Conscious Choice: The “Anti” Antidote

August 1999

The “Anti” Antidote

Awakening Positive Activists

by Lucy Hayden

Few people have time or energy to work for other people’s causes — but they will work tirelessly for their own. Effective grassroots organizations provide a means for people to act on the things they believe in. Once you recognize this, inspiring people to work toward a common goal becomes much easier.

In 1994 I co-founded an all-volunteer community development organization called Red Hook Views, in Red Hook, NY. I first got involved to oppose a mall; a few years later my co-founder and I were running a three hundred-member nonprofit. While the issues we tackled may not speak to everyone, the general strategies we applied to recruit and inspire volunteers are useful to any grassroots organization.

The Stinkville Reaction

People respond to a local problem in one of two ways. They either react to what they don’t like and fight against it, or they find an alternative solution and work toward it. The reactive response comes naturally to most people, but it’s not effective in finding long-term solutions. Whether fighting a polluting conglomerate, an entrenched, regressive school board, or another established organization or practice, the enthusiastic people involved will waste their energy if they’re fighting a battle rather than solving a problem.

Take hypothetical Stinkville, a town that’s gained a reputation as a dumping ground for construction waste. A new dump is proposed. Officials say it’ll bring in tax revenue. It will also degrade substantial natural resources and amenities. You want to have a meeting to inform and organize people.

You announce a "Stop the Dump" meeting, and you get ten or twenty angry people out to talk about all the bad things the dump will bring. They will argue about the best way to fight against the proposal. Most scenarios like this wind up maybe a year later with a few burnt out, discouraged people facing the ultimate option of bringing a lawsuit against the opposition.

The Positive Alternative

Rather than setting out to fight the dump, you can instead ask people to come out to discuss what they would like their town to be like in ten years. It’s not the most direct way to stop the dump, but the results will be far more satisfying for everyone.

At your first meeting, you’ll have a room full of people with constructive ideas who want to get involved. You find out that collecting taxes from dumps is not a high priority among residents. Someone may suggest a more profitable use for the land. Another person may see an opportunity to buy the land. These ideas probably wouldn’t have come up at a "Stop the Dump" meeting. More importantly, these ideas are valued by the people who thought of them, perhaps valued enough to be acted on. This is not as far-fetched as you may think.

What We Did in Red Hook

In 1994, a large mall was proposed to be built just outside Red Hook Village, a place defined by its one traffic light and the two-story Victorian buildings lining the sidewalks. When Michele Robinson Greig, a scholar and local farmer’s wife, learned about the proposed mall, she published a newsletter called Red Hook Views which posed the question, "Are you alarmed about the type of development occurring south of the village?" and announced a meeting. Wherever she went she handed the newsletter to people, and she left stacks of them in local stores.

I’d just moved to Red Hook and liked the old-fashioned village, so when I read Michele’s newsletter, I was angry. I drove eleven miles to Greig Farm in pouring rain, climbed the back stairs of a barn, and found five people sitting around eating blueberries.

We talked for a while about why we didn’t want the mall built. Apparently the developer had a lot of money and government support. It didn’t take much to realize that six people fighting this proposal would wind up in a face-off with the developer, and that, if previous experiences in town were any indication, the developer would steamroll through the approval process, leaving us only the option to sue. Impossible: none of us had money.

We thought we’d have a better chance of success if we drew more people into the cause. We decided that telling people about the potential negative effects of this mall probably wouldn’t help. Michele had taken that approach in the newsletter, and only six people had come out. We decided instead to find out what people wanted Red Hook’s future to look like. We thought a discussion about the town’s future would open people’s eyes to the long-term consequences of strip development. We suspected that many residents hadn’t given it much thought.

Using the Tools at Hand

Michele suggested holding an open meeting in the town hall, which seemed to me a bold and powerful idea. I then suggested we send a press release to the local newspapers. We were underway.

More significantly, we had stumbled on the two most important resources for grassroots organizing: public meeting places and the local media. They save you both money and time. Town halls and other public buildings are neutral territory, they’re easy to find, they’re usually free of charge, and using them lends your organization credibility.

