Newt Gingrich Becomes Saul Alinsky

I sat listening to Newt Gingrich speaking after the results were announced in the Florida primary. Stunning. The critic of Barack Obama as a follower of the principals of Saul Alinsky announced that he was going to run a peoples' campaign against Wall St., against money, and against government and those in power. It's all very interesting because he's following all of the tactics taught and promoted by Alinsky. Creating conflict and tension between him and the people he opposes is right out of the community organizers handbook. He urged people to use social media and bring about his election. This is what makes politics interesting. Newt will fight on, perhaps as the conservative community organizer. We'll see.

Capitalizing On Anger

Over the past week or so I've been thinking a lot about the anger that we've all been seeing in politics. It seems to me that we've entered a dangerous time. People are hurting, systems are broken, government's failure is less about reform at this point and more about structural change. There are many people who remain angry with the cultural shifts that occurred as a result of the politics of the 60's and who would like to blame that shift for where we are today. I happen to think that's an incorrect analyses but it is what it is as they say. People are without work and many have lost their homes. Most of us feel some level of deep seated insecurity. It doesn't really matter if you're just starting out with college debt or if you're planning or in the midst of retirement. There's an uneasiness and yes, there's an anger.

Last week I watched Governor Andrew Cuomo from my home state of New York deliver his annual budget. That's when I first saw and realized how anger was such a driving force. He hit all of the anger hot buttons - teachers, the educational system in general, inefficient government, loss of jobs, government mandates, higher taxes and oh yes, executive compensation in non profits (pigs at the trough as it were - at least from his perspective). His presentation frustrated me and I wasn't really sure why, but I could see and feel the anger level rising as he presented the various ills that residents of New York State have been complaining about for years. And I saw an anger in him that I suggest isn't very healthy.

Later in the week I watched the Republican debate in South Carolina and guess what - I saw it again, real anger and lots of hot buttons pushed especially by Newt Gingrich. Mixed with this anger was anger at people and constituencies. There was also some real meanness mixed in. Over the weekend I watched Chris Christie, the Governor of New Jersey, on a couple of different occasions and realized here was another fellow representing or at least spouting about all of those anger issues. The same bag that Cuomo and Gingrich were reaching into, pulling out items that they all know are driving us crazy.

For a while I was confused. How could it be that all of these politicians were saying such similar things? Aren't they miles apart on issues and proposed solutions? Then it hit me and I felt so stupid. These three, and there are plenty more, politicians, on different sides of many issues, are playing to our anger and insecurity. They've figured out how to capitalize on anger. They want us to cheer them on as they go on and on about everything that's wrong with the system, the economy and even us.

I think that we should all be very careful with this political show and rhetoric, particularly with Cuomo and Christie who are already in power and governing. I really do worry about our most vulnerable people when I listen to the hot button anger from these two especially. Times are tough but they're really tough and will get tougher for the sick, the frail, the poor, the elderly and people with disabilities. These are easy audiences to leave out. They are an inconvenience of sorts when you're reinventing government and feeding into the anger of the electorate.

Now there's one other thing that no one seems to want to talk about relative to all three of these people - Gingrich, Cuomo and Christie and by the way, you may like these guys and their toughness. Tough times call for tough guys afterall. But here's the thing and it's what not too many people talk about. They're all, what appear to be, bullies. They really are. Listen to the rhetoric. Listen to how they portray the opposition. Listen to how they put down someone asking a simple question or someone who doesn't agree. Cuomo takes on school superintendents, school board members, non profit executives and many others and presents them as down right evil. Gingrich and Christie do the same. They beat up people who they know don't have the same forum. And guess what is so crazy? We have laws against bullying and at least two of these people are supposed to be part of enforcing them! It's not good for any of us and we know it. But the red meat aspect keeps drawing us back to the table. Sometimes, we find ourselves cheering them on and we become as bad as they are.

Remember, violence is not just physical. Words play and important part in how we do violence to each other or to groups of people. Let's all take some responsibility in trying to tone down this angry rhetoric from politicians and the electorate.

