The Most Important Office in Democracy: Citizen

One week and counting to the anti-inaugural and Women’s March on Washington, friends. And the prez-elect’s antics continue.  Got hope? 

He’s hired his wheeler-dealer son-in-law as his chief advisor. On what? How to make the most hay out while the sun shines on the Trump White House? He spends his time tweeting like a twit about Schwarzenegger’s performance as host of The Apprentice. Presidential much? I can’t help but think of Trevor Noah’s Trump the Toddler routine, balling-up his little baby fists and stamping his feet to demand attention. Even mild-mannered Biden said on a PBS NewsHour interview last week, “Grow up, you’re President now.”

To add salt to the wounds, we all watched Obama’s farewell speech Tuesday night with a box of tissues handy. Or we didn’t watch because we couldn’t face saying goodbye to that guy and his lovely wife and all the loveliness that surrounds them. But if you did watch, as did I, shedding a few tears along with Podus, you had to catch his main message.

It’s time to…

“Hitch our trailers to something bigger than ourselves.”

 Take-on with aplomb “the most important office in democracy:  citizen.”

“Lace-up [our] shoes and do some organizing…and if you don’t like who’s in there, grab a clipboard, get some signatures, and run for office yourself.”

This is great, I’m thinking, as I’m scribbling furiously in my notebook. Obama as coach. And as a citizen himself very soon, he assured, he is “staying in the fight.”

Okay, dear Obama, si se puede, yes we can, and yes we are.

And yes we did.  Please indulge me as I take a veer down memory lane…back to this time in 2009 when I was knee-deep in preparations for the Samba-O-Bamba Inaugural Ball. Was that a hoot, driving through the streets of MtP with my friend Gigi, dressed in our ball gowns, 11 frigging degrees out and we’re freezing because we have our new black President in the back seat, a larger than life cutout so big we have to roll down the back windows of the Toyota so he head can poke-out. It was a Bacchanalian celebration of democracy with a Brazilian twist, samba music and dancing and a piñata bashing of W’s head to top-off the evening. 

This year things are going to be a little different. I’m leveraging my organizing power and facilitation skills for What NOW? An evening of drinks, dialogue and dissent! Not so much dancing, but it’s going to be a ball, transforming anger and dismay into action –taking active part in “the joyous task we’ve been given – to continue to try to improve our country.” 

So please come out, friends. Move past Denial and Resistance and into Exploration. Come fueled with march energy. Come tired. Come with rage and joy and hope and hopelessness. Come with ideas, even if they are messy and muddled. Come open to the possibilities. 

My colleague and I, as your facilitators, will come with the questions, the power of questions, to help you clarify the ideas and make connections.  And once those flip charts come out, you’ll know we're ready to make shit happen.

 

As Obama said in his farewell, “The constitution is just a piece of parchment …We the people give it meaning – with our participation.”

Start now. Post a comment, reserve your space, let your voice be heard. For tix:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/what-now-post-march-evening-of-drinks-dialogue-dissent-tickets-30892613639

'Tis the Season to be Jolly?

If you see me at a party this holiday season and kindly ask how I am doing, pardon me if I remove my jolly holiday mask and respond candidly.  

“Not great,” was my answer, over jalapeño poppers, at a friend’s recent Christmas gathering. The world as we know it is crumbling down. Already, it was slipping in that direction – half the population apparently thought so – but living in our bubbles we didn’t notice. Now we’re waking up, having to face the truth of this Trump upset and watch the parade of right-wing billionaires marching behind their leader, straight into the halls of power, determined to undo whatever good Obama managed to eke out during his two exalted terms.

The news reports are disturbing and getting scarier by the day. Almost afraid to look, I squint through  ‘got-hope’ glasses and tell myself:  he will be reasonable, he’s in over his head, maybe it won’t be so bad. I’m white-privileged and can still enjoy a bountiful celebratory Mexican spread complete with high-end mezcal imported (under NAFTA) from Oaxaca. At least the stock market is going up (I’m not sure exactly why) and I won’t be sent across the border (though maybe I’d like to be). 

But it’s not good enough to be a good loser. And that’s the #silverlining. When it’s just another middle-of-the-road Dem in there looking a lot like a Republican, cozying up to the banks and oil interests, I can remain an arm-chair liberal. For the first time in my lifetime, I matter, I’m needed. The situation is so extreme, there’s almost freedom in it, permission to act out, to take my role as a citizen seriously.

This time around I have no choice. Change begins with me. Okay, I may not change the #RedStaters. I’m not ready yet for that challenge. First, I’ve got to look at my Self.   

Where AM I?  And where are you on the Change Curve NOW?  

I find this model (based on the work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross) helpful in my work with leaders confronting change in their organizations. So how does it apply to a large-scale societal shift? It still comes down to ME.

