In 2003, Gladstone, Missouri, faced some difficult challenges—an aging population, strict boundaries that prevented physical growth, declining revenues, a declining business environment and inadequate city services. There was only one ambulance and two paramedics to provide emergency services and no place to house the city’s recreational programs for youth.

With technical assistance from Derek Okubo, a former National Civic League vice president who now works as Director of Human Rights and Community Relations for the city of Denver, more than 150 citizens participated in the community effort known as “Gladstone on the Move…Citizens Making a Difference.”

The group identified six key performance areas or KPAs: Business/Economic Development, Neighborhoods, Community Center, City Services, Education, Identity/Regionalism. The group researched and discussed the issue and came up with a list of priorities.

Gladstone on the Move came up with a plan that could be used to guide the city over the next 20 years. Next step: create an implementation committee to figure out a timeline and an action plan for achieving the desired results.

The citizens themselves recommended Gladstone’s first ever property tax increase to the city council, also to extend a sales tax that was about to expire to pay for parks and recreation needs. The council put the tax increases on the ballot and Gladstone on the Move campaigned to get them passed.

The community now has a complete ambulance service that is fully staffed, not only basic life support for getting people to a hospital but advanced life support for people suffering heart attacks, strokes and other medical emergencies.

It also has a marketing program. It is building more sidewalks than ever before. It has a comprehensive street lighting program, three major economic development initiatives, several hundred square feet in retail and several thousand in housing units with an affordable housing philosophy.

With the parks and recreation sales tax, they invested $1.3 million in an existing outdoor pool to make it a family event center, the city constructed a $25 million community center in partnership with the nearby school districts, complete with indoor recreation pools and the fitness area and the conference rooms and all that. It also has a competitive swim arena used to host the high school swim competition.

The point here is not that taxes are good and every community should raise them. The point is, if you have these needs and desires: a recreation center, a better ambulance service, an economic development plan, more street lighting, you need to figure out how to pay for it, and it helps to have that conversation out in the open with members of the public taking the leading role.

There can be little doubt that these tax proposals could easily have failed without the Gladstone on the Move process.  As one local official put it, “When you involve people and you listen and you take action, positive outcomes result.”

Gladstone was an All-America City Award winner in 2008. The Gladstone on the Move process won a Program Excellence Award from the International City/County Management Association in the strategic planning category.

Use the box below to tell about people in your community who are rallying together to make improvements for your town possible.

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Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

Yesterday was the first year anniversary of the shootings that occurred in Tucson, Arizona. Six people lost their lives and 13 people maimed on that infamous day, and many more carry scars. During a visit to Tucson, State of the Re:Union asked relatives of victims and those who bore witness to this horror to write a letter to their city, reflecting on Tucson one year after this tragedy occurred.

In remembering these people, NPR aired SOTRU’s Letters to Tucson, One Year After the Shootings. It is a collection of indelible memories and thoughts from men and women recounting this day. If you missed it on NPR yesterday, you can listen to it here.

NPR’s and PRX’s State of the Re:Union will feature this fascinating city and the people who call it home in SOTRU’s 2012 season. As it is with all of the places we visit, there is a lot more than meets the eye going on in this town. With SOTRU as your personal guide, you will enjoy a spectacular journey into the intriguing city of Tuscon. Stayed tuned!

A Reflection of Meaning

Although Thanksgiving has come and gone, the spirit that it ushers in is one of charity, thankfulness, well-wishes and acts of kindness. This spirit has a tendency to last through year’s end, but what of the other months in the year? Where does this spirit go, but most importantly, why does it go? State of the Re:Union contributor Rich Harwood of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation shares some of his reflections on Thanksgiving, including the proverbial turkey chase, what it means to us and how it intertwines with our daily lives.

I’ve never been on a real turkey chase, and maybe you haven’t either, but with the passing of Thanksgiving, I suspect we’re all in pursuit of something. But where will your own chase lead you, and why are you headed there? Here are some thoughts concerning “the chase” to think about as you reflect over this recent Thanksgiving and the upcoming holiday season.