Local newspapers are another key resource. Without the community newspapers in Red Hook, I don’t think we would have been able to function. Writing press releases, letters, and columns for the local press is a great way to broadcast information: it’s free, it distributes itself, it reaches people you may never see, and it can provide enough information about your activities to interest a reporter.

Preparing for the Meeting

Michele and I started working to pull the meeting together. She had been a professor of medieval literature, practiced in the art of getting students to think, coaxing them to develop their thoughts, and engaging them in new ideas. I was a writer and editor used to clarifying obscure, jargon-ridden text. It turned out that we were well equipped for the tasks ahead.

We wanted the meeting to be entirely open so that everyone would speak freely. We didn’t want to force our ideas down people’s throats. Certainly, we were concerned about the strip mall, but who were we to tell people what to do? So we decided to pose an open question: What are your hopes and dreams for Red Hook? To the papers, we announced that we were holding a public meeting for everyone to talk about Red Hook’s future. A couple of interested reporters wrote advance articles.

We decided that absolutely everything should be written down so that people could see their ideas in print. I think this decision was fundamental to our success. I can see now, after five years of running and attending public meetings, that accurately recording people’s comments is essential to a fair, productive public process. It forces those hosting a meeting to listen carefully and forces speakers to frame their thoughts carefully and take public ownership of their ideas.

Recording ideas is not the same as taking minutes. It may involve asking a speaker to clarify a thought, to address a question directly, to suggest a concrete solution, until both you and the speaker are satisfied. It does take work, and practice will improve the results.

Sometimes bizarre ideas come up — record them. Often they hold a germ of something useful. Besides, if you do not record the idea, you alienate a member of your community.

When you reach out, open the door to everyone. Ultimately, no matter what issue you’re tackling, workable solutions come from face-to-face talks among all interested parties. All of our meetings were and continue to be open meetings, announced in the paper, with minutes recorded. Many are videotaped. Open doors keep you honest: if you can’t say what you have to say in public, your goals or methods may not be in the best interest of the community.

We spent several weeks reaching people, using all the methods we could think of. These are enumerated in the accompanying sidebar.

Essential Ground Rules

The night of the meeting, approximately two hundred people, most of whom didn’t know us or each other, sat in the town hall, waiting to see what would happen. The attendance far exceeded our expectations. We had taped large sheets of newsprint to the walls to record everyone’s ideas. I caught Michele’s eye: we were both thinking, "Holy Cow, what are we doing?"

Michele took a deep breath, smiled, and explained the following ground rules: restrict your speaking time to answering the question posed; be brief; contribute positive ideas; if you identify a problem, suggest a solution; don’t censure or criticize others’ ideas. She explained that we would apply the following rules to ourselves: record and credit every idea; give everyone a chance to speak; don’t allow anyone to hijack the discussion. The rules were designed to put everyone on the same footing and encourage creative thinking.

We passed a sign-in sheet around, asking for names and contact numbers. At the same time, everyone in the room introduced themselves and very briefly explained why they were there. This is a great thing to do if you want people to connect. Many will be nervous and lack confidence. Introductions break down barriers and warm people up.

After introductions, Michele posed the question. Hands went up. Almost to a person, those who spoke began by saying how nice it was to be given a chance to talk. It seems that many had been to public hearings or town meetings where they felt their comments had been unwelcome and ignored. They went on to talk about Red Hook and make suggestions, from the practical and easy to the visionary and wild. The meeting lasted three hours, after which the crowd was energized and happy. At the close of the meeting, we didn’t draw any conclusions, but promised to put the ideas together and do something with them.

It’s amazing that things went as well as they did. In retrospect, it’s because we enforced our set of rules. At other meetings, I’ve seen how tough it is to steer a public discussion toward productive solutions. Even professional meeting facilitators rarely get this right. Some ignore what they don’t want to hear. Some lead a meeting by the nose to a preferred conclusion or invite only those they feel are interested in an issue. As a result, ordinary folks who might be willing to get involved are shut out of the public process and feel cheated.