First there’s Denial.  Many of us are still there. In Denial we avoid news and the ugly truth. Pick your news story du jour: the gratuitous Carrier deal, grandstanding over 700 jobs, a drop in the bucket compared to Obama’s unsung 14 million;  Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp of alligators” when all he’s doing is introducing a variant species; the Exxon-Mobil snakehead; his refusal to divest from his business interests; the seedy Russian connection; and, one of my favorites, our new President charging the American People $1M a day in rent so he can spend his weekends in comfort of his beloved Trump Tower!

Oh, let’s not forget the benign pizza joint in upper NW DC that was raided by a gun-toting nutter, driven by # falsenews that the restaurant owners, along with Hillary, were involved in a child sex ring. Disgusting. Even more disgusting, people believed it!

Okay, the expletives are an indicator I’m moving out of Denial, allowing reality to sink in, and getting enraged. Good for me! That’s Resistance, the next stage on the change curve, an excellent place to hang out (for a while). 

In Resistance, I face the truth and face my fears, taking the news in, perhaps in bite-sized morsels, hopefully from trusted sources. Though, frankly, I’ve got a gripe with the entire #mediamachine, the way the collective of outlets handed Trump the victory on a silver platter in exchange for ratings. So I have to be careful how I digest what I read and see and hear. I engage with friends, try not to hide my dismay, talk, listen, yell, post, and get real clear: this IS happening. 

If I don’t, I can slide back into Denial. And that subtle version, where I downplay the impacts, is most dangerous.

Bear with me as I draw a connection that I hope won’t sound disrespectful or exaggerated. Over Thanksgiving, I read Night, Elie Wiesel’s prized memoir about coming of age in the Nazi death camps. The thematic thread he weaves throughout the story begins right up-front, when no one will listen to the ominous warnings of Moishe the Beadle.  

By page 10, “German soldiers – with their steel helmets and their death’s-head emblem – were already in our town, the Fascists were already in power, the verdict was already out – and the Jews of Sighet were still smiling.”

Then, a third of the way through, “Most people thought that we would remain in the ghetto until the end of the war, until the arrival of the Red Army. Afterward everything would be as before. The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion.”

Of course we all know where this horrific story goes. Once the boy arrives in Auschwitz with his father, he has no choice but to open his eyes. “I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible then men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent? No. All this could not be real. A nightmare perhaps…”

Yes, a nightmare and a mind-boggling reality.

Which is why we must deftly move along the Change Curve, out of Denial and into Resistance, where we hit rock-bottom, and, only then, can we move forward into Exploration.

We don’t have time to stay stuck, nor can we skip stages. The latter is a trap I fell into myself, eager to shift to Exploration mode at a brainstorming dinner with colleagues recently. We had come together with flipcharts and markers to discuss how to put our facilitation and change skills to good use given this new political reality. And we walked away with a can-do game plan.

But later that night my subconscious awakened me to the truth. I dreamed I was part of the resistance movement and we were being hunted down by an army of guys wielding machine guns. The hotel in PG county where we were meeting turned into a bloodbath. I hid behind a white upholstered chair in the lobby as bullets reverberated, glass shattered, and blood splattered the walls. I awoke in a panic asking myself:  Was a hero or a coward? Will I stand up or hide out?

Feeling my fear, fearing my ambivalence, is part of the process. As one of my mentors used to say, “All resistance is information.”  Ironically, I have to get past my own internal Resistance to become part of the bigger Resistance that will propel me forward.

In my next post I’ll talk more about the way forward – and the What NOW? Drinks and Dialogue event my colleagues and I are organizing to help ourselves get past Denial and into the streets!

Stay tuned, comrades…

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.” ― Elie Wiesel

On Confidence ~ The Warrior vs. The Worrier

The other night at a party, over dolmades and champagne (realizing Goal 1 of my Vision!), a friend asked me:  How do you just go for things, Anne? You really put yourself out there. You must be so confident.  I have this great idea; but I have so many doubts.  

The truth is:  I have loads of doubts. On a daily basis I question myself:  Who am I to be writing a book?  Shouldn’t I be looking for a *real* job? Maybe I SHOULD have stayed in Mexico.

I have learned over time to notice that little voice, the Worrier, not the Warrior that I really am. I thank the Worrier for its concern. It’s trying its best to keep me in the safe status quo where ‘I belong.’  Then I go back to my vision and proceed forward.  Vamos adalante, as the Mexicans say, forward we go.

Your vision will serve you. If you have progressed through the visioning steps with mindfulness and sincerity, from conception of ideas, to formulating and sharing, to committing to action, your Vision becomes a force bigger than Doubt and Worry. You can glance at it from time to time if you like.  But you will find, without scrutinizing it and checking off boxes, you are REALIZING it.

