Bright Continent: 'Africa - Altered States, Ordinary Miracles,' by Nicholas Kristof, New York Times book review
... I’ve thought a good deal about these issues, partly because I’m often a purveyor of columns about war and disaster in Africa, from Darfur to Congo to AIDS in southern Africa. And frankly, it’s discomfiting to feel that I’m helping Africa by exposing such catastrophes, and then have African leaders complain — as they do — that such reporting undermines their access to foreign investment and their ability to expand their economies and overcome poverty.It's a variation of the theme we grapple with here in New Albany. Do we continue explicating the insanity of what doesn't work right and risk losing the positives, thus scaring away people we're trying to attract?
But don't those people deserve to know what they're getting into before committing to the investment?
22 comments:
What they're getting into is being a part of positive change. We can talk about what needs changing and how it is, in fact, positively changing, without a) being dishonest or b) making it sound hopeless.
As suggested in the linked article, context is important. That context extends to considerations of audience as well.
The question has often been asked: what do we have to sell that people want?
The answer: something to believe in.
Whether it's trust in neighbors or market confidence, that believing builds both community and economic empowerment.
"Whether it's trust in neighbors or market confidence, that believing builds both community and economic empowerment."
This is a good example of what I fundamentally disagree with you guys over. It's like you're saying "have faith", or if we just believe...
This does not sound like fact-based advocacy to me.
I see nothing to indicate that a fact-based advocacy contradicts believing in something. I advocate for good beer using facts, and believe in the results. I also believe in my personal ability to use these facts toward achieving something positive.
If someone says to me: "If you don't love the city, leave it," I reply: "I believe in the city's future, and here are a few facts to support the belief."
Why must this be an either-or situation?
I guess I've just lost sight of your positive change machine. If there is no functioning democracy here, at least as I've practiced the concept elsewhere, what is this mighty machine for change in NA?
I'm interpreting the answer as "Gina has lost sight of it."
Fair enough.
My sight is centered on making a business investment downtown and seeing it through. Beer is my positive change machine, and I believe it can make a difference because I've seen it make a difference before.
I'm now asking this in the gentlest and sincerest of ways:
Apart from what I recall as a recent suggestion to file environmental lawsuits, precisely what is the alternative you're advocating for us to adopt? All I've heard lately is despair and negativism. I don't say that to be hurtful, just the tone I've gotten from recent comments.
“Apart from what I recall as a recent suggestion to file environmental lawsuits, precisely what is the alternative you're advocating for us to adopt? All I've heard lately is despair and negativism. I don't say that to be hurtful, just the tone I've gotten from recent comments.”
I’m not advocating any sort of program or agenda, really. I despair seeing people here fight with everything but democracy. By the way I have a personal wall of shame with a long list of local folks who’ve told me “if you don’t like it here, go somewhere else.” LOL I’ve been a change agent out in the “real world” for 30 years and I don’t ever remember anyone saying that to me. That fact has struck a chord in me. It registers as a serious fear for any sort of change here. Politics(civic arena) is a positive change process, as I’ve lived it. Education is the other major one. Your example of the environmental issue is a good one. People here will think of every other way to stop an egregious polluter except the way our system of government has been set up to handle it? Assert your right not to be polluted. I fear people here have actually forgotten they have “rights”.
Gina,
How do you get we aren't using democracy as a weapon/tool when many of us spend every spare moment researching facts and bringing them back to those elected/appointed officials who in turn exclaim We didn't know that!"
And the focus of that effort being merely to erase the excuses they have compiled over the years for inaction.
When the public meeting rooms are vacant while decisions are being made that affect the whole, don't even start with about "lack of democracy"!
One only gets out what one puts in.
Just to be clear, this is not a direct attack on you.
It is a rant of frustration about those who have lived and participated elsewhere but refuse to do so here.
This is at least the 3rd time since Wednesday I've had this conversation.
Those of us doing so don't like the
slime either.
However until someone can show us a plan that works otherwise, it's all we've got!
All ya'll put down yer purses and jump in the pool to help or quityerbellyakin!
PS-I ain't goin' anywhere!