Turkeys hold a special place in American culture — from defining early historical meals and current Thanksgiving menus, to Wild Turkey whiskey, to calling something we deem unsatisfactory “a turkey!” It was even the bird Benjamin Franklin suggested be our national symbol instead of the bald eagle. And on every Thanksgiving, there are all kinds of “turkey runs,” 5K and 10K races sponsored in support of some charitable cause.

And yet, the notion of “a chase” conjures up the pursuit of the unattainable. Think: “chase dreams,” where you cannot bring closure or finality to something in your life. Think: “ideals,” which we strive to place within our grasp, knowing that they may never be fulfilled. According to Wayne Capooth, in Delta Farm Press, “Turkey chases have been a part of American history since our earliest days. Samuel Kercheval in his A History of the Valley (Shenandoah), 1833, said “the native youth is taught the wiles of the turkey hunter.”

This season you may be “chasing” your own way to a holiday gatherings. Maybe it is across town, or in another community, or at your home. But, wherever the places you go, this time of year puts each of us in a precarious bind: running to complete our work, running to get somewhere, running to get back to work. That’s me too.

I’m in the middle of writing a new book about how people can make good on their urge to do good. There are many subtexts at work, but there are two that shed light on the notion of the turkey chase.

First, there is the pressure of inwardness, which is our proclivity to see our work in public life through the prism of promoting and spreading our own efforts. Inwardness tells us to start with our own needs and programs, rather than the community in which we live and work. The second factor is the push for busyness — a kind of “activity happy, yet action deprived” approach. Such busyness can make us feel we are doing something, moving ahead, and soothing our own anxieties about the lack of progress. But for all the running, all the activity, little changes.

I raise the ideas of inwardness and busyness because they launch us on a chase of the unattainable. If we are not careful, we risk losing sight of what we care about, and what change or goodness we hope to effect. What about you?

What is that path for you? Is it the “chase” — the proverbial unattainable, unachievable, even undesirable; or, is it something that you should stop to see and feel and know? There is something noble about Thanksgiving, [the start to the holiday season] about how it has the power to halt our busyness and inwardness; for many, it creates the space that might not otherwise exist to come together with family and friends (however difficult that can sometimes be!).

Maybe it is trite to say that this Thanksgiving should be about something doable, and that is intrinsically decent: giving thanks. It’s a simple idea, I know, and one that you have already thought about. But it may not be something we each do.

As we go through this holiday season, what are some ways we can integrate the hallmarks of Thanksgiving and this season into our daily lives? What does the “chase” mean to you, and how does it intertwine with your everyday living? How do you make your busyness count? Is it satisfying with how you spend your time, or do you think your “activity” could include notes of “action” offering more fulfillment? You can tell us, we always have an ear to bend your way.

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A dynamic public speaker, Rich Harwood is a frequent keynote for foundations and national organizations. He is an expert contributor on national and syndicated media outlets including MSNBC, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN’s Inside Politics, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Special Report with Brit Hume, C-SPAN, and many others. He is also the author of Hope Unraveled: The people\’92s retreat and our way back (2005), Make Hope Real: How we can accelerate change for the public good (2008) and numerous studies, articles and essays chronicling vital issues of our time. His most recent written work, Why We\’92re Here: The Powerful Impact of Public Broadcasters When They Turn Outward, is being published and distributed in Spring 2011. You can follow him on twitter @RichHarwood and facebook.com/richharwood.

You can read Rich’s posts every Tuesday on State of the Re:Union’s website.

It sounds almost like the set-up for a bad joke: what do you get when you put dozens of computer hackers and elementary school teachers in a room and keep them there overnight? But, no, it’s no joke. It’s the game plan for an event in Baltimore next weekend that brings together two communities not ordinarily in frequent dialogue with one another: web developers and educators.

On the weekend of November 12^th and 13^th, an estimated 80 software designers and developers will gather at a Baltimore high school for a fast and furious session of building applications based on ideas crowd-sourced from local teachers and administrators. I stumbled across the event, billed as “Education Hack Day,” while researching an upcoming SOTRU episode in Baltimore. It’s the brain child of Mike Brenner, the founder of StartupBaltimore, a networking group for tech entrepreneurs, and Scott Messinger, a teacher-turned-web-developer. Scott’s background bridging education and technology informed the idea. “Software development is largely missing a teacher voice,” he told me. “A lot of the products we have to use as teachers aren’t always that useful for us, or that intuitive.” The solution to that problem, Scott and Mike thought, was just to get teachers and the developers together to generate solutions. “Why don’t we have the teachers tell about their problems and their ideas and have the developers and designers and teachers get together and create something?”