Like me in Rock Creek Park last weekend.  I was running on the dirt path,  alongside the babbling stream, beneath the canopy of trees, in the oppressive humidity. And suddenly it hit me: I’m doing just what I dreamed of for my new DC life.  I’m back in on the Rock Creek trail, hopping piles of manure, dumping sweat, acclimatizing to life in the swamp, and feeling... happy. In the afternoon, I was meeting my sangha to discuss a new book we were reading on The Power of Meditation. And I was reviewing contracts for a new green roof.

In those moments, give yourself a pat on the back. Whether you have a coach or not, you learn to become your own biggest supporter. Celebrating accomplishments is part of the game.

And back to my friend’s question about Confidence.

Each blog story I write, complete, and post breeds more commitment and diffuses the doubt.  Sure, I still have moments, hours, days of questioning.  But I forge ahead despite it.  The Warrior says to the little Worrier:  Thanks for sharing; now kindly eff*@#%-off.   

Perhaps Confidence, or better yet, Courage is a muscle you build, a byproduct of again and again pushing through the fears and noticing:  my Vision is coming true!  

What IS Success? Pondering my First PCV Trimester Report & 'Small Wins' with the Consejo on Sustainability Rioverde

I’m completing my first trimester report as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I’ve filled in the Java screens with my actions, results, challenges, checked the accomplishment boxes, and calculated activity headcounts. I’m taking this system seriously; I know we have to justify our existence in the work of peace and friendship. But I’ve left the Success Story screen blank. I have to let that one stew.

What is success after three months on-site in Green River?

A municipio of 88,000 situated in the Zona Media of San Luis Potosi, it is a pueblo caught in-between: between the bustling capital and the lush Huesteca; between 263 rural ejido communities and the bourgeois urban center; between dependency on their government and the US. One young campesino I met in an early foro in El Capulin community told us Peace Corps Volunteers that if he didn’t get the muni’s help (apoyo para el campo) to make the land workable again, he was going back to Estados Unidos. A threat, a Plan B, a reality.

This new Consejo de Sustentabilidad Rioverde, with whom I’ve been assigned to work, seems sandwiched in-between too. Citizens representing each of six sectors (ecologia, agricultura, emprezas, academia, social y gobierno), they’ve been selected by the mayor’s office to serve as a much-needed link between the Government and the People. They’ve been sworn-in in Cabildo, and are tasked with setting the standard for sustainability in the municipality, encouraging and creating development projects that “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (Bruntland Commission, Rio Accords, 1987)

This is not small order – especially given the fact that it’s an all-volunteer board, and they’ve been given no budget or official authority or ability to raise and manage funds of their own.

So what is success for them?

As a Peace Corps volunteer doing the work of development, I am meant to create sustainable projects – changes that outlast my two-year term of service. And with this board that has sustainability in its name, it seems obvious, our work together should create an organization and initiative that outlives them too. Having a coincidence of intentions is a pretty good place to start.

So I set out to formulate our ‘primera meta’ and present this to the Consejo at our first meeting:

Crear un Consejo de Sustentabilidad eficaz y eficiente, con una misión, visión y papeles claros, con un proceso colaborativa, y con herramientas y conocimiento para continuar y crecer Agenda 21 para el largo plazo.

In other words (borrowing from one my heroes), be the sustainability we hope to create in Rioverde.

I’m tapping into my 15 years of organization development consulting experience, using my SeeChange participatory tools to create something concrete the group can react to, revise, buy-into. But instead, I hear doubts – conversation swirling around the table and going nowhere – caught between hopes for change in their pueblo, a sustainable future for their children, a government that’s participatory and transparent…and their complaints about the system, the impossibility of their task, ni modo refrains that fill the time and space and keep them sandwiched comfortably in the status quo.

I want them to discuss this first goal, believe in it, and move forward as a team to realize it. But that’s not happening. They’re avoiding it, looking outward, not inward, going off in their own directions, forgetting their aspiration to be a ‘different kind of Consejo.’

And I feel the frustration building, my own gringa desires for progress and productivity butting up against reality, my ‘just do it’ cultural programming butting up against mañana. After a couple weeks of this ‘going nowhere,’ I begin to question myself, my approach, my work with the Consejo and my reason for being here in Rioverde (maybe my energy would be better spent with la gente in the Campo), even my decision to join the Peace Corps and come to Mexico in the first place!

Luckily I recognize this is what the Buddhist’s call dukkha – the worry, doubt, second-guessing, and piling-on we do when things aren’t going how we planned. So I take a step back, breathe, take some time from the business of planning and doing and reacting to investigate my own role in the process – how my own desires for change and to have an impact might be effecting them.

Perhaps this pause and reflection is my first small ‘success.’ Because suddenly from this distance, my lens focusing in, I see: They are at the very beginning of their change journey. And so am I!

