The debt ceiling crisis brought out some of the worst of people’s tendencies in the country. Today, many of us are asking what can be done to get things moving in a better direction. Here are five questions that can help you and others bring out the best in ourselves, and which you can put to use immediately in your own life, work and community.

I thought to draw on these questions this morning because so many of us are so deeply frustrated and angry about the state of affairs in the country. Oftentimes we can feel like we can’t change the nation’s trajectory, that we are prisoners to current conditions.

It doesn’t seem that a “change” in the tone and substance of Washington, D.C., in many state capitals, or for that matter in many communities, will come anytime soon. Indeed, such change may materialize only when the country demands and expects it. I believe we’re moving in that direction, but we’re not there yet.

But where does that leave you? Must we stand idly by and wait for others to change the nation’s course? Should we simply put our heads down and tend to our own affairs? Do we believe that our own actions do not matter?

My answer is simple and direct: what each of us does daily does matter.  It matters to what happens in our own communities, in our workplaces, in our relationships. It matters to who each of us is, and whether we believe we are staying true to ourselves. If these things don’t matter, then what does?

So, on this day, the day the debt ceiling crisis has come to an end (at least for now), what can we do? Here are five questions I’d urge you to ask yourself, to answer, and to act on.

• How can I come together with others to truly make a difference?
• How do I make the kinds of leaps in my life and in efforts in my community to have the impact and life I seek?
• How can my participation in the community reflect the best of my personal values?
• How can I unleash the potential of myself and others?
• How do I find the courage and humility to take such a path?

Over the past weeks, I have traveled to Kansas City, Missouri; Battle Creek, Michigan; Champaign/Urbana, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; San Francisco, California; and Brazil, among other places, and no matter where I go, I hear people yearning to make a difference in their communities and to live their lives in meaningful ways. Each of us can do this, and the questions above can help. Their simplicity is what we need to grapple with right now.

As you move ahead, I ask you to keep the words of Dorothy Day, the Catholic social activist, in mind. These words have inspired me for years:

“Some people say, what is the sense
of our small effort?

They cannot see that we must lay one
brick at a time, take one step at a time.

A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that
spread in all directions. Each one of
our thoughts, words and deeds is like that.

No one has a right to sit down and
feel hopeless.

There is too much work to do.”

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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’s 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’re 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.

I spent last week in Brazil, and came away with a feeling of immense possibility for that nation and its people. Part of my trip took me to the rain forest where my colleague, Lisa Flick Wilson, and I visited one of them most innovative schools I have ever seen.  And where there are lessons for all of us.
After a 40-minute helicopter ride, our party arrived at the rural family house – Casa Familiar, a technical school for young people in the state of Bahia, in the north of Brazil, and the heart of the Atlantic Rain Forest.  About 35 students greeted us.
These students come from the larger region, many of them once destined to destitute poverty, lost hope, and a feeling of being invisible to the rest of Brazilian society. But, one by one, the students told us of how the school had enabled them to feel accomplished and competent, see their value to society, and want to give back to others.

This last point – the desire to give back – was profoundly expressed, all without any notion of required “service learning” hours or programs we might hear about here in the U.S. Instead, this ethos permeated everything at the school and how it operated. Indeed, this school was producing not only good students, but is fast becoming a force for positive change in the larger region. For instance:

• The school created a lab to teach students about soil conversation and other agriculture issues. Now, anyone in the region can come to the lab, use it, and learn. It’s a community resource.
• There is a room filled with computers at the school, donated in part by various companies. Beyond students using these computers, anyone in the region can too. Even more, the school realized that many people in the region cannot get to the school, and so the school takes computers into the community for people to learn how to use.
• When they return home every two weeks, the students serve as community teachers, where they share with others the skills, insights and lessons they are learning at the rural family house so others can benefit. (Think about the power of these students, once forgotten, now standing before their community.)
• What’s more is that both the soil and computer labs are run by student graduates. In fact, all of the staff graduated from the school – from the principal to the director of education programming.