Lloyd, case in point...many personal statements and assumptions but my point about the institutions of democracy - participation, transparency, accountability, free press, etc., are reduced to a personal rant about *I go to meetings, you don't go to the meetings I go do, therefore you do not participate in democracy or positive change.* Like me saying - hey I went to a lot of meetings in Boston to elect Obama president and you didn't, so shut up. Grow up.
I’m not advocating any sort of program or agenda, really.I'm confused, then. What is the program for asserting democratic rights ... or is that something done sans program?
sans program? ARe you an American? Do you know about the constitution and the Bill of Rights? Any idea how our "justice" works? blah blah, yes, my secret agenda is to be a free life liberty and happiness loving American. psst....
Lloyd wrote and says he participates, and you say going to meetings doesn't matter.
Seems to me he's being a good citizen by doing so, and encouraging respect for justice, etc, etc.
Jeff talks about positive change, and you dismiss that, too, although you refer to all the things you know about it that you're not sharing when I ask you to do so.
I talk about being confused, and you reply with an undefined reference to the Bill of Rights.
WTF? I've tried being blunt before, but that didn't go anywhere, either, so let me ask again: What's the nut and bolt program for positive change of the sort you engaged in when living east of here? How do we do it? What does it involve?
BTW, I'm a European, remember.
Participation, transparency, accountability, free press, rule of law...
When I lived in Massachusetts I always just thought of it as democracy. Why do you think that's a personal agenda?
Participation we've got albeit minimal.
Free press we've got when local management allows it!
Transparency and accountability we are getting when we force it!
The rule of law is an enigma that only takes affect when A) a poitical party buys it or B) when the people in mass (again) force the issue!
I'm not looking for self aggrandizement.
I'm lookig for a roomfulls of determined, focused, voting citizens who will hang in until accountability, transperancy, and the rule of law become the norm in leiu of the exception.
"ROCK" is successful beacause it is focused, organized, and vigilant.
We fail because we are none of the above plus we can't/won't get past petty personality glitches!
"If I can't bat first, I'm gonna take my ball & go home!"
Or
"If I have to get my hands dirty, I quit!"
Speaking of growing up!!
Participation, transparency, accountability, free press, rule of law... It is not my intent to imply that these conditions constitute a personal agenda.
I glean that you believe we must demand these in order to redress the imbalance. Fine. Now that we're all on the same page as Yvonne Konvict and Frank Luccrazy, can someone -- Gina or anyone else reading -- tell me how we go about obtaining any of them in a situation of absence?
What sort of social conditions preface life in Massachusetts such that those people have them there, and we don't here?
Again, it seems to me that obtaining some measure of these is the reason we all care. Consequently, how does my asking for details of the process become transformed into accusations of a personal agenda?
???
Gina,
Do you not see that what some here are fighting for is the democracy that you speak of? That's why Lloyd goes to meetings and does so much research. That's why Jeff and Roger go to meeting and are on boards/committees. That's why Jeff, Roger, Lloyd, Randy, and others sued the council over redistricting. One person, one vote. That's why I served on the redistricting committee and also go to meetings. I tried to speak at a council meeting a couple of months ago about redistricting and was shouted down by the council president. We know democracy is not working in New Albany.
It's almost like you blame us for the lack of democracy in New Albany. If you think that the ones advocating change are going about it all wrong, then tell them(us)what you think should be done to bring about democracy in New Albany.
Mark - we started this thread way back at "We can talk about what needs changing and how it is, in fact, positively changing, without a) being dishonest or b) making it sound hopeless."
Then go back a couple months to the public invitation to the ESNA meeting featuring our city administration and their "engagement" with the neighborhoods concerns.
I suggested publicily that we'd been duped by this tired old "engagement" strategy by city hall for years. Since many of the folks in ESNA are friends, I know well their passion and commitment to revitalization. So I wrote I thought people should not play into the "we're talkin' so we must be doin' sompin!" game anymore since it was a distraction from achieving code enforcement, amongst other issues. I don't like to see people banging their heads against a wall perpetually. If the city has not enforced codes for 60 years, there may be reasons and if people don't work with that reality, they will just bang their heads against a wall.
Not surprisingly, bluegill responded - "if you don't like it here, move somewhere else."