Now, for many “hacking” connotes something subversive or illicit—computer programmers sneaking into protected digital terrain, intent on sabotage. But the word has another definition, one that is more creative than destructive. In this case, Scott says, by “hacking,” they mean “improvising, creating from nothing something that solves a problem.” What kind of problems could hackers and teachers actually solve over the course of one weekend? They’re not attempting large-scale education reform, here. An end result might be something like an app that helps teachers and administrators keep in touch with students’ families and set up parent-teacher conferences. Or it could be a product based around a particular item on the teachers’ list of tools they’d live to have. A friend of Scott’s who is the principal of a Baltimore public school just purchased ipads for all the kids in his 5^th grade classrooms. He’d like some sort of application that makes the ipad function as a reading manager. “So they’ll login to the app, they’ll find out their reading level, and they’ll read some of those books,” Scott says. “And they’ll answer some questions and if they answer the questions right, that’ll bump them up to the next reading level.”

The plan for Education Hack Day is modeled on the success of another event Mike organized, Civic Hack Day, which brought developers together to work projects for state and city government (an app that calculated the likelihood of getting a parking ticket came out of that). And, ultimately, one of the goals is developing a stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem for tech start-ups in Baltimore. Who knows what kind of ideas for a new company might be seeded this weekend, perhaps in a burst of coding creativity at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning? And if that new company is also built around finding education solutions that benefit the Baltimore community as a whole, Scott and Mike think, well, that’s a win-win. That’s the kind of result that’d be very far from the punchline of a joke about mixing hackers and teachers.

Update: To learn how things went at Education Hack Day, check out Mike Brenner’s recap here.

A Haven for Community-based Problem Solving

Several years ago I was doing some research on civic innovation at the local government level. It wasn’t hard to find good examples, but many of them were old and out of date, or already familiar to the practitioners and researchers in the field of democratic governance and deliberative democracy. Part of my job was to find new examples, and one of the very best examples I found was River Haven.

For as long as anyone could remember, homeless people have camped out in the dry bed of the Ventura River, but with El Niño sitting off the coast of California, the weather was a lot wetter than usual, and the risk of flooding was high. Local officials decided they would have to more strictly enforce local ordinances against people camping in the Ventura River.

“The law, in its majestic equality,” quipped Anatole France, “forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” The law is the law, but in this case, city officials decided to do more than just enforce the local ordinances.

They also convened a public planning process to deal with the larger issue of homelessness. All the usual “stakeholders” (public safety, business owners, service providers and, of course, the homeless people themselves) were invited, but so were “non-stakeholders,” that is, ordinary citizens who were simply interested in helping address a critical community issue.

The problem was this: many homeless people in Ventura and elsewhere don’t want to stay in shelters. The rules are too strict. They can only be there for certain hours and they keep their things and pets. What’s more, some of the homeless people who camped in the riverbed thought of themselves as part of a community—and they didn’t want to lose that connection.

After a series of what Ventura City Manager Rick Cole described to me as a series of “non-productive meetings with deadlines growing ever-closer,” a local artist with a studio near the river, one of the non-stakeholders, made a suggestion. Why not set up a camp for the homeless somewhere other than in the riverbed?

A philanthropic organization called the Turning Point Foundation stepped forward to be the fiscal agent, and the city made available some land near the harbor. Patterned loosely on similar efforts in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, the camp was called “River Haven,” a self-governing tent village with more than two-dozen residents. The rules were clear—no drugs or alcohol, for instance, and there would be an elected council of residents to enforce them.

I was wondering recently, what had become of River Haven? But I was almost afraid to find out. Some inspiring stories are just too good to be true. Recently, however, I phoned Clyde Reynolds, executive director of the Turning Point Foundation, to find out.