Martin Luther King, Jr. An Example of Great Leadership

Today, January 16, 2012, we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. I've written here about leadership and the qualities that we find in great leaders. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great leader and we should really reflect on that leadership.

I was a young college student when demonstrations for voter registration were going on in Selma, Alabama. The ensuing violence by police against protesters caused me to travel to Selma to join and support people who were demonstrating for one of the most basic rights in a democracy, the right to vote. In that brief moment in history, I was able to watch Martin Luther King, Jr. in action. I didn't know what I know now. I didn't understand very much about leadership or how you got things done even when you were frightened or when you were mad as hell. I only saw him briefly in the time that I was there because he was shuttling back and forth between Selma and Montgomery negotiating with state and federal officials about court orders and bans on marching. He was busy strategizing and making sure that whatever happened, happened well and sent the right message. He was meeting with young people from the Student Non Violent Coordinating Council and trying to hold together the coalition of radical young people and the more traditional or moderate older generation at the time. He was also dealing with three murders of people supporting the demonstrations at the time. None of these were easy tasks and as I and others have had the benefit of time and history to review his actions, his conversations and his dreams, it has become much clearer what a true leader he was.

King had his doubts throughout his time as a leader. He wondered, why me? He may have even hoped for someone else. But he had too many gifts. First and foremost he was a great orator. He knew words and understood their power. But it wasn't just the words. Oh no, it was the delivery. It was the passion and the emotion of words like these - "History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."

There was always a call to arms. Non violent arms to be sure because Dr. King understood and embraced non violence. But he evolved in this area too. Vietnam was one of his biggest challenges. To speak out or not. He feared tying the civil rights movement to the anti war movement but he knew and understood that it was inevitable and he spoke eloquently about the harm the war was doing to both countries - Vietnam and the United States.

Interestingly, his leadership was sought out. People, groups, politicians and movements looked to Dr. King as a voice. Great leaders should expect to be sought out. They should also expect to struggle with decisions about how involved they should be or become in this cause or that.

We can all continue to learn a lot from Martin Luther King, Jr. Young and old should study his words and review his actions. His memory along with so many others needs to be brought forward and celebrated. What do we have after all, if our memory is lost?

So I end with this quote from Dr, King - "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable....Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle: the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals."

Trying To Turn A Prison Into A Community Support Facility - What's Wrong With That Picture?

On December 30, 2011 in the late afternoon, an article appeared in the NY Times announcing that an investigation had been released by the Inspector General's office on abuse and neglect at the state run Valley Ridge Center for Intensive Treatment in Norwich, NY. The report and investigation were done in conjunction with the NYS Commission on Quality of Care and as a followup to a request by the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities.

When I first saw the article and when I opened the report I thought, finally we're going to see a professional investigative report rather then innuendo and inferences. I began to read and quickly realized that there was a new and perhaps a bigger problem. I want to be clear, the report is professionally done and tries to get at root causes and issues. The report is also hard to read because the allegations are brutal, the language is rough and most readers will know in their hearts that very bad things happened at Valley Ridge. The report is here (click here) so you can go to it and read it on your own. Prepare yourself.

I'll let people better then me be the judge relative to the report and it's conclusions, but here is the bigger concern that jumped out at me almost immediately and I think it's the basis for a lot of issues in NY's system of support for people with developmental and a number of other disabilities. Valley Ridge is a correctional facility disguised as a community support residential facility - plain and simple. Valley Ridge is a correctional facility run by the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities not the Department of Corrections - plain and simple. A lot of people will attempt to deny this and argue that it's not really the case. But it is. Somehow New York State has concluded that people with developmental disabilities, who may and I emphasis may have committed serious and dangerous crimes, are better served by the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities then in the correctional system. Maybe they are correct, maybe not. New York State, the courts and state agencies have concluded that it's ok to incarcerate these people with no real sentencing guidelines either. They will remain until what - they get better, someone will take them in another setting, they batter and bruise or get battered and bruised themselves? All in the name of "it's better then the alternative". I really hope there's someone thinking about if that's true or not. I tend to think not.