Here in the States I have been urging many schools to think about their role as more than educators of students in classrooms, but as a larger force for change in their community. Such suggestions often are met by resistance – “We don’t have the time” – or by turning the idea into highly complex endeavors riddled by endless plans, detailed strategies, boring PowerPoint presentations, and laundry lists of activities.

But, in Bahia, they have created an approach driven by elegant simplicity, in which the school produces students who excel and builds community at the same time. One can imagine how the graduating students can form into a network of new, young leaders from throughout the region, who bring a clear commitment to their culture and heritage, and who know how to bring others together to create the kind of communities people there seek to have. This is exactly their plan.

After the students spoke, I was asked to say a few words. Among a number of points, I said that I had heard many Brazilians during my trip express concern about how such a fast-growing, diverse nation could ever come together to produce positive change. Well, as I looked into the eyes of these students, I told them that I could see the future of Brazil, right there, in Bahia, a place no one would ever dream could produce such innovation and leadership. And to me the future looked quite bright.

My second point was that I wanted their permission to tell their story back here in the U.S. To me, this is a story of hope and change – real, not imagined; results-driven, not rhetorical; and one developed through discipline, not long lists of disparate activities. It is true and genuine social innovation.
I also told them that I would love to have each of them come back to the States with me to tell their own story. I hope that day, too, will come.

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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’s retreat and our way back (2005), Make Hope Real: How we can accelerate change for the public goodtwitter @RichHarwood and facebook.com/richharwood.

(2008) and numerous studies, articles and essays chronicling vital issues of our time. His most recent written work, Why We’re Here: The Powerful Impact of Public Broadcasters When They Turn Outward, is being published and distributed in Spring 2011. You can follow him on

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

What’s Our Circle of Compassion?

I was sitting all the way at the other end of a large table from Delores in Champaign, Illinois, and I needed to do everything I could not to let the tears fall from my eyes. Here was a woman desperately struggling to keep her head above water in today’s economy and her acts of compassion were simply overwhelming to me. Throughout Main Street America, her story is not uncommon.

Over the course of our three-hour conversation, I learned about Delores and her life. I was in Champaign to talk with a cross-section of people for our new Citizens and Politics: A View from Main Street study we’re undertaking in conjunction with the Kettering Foundation.

Delores, a middle-aged, African-American, single mother is employed as a bus driver, where she earns less than $30,000 a year. And she is a Republican. Like so many Americans we’ve been talking with, Delores is doing all she can to make ends meet. And yet, all the talk of a “bad economy” in nightly news reports, findings from the latest public opinion surveys, and daily highlights of cold unemployment facts, sorely miss the point of people’s plight and aspirations. Indeed, many of the remedies being proposed to address people’s concerns seem utterly disconnected from what people are actually wrestling with.

For these issues are fundamentally about people and their lives, their hopes and what keeps them awake at night, their guts churning with anxiety. In 25 years of doing this work, I have never encountered such a time when people have been so rattled and scared about their future – where they talk so openly about their fear of losing a job, their family in free-fall as their earnings drop precipitously from $60,000 to below $30,000 and share their worries about not being able to hold onto their modest home, bought after many years of scraping together hard-earned dollars.

Delores and her fellow Illinoisans expressed frustration, even anger about the current situation. They believe the wealthy and powerful are taking care of themselves and have turned their backs on the rest of the country. They feel screwed, left behind, discarded. There is a sense of humanity that is being lost in this process–a sense of connection between and among people. In this abyss is a sense that we are no longer in the same boat together, part of something larger than ourselves.

But as strongly as Delores expressed such concerns, there was an equal fierceness about her compassion for others. Through the discussion, I came to learn Delores’ son has learning disabilities, and she’s concerned that the local school system is passing him from grade to grade without regard for whether he is actually learning anything. She expressed her concerns not by using politically correct language, or with a sense that she had been unduly burdened, but with a bluntness of acknowledging reality and the need to find the right support for her son. She discussed how she pushes and prods the local school system to create a good learning environment in which he can grow. Again, she did not speak about what she was owed or make arguments about her “rights” or ask for any hand-outs.