He told me River Haven is still going strong, albeit with some significant changes. Tents have been replaced by geodesic domes, and the screening of residents has become more careful. People have to be serious about wanting to transition out of the camp and into a more permanent kind of housing. Also, and this isn’t surprising, really, the camp isn’t entirely self-governing. Today there is more direct regulation by foundation management.

Self-governing or not, River Haven was one of the most vivid and interesting stories of civic engagement and collaborative problem solving I found. Homelessness is a perfect example of what deliberative democracy types call a “wicked problem,” that is, a persistent, complex challenge for which there is no easy solution. Citizens met together, including the homeless themselves. They deliberated on a complex issue and came up with a list of proposals, River Haven being one of them, and that is community problem-solving at its best.

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Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

The “Mix it Up” Program for U.S. Schools

This week’s School Spotlight is highlighting the “Mix It Up” program schools throughout the U.S. have been implementing into their students’ lunchtime. As a result, participating schools have been enjoying great success in breaking down barriers that often stem from misunderstandings in cultural diversities.

The “Mix it Up” program is the brain child of Teaching Tolerance: A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that “is dedicated to reducing prejudice, improving intergroup relations and supporting equitable school experiences for our nation’s children.” And with the “Mix It Up at Lunch” program, they are certainly living up to their modus operandi. With just a few years in operation, this program has quickly grown to include 2,420 schools that are utilizing its service. In this number, 50 different schools serve as “Mix It Up Model Schools.”

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Just what is Mix It Up at Lunch Day?

According to Teaching Tolerance’s Website, this is “A national campaign launched by Teaching Tolerance a decade ago, Mix It Up at Lunch Day encourages students to identify, question and cross social boundaries.

As you might have seen mentioned the past few weeks, State of the Re:Union is continuing on in its yearly funding crusade. October started our month-long fundraising drive, and while we still have some dollars to go to reach our goal, we believe that with help from SOTRU Superheroes like yourself, we’ll have be able to raise the funds needed to continue telling amazing stories of people building community from coast-to-coast.

Our yearly fundraising event, ‘State of the Re:Union Live’ happened in Jacksonville, FL this past Saturday, October 22nd. Host Al Letson, entertained and informed with an incredible multimedia performance that mixed videos and radio segments from a variety of episodes with performance and narration. Our deepest thanks to all who attended and supported the event for creating an incredible sense of community under one roof.

Saturday night’s efforts helped make a dent in our fundraising needs, but we’ve still got a healthy portion of fundraising to go. Unlike the majority of public radio show’s, SOTRU is not presented by a specific station, and independently responsible for raising the funds needed to continue. We’re confident, that with your help, we can make it.

Grassroots and gumption: That’s what sets our listeners aside from others. You have the ability to help us make a change in the lives of millions more throughout the U.S. The one common thread we have seen throughout SOTRU listeners is the ability to make things happen, and that spirit is what we are counting on. You can help by making a simple donation. If you enjoy the episodes and want to hear more of what communities across America are doing to keep it going, your tax-deductible donation – from $5 to $500 – will help with just that. Click here to help to lend a hand in helping us bring things back together.

Want to get involved beyond you’re cash contribution? There are other ways you can help:

Host a Listening Party

For those who weren’t able to attend our State of the Re:Union Live event, have no fear. You can participate and enjoy the fun while showing off your mad-hosting skills. Through throwing a State of the Re:Union Listening Party.

We’re asking our loyal listeners to become SOTRU Superheroes by gathering their friends to come together to listen to a State of the Re:Union episode while helping raise much-needed funds to continue producing this program. Click here to find out more on hosting your own event.

Underwriting Support

From radio episode underwriting to podcasts and website advertising, SOTRU has a variety of underwriting opportunities to fit your business or organization’s budget. Our episodes reach an average audience of more than half a million listeners each week and are aired in more than 200 markets across the country. In addition to maximizing national exposure for your organization, you’ll reach civic-minded individuals and influential decision makers who believe in the power of community.

Please email Brie at brie(at)stateofthereunion(dot)com for more information.

Grants & Foundational Support

Does your foundation or organization to support public media, arts programs, educational initiatives or community-oriented projects? SOTRU is always looking to expand our partnerships and support network.

