and good humor to separate the ideas and insights that move the transformation effort forward from those that do not. It helps to have a transformation mechanism to drive this work, and a transformation blueprint to organize it. Every transformation step involves learning, and every step must be repeated multiple times. Transformation is a journey, not a destination.
As described in Chapter 4 the following Transformation Blueprint is being used in the Pine Ridge neighborhood in Topeka, Kansas.
Transformation Blueprint
Step 1Decide to build something no one has seen
Step 2Start doing Big Picture thinking and don’t stop
Step 3Build a Transformation Mechanism
Step 4Adopt a Transformation Blueprint
Step 5Get clear on A---on where you are
Step 6Get clear on B---on where you are going
Step 7Build capacity
Step 8Set out on the journey
Step 9Analyze progress, make refinements, repeat Steps 1-9
CHAPTER 2
CHALLENGES
Understanding the seven challenges to be overcome is an essential beginning point for creating a new and better way to insure that all residents in an urban neighborhood or rural community enjoy the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
A. WEALTH AND POWER
In 1776 the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence applied to less than half of the population. Getting to the point that all means all promised to be a long and difficult task from this beginning point.
The challenge here has two parts. Either a different, better way needs to be found to get wealthy and powerful people to give up some of their wealth and power, or an alternative is needed that will close the all means all gap without requiring them to do so. This Chapter and the five that follow explore this second alternative in detail.
B. UNFAVORABLE NUMBERS
The people in the forefront of efforts to close the unalienable Rights gap in the U.S. have always been outnumbered roughly six to one. People’s resistance to change and their moral principles account for most of this disparity, but these are not mutually exclusive categories. There are also other, less significant reasons.
E. M. Rogers’ Theory of Innovations suggests that 16% of Americans (approximately 1 in 7) are either innovators (2.5%) or Early Adopters (13.5%), and the rest are resistant to change in varying degree. Coming at this from a different direction Lawrence Kohlberg estimates that 85% to 90% of Americans hold conventional, largely unexamined moral views that they have acquired from their everyday interactions with the people around them and from organizations, institutions, and media sources that affirm these views. This leaves roughly 10% to 15% of Americans (also approximately 1 in 7) who hold ethical principles they have developed largely independently.
A determined minority can make good things happen in spite of the odds they face. Generally, though, significant unalienable Rights gap closing initiatives have benefitted from external factors.
The thirty year period from 1946 to 1976 is an example. Adjusted for inflation average household income in the U.S grew every year from 1946 to 1974. This and the lift provided by the end of the Depression and World War II, produced a population in the 1950s and 1960s that was largely optimistic and committed to the common good. During this period, a variety of programs and initiatives were started that directly helped low and moderate income families pursue their core hopes and dreams---meeting their basic needs, making a living, having a decent place to live, obtaining a quality education for themselves and their children, having social and recreation opportunities, and enjoying good health. Indirectly, these families benefited from progressive changes in environment, peace, justice, and economic opportunity laws, regulations, and practices.
The numbers challenge is to identify and encourage social trends and movements that complement the efforts of a small but determined number of people who are working to insure that all means all means all.
C. RESISTANCE TO CHANGE
The fact that people are aware that most change efforts fail is a barrier to transforming urban neighborhoods and rural communities. Individuals that set out to change something about themselves or their lives rarely succeed in doing so, at least in the long term. Most organizations have a history of failed change efforts, and all they have to show for them are unused strategic plans, consultant reports that were ignored, and to-do lists with very little checked off. Initiatives designed to improve poorly run organizations and problem ridden urban neighborhoods and rural communities are particularly prone to failure.
The challenge here is to find ways to create alternatives that move people beyond their reluctance to change. Offering people the opportunity to build something no one has seen before is one way to do this.
D. PUSH BACK BY WEALTHY AND POWERFUL PEOPLE
In the early 1970s wealthy and powerful Americans began to push back against the progressive cultural, legislative, and regulatory changes of the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. This push back was framed as an effort to preserve and enhance the free enterprise system, but it also had to do with creating the conditions in which wealthy and powerful people could get wealthier and more powerful. Environmental concerns, peace, justice, and economic opportunity for all are secondary considerations for free enterprise advocates.