Then, amid this story, I learned that Delores had taken in a foster child, who she has now adopted, and of her love for this child. She matter-of-factly told stories about how she reaches out to others in the community to ensure they are making a go of things; about how people need to watch out for each others’ kids; about how we must care for the less fortunate among us.

On one level, Delores has little in material goods, but on another, so much in her heart.

What was so striking to me about her compassion, and that of many others, too, is not a kind of warm, cuddly, Hallmark-card like sentimental feeling one might expect, but a burning commitment to keep her dignity, to care about others, not to give in to larger currents that suggest one should turn away from others only to care for themselves.

One of our challenges today is to find ways to expand the circle of compassion within our communities and society if we, as a nation, are to move ahead. Delores is a reminder of what that really means. Despite the challenges that beset her, she has chosen to expand and embrace her circle.

Now, who are you including in your circle of compassion?

Delores’s story is the first in a series we are calling A View from Main Street which will feature stories of everyday Americans throughout the country. These stories will be featured together in a national study called Citizens and Politics II slated to be published later this year. You can read Citizens and Politics I here.

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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’s 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’re 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.

Top image from Wikimedia Commons user: Ardfern.

I have been thinking a lot about how to make a difference in society and also stay true to yourself.  I write and speak on this topic a good deal, but in light of the recent storms in America’s heartland, the question of charity vs. change has been on my mind. There has always been a difference that has concerned me–oftentimes I think we get them confused. I still do; so I wanted to return to this topic amid the challenges we face.

For a very long time I have always sought to speak out on significant difference between charity and change. Charity is ensuring someone has a meal tonight or roof over their head, things that folks in the wake of a natural disaster very much need. All things I suspect we agree are good things to do. But the problem is when we come to believe that such charity is a substitute for change–in fact, that it IS change.

I remember very clearly hearing on the radio a segment of a National Press Club talk given by Reverend David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, who was talking about how to end hunger in the U.S. At one point, he made a passionate riff about how Moses and Jesus and the prophets all were fundamentally calling for changes in structures, laws, and beliefs, among other things. Yes, they wanted people to help the less fortunate; there’s much written about that in religious and other belief systems. But, they also said that only through basic changes in underlying conditions in society, would the world be different.

Beckmann was asked if he thought there was a “compassion gap” in the U.S., had people become so fatigued by national and world disasters and assorted other events that they were no longer willing to engage or even pay attention. He emphatically said “No” – while there is a lack of confidence in our ability to act effectively on challenges, people still “care.”

I agree with him. Every indicator I see in my work and travels is that people still do care about others and deeply so. But caring and what we do are two very different things. We have created all sorts of mechanisms that enable people to marshal in the short term financial and other resources to express our individual and collective compassion for victims of natural disasters and to respond to people’s immediate needs. We can make donations through instant text messages, directly support charities online and bypass “middle men,” and rally around a cause through instant mobilization efforts. But is that enough?

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Every indicator I see in my work and travels is that people still do care about others and deeply so. But caring and what we do are two very different things.

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At a Craigslist Boot Camp, where I once spoke, I was taken to task for not promoting “fast and easy” volunteer actions people can take, whether they be donations or other activities like reading a book to a kid. Statements about such “fast and easy” actions were a mantra at the event. My own response was that the actions people take can be viewed along a continuum–say, from something fast and easy to something deeper and more sustained over time.

But I also said that we must not confuse fast and easy such actions with fundamental change, that our purpose and actions must be aligned. To create change, as Beckmann was pointing out, we must get at fundamental structures, policies, laws, norms, relationships. Yes, charitable acts can contribute to such change, but they do not get us there.

I suppose I am writing about this topic today because at no other point in my own lifetime can I remember when charity was more needed at home and abroad. So I find there is a pull within me to hold back a bit on drawing such a sharp distinction between charity and change. I know we need charity and we must give. And yet, what I also know is that the need for change–real, fundamental, basic transformation–is desperately needed today. We are in a new time, guided by too many old reflexes and approaches. We need to act on both charity and change, but let us be clear aware of when which response is called for when.

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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’s 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’re 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.