For those who attended our fundraising event in Jacksonville, thank you. We also want to thank all of our amazing sponsors, volunteers and guests that made “State of the Re:Union Live” such a successful event. A special thank you to Mossfire and O’Brothers restaurants for the delectable treats that were insanely delicious. We would also like to extend a special thank you to the wonderful people at MOCA Jacksonville for hosting our event, and to the supporting sponsors who helped bring it all together: PB&J Jacksonville and Tommy Hobin at Mind Jar Media. Our gratitude goes out to Folio Weekly and the Times Union for helping to get the word on the event.

We would be remiss not to mention the wonderful silent auction items contributed by: Tiffany Manning Photography, Orsay Restaurant of Avondale, Fly’s Tie Irish Pub of Atlantic Beach, Belk Regency, Ananda Kula of Avondale, Green Man Gourmet of Avondale, and The Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens. Thank you. Bids from these items nudged us closer to our goal. and to those already offering their support, we are truly grateful for your endeavors. We are a thankful bunch, and have so much more appreciation to give, so thank you in advance for helping us continue journeying into America’s communities, hearts and stories.

And to those already offering their support, we are truly grateful for your endeavors. We are a thankful bunch, and have so much more appreciation to give, so thank you in advance for helping us continue journeying into America’s communities, hearts and stories.

State of the Re:Union contributor Rich Harwood of the Harwood Institute offers some sage advice for companies and organizations facing the looming threat of economic turmoil: Turn Outward to the community to find the best direction when dealing with tough times.

A while back, I was in San Diego with public broadcasters who were asked what they would do if they had to cut their budgets by 15-40%. Unfortunately, such a question is no longer academic for many groups and organizations. Hard times are here, and notwithstanding promises of “change,” a quick economic rebound remains unlikely. But so many times when we face crises and choices, our instinct is to look inward for answers. My advice is first, Turn Outward.

There’s a great deal of talk among foundations, at national conferences, and in many publications about the tough times we face. For many groups, money is tight. I suspect very few groups will be immune from the current economic downturn.  Budgets are being slashed, staffs cut, programs gutted.

Experience tells me that when most of us feel under intense pressure, we turn to some trusted tools. Many organizations undertake new strategic planning, rebrand themselves, and figure out ways to generate more membership dues while trimming services. In taking such steps the impulse is to look within the organization to save ourselves, our work, and reassemble our efforts.

Recently, I spent the day with some organizational leaders facing their own challenge of shrinking resources.
Over a three hour period the conversation was focused entirely inward.  When I got up to speak I made the following observation: while their mission is to serve communities, barely anyone had talked about their relationship to community. Instead, the conversation focused on how to incrementally cut budgets, or conversely, how to slash operations.

Indeed, the conversations revolved around how the organization could save itself.  The essence of holding a public mission was lost in the desire to survive. Some people tell me that trying to maintain their public mission at this time is difficult. It is not that they want to do away with it, but they cannot see how to keep it robust.

My response is simple and straightforward. It is in these times that you must turn outward toward your community. The task is not to engage in marketing research, though that might be helpful, but to gain clarity on the following points:

•    What are the real needs and aspirations of people in your community — and how do they relate to your organization’s mission?
•    What are the essential priorities for your work — so that your efforts are relevant and significant within the community?
•    What does impact mean — so that you are focused only on those areas where you are making a genuine contribution?
•    What assets do you have to put up against this work — and what other assets exist somewhere in the community?

Without having clear answers to such questions, how could we possibly know where to focus and what shape our organizations should take? How could we know what to cut, where to refocus, which staff we most need? How could we do yet another strategic planning exercise; what inputs would we use? Would rebranding ourselves, again, matter?

When each of us steps forward to engage in the work we do, we make a basic (usually implicit) choice about the direction we face. Most of the time, we face inward toward ourselves, our colleagues, our organizations. I’m suggesting we assume a different posture, one that has us turn outward toward our communities. By looking outward we discover what we need to know to make the tough choices we face, and find paths for change.

We are riding the wake of the last presidential election in which hope and change were the watchwords. Part of that change will come from the work that you and many others are doing to make a difference in our society. I know this period of economic downturn continues to be hard for many of you, and I hope that you find the resources, insights, and colleagues you need to move ahead in your work and efforts.  You’re fighting the good fight: now, let’s Turn Outward.