The Powell Memorandum of August 23, 1971 provided the rationale and a comprehensive set of action steps for this push back. Among other suggests Powell advocated using resources provided by wealthy people to encourage media, universities and college faculty, foundations, think tanks, speakers, authors, writers, K-12 schools, non-profit organizations, and government at all levels to promote the use of the free enterprise system as a source of values, and as a mechanism for apportioning and sanctioning wealth.
Clearly, the course of action Powell set out was successful. The challenge here is find ways to counter this success. One likely avenue is to dramatize the damage being done by income inequality.
E. PUSH BACK BY LOW AND MIDDLE INCOME PEOPLE---PART 1
In 1975 the regular, annual post-war increase in average U.S. household income stopped. Adjusted for inflation the incomes of low and middle income households today are essentially what they were more than forty years ago, which suggests that virtually all of the productivity gains since then have gone to wealthy people. Income inequality has grown steadily during this period.
Despite these developments millions of low and middle income Americans have joined wealthy people in an increasingly successful push back against the progressive cultural, legislative, and regulatory changes of the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. They start from different income levels, and they may have different long-term income expectations, but clearly many low and middle income people share the conviction of wealthy people that an economy unfettered by government taxation, environmental protection requirements, social costs, and transparency requirements is more likely to produce economic benefits for everyone than an economy without these characteristics. Unfortunately for these low and middle income people, there is substantial evidence that suggests that this economic model increases their tax burden, makes them less healthy, more fearful, more stressed, and reduces their upward mobility prospects.
The challenge here is to find ways to encourage low and middle income Americans to abandon their support for a role for government that is not in their best interests.
F. PUSH BACK BY LOW AND MIDDLE INCOME PEOPLE---PART 2
Over the past decade the economic reasons low and middle have been pushing back against post-World War II cultural, legislative, and regulatory changes have largely given way to non-economic reasons. Many low and middle income people now share an unshakeable belief that the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s programs and initiatives that helped people pursue their core hopes and dreams, and the progressive changes in environment, peace, justice, and economic opportunity laws, regulations, and practices from that period pose a threat to their way of life and that of their families, friends, and neighbors.
They see these changes as an affront to their religion and culture. They feel that they are not being treated with the dignity and respect, and that their values and religious beliefs are being questioned and even mocked. They consider that they are being unfairly labeled as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and more. They believe that the economic, political, and social systems are rigged and deeply unfair to them in many ways. They recognize that they are losing ground financially, and they perceive, correctly, that their children will not do as well as they have. It is understandable that these Americans are fearful, stressed, frustrated, angry, hostile to government, and looking for someone to blame.
These grievances run deep. As voters, candidates for office, and office holders, these aggrieved Americans waste no time quickly and systematically punishing the people they perceive have punished and disadvantaged them for decades.
The challenge here is to find ways to demonstrate that closing the all means all gap is not a zero sum game in which the number of winners must match the number of losers. Instead, it is a way forward in which everyone wins.
G. POLITICAL REALITIES
In America candidates for elected office must raise stunning sums of money to run competitive races. What candidates offer major campaign contributors has changed little over the past 40 years. They tell them sometimes in code and sometimes openly that they will be responsive to their concerns, increase their incomes, lower their taxes, reduce regulations and oversight, and whenever possible shift financial, environmental, and social costs from businesses and wealthy people to low and middle income people.
Elected officials who run on a platform of letting the free market and the traits of individuals determine economic winners and losers have little to offer low and middle income persons that is of financial benefit. If taxes are reduced for wealthy people programs and services for low and middle income people must be cut or their taxes raised. If individual initiative is the criterion for financial and social success there is no need or reason to offer direct or indirect assistance to low and middle income people. (Not incidentally, this justifies ignoring the competitive advantages that accrue to children born into wealth, and the competitive disadvantages that accrue to children born into families of modest or limited means.)
Candidates for office and elected officials can and do offer non-wealthy people a variety of non-financial benefits. They offer support for a variety of social issues---anti-abortion initiatives, transgender bathroom bills, gun rights, immigration enforcement, criminalizing drug use, etc. They offer scapegoats---government employees, professors, terrorists, immigrants, minorities, welfare queens, tree huggers, abortionists, hippies, gays, and more. They offer to dislike, hate or, more recently, punish the people they have been instrumental in getting low and moderate income people to dislike or hate. They assure low and middle income people that they are badly treated. And, they support federal, state, and local legislation that may or may not pass and, if it does, may or may not be deemed constitutional that has broad support among people who feel they are not being respected and treated right.