Global Research Centrum: Chicago, GH, Social Methods School 12­13­74

I want to call these methodologies the framing methods. We now see that the comprehensive development plan, or the 5th City Model, is not the tactical system but the practical vision The 5th City Model consists of the economic, education, symbol, style and political categories. There are structures underneath that. While 5th City has put flesh on these, we know that this must be a contentless screen through which you can look at a community. This practical vision gives you permission to see the Indicative of that community, the eyes to uncover the possibi`4ities and the necessary directions for the future

This model is not the practical, tactical system. You can get lost in setting things in motion and not do the community. We are concerned about doing the world or doing the community. The practical vision provides insights into what is needed. From these insights, you can build a tactical system. The tactical system is very practical, and although it varies from place to place, the methodologies used are common.

In Fifth City, for example, the contradiction was the cultural. People needed a new story about their life. Without a new story, they would never move. When we went to Australia, we saw immediately that it did not matter how many imaginal bells we rang for the Aboriginals. These people would not move into the future until they could stand on their feet economically and get off the dole. So our model had to begin with the economic. We got 5000 head of sheep, 200 herd of cattle, started a garden, to allow these people to begin to move into the future.

We are doing the world. This is the screen. This is the practical vision. This is your vision of the new community, the primal community. This is the tactical system to get that job done. We intend to do global demonstrations ­­ 24 around the world ­­ as biteable illustrations that release people to see possibilities. The world is blocked today in it's belief that there is no possibility. In stating this, we have to realize that we are the social demonstration to be in with. You and I do not have a mission out in the world; we are the mission. We are the social demonstration of the new man, the new world, the new community. This is the starting point. Then we must provide the bitable illustrations that people can respond to.

People do not respond simply to imaginal stories, although It is still an important part of our task. India is going to respond to social demonstration when they see that they can move and reduplicate. None of our social demonstrations are important in themselves. What Is crucial is the net.

I can get very excited about Uptown and spend the rest of my life here. There is a lot of pain, struggle and heartache, but I have to confess it is fun. But Uptown and Podunk Hollow are not important. What is important is the net. You probably have to write that across your mirror as a reminder, for the local begins to envelop you until the local is the only crucial thing in life. You can Justify the universe from that position but the impact lies in creating a snowball that rolls down a mountain, gathering steam and more snow until it becomes inclusive.

Our aim is human development. Our aim is depth change. We are serious when we say that we are out to change the world and that we are a force with that possibility. We do not want a string of successful projects. Perhaps that would be some measure of success. But what difference does it make? The net jars the imagination of the world and changes human life.

Our turn to the world has made the framing methodology more important4 We needed deeper sophistication to demonstrate that we are local men who know how to be local men. We are not outside experts. We are local man, who brood through and struggle with a situation. We learn that we could not do Fifth City by living in the suburbs. We lived with the people, shared their sweat:, their anxieties, and they knew that their fate was our fate too.

A second dimension of sophistication is the capability of walking with kings, for the sake of getting the task done on the local level. A third dimension, the one that holds things together, is that you are the revolutionary. You do not lose your soul to either one.

Another key to the framing methodology lies in grasping clearly the shifts in revolutionary forces with possibilities for release in our time. The economic and cultural are the innovative forces today. It is difficult for people with disestablishment postures like myself to accept the fact that people of the Royal Bank of Canada have a vision, social passion and the willingness to risk innovative approaches to renew local community. The "new businesses" know that their role has changed. Their primary responsibility is no longer the bottom line of an annual report, but the state of the world.

The political is not as crucial as it once was. You have to come at that indirectly. When economic forces begin to move, the political forces will say "yes" to it. The political forces have relinquished the innovative role and have become the nodders in society now. A crucial aspect of grasping the framing methodologies lies in stating our role. Listed next are the ten actualizing principles.

First, we are not­for­profit, not only as a not­for-profit organization, but in the depths of our being, we are not­for­profit. We are not out to make a living by renewing a community. We are not an agency that works in local community for salaries, jobs, or to make a profit by developing that community. Our life is developing new community. That means we can do it cheaply; Majuro is $5000. We can stretch contributions to create additional projects.

We took government money to do the 5th City Preschool. We did three preschools instead of only one. We had to hide the kids in the bomb shelter ­ sometimes, because the rules said we were only to do one preschool. The government knew all the time that we were doing three schools and were pleased with it, but for inspection's sake we had to go through the motions.

Secondly, we stress implementation, not planning of community development. There are many instances of people paying thousands of dollars for a development plan. Delightful reading, if you have the time, but nothing ever happens because the plans do not include implementary tactics. This occurred in Majuro when folk with a liberal, bourgeois, U.S. planning mindset, studied the housing situation there and concluded, "Majuro needs suburban houses like we have in the U.S." But there was no interest for that kind of home in Majuro.

In each part of indicative battle planning, you do not depend on the last part. In doing your proposals, you go back to the actual situation. You build a new model at every step.

Secondly, our model includes the rational and the intuitive. We know that a model that is Just rational is wrong, because life is not that way. It is necessary to bring your intuitions into planning. Swirling, gapping, and other methods are designed to bring your intuitional devices and sensitivities to bear upon the rational plans.