I've had some experiences with jails and prisons. They are brutal and difficult places where thousands of men and women are locked up. There are many who will argue that they're meant to be that way - hard places and hard time - and frankly it really doesn't matter if you're a violent or non-violent offender or someone with a developmental disability who broke the law. But the bottom line is, no matter what anyone tells you, they are institutions that are based on control and protection of society as well as the protection of corrections staff. That's the focus everyday. How much abuse and neglect do you think takes place in a prison facility? Who really cares?

So we have Valley Ridge and other facilities like it. The state builds units that look like homes with congregate settings. We surround these facilities with 10-14' high fences with razor barbed wire on top. We have security lock downs and bed counts at shift changes. We hire staff and then try to model them and these facilities after a model of community supports in residential homes. It just doesn't work. It doesn't and we shouldn't be surprised. Perhaps we should be shocked or angry but we shouldn't be surprised.

And worse yet, I don't have the answer. I don't know if anyone else does either. But we have to call it as we see it and at least begin thinking about what the answer may be. The biggest reason we have to figure this out is because as things stand now, the people in these facilities will end up continuing to hurt or be hurt. There have to be serious discussions and planning about behavioral supports. Supports that are based on meaningful change vs power struggles. Power struggles lead to confrontations and potentially to violent behavior by both parties.

This report is extremely important if it helps us get at these basic concepts and issues.

Why Is Collaboration So Hard?

Starting a blog entry with a question is always an interesting approach. It probably implies to the reader that if they read on, there's an answer to the question. Well I have to be honest upfront. I don't have an answer to this one but I have some ideas and I do know it's a really important question for lots of people who are trying to figure out better and more efficient ways to get things done. If I do nothing else here, I'd like to think that people will be better off by just giving some real thought to this question.

It doesn't matter if you're a small business, a large business, a human service agency, a not for profit, a county or a state - the question is one confronting everyone. Deep down, we all know we need to collaborate. In reality we already do to a great extent. It's how we get things done on a daily basis. We talk to other people and entities and we move through this complicated world with joint efforts all the time.

But something happens when we talk about and attempt what I would call real and meaningful collaboration. Barriers go up like shields on the Starship Enterprise. It's pretty natural I would guess. Your thing is yours and there is a need for protection. It's kind of like a survival instinct and that may be a good part of that answer I didn't think we'd get to - it's really hard, first and foremost, because of our own or our organization's need for or perception of need for survival.

So how can we make it easier or what happens in the collaborative process that breeds some level of success. Well for starters, trust is a huge issue. For those shields to come down just a bit, trust really needs to be developed, discussed and practiced. Building trust is a process and it's also based on reality and expierience. People have to be willing to spend time with each other, formal and informal. People have to feel each other out, get to know each other, test each other, potentially get upset with each other and makeup. When we talk about collaboration of any kind, we're really talking about relationships, organizational and personal.

So what else gets in the way besides trust? Cultural differences, beliefs and values are usually big issues for all of us, so they have to be identified and talked about. The idea isn't who's are best, the idea is to understand and talk about these differences. In the discussion people identify what they can or can't change, what they do and don't like, what they can or can't live with and it's all good information to have.

To me though, the biggest issue that confronts and often times stops collaboration is this - ego, ego, ego! Ego of the person, ego of the organization and so on. The first sign is always how personal things are or how personal they become. Who's idea is it? Who's name will be on the idea, program or product? It's mine/ours, not yours. It's all natural. People work for years to identify themselves or an organization and suddenly a collaborative effort takes much of that away or at least seems to. A solution I've seen work effectively is the creation of a new entity so no one's existing organization is threatened. It could be a committee or a more formal organizational model but the point is that it takes people outside of their normal operational mode. The collaborative results come from that new and separate entity. The work is joint work by people in that new entity.

Some of this is funny and we need to keep a sense of humor about it all. I've seen organizations believe in and preach collaboration, have internal meetings on collaboration, come up with plans for collaboration and on and on. But they make one big error, and they don't see it - there are no partners in the room. It's all about what they are going to do about collaboration. Obviously as we stand back and look at it we know it doesn't work but it goes on all the time.