Fine, you're now the gatekeepers to hell. With a few side-ways steps Bluegill apparently was sucked into the dark hole of back-room deals, bar-fights, and personal attacks on other revitalization activists.
So when this thread started and Bluegill said something along the lines of "have faith, wear a smiley face, pretend this isn't a corrupt hell-hole, or you're anti-progress. A. Is it really Bluegills way or the highway?, B. I like people to consider the idea of a functioning justice system and the idea of using it to demand justice.
Speaking of the legal system - what has happened with the redistricting lawsuit?
What is this, "Dawn of the Living Corruptible?"
Not surprisingly, bluegill responded - "if you don't like it here, move somewhere else."
Fine, you're now the gatekeepers to hell. With a few side-ways steps Bluegill apparently was sucked into the dark hole of back-room deals, bar-fights, and personal attacks on other revitalization activists.
Thank you for finally stating the obvious. At least now we know ehere this is coming from.
Bluegill's very brief rejoinder, which to my recollection came at the end of a series of comments (on Facebook?) to the effect that there was little if any hope here in New Albany, has now been inflated into all-encompassing accusations and assumptions that have precious little bearing on the original statement.
Talk about personal attacks. Rarely has the pot screamed at the kettle in this manner in this space.
Gads, Bluegill's been brainwashed and now he's in on the good old boy conspiracy?
Hmm. I serve without pay on two boards, invest in downtown, and rattle the cage as often as humanly possible.
Oops, guess I'm part of it, too. Shall we all migrate to Birdseye?
Oddly, stopping the collective head banging and changing strategies by reaching consensus on desired and measurable outcomes was exactly what I suggested before the forum, at the forum, and since. It's funny now to realize that the suggestion was deemed to be "...so reasonable" at the time.
Roger then augmented that with a renewed call for grassroots organization, writing both in the Tribune and here at NAC.
I think both are still needed.
Perhaps even more strangely given the delusional, defamatory ranting of late, my other opinion hasn't changed either: If someone is unhappy with where they live and has determined it will never change to suit them, they should consider moving. That bit of advice is so mean and hurtful I've followed it myself more than once.
I personally don't subscribe to the theory that a person is a part of some sinister conspiracy if they simply choose not to play the miserable, desperate victim role but, obviously, opinions differ.
The "revitalization activist" reference did make me laugh, though, but mostly just because such idiosyncratic claims remind me to occasionally check my own self-image for accuracy. We all need that from time to time.
Go Gina! It's all about the change and money the way each person would like to see it spent and who has the most influence for what they would like it all to be for their finacial benefit. It always has been and always will be exactly that, bar none. Anyone that doesn't wish to admit that cannot see the wood for the pulp. Yes, it is good for the area, but bottom line is the money: it equals dollar signs.
Gina,
If you are still reading this thread, the "RD" lawsuit was settled out of court.
While the lawsuit was still active the council redistricted at approx. 500 variance per district. They passed this in December of 07. The federal judge basically told the council not to bring that into court. That's what led to the settlement and the RD committee.
The council and plaintiffs agreed to set up a committee with 3 members of the council and 3 private citizens. This committee came up with a plan with a maximum difference between districts of approx. 50(10 times closer)after many hours of public meetings(which no one attended). The Council voted down the committee's plan last July. The council president at that time, Mr. Gahan, said that the council would would try to improve the plan. And there it sat.
So what has since happened? The council never officially rescinded their 12-07 RD, the one the federal judge told them not bring into court. That RD plan is just now making it's way through the system and will probably be in place for the 2011 elections.
So, IMO, there are two options as to what happened. The council never signed the settlement in good faith--hence, no repeal. Or, they meant to repeal, did not, eventually discovered(in the last couple of weeks)they had not and moved their 07 plan forward.
Either way, I see bad faith on the part of the council and bad legal representation for the plaintiffs for allowing them to sign such a consent decree.
thanks Mark, do I stopped following this thread Friday when I couldn't figure out what the discussion was about anymore.
I do appreciate your fact-based recall of the Redistricting suit. If there's anything I'd hoped to talk about with my pro-democracy rant, it was the state of the justice system here. It seems like a straight forward constitutional issue - equal representation. One has to wonder that the legal system has no recourse to protect such a basic right.
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