The Emerging New Society:
The Best in American Innovation
Introduction
Thumbing through the newspaper, we discover now and then a story about a neighborhood that launched a community vegetable garden, a company that empowers its staff through ownership options, urban teenage artists who use performance art to help police officers understand their needs, communities bound together to support local farms. It’s easy to dismiss these stories as merely “feel good” items intended to temporarily ease the weight of the day’s overwhelmingly bad news. But many of these stories are more than isolated reports about the success of a single individual, community, or institution. Instead they are pieces of a larger story of change taking place in the United States — a story not simply of successful ways to address problems such as urban sprawl, environmental degradation, health care, and local economic instability, but one of increased civic participation, a renewed commitment to social health, and a growing trust in democratic processes. In short, they are stories about rebuilding our communities.
Given the frequency with which that phrase is uttered these days, it is worth defining our terms. It is important to note that by community building we don’t mean community bonding, for people may come to be bonded in many ways—through a shared traumatic experience such as war, for example. Nor do we mean that communities achieve some goal such as clean parks, for goals may be accomplished with coercion. We take community building to be activities that increase a community’s capacity to continually inventory its assets and build upon its shared strengths. Community is not understood here as a homogenous group in a narrow demographic profile that suffers few disagreements; it refers to those who reside in a specific area and share an interest in its long-term well-being. This implies a consideration not only of oneself and one’s family, but of the other residents and institutions in the area, and of the environment itself. Strong communities are those that actively seek ways to increase grassroots participation, expand ownership of their institutions, and encourage public discussions about issues that have immediate relevance in the lives of their residents.
Because communities are always changing, community-building efforts will never be completed once and for all, but will require continued assessment and reevaluation as values change and skills are added and subtracted. On one level, community building enables residents to build coalitions and inclusive networks and to manage complex problems with an array of integrated services. On another level, community building will leave residents better equipped to work together, able to build institutions that endure, and confident that their participation in planning and decision making is both necessary and valued. Community building on this level hones civic skills necessary to a healthy democracy. And when we practice democracy with our neighbors, we invite democracy to thrive in our nation.
Strong communities are finding new ways to solve intractable problems. These innovative solutions, in the words of Dave Morris, “[challenge] the conventional wisdom that bigger is better, that separating the producer from the consumer, the banker from the depositor, the worker from the owner, the government from its citizens, is a necessary requirement for achieving a prosperous economy and a healthy society.” Institutions that are rooted in specific communities and infused with the financial and emotional investment of its residents become enduring entities that people can count on to make lasting contributions to their societies. Together they are transforming at some level nearly every U.S. institution. For example:
Community: Fewer than 100 Community Development Corporations (CDCs) existed in the late 1960s; today there are an estimated 3,600–4,000 CDCs across the nation. CDCs have created more than 247,000 private sector jobs and built over 550,000 units of affordable housing for the poor.
Education: In 1984, nine percent of U.S. high schools offered service-learning opportunities; in 1999, 83 percent of all public high schools recognized or arranged service-learning activities for their students. Ninety-five percent of teens feel it is important to learn the value of community service.
Economy: Numbering only 200 in 1974, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) are now estimated to number over 11,500 and to benefit almost nine million employees.
Farming: Beginning with just one U.S. farm in 1985, Community Supported Agriculture programs grew to number about 1,000 in 1999.
Environment: Recycling rates jumped from 6.6 percent in 1970 to 28 percent today.
Arts: One hundred percent of America’s fifty largest cities have arts programming that addresses social issues such as teen pregnancy, literacy, public safety, drug use, and aids. Local government support for the arts increased 86 percent between 1986 and 1996.
This report has a two-fold purpose. First, it will highlight some of the most successful of these innovative practices reshaping major U.S. institutions. Some of the most inspiring possibilities become evident when seemingly mismatched pieces—inner-city youth, the police department, a local nonprofit arts agency, state politicians, and public high school teachers—are placed side by side, as they were in Oakland, California, in order to give youth a platform from which to communicate their political thoughts.
The second intention of this report is to juxtapose some of these changing local institutions in order to see more clearly a new American society—a society whose features are already beginning to emerge. Individually, these programs are making measurable contributions; by looking at them together, as a part of a larger trend reshaping our nation, we can see their potential for even greater effectiveness.
To join just two pieces, imagine if our systems of education and employment worked side by side to bring increased pride in one’s efforts, respect for the work of others, greater personal responsibility, and larger, tangible benefits of that responsibility.
Real models already exist. A small charter school in northern Minnesota operates on the principle that human beings have a natural curiosity and an innate motivation to learn; thus, Minnesota New Country School (MNCS) has removed perceived barriers to learning that include classrooms, teachers, schedules, and formal homework. Instead, students, their adult “advisors,” parents, and members of the community understand the level of academic achievement students in each age group are expected to meet, and together they set about to exceed those expectations. Students plan their own individual or team-based projects, help to determine their own learning goals, and manage their own schedules. They demonstrate proficiency not by written tests alone, but through public presentations, which reinforce their accountability to themselves, their team members, and those in the greater community who have invested time, resources, and expertise in their education. This remarkable approach to education has been highly successful, but where do these students use their skills after graduation? How do they put a lid on their creativity, slow their motivation, and keep their ideas to themselves in order to adjust to a typical work environment where their boss—or their boss’s boss—will determine for them their duties, goals, procedures, and even when lunch is to be taken?
Imagine instead the dynamic intellectual and commercial growth possible for a community whose workplace values are compatible with these educational values. W. L. Gore, Inc., in Newark, Delaware, is just the sort of workplace where MNCS students would excel. Gore has no “bosses” and therefore no underlings. Just as MNCS believes people naturally like to learn, Gore’s non-hierarchical “lattice” structure is founded on the principle that people naturally like to work, and so the company facilitates that desire. New hires at Gore, all called “associates,” determine their own responsibilities and commitments within the company. Associates join project-based teams, deliberate together, and are free to rally others to pursue viable projects that meet personal and corporate goals. All who work at Gore have an opportunity for ownership in the company, which has enabled them to exercise autonomy and control over their workdays as well as to share in the wealth their labor makes possible. Gore credits its continued marketplace success to the freedom and responsibility nurtured in its associates.
The thirty-four stories described in this report represent just a few of a vast number of undertakings by people whose ideas, dreams, coalition building, and hard work have enhanced countless communities—variously defined—across the country. These and other projects like them represent a widespread, creative thrust toward rebuilding the United States from the ground up. This emerging new society is gaining momentum, and it will eventually burst through the surface to bring new possibilities into our imaginations and everyday conversations.
Far from being a utopian dream, then, the programs described within this report are practical, concrete, and replicable. This is not a report about “nowhere”; it’s a report about daily life in Chicago, New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in tiny Chillicothe, Missouri; Muncie, Indiana; and Aiken, South Carolina. Several of these institutions already assist others in implementing similar change in towns and cities across in the United States and around the world. As momentum grows, we will of course hash out disagreements and argue disparate beliefs, and we will still struggle to overcome obstinate institutionalized injustice. This report emphatically must not be read as our remedy for large-order social problems. We do, however, suggest that regardless of the type and degree of problems communities face, some community, somewhere in this country, is tackling those problems in new and promising ways. To those whose communities do not have problems of the scale of those mentioned within this report, we hope to show that the tightly knit neighborhoods, increased democratic participation, genuine opportunity, and a greater sense of well-being that results from attention to community building are worth pursuing in themselves.
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The Emerging New Society:
The Best in American Innovation
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