Third, we are Grassroots Engagement and Participation. We intend to create communities in which the grassroots citizens can grasp their destiny, Plan and move with it.

We are out, fourthly to equip local man with methods. We do not come with expertise in a cul­de­sac. We are willing to sell our methods and walk out of the community with them still in our briefcases. We are out to let a community steal everything we know.

Fifth, we are centering on methods of corporate action, tactical thinking, and motivated being. These three methods are the key to any human development anywhere in the world.

Sixth, we are after comprehensive development. The economic and social are interrelated. You cannot develop a community economically without developing the social also.

Seventh, we see ourselves working within structures of society, with structural relationships. We are out to rebalance local communities (both the public and the private sectors) so that the federal and local structures can play their proper roles. Federal and regional structures exist to serve the local community. Yet today, they have no way to serve the local. The genius in 5th City was in enabling the local to begin using those structures. Instead of demonstrating in front of Mayor Daley's office, 5th City discovered how to work with the structures to get their garbage collected, and to get city and federal funds released for use where the money was needed. You are after structural renewal. You are out to recreate structures, to make them viable. That is revolutionary.

Then, eighth, you work with building inclusive local leadership. There is symbolic leadership, business leadership and bureaucratic leadership. You are out to recreate their roles so they can function.

The ninth actuating principle involves distinguishing between the practical vision and the tactical systems. We talked about this earlier.

Tenth is the role miracles play In getting social demonstration quickly off the ground. We are clear that life is Interrelated and unless everything happens at the same time, change does not take place. A community is not standing on Its own feet as lung as it is dependent on this program, that program, this expert e~ that group. it is only when a community sees the possibility of the comprehensive that they begin to move. Most important is the image that anything you do is done on behalf of the whole globe.

These are the ten principles of the framing model. I am going to call the model of social demonstration the core. That model emerges from the entire indicative battleplanning process. The tactics you then build must be all-inclusive and must communicate possibility. You can then discern the miracles needed to get that tactical system moving.

We will work with the tactical system of Majuro as an example of this process. The categories for Majuro are the training arena, the social arena and the economic arena. The emphasis in Majuro is on training and creating a new educational system. Practical education is needed. A preschool and a demonstration high school are planned in the arena of formal education.

Practical research in giving the people expertise to run business enterprises is the key economic tactic. The social arena includes recovery of the Marshallese heritage and adult education.

At this stage it is possible to list the miracles needed to get that tactical system underway. Miracles are the launching dynamics that catalyze structural change. We are structural revolutionaries but we will never change a structure. Society will do that. You are just releasing the dynamic that lets the structures be changed.

The Marshallese people do not have the faintest notion what a school should be. If you set up a new school, they will not know any more than when they started. You are out to have the dramatic demonstration of them working shoulder to shoulder with you through the process of curriculum building and all the struggles of building a school. You let that kind of miracle happen, get that dynamic into being, and you can be sure that structures of education are going to be invented.

Another aspect of this Is the core, your local revolutionaries­­and you could not live without them. We would not have been able to move in Majuro without people to go in there and do a miracle. The core took a corporation a half million dollars in debt, and in one year turned it into a profit­making organization. They are paying S89,000 on the first part of that debt this December. In the process, they performed a miracle. This is the only company in Micronesia that is earning a profit. The people stand up and say, "We can do it. Because of this, we were invited to do a consult which brought the kind of authorization that we had to have to begin to move in that situation.

The keys to your framing, therefore, are your models and authorization. You need a nod to do your work. Authorization puts you inside the channels where a community works and makes decisions on the local and inclusive level. We do not understand very much about this. Authorization Is crucial. That is the way a community maintains itself and moves on. It is not a matter of villain versus heroes. It is a very practical issue of how a community operates. In many cases, these authorization dynamics are not as self-conscious as I expected them to be. We need to discern that We will talk about this later.

Next, you need to build a new set of tactics to bring your frame into being. Let's look at what we are calling the instruments in the Majuro tactical system. One is MCAA. Then TASC, an association of businessmen who can do volume buying and volume cooperating to be a big business instead of a bunch of small ones. Third, a committee of one hundred local people who signed a document of endorsement, putting their life's blood behind this job. Then, the focal government, or Nitijella, and the district administration. I am calling this the local, social instrument of renewal. It might be an organization, an alliance of people or some sort of gathering. It is the place where the social concerns of the community can be focused in a structural way, expressing everyone's participation.

The same is true in the economic arena. TASC is an inclusive instrument which focuses the economic and pushes them toward effective operation. In Majuro, everyone has their own box of Tide. It is sold in about 50 different stores. This meant the price was high because it was ordered in small quantities. Now everybody buys in one order of Tide; then it is distributed at remarkable savings. This tactic allowed the economic structures to see their own power. They saw a way to move together not only to buy Tide, but to redevelop their economic life.

Here is the local government, which is crucial in giving a nod and participating in the decisions that are made. When there is a consensus on needed action by these other groups, the local government has a way to be accountable to their people. This committee of 100 people is close to guilding activity.