The sheer volume and speed of the news over the past year or more has left many of us feeling like our heads are spinning. Just when a lull appears to be coming our way, another domestic or international crisis hits. The upheaval has left many people feeling uprooted and dispirited, or at least wondering how they—and, we as nation—can make our way forward. There’s no better time for a re: union in America than now.

“Re: union” is a powerful idea. In our personal lives, it often invokes the good feelings of a “family” or “school” reunion. In public life, this little word makes a big entreaty to us. It asks us to do something—but not just anything, something meaningful: to step forward, to join back with others we have lost sight of or turned away from, to put something back together again; to re-create something we can do only together.

We live in a time when technology allows us to connect with anyone, at anytime. And yet, despite this ability to connect, so many people feel disconnected from one another and especially from those who are different from us. There is a gnawing sense among many people of being isolated and fragmented. So many of us are running faster and harder, but worry we are somehow falling behind. Our politics and public life are toxic—filled by acrimony and divisiveness, with too many people thinking only about themselves.

Still, as I travel the country, I find a deep yearning among people to re-engage and reconnect. People want to come back into the public square. They want to join with others to make a difference. They want to work not simply for their own good, but the common good.

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In short, people want a re: union.

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But nothing is automatic. We know this, especially now. Simply wanting something and fulfilling it are two different things entirely. The fulfillment of our aspirations will take hard work, deliberate action, and each of us rolling up our sleeves.

Indeed, to bring about a re: union—or, put a better way, to create a path on which we are moving toward re: union—will require that we engage with each other differently. We must see and hear one another. We must learn to listen. We will need to create new avenues for making progress. All this will require that each of us steps forward and open ourselves up. This is the hard work we must do, and we must do it in ways that actually addresses core concerns people hold about the economy and jobs, education, health care, and other pressing issues.

The good news (and there is good news!) is that my own work in communities across the country provides plenty of evidence that Americans are ready, even willing, to take a new path. I plan on writing about the people I’ve met and spoken with in my travels and their path forward in this blog. Moreover, State of the Re: Union, through its programming, is giving voice to people’s own struggles and aspirations and the steps they are taking to make life better. The show is all about how people are living their lives today, and how people can come together to create a better society – for themselves, and for all of us.

That’s why I am so delighted that The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation is partnering up with State of the Re: Union.

So, let’s keep moving, and through our words and actions let’s demonstrate what’s possible. It’s time, for a re: union.

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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’s 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’re 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.

SOTRU Is Excited to Announce Our Newest Guest Contributor

Are you tired and frustrated with public life? Isn’t it easier to simply focus on your family, your job and your life? The honest truth is that most Americans feel this way. They are tired and frustrated. They have been running as hard as they can just to make ends meet. Communities are facing mounting pressure to improve schools, keep people employed and spur housing, economic and job growth in tough times. But there is hope ahead.

State of the Re: Union is teaming up with a man who has been called “One of the great thinkers in American public life,” Rich Harwood to bring you honesty, insight and hope straight from the frontlines. Incredible challenges loom ahead in our communities, but there are still many opportunities. And if we don’t talk about both–we’re not being honest.

Rich has, over the past twenty years, become a leading national authority on improving America’s communities, raising standards of political conduct and re-engaging citizens on today’s most complex and controversial public issues. He is the president and founder of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation.

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State of the Re: Union is teaming up with a man who has been called “One of the great thinkers in American public life,” Rich Harwood to bring you honesty, insight and hope straight from the frontlines.

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“If we are to improve our communities,” says Rich, “then we need to release ourselves from the resignation that public life has to be the way it is today or what it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. We must declare that it can be better, that we can be better!”

Rich’s unique voice stirs up a desire to make a difference and gives you an easy way to get moving. There are simple, easy steps to make your job, your community and your life more hope-filled. You can do what you really want to do, stay true to yourself and have impact.

Rich Harwood and State of the Re: Union are what the American people need to hear right now. Both are committed to spreading a vision for what American society should be. Harwood has inspired thousands of people to step forward and take action rooted in their community and stay true to themselves. Together we will work to bring you stories that highlight people and communities making good on their urge to do good. Stay Tuned!

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’s 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’re 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.