With the exception of very few, most of us are still feeling the dizzying effects made by the roller coaster economy that seems to stay below a point of financial safety. It is quite easy and understandable to despair, but SOTRU knows that there is a plethora of community-minded optimists out there. We want to hear how you have “turned outward” and interacted with community to keep fighting the good fight.

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A dynamic public speaker, Rich Harwood is a frequent keynote for foundations and national organizations. He is an expert contributor on national and syndicated media outlets including MSNBC, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN’s Inside Politics, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Special Report with Brit Hume, C-SPAN, and many others. He is also the author of Hope Unraveled: The people\’92s retreat and our way back (2005), Make Hope Real: How we can accelerate change for the public good (2008) and numerous studies, articles and essays chronicling vital issues of our time. His most recent written work, Why We\’92re Here: The Powerful Impact of Public Broadcasters When They Turn Outward, is being published and distributed in Spring 2011. You can follow him on twitter @RichHarwood and facebook.com/richharwood.

You can read Rich’s posts every Tuesday on State of the Re:Union’s website.

There’s a new study out on how we Americans get our local news, and the findings show that “word of mouth” ranks second among all sources after local TV news. This has important implications for how communities go about informing themselves, engaging people, and, ultimately solving public challenges.

In one way, this finding is not surprising. Back in the mid 1990s, the Harwood Institute did a study on how and why people engage on public concerns, entitled “Meaningful Chaos.” What we found then (and which is echoed in this latest study done by the Pew Research Center and Knight Foundation), is that people use numerous information sources, piecing them together in an attempt to paint a picture of what’s happening in the world around them. And to do so, they rely on no one single news source – instead, people actively and intentionally draw on a collection of them.

In piecing together this picture, people are in search of three things: coherence, meaning, and a sense of possibility. These are each basic human yearnings – desires that each of us are seeking to satisfy as we make our way through life. At issue is how well different organizations and groups help people to do this.

To understand these sources and their interplay, the Knight Foundation has been doing great work on what they call “information ecologies” – the web of information sources people tap into and use in daily community life. On October 17, the Aspen Institute (with support from Knight) will release a new white paper I wrote on how to assess local information environments. Click here if you want to receive a copy. I’ll be writing future posts about the key insights and findings in the days ahead.

But, for now, I want to underscore this one finding about “word of mouth” and its implications for the various efforts to “mobilize” Americans around particular issues, such as education.

Many of these efforts are laudable. But the importance of “word of mouth” is a reminder to those organizations and groups seeking to mobilize people that simply pushing out top-down, heavily messaged, highly packaged campaigns will not work. They run the risk of smelling like (and being!) public relations hyperbole, in which national or even local organizations are seen as trying to amass individuals in support of their organizational agenda.

Whether it’s the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, or the Tea Party, people are sending a clear message that they want to be heard, they want to engage on things that matter to them, and in ways that enable them to take action together. Word of mouth is at the center of these activities, and at the center of people’s lives. Our task now is to engage people in ways that tap into that and honor it.

What informational resource/s work well in your community. Does the answer lie in your local news, social clubs, or places of worship? What role does word of mouth play in your day-to-day? Perhaps some prefer another method of garnering reliable information to proceed in better decision-making for the community. We’d be interested to hear some of your thoughts and ideas on what mobilizes you, so please send them our way.

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A dynamic public speaker, Rich Harwood is a frequent keynote for foundations and national organizations. He is an expert contributor on national and syndicated media outlets including MSNBC, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN’s Inside Politics, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Special Report with Brit Hume, C-SPAN, and many others. He is also the author of Hope Unraveled: The people\’92s retreat and our way back (2005), Make Hope Real: How we can accelerate change for the public good (2008) and numerous studies, articles and essays chronicling vital issues of our time. His most recent written work, Why We\’92re Here: The Powerful Impact of Public Broadcasters When They Turn Outward, is being published and distributed in Spring 2011. You can follow him on twitter @RichHarwood and facebook.com/richharwood.

You can read Rich’s posts every Tuesday on State of the Re:Union’s website.