Here's another example. A funding source or an umbrella organization decides it will force collaboration. Lots of ways to do it. Tie it to money or just snap your fingers and make it a policy. Not a lot of success there and we all know it. But these power based organizations want it to happen and they want it to happen now so they move forward operating as they do from positions of power.

I happen to believe strongly in collaboration but this has evolved over a lot of time. I don't believe it's always easy and I know it's time consuming. It can't be forced. I've seen good and bad examples. My best advice is to find people who share your view on the importance of collaboration and start to talk about it. Start the process of building trust, getting to know each other. It's the tip toe, first date, stick your foot in the water approach that we all tend to need. There's a reason we do that in relationships. They can be hard. But in the end we celebrate those good times, successes and feelings.

Governor Cuomo's State of the State Address

It was big, it's ambitious and.... it's confusing. The Governor has to be given credit for a number of things. He really does have a skill of bringing people together. Having the Speaker of the Assembly and the Leader of the Senate speaking at what traditionally is the Governor's event, accomplishes a lot, and probably prevents an opposition type response. It's a pretty brilliant political move. Seems small but does something major on the cooperation side of things. Sometimes perception really does become reality. We also all learn, at some point, that it's harder to say something bad or nasty about someone when they are right there looking you in the eye.

The Governor also knows how to reach out to constituencies and to argue his points with logic and humor. I personally think his argument against finger printing people for food stamp eligibility really did help people to see that there's something pretty basically unsound about such a policy. But we'll see how successful he is with getting it changed.

Two big issues, hydro-fracking and abuse and neglect of people with developmental disabilities (as purported by outside reporting) weren't discussed in the actual presentation but people who have seen the text say these items were written about. My own sense is that the Governor ran into a time problem rather then a conscious effort to avoid these topics. The speech did go on for close to an hour mid-day and any good orator has a sense of when the audience is getting tired, etc.

So that's the positive side. The hard part of his message really was understanding it. The state is facing a $2 Billion deficit that seems to grow if you blink an eye. Human service, health care providers, educators and municipalities have been belt tightening, laying off employees, restructuring and focusing on shared services. Their decisions and actions have been painful. So where does $25 Billion come from? How do you expand and renovate the Javits Center in NYC when other states and cities are left holding the bag on financing packages for similar expansions/developments that just haven't seen the increase in conferences and tourism in a bad economy? How do you rebuild Buffalo and get at it's particular problems and leave out Rochester, Syracuse and other cities? Where are the federal and private investment dollars going to come from? That's my confusion. I may be thick and I may not understand economics. I just don't get how or where that $25 Billion is coming from.

I really do wish him the best of luck and hope there's an economic plan behind this that makes sense. It would be wonderful to see that commitment to our cities, our bridges and infrastructure, to our healthcare and educational systems. The Governor's budget will be presented in the next few weeks and perhaps we'll have a better understanding of how this will all work.

Musings In The Cold and Without Electricity.....

Well sort of! Smartest move I made a year or so ago was a whole house generator. So it hums along as the folks from NYSEG gear up and get out (in the cold), on the road to find out what's going on. So I'm able to sit here and watch the Iowa Caucus results, post on my blog and think about all of the other things that are out there going on.

At some point I will be writing about the latest NY Times article and the Inspector General's report on Valley Ridge, a facility for people with developmental disabilities in New York State. But right now other thoughts.....

My good friend Joe recommended a book and I was already planning on a couple. Well today got them all and I'm happy and don't know where to start. Joe's recommendation was William Kennedy's Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes - Albany, Cuba and the 60's. Wow! Next Hemingway's Boat - I hear it's a great book talking about his boat, the one place he felt some peace, of sorts. And finally - Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero by Chris Matthews. Anyway, an exciting array of books and reading that I'm looking forward to.

Last Thursday I went to a celebration for Don Colquhoun who retired recently after 17 years as director of The Arc of Orleans. A nice event. Don's career made a couple of sharp turns along the way to get him to The Arc and it seems to have done him and lots of other people good. He'll obviously be missed and everyone wishes him the best.