[Springboard] The Necessity for r Collective Action Forrest Craver

[Forrest Craver]

*COLLECTIVE ACTION: A MISSING ELEMENT IN THE GREEN MOVEMENT
*



These Amish farmers, working in Lancaster, Pa, are following a centuries old
tradition of collective 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 he 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 l 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 need for collective 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 inter-generational 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/forrestcraver for numerous blog
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? and 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 at gmail.com.
And good luck as you move forward in building the movement for a better
world.
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