State of the Re:Union intern Brit McGinnis shares a product of her inspiration from a SOTRU tradition in “Letters to the City.” You can read the “Letters to the City” by visiting our Website (click here): under “Radio Episodes” you can choose which episode you would like to find out more about. Once you choose an episode, the “Letters to the City” will be available for your viewing pleasure on the right side of the page.

Dear Oregon,

This is really a sad farewell for me, due to my leaving you to take on an internship in Ireland, a country across the sea and much different than yourself. I will miss you, Oregon — you’re such a chill state to hang with! You’re one of the mild-tempered middle children of the Union, the nature-loving, sweater-wearing, sweet-tooth-possessing daughter born on Valentine’s Day.

I first came to know you in the depths of winter (during a record-breaking snowfall, to boot). I was a little girl from California who had never seen snow, and I was boggled by it. The world looked exactly like the black and white postcards I had seen at Christmastime, and the snow-made air was clean and pure. My brothers and I had to gather firewood to feed the burning hearth, and knocked icicles off the roof to munch on with the neighbor kids.

But your landscape changed dramatically once summer came around, and goodness knows I loved you for it. The air was clean and arid, especially around the lava fields. The local people retained their famous friendliness throughout the change of seasons, and my family adopted the state as our new home.

Now that I’m older, I see you through different eyes. I can appreciate your  urban wisdom, the street smarts you contain under your scruffy exterior. You are so beloved by your people, who work hard to retain your natural beauty.

People have sometimes tried to make you feel like you aren’t cool, that you are too backwoodsy or don’t have enough big cities. But you just smile to yourself, Oregon, because you know the truth. You’re as awesome as they come. You’re the perfect pit stop between Los Angeles and Seattle, and musicians love to be taken in by your chill, music connoisseur peeps in Eugene or Portland (even Bend sometimes!).

You are so multifaceted, Oregon. It’s one of the things I love most about you. Farmland, beaches, volcanoes, forests— you’ve got it all. Both the High Desert and the Silicon Forest reside within you. You’re a jill-of-all-trades, with plenty of wonderful things to offer.

I love you, Oregon. You took me in as a scrappy kid from the desert and gave me a home. You also gave me a new heritage, one of pioneers, adventurers and scientists. I will no doubt miss your toughness, confidence, and all-American creativity when I venture from your shores.

Always,

Brit

P.S. There is indeed an Oregonian accent! To achieve it, begin by speaking slowly. Emphasize all “o” sounds, stretch out your “n”s, and make your t- and k-sounds extra harsh. And never forget, it’s “OR-UH-GUN”- not “OAR-EE-GONE.”

State of the Re:Union’s intern Melissa Lee gives us an insight into what some people of a small town in Washington State are doing to keep their community going.

Here’s something you don’t usually hear when entering a hardware store: “We’ve got some pie over there, help yourself.”

That’s exactly what I heard when I stepped into the Waitsburg Hardware & Mercantile in Waitsburg, WA.  And there was pie indeed.  It was blueberry rhubarb and it was delicious.  There was also coffee to go along with it.  I happened to stumble into the hardware store on what is known to the locals as “pie day,” which is not so much a set day of the week, but occurs whenever someone from the community decides to bring in pie for anyone who might stop by to enjoy.

“We have some very good pie and cake makers, and sometimes we have biscuits and gravy; we have all kinds of food in here,” said John Stellwagen.  He and his wife, Marilyn, own the place since they bought the business in 2005, and it was then that it became a center where people come together.  “People want to fix something, they bring it in.  We have people that make smoked cheeses and bring them in and sometimes we barbeque, so it just gets you through the day.” According to the Web site the hardware store is “A place where the community gathers to pass the time of day and catch up on the local news.”

I spent about a half hour in the store and in that time saw at least 10 people come in, sit down, eat some pie and chat.  Many people seemed to know each other, but I also overheard introductions being made.  Stellwagen told me it all started one fall when Waitsburg Hardware decided to hold an apple pie baking contest.  Members of the community brought in their finest but the result was a draw, everyone coming in first place.  A run-off was planned, a second round of pie eating ensued and “pie day” was born.

“We had all these people bringing in these pies and we could never quite make up our mind, so we had to have another run-off, but really it was just a huge excuse to have pie. We never did choose anyone, but we had a pie a day for weeks,” explained Stellwagen.