Then, you need to find the resources to enable this operation­regional, federal, corporation and foundation resources. But first you build the local base. You do not dream up something to do on a local level and then find a sugardaddy to pay you to do it. Nobody is going to be interested in that. If you can say that 100 people have put their lives into this, it means more than their signatures on a piece of paper. It means that their funds, and these instruments, have begun to pour their economic resources into that.

The leaders of Majuro have decided to raise one million dollars for their development. You can image the power they have when they say TO a foundation or the federal government, "These people have committed one million dollars to do this. The total cost is this and we would like this contribution from you." There is a new kind of seriousness about this new possibility to move

That is the frame through which you launch your miracles and develop your tactics. It is a matter of developing relationships. You are taking the relationships of the local to the government, the relationships of the federal to the regional, and pulling then, all into one focus upon that local situation. You are also relating the economic to the social. Putting all the young men in Majuro on an LST and training them, may create new economic resources. But at the same time, they will become new human beings who can build a new society.

Finally, you have recreated genuine roles for the local, regional and federal levels and provided a rational way for them to participate in developing human society. That is why all these governments were originally created and why everyone of them hungers to be useful.

Framing is an inclusive intent. It brings the world's energies into focus and lets it participate in renewing community. You are out to do the whole at once and you do it on a shoestring. It will take a million dollars to launch all those miracles in the Marshall Islands. You may think that is a lot, but the federal budget for that part of the world is 70 million dollars. It goes down the drain every year on things the government and the local people will tell you accomplish nothing.

When you show them a one million dollar figure, they appreciate it, especially when you have demonstrated that your plan is practically possible. You demonstrate it by your tactics, the proposals and through just doing the homework that needs to be done.

Detailed care is required. You cannot be sloppy. These government people do an awful lot of homework. When we said we needed these kind of ships, they pointed out that there are two of them in Norfolk, Va., one in Guam that needs motor repairs, one in Hawaii that has to be repainted before it can go, and so on. You need to know the cost, how long it takes to get the boats there. You tell them we have people to supply that labor to get the job done. If you lay out specific requirements. someone will listen to you.

We are practical visionaries. We are finding English professors, and all kinds of people who have forgotten that they are great mechanics or farmers. There is a new level of gifts to pour back into this. It is Important to see that we are building the power centers. We are enabling the power that exists to be shifted to the functions that it needs to play. That takes some very clever doing.

In Majuro we discerned the power dynamics were In the political arena­­ the district government, and in the business arena­­the economic leaders. In the symbolic arena it was the Iroij, equivalent to kings­the tribal leaders. The Iroij have been frustrated for ears, trying to renew the islands. You give them back their roles to develop the country. I suspect when you find the symbolic, the political a~, economic leaders in your communities, you will find a bunch of frustrated people. Their passion may have soured into cynicism, but behind that cynicism is a deep reservoir of passion that practical vision can release.

In order to relate to these power centers, you must find and use their channels of contact. You become clear about these channels when you visit someone like Clement Stone. He always asks if you have checked with Bob, Jim, Bill, Sue, Betty. You know that as soon as you walk out of that office, he is going to call Bob, Jim, Bill, Sue and Betty and ask, "What do you know about these people." When you discover this, you thank him and put these people on your list to be seen immediately.

There is protocol within these circuits. Somebody who has a nice proposal and runs over to the mayor's office is just liable to have it be permanently "misfiled," For there are people you go to see first, who you check with, and who you honor.

The discernible points of power are not always very self-conscious, but they operate in a rather self-conscious way. There are information gathering circuits. Most leaders have people who they check just about anything with. There are the people they talk to when they make decisions, and these are not necessarily the same people.

Unless you have covered these bases fairly well, and demonstrated integrity within their structures, they are not going to pay a great deal of attention to you. Our positive job is discerning those circuits so they are once again given a creative role to play.

So many of these circuits play a negative role of trying to protect the status quo. Recreating possibility for those people to work at the creation of their society is an exciting task for them and a very practical job for us to do.

Cultivation of these people does not involve taking them out to dinner and shows. These people are interested in work. You must present a hard plan that you know backwards and upside down. You must know exactly what you are going to ask of them in order for them to begin to function. We have a lot to learn here. We cannot create a nice set of tactics and use that to cultivate community leaders. We need to do a lot of field work first.

I want to say one last word about the core and the revolutionary stance. It is painful to know that when you work in those channels, you polish a lot of boots. You go at 2:00 rather than when you feel like It because this is the appointment time the establishment set up. But you are not out to do that person's bidding. You are not out to do what the establishment wants done. You are a revolutionary.

If I can speak mythologically for a moment, the only thing you are out to do is the Lord's will. You are out to do what history demands. If you are serious about getting that job done, you do not tell that person what the Lord's will is for him and expect any results. You have to be subtle steel. You see what is necessary to satisfy that dimension in order to get the revolutionary program into history.

That is the job of the core. We are about the serious business of human development. It takes wisdom and it takes the mythology of framing to see how to get those tactics and miracle system into being. I think you will have an exciting time working in those arenas.

­­George Holcombe

12/13/74