(Adams Presidential Address Continued from Page 2)
As a young boy I traipsed along with her as she made her subscription collections and listened to her conversations of the needs of the “old country” kitchen table by kitchen table, front porch by front porch. There was one time in my mid-teens when I encountered FBI agents leaving her apartment overhearing them say, “Oh, that old lady can’t be a Communist, she’s just too nice!” Telling my grandmother of what I overheard she sat me down and said, “Randy, I just want you to understand something. My brand of Socialism is to bring everybody up, not take anybody down!” She was my first community development instructor, although I didn’t know it at the time. I have come to appreciate the importance for regulated capitalism as an economic dynamic while adhering to the values of social equity and justice.
My second instructor was my African American Junior High social studies teacher. I went to a segregated school of sorts that was 85% African American and 15% White. I was the only White boy in my homeroom class. Most of the teachers were also African American and the best in the school system, being limited to teaching in mostly black schools. When a question was posed during a class about how long it would take to achieve civil rights for African Americans, I raised my hand and replied what I had heard at home, “It will take time.” My teacher blew up saying, “We’ve waited 400 hundred years. How much longer do we have to wait?” She immediately apologized for her outburst. I was not shocked as I think she may have thought, but intrigued. She made me question what I was thinking and I found it stimulating. It wasn’t until years later when I began to learn more of our country’s history and looked back at the incident that I understood why she felt in the 50’s she may have crossed a line. She was teaching and while she may not have realized it, I was learning. Why do people have to wait for social justice? It has always made me search for who benefits or who loses from rules, regulations, and laws - and why?
I worked on a number of projects while in college during the 60’s in inner city Cleveland. The most memorable experience was one I had in a class on civil rights where we discussed the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and historical events and leaders in the civil rights movement. A young African American woman with her small child came up to me after class. She said the sessions were quite interesting, but then asked me a simple question. “Can you help us get our garbage picked up?” Another teacher! All she wanted was what she had full rights to in the first place, being treated as all other citizens receiving the services they deserved. The great words we discussed in our sessions had meaning only if they could demonstrate that they resulted in equal treatment and social justice.
The last story is from something that happened during my training program upon entering Peace Corps service. I was frustrated with the community I was sent to live in for three weeks as a practicum because they did not seem interested in doing anything, i.e., not repairing the road, their houses, the school, etc. I wasn’t sure what to do. I was supposed to be a community development specialist and get things done!!! They wanted to build a wall around the cemetery and I thought it was a waste of time and resources.
What I have found throughout my career is that I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have people around me who have tolerated my ignorance and have taken the time to clue me in. And luckily, as an old friend later once said to me, “We have two ears and one mouth and should use them proportionately.”2 I have tried to follow his advice.
In this case, a young man I had befriended the first few days in the community came up to me and said, “Randy, I understand what you are trying to do, but please understand that we own nothing here. The land, houses, and community center are owned by the landowner. The only thing we own is the land of the cemetery! That is ours and that’s where we will end up. We want to make it nice.” Community development is inherently a learning experience for everyone involved in the process, including the formal practitioner/scholars entrusted by the community with any training and technical assistance responsibilities.
I have worked in community development for over 40 years. When asked to explain what I did or do, I share my own facitious history of what I’ve learn about the field. In the 60’s we shot from the hip John Wayne style and whatever we hit we called the target! In the 70’s we used the gut feeling approach. As experts we had a gut feel this or that would work, but then were informed by our medical colleagues that gut feelings may simply be the product of excess gas, so we needed another approach. In the 80’s we had what I call the ideological approach, i.e., we looked for the one case that justified our position and ignored all competing facts – at least that is what I felt was being imposed on us by the ideologically correct of the period. In the 90’s I thought we had finally found the Holy Grail, the Zen approach (I’m ecumenical) which meant looking for the simplicity within the complexity. Performance indicators were the way to go. But then I discovered many times we didn’t yet know the questions we wanted to answer with the data we collected. Today we are in the era of regionalism. What will we learn from this decade?
(continued)
2 - Wesley Steward, former Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic and retired USIA official
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