“Sometimes people stop in two or three times a day,” a patron who was working on his second piece of the blueberry rhubarb treat told me.

The pie and coffee wasn’t the only evidence I saw that this store serves as much more than a place to buy nails and a hammer.  Marilyn Stellwagen also runs the Black Dog Rescue Program, which finds homes for abandoned cats and dogs, placing around 250 needy animals in the past two years.  And locals have a place to strut their stuff on a community bulletin board, displaying pictures of area members and the fish they have caught, complete with labels showing names and sizes.

I had just gone in to buy some batteries, but I left with a lot more; a sense that community can form wherever there is pie and a welcoming population.  Before I walked out the door, Stellwagen told me to come back sometime soon, and I will.  I hope I happen upon biscuits and gravy day, but for now, I know where I can find some pie; sitting right next to the screwdrivers, just how I like it.

Would these type of events work in a larger town or a metropolis, or is this something that can only be utilized by smaller hamlets? Do you know of more unique tactics to get the community involved? We would love to hear about it.

The word “reform” has become ubiquitous in its meaning and uses over the past few years. It is a hot-button topic, and perhaps its meaning has diminished. State of the Re:Union’s contributor Peter Block gives a refresher course on how to reform the notion of “reform.” (Because there are a few poignant points, SOTRU will present an excerpt from his post. To read Peter’s post in its entirety, click here.)

I would like to whisper a quiet caution to those of us who are investing in institutional or structural reform efforts. There is an intensifying stream of efforts to reform our institutions. In the U.S. there is government reform, education reform, healthcare reform, economic reform, food reform and environmental reform efforts. A growth industry to be sure.

Unfortunately, most of these reform efforts will change very little of consequence. Reform means to change the nature or order of things, to end something that is not working and replace it with something that does. Most of our current efforts have little to do with reform. They are at best efforts to make things a little better, a little less expensive, and at worst they are punitive strategies masquerading under the banner of reform.

The meaning of serious reform.

If we were serious about reform, there are four conditions that need to exist:

1. Serious reform means that there is a fundamental shift in the nature of relationships among the players. For example there would be a change in the relationship between teacher and student in education, doctor and patient in health care, politician and citizen in government, farmer and family in the food world.

2. This shift in relationship begins with a shift in who is authorized to speak, whose voice counts. If the voice of the educator, medical professional or elected official drives the reform and the voice of the student, patient or citizen is not amplified, then nothing has really changed.

3. When we re-authorize whose voice counts, there is a shift in where control resides. This means that real transformation calls forth from the student and patient and citizen more power than they had before, whether they want it or not. Power is distributed, not centralized. Consistency and efficiency are sacrificed for local ownership.

4. Shifting control leads to new forms of engagement. The players whom the system is designed to serve (students, patients and citizens) are now the center of the action. We pay close attention to how they come together. They meet to create relationships with one another. They value one another’s speaking. They realize they have the real power to create the future they have in mind for themselves. These effects are determined by the way we come together, not by new policy, program or expert design.

Education reform applies to the other reform movements afoot.

Serious economic reform will create ways to build a stronger relationship among local businesses, home-based entrepreneurs, citizens buying less and buying local.

Serious health care reform will recognize that health is dependent on the network of relationships around us. We now know how to be healthy, we just need support from each other.

Government reform will have all of us deciding that we are citizens producing a good life for ourselves, not consumers wanting more services. Politicians will lose power and redefine their role as super-conveners of the process described above.

What this calls us to remember is that it is in the nature of students, parents, neighbors and citizens to lead the fundamental shifts that we all seek. The essential reform is to break the dependency we have on professionals, experts and consumption to provide satisfaction. As this occurs, our gift to the professionals is to give them and their systems something to follow.

What has reform come to mean to you? Has it been used so often that it has lost its meaning? What do you find to be the definition of reform? We want to know how reform works in your life, so write and tell us about your thoughts and comments.

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Peter Block co-authored the book “The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods.” He is a partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops to build the skills outlined in his books. He is the author of Flawless Consulting, Stewardship, The Answer to How Is Yes, and Community. He is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the Organization Development Network’s 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award.