I pull out my handy Human Change Curve to remind myself – it’s a process. And the first stage is Denial – not just a river in Egypt – but a time when things are so new it’s easy to pretend they’re aren’t – to just float along like nothing’s changed and nothing’s going to. And this can be a dangerous place to get stuck because, in fact, it will prevent evolution. For the Consejo and me, it will block any hope for work together on the path toward a sustainable Rioverde – and realizing our own personal dreams.

So what is needed to get past Denial? Information.

The truth is the Consejo members don’t really know me, don’t yet trust me. Why should they? New to Mexico, to Rioverde, an outsider, here in my sitio less than two months – learning and improving as fast as I can, but still fumbling with their language, the customs, still adjusting to the extreme temperatures and the Vitamina T intake, tacos, tamales, tostadas, tortas, tamborcitos, experiencing periodic bouts of Montezuma’s revenge – and discovering the inner workings of the bureaucracy, the players, their challenges and agendas.

I need to share with the Consejo information about who I am, my background and experience as an entrepreneur, my life and interests, my hopes and fears, my ideas about participation and innovation, why I am here in their country – why I left the comforts of Washington DC and my established consulting life…for something bigger than me. Ah, and for the Comida Mexicana!

Most important (and difficult), I realize I need to let go of my game plan altogether. Perhaps the Consejo wants or even needs to work on its own, confronting their challenges, making their own discoveries, experiencing possible successes, even failure – without my involvement. This is not a comfortable realization to make. I hear the little voice inside me saying: It’s not fair, I came to help. And I find myself quickly concocting Plan B and C – how to make my life meaningful, myself useful, in the Peace Corps.

But I move forward, with my PCV partner, to hold a special meeting of the Consejo, presenting our experience and ideas and outlining the process of capacity-building and planning – and then letting go. Asking if they are in agreement to involve us – explaining it’s their decision: we cannot be effective unless they are open and ready to learn and share with us.

We go around the table then, sure to hear every voice – what are their desires, thoughts, concerns? And one by one, I hear agreement: yes they do want and need the help – several of them say, in fact, they joined this Consejo in order to learn and create a new model.

I am relieved, in truth. And beneath the agreement, I hear Resistance: impatience from a few voices, ‘vamos adalente’. We don’t want to waste time. We are busy. And tiny complaints: do we have to make it a weekend retreat? Even sarcasm: Look, we are not Americans. We are not going to applaud the idea.

Okay, fair enough.

But perhaps, nevertheless, a tiny victory. Moving out of the muddy Denial stage into wilds of Resistance is progress; certainly something to include on the Success Story page of my first trimester report.

And now, with this acuerdo, I don’t have to explore a Peace Corps Plan B – at least for now. I can dive into preparing a survey of the Consejo and creating the best teambuilding workshop I can – bringing all my experience, skills, tools, energy, even love, to the table – putting all of that into the PowerPoints and translations and participatory exercises – then letting go of the result.

Ojala…I’ll have (even) more ‘small success’ to report next quarter.

I Definitely Won't Miss the IHOP

“Even a simple word becomes superfluous when our lives are changing, and even more so when we are changing too.” Jose Saramago.

I agree, at some level words can’t speak to the feelings of both loss and excitement I’m experiencing in the midst of this change. But as a ‘change agent’ I can’t let this opportunity go without a little commentary.

I’m leaving for the Peace Corps in a few weeks – T minus 28 days and counting. (Is there an emoticon for Heart Palpitations?)

I’m definitely counting, not just the days, but the litany of chores I have to get myself outa dodge. Flipcharts of to-do lists hang on my dining room walls – three pages of them, with just a few chintzy items scratched off. I must ready my house for the tenants; organize my finances so Uncle Sam doesn’t come after me in Mexico; shut down SeeChange and get closure with my clients…

I’ve done this before – I could write a book about it and maybe I will: Gettin’ Outa Dodge: An Escapist’s Guide.

But I don’t think I’m escaping this time; not like before with Brazil which had a desperate, adrenaline-infused quality about it, not to mention a man at the hot center of it. Pfew.

My life in Washington right now is good: I’m pretty happy, financially stable, creative and productive, spiritually engaged, and even in some relative state of peace. This is the BEST time to leave.

Mom’s in town to help with the transition – if I can pull her off the sofa and away from Rachael Maddow to start sorting and sifting through my accumulated junk.

We’re going room by room. I’m not even much of an accumulator; yet it’s important to have someone with no stake in the game telling you to LET IT GO.

Letting go of the old and making space for the new – that’s one of the keys to change. You gotta make ah-space.

But the stuff is easy – it’s the people and the connections and routines that are harder. Yoga class with Alice on Fridays and with Chantelle on Sunday mornings, her sweet readings and lavender aromatherapy rejuvenating me for the week to come. And Marvin the Cheeseman at CW who calls me 'Anita' and has my Canoa Kids taped to the wall behind the counter. And Rock Creek Park.

I definitely won’t miss the IHOP.