Once people feel they are in conflict with one another, it’s difficult to find common ground, and very little is resolved satisfactorily. It’s even harder to ensure that all those who might get involved feel included and valued. Our ground rules forced people to think about what they wanted and encouraged others to listen carefully. We continue to adhere to them unrelentingly, even today.

The Next Step: Public Education

After the meeting, we took a close look at the participants’ ideas. Although stopping the new mall had not been discussed, many of the suggestions focused on preserving the village, eliminating strip development, restoring buildings, and protecting open space. As we suspected, the residents’ vision for Red Hook did not include a new mall.

We began to see that the ideas were all complementary, parts of a jigsaw puzzle that when put together showed a village with a healthy economy surrounded by farmland. The ideas fell naturally into categories, such as traffic, farmland protection, and historic preservation. We decided to hold a forum to discuss each general area in detail. It appeared that our next job was providing information to help people act on their ideas.

Michele and I started writing a weekly newspaper column. We published ideas from the meeting, giving credit to those who contributed them, and then wrote about what other towns were doing to address similar issues.

Every month for the first year we hosted a forum, which typically opened with a slide show or an expert speaker, many of whom spoke for free. Some village businesses gave us a little financial support to pay for presentations. We distributed related information at the forums and through the column so that people could see what was possible.

The Big Shift

It took a few months for the "mulch" we were spreading to work, but changes were afoot. I remember standing in line at the corner store one day. Two older guys were talking about ways to alleviate traffic congestion at the crossroads. It was straight from our latest column. Another day, at the town pool, a couple of mothers were talking about the purchase of development rights on farmland. At our monthly forums, people started citing parts of the zoning code and bringing in photos of other towns.

Individuals began to work on projects, many inspired by ideas from the first public meeting. A community garden was started. Volunteers videotaped and broadcast our meetings on public-access television. There was a surge in public participation, with more people running for public office and serving on committees. Letters to the papers from Red Hook residents increased dramatically.

Planners were brought in with grant money to enhance the gateway area. A plan for trails, traffic calming, and pedestrian access was drawn up, on request, by the Department of Transportation. A farmland protection program got underway. Several independent stores opened in the village, and commercial signage noticeably improved.

If we had narrowly focused on stopping the mall, I’m certain that I would have burned out long ago and that the mall would be built the way the developer envisioned it. People would have a vague memory of "that group against the mall." Instead, Red Hook Views now has three hundred dues-paying members and serves as a vehicle for public discussion.

The mall proposal is still on the table, but many compromises have been reached with the developer — in size, architectural design, layout, parking, trails access. Through the ongoing public process we established, the residents found solutions we can all live with.

While Red Hook Views certainly cannot take credit for all the positive changes in town or the current high level of activism, we are recognized as a "hyperactivist" organization that reaches out to the community and opens difficult issues to public discussion.

Making It Self-Sustaining

Some grassroots organizations have a finite lifespan dictated by the cause for which they’re working. For instance, a group working to enact legislation may not have a life after the laws they lobby for are adopted. Other organizations, however, may need to exist indefinitely. These organizations have to be self-renewing; they can’t depend solely on the vision and energy of one or two people.

Right now, you may be very motivated and energetic about your cause and your organization, and you may dive headlong into a full-time commitment. Years from now, you may find that the organization you gave birth to has you surrounded and depends on you for too much. You may want to move on but be worried that, if you do, the group will falter.

This is no ego trip. It’s a real quandary faced by many grassroots organizations. But if you’ve cultivated leadership from within, your organization will have a life of its own.

Last year, Michele and I decided to step down as co-chairs, and two new co-chairs stepped into the leadership. One reason we resigned was to see whether Red Hook Views would continue without us. It has. The fifth annual town-wide meeting is coming up, one new co-chair has recently published an editorial, and the group has initiated a widespread campaign in favor of size limits on new commercial buildings. Red Hook Views is more solid than ever. As the founders, Michele and I feel the same mix of pride and sadness that parents must feel when they send a child off into the world

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