Community Organizing--Ecological Metaphor

Location. Location. Location.  true in real estate but also true to some degree in creativity, politics, innovation, and becoming rich and powerful.  When I was coming of age, breaking through the tiny terrarium of my high school that I thought had everything in it ever known to man or at least everything that was important, I was living in an outpost, Portland, Oregon.  In most any field if you learned the basics from books (reminder: no Google in those days), and engaged with a few professors or mentors you might just add a semicolon to the ever lasting story of ideas.  And you could be a star.  You know, big fish in a little puddle. 

But, if you stayed put two things would most likely happen:  you would not be challenged by people equally bright and much brighter than you; and no one would likely know anything about what you were doing.  If you came up with an "original" idea someone else was likely having it, or already moved on to the next idea or turned the idea into action, including translating it into billions, power, hot chicks, fame, or whatever turned them on, while you talked about it with other nobodies.  Maybe you even wrote it up (or painted it or videotaped it...whatever) and your circle of friends, colleagues or co-conspirators grew. If there was anyone within a hundred miles thinking at all like you, you would find each other.  Or you might have the "original" idea and write it down in a journal and your son or grandson would find it years later in the attic along with a "goony" map to buried treasure, and exclaimed,  "Jesus, Grandpa Fred invented the Internet before there was one!"   But, like so what? If you "invented" the internet by hooking two Osbornes with clothes wire, and called it Mugbook, and you were living in Boring or Drain, Oregon, no investors, and your only connection to Stanford was your second cousin who was a groundskeeper, then you got laughed at,  and had kick me signs taped to your nerd tee-shirt.

So you had to move to limited number of epicenters.  That might happen if you got accepted to the right college, or later when you just hit the road, like half the heroes of Hollywood films.   If you were on the west coast that meant moving to the Bay area.  On the east coast you had more choices:  Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., even college towns scattered through out the land like boutique hotels in the corn fields. 

I watched my friends move here and there, sometimes because Portland felt too small after a failed love affair.  They put miles between themselves and the memories.  Or they decided to "make a name for themselves," and moved to an epicenter.  I decided to stay in one place.  And one of my enduring heroes who has not let me down, Gary Snyder, pointed out how staying put was a courageous act that could save the planet.  As invaders we hardly know about the places we end up living.  We are driven by a aversion to being in the backwaters. literally or artistically or intellectually or entrepreneurially. What Snyder said is If you want to do one very important thing to save the planet you can stay in one place and embrace, learn about it, and love it but not to death.

    One day I realized I was a little like Forest Gump.  I seemed to be by chance or preference or by living on my own planet as someone said about my way of thinking, I ended up standing in a forest after a clear cut, or a meadow just when new plants emerged.  OK, I'm in metaphor land now.  I doubt I've ever been the first and only person in that meadow in spring or after a fire or clear cut.  Although the thing is very few of us are, if any.  There wasn't one Bill Gates.  There were probably hundreds of Bill Gates clones.  But, location, location, location.

And there's another part of the equation for who gets the big score; well actually two but they are often inter-related.  That is social network capital, and inherited social capital.  Let's just put aside actual inherited capital.  It goes without saying that if you start your life with oodles of cash, implementing ideas or getting published or a movie made, will be easier.  But we know stories about the other kinds of social capital.  George Bush, a C student, became president. Isn't America great.  Anyone can become anything they want if they just work hard. 

But, also think about universities.  We sent off our women folk to good universities so they could score higher in the gene pool.  Like the Blue whale that teaches its little kid where to cash in on the krill.  As I tell my students I've compared the curriculum for courses I teach with Harvard or Princeton, and its funny the textbooks are often the same, the content covered nearly identical.  Now why do you suppose the Harvard students will end up becoming corporate giants or whatever?  It's the value of the social network they create.  Then, just to make sure my students at Portland State University don't feel too bad I illustrate how it works by asking them a fictitious question, "I'm thinking of applying for a job at Intel (which has a big presence in Portland), can anyone help me...know someone who works there.?"  Inevitably out of a class of 30 at least 5-6 hands go up.  "OK," I add, now imagine asking that question in Burns Oregon (outpost town in far dessert eastern Oregon) "do you think there would be as many hands going up?"  Its called "weak ties" and is essential to how one gets a job, obtains investment capital, finds other creative people to make a movie with.

