Bren, of course I appreciate your comment, and I thank you too. The story you tell is a common one, and the mistakes made by the super-activist is glaring - at least to me. Quite frankly, in a short few minutes, that activist squandered years and years of hard work - and did more harm than good. In short, she knew what she wanted, but she did not know what it took to get it, so she went for broke and walked out broke. If you are dealing with systems, you have to know how that system works - or you won't make any progress
However, big corporations are the co-opters - not the government. For example, we had one super-activist who was so good he went on to win a state senate seat in a super Republican district. After two terms in office, and a lot of good work, he took a job with Chevron Oil. We watched many super activists follow the same path.
This problem is rooted in the huge gap between salaries that corporations can afford to pay, and the salaries government and non-profit work pays. If you are super good at what you do, you soon discover that you can get ahead by going to work for a corporation, or you can continue struggling to make ends meet. In the case of our young super-activist, turned senator, he and his wife had a child with disabilities who needed very expensive care (this was before the ACA). But for some people, non-profit work is a pipeline to a better job.
Worse yet, most of the large foundations in this country are funded, thus controlled, by big corporations and the uber-wealthy. Since small non-profits rely on these big foundations for funding, the big foundations control their agendas. They do this by selectively choosing which grants to fund. If a smaller non-profit has a super leader, their leader is quickly co-opted by the foundation.
As I said, activists need to get as serious about our work, as we are our education, jobs, businesses, and families. Activists need education, training, tools and leadership of our own – and that won’t happen, unless we build it ourselves. To stir the imagination, here is the story of one super-activist who did just that.
We had a super-activist, and former legislator, who saw the problem and set out to fix it. Carol started a regional training institute for new leaders, and used her connections to keep it funded. To my knowledge it was the first training institute for grassroots' leaders in the nation.
Carol also used funding to track indicators that no one had ever tracked in our region before. That data gave her tremendous power at the state level - and terrified big corporations. Note to the wise; corporations are terrified of human based data - like rates of teen pregnancy, stds, suicide, educational achievement, environmental conditions, housing starts, physicians and hospital rooms per capita, etc. These data points are irrefutable evidence of decline caused by legislative neglect, abuse or other failure to hold corporations accountable to the communities where they have employees.
When I attended the institute's training program, I had instructors from Harvard, various universities, plus state and federal legislators. We learned how government works, especially at the local level. We spent time talking and interviewing dozens of CEOs, elected officials and business owners throughout the region. We travelled to our region's most cutting edge businesses, to learn how technology was impacting jobs in our communities. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I learned more during those six months, than I'd ever learned in any university classroom. I also met people I would work with for the next twenty five years.
Carol's success rate was so good, it convinced the state to fund construction of the first university in our rural region. Once the university was finished, Carol left her institute to lead the new university and keep on building independent, effective leaders for our region. In a nutshell, Carol had managed to flip the script, and keep super activists in control.
I encourage every activist to consider building a training program of their own.