    I doubt I'm ever the first and only person to the rarefied spot on genius.  But, I related dearly to the movie, A Brilliant Mind.  OK, not because I am a possible Nobel Prize winner, but more because I sometimes feel like I can't tell if I really am in a secret lab or just a run down shed in the back yard.

    I wandered around Portland telling people about the coming world brain when there were maybe 20-30 others thinking like me, half of who were geniuses, half who might be as comfortable in One Flew over the cuckoo’s nest cuddling perpetual motion machines.   And then I though about ecology and how when there is a fire or clear cut there are early occupiers.  In this neck of the woods that would be plants like Fireweed.

We come in quickly, and occupy the vacant land and there's hardly anyone or any other species there.  Yes, the other term sometimes used here is early adapter.  But, its a little different.  I'll explain more in a minute.  But, first think through the succession.  Pioneering plants are followed by nurse trees, again in this neck of the woods that would be trees like alders, and then those are followed by the slow growing climax giant trees like Redwoods, Douglas Firs and Hemlocks.  In my metaphor, the later is clearly governmental institutions. Just leave aside the private sector for a moment. 

    Of course I love fireweeds.  I am one.  And I love that stage in development.  You can trust almost everyone that gravitates toward the new idea or action.  Not all, just more or most.  The snake oil salesmen come later.  But, its the nurse trees that intrigue me.  And I think that stage is dominated by women or men with strong feminist leanings.  I usually stand in the open field pointing to something that looks obvious to me.  Look look there's a world brain coming.  Don't you see it, like a tornado bearing down on us; the moon about to come from behind a cloud bank.  But, that seems to be what I know how to do best.  I see it coming.  I point it out and I can usually gather a few people to hear me out.  But, then I don't always know what to do next.  That's where the nurse trees come in.

The nurse stage takes people who have a balance of risk taking, nurturing, trust building, organizational skills--my sock drawer is a mess; theirs are organized, although probably not anally so.  That too comes later, you know bureaucracy.  When I was at the center of activities as the food movement took off in Portland the meetings were dominated by women. When I met with people who started the Portland Saturday Market I think it was all women.  At some point the nurse trees grow up creating shade for the institutions to take hold. 

    There is a corollary in my metaphor for understanding community development related to understanding the interaction between private, public and nonprofit or NGO sectors.  The NGO sector is not the same everywhere.  For example, in Japan NGOs are understood as the place where people volunteer.  You would need seek a career in the NGO sector.  You could probably count the number of people with PhDs on two hands working for NGOs in Japan.  In Thailand NGOs are considered adversarial.  That is true in America as well but the sector is large, at least as defined by tax codes.  Kind of like trying to understand how a dachshund and St. Bernard are all dogs.  But, there are people with PhDs working with NGOs in America.   But, NGOS, broadly speaking, can do things that neither the public or private sectors can.

A great example is the group EcoTrust, headquartered in Portland.  A brilliant and effective NGO with a high ratio of PhDs.  I listened to staff from Ecotrust one day describe their role in creating a fisheries zoning program in California.  The State wanted to establish water zoning that might in some ways parallel land use zoning.  But, they faced several problems.  To create the program they (the BIG they, government) would need to gain information from the field, so to speak; the experiential knowledge of the fishing people.  Not exactly the kind of information they wanted to share with "the man."  They entered into a contract with Ecotrust to gain that information.  Why?  Because they figured the fisher people might trust an NGO more than government.  So first potential quality of an NGO, trust.  And as a part of that knowledge gathering they needed to bring the people together, a wide variety of stakeholders:  the fisher people, wide variety of government agencies, corporations, brokers, wholesalers, retailers.  So, second quality, they needed to facilitate and "mobilize" people.  To carry out their contract Ecotrust developed a software program that would facilitate information gathering while protecting the confidential knowledge about fishing grounds, etc.  So a third quality:  entrepreneurship or innovation without a means to turn a profit.  So of course no private sector player motivated to develop it.

And you?  Are you a fireweed, nurse tree, or Hemlock?