Community-Based Knowledge, Sustainable Business, & Renewable Energy

<h2>TAG LINES</h2>
I'm a writer, so part of my job is to 'talk the talk.' At the same time
, I have, many more times than once or twice, also 'walked the walk,' helping fo
lks to organize to get things they wanted, helping to oppose Klan activity's pre
sence in schools and public places, helping to pull people together to talk abou
t peace and justice and renewable energy issues, and so on.
PIC DEMOCRACY POSTER When I speak passionately about democracy, therefore, I
can honestly say that my position has some basis in practice, even if I'm a bit
of a nerd who doesn't like to mix all that much. Why I 'speak passionately abou
t democracy' is much more than an outbreak of idealism.
A syllogism can efficiently express my point here. If some mechanism fo
r majority rule doesn't occur pretty quickly, then all pretension of 'corporate
social responsibility,' sustainable business, and 'business...better' will have
the combined weight of less than a single atom of Plutonium, a satanic substance
that, in aggregate, will rule the planet instead of the more benign and humane
techniques and methods that we insist are our priorities.
That this is so, that the present '<a href="http://www.justmeans.com/edi
torials?action=readeditorial&p=25981">establishment</a>,' '<a href="http://www.j
ustmeans.com/editorials?action=readeditorial&p=31139">Standard Operating Procedu
re</a>,' and <a href="http://www.justmeans.com/Nukes-Will-Never-Be-Sustainable-B
usiness/32748.html">ruling class</a> have, beyond any rational doubt, already de
cided on 'our' energy future should be plain, not only from everything that I wr
ite, but also from any honest, even cursory, glance at the current and historica
l energy situation. Dick Cheney's <a href="http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/li
t/energytaskforce/index.html">methods</a> are the opposite of anomalous.
I'll hope that folks can follow this line of reasoning. If they can, th
en they will jump with joy to affirm, "You're right, Jimbo, we need some more fl
ipping democracy here, tout suite!" And as I've repeatedly <a href="http://www.
justmeans.com/editorials?action=readeditorial&p=32030">made clear</a>, we're not
talking any once-a-year, namby-pamby, nod-and-say-yes democracy either.
We have to commit ourselves to the fiercest and most serious emergence o
f a democratic movement of regular folks, the likes of which very few of the liv
ing on this continent have ever seen. Arguably, <a href="http://www.iww.org/cul
ture/myths/international.shtml">the Industrial Workers of the World</a>, the <a
href="">Congress of Industrial Organizations</a>, the <a href=" http://www.justm
eans.com/editorials?action=readeditorial&p=32218">Civil Rights Movement</a>, eve
n the <a href="http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/Vietnam/riseandfall.html">
1960's Peace Movement</a>, all do represent such true grassroots engagement, the
people's vying for real power.
PIC BEN BARBER Several articles in this venue have mentioned the efforts of Ben
jamin Barber as a profound proponent of more profound expression of democracy.
His book, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6279.html">A Passion for De
mocracy</a> <em>"addresses issues of ongoing relevance to today's debates about
the roots of participatory democracy, including individualism vs. community, the
importance of consent, and the irrelevance of Marxism. Essays in the second se
ction, ... provide a 'strong democracy' critique of American democratic practice
. 'Education for Democracy: Civic Education, Service, and Citizenship' applies B
arber's theories to three related topics and includes his much-discussed essay '
America Skips School.' The final section, 'Democracy and Technology: Endless Fro
ntier or End of Democracy?' provides glimpses into a future that technology alon
e cannot secure for democracy."</em>
 Barber is calling for a movement for democracy in the land of the Declar
ation of Independence. He draws a 'bright-line' distinction between the pretens
ions of 'consumer freedom of choice' and real, rough-and-tumble civic action. F
or a 'recipe' in constructing such a movement, one might turn to Mark Rudd, he o
f the Weather Underground, who has written a <a href="http://www.markrudd.com/">
brief essay</a>(), "What It Takes to Build a Movement."
<table style="background-color:white;background-image:url('http://farm5.
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<tr>
<td>"(Y)oung people... often tell me, 'Nothing anyone does can ever make a dif
ference.' The words still sound strange:€it's a phrase I never once heard forty y
ears ago, a sentiment obviously false on its surface. €Growing up in the Fifties a
nd Sixties, I – and the rest of the country – knew about the civil rights movement i
n the South, and what was most evident was that individuals, joining with others
, actually were making a difference. The labor movement of the Thirties to the S
ixties had improved the lives of millions; the anti-war movement had brought dow
n a sitting president... . this is all self-evident. So, why the defeatism?€In th
e absence of knowledge of how these historical movements were built, young peopl
e assume that they arose spontaneously, or, perhaps, charismatic leaders suddenl
y called them into existence.€On the third Monday of every January we celebrate Ma
rtin Luther King Jr. having had a dream; knowledge of the movement itself is los
t." </td>
</tr>
</table>
Social justice, one part of which is <a href="http://www.justmeans.com/e
ditorials?action=readeditorial&p=32382">environmental justice</a>, is what built
the Civil Rights Movement. The reason that the "I have a dream!" speech still
moves listeners to tears is that they still share that dream. The hundreds of t
housands in Washington's 1963 August swelter, listening to that speech, and the
billions whom that dream continues to captivate, are not responding to King as j
ust another person; they are crying out for justice in the same way that King di
d. As Rudd notes, 'this is lost,' to our very great detriment.
Building capacity, just as clearly, is part of having democracy. Otherw
ise, the 'dream' is no more that a fantasy of 'easy street,' of a Big Rock Candy
Mountain, with its "lake of stew, and of whisky too," that never ends, "where t
hey hung the jerk who invented work," and so on. And this kind of 'wishful thin
king' is worse than meaningless.
Strengthening communities is not magic. It means having more jobs, more
resources, more infrastructure, more sense of power over the immediate environs
that all too often, for poor and middle class people, are so close to out of co
ntrol that they might as well be a hellish video game.
PIC SOCIAL CAPITAL And it also involves creating social capital, as Frances
Moore Lappe--whose seminal work, Food First, remains a critical tome for those
who like to eat to read--<a href="http://www.communiteam.org/cbinworkplace.pdf">
has maintained</a>, along with her collaborator, Paul Martin DuBos, "in their b
ook, The Quickening of America", Center for Living Democracy co-founders ... rep
orted on ten skills that people in the most successful nonprofit, business, and
community groups demonstrate. These 'Arts of Democracy,' as they refer to them,
include active listening, using conflict creatively, negotiating, dialogue, publ
ic judgment (group decision-making), and reflection. All of these skills are nec
essary for effective, collaborative problem solving and community building."
If this describes a Tea Party meeting, the normal rant of right-wing rad
io, or the everyday schtick of Fox News, then, as my granddaddy used to say, "I'
m a monkey's uncle." We have to tune in to each other more and turn off the ins
ult machine that most of us carry inside, ready to crank up. I say this in humb
le self criticism, by the way, but also with an awareness that such destructive
mechanisms serve a purpose for those who would undercut democracy to advance the
ir own agendas.
Science, Technology, and Society (STS) is also a component of this capac
itation process, both in a conceptual sense of making policy understandable for
local leadership, and in bringing Popular Education techniques to regular people
that start the relearning process 'where they are,' on the one hand, and, on th
e other hand, listen in closely to understand the wisdom and knowledge that they
already possess. STS epitomizes this multi-phase feedback loop for the increas
e and <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a73903769
2">transmission of knowledge</a>.
Brian Martin, a prolific Australian practitioner of STS and community ca
pacitation, writes about <a href="http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/05Restivo.
html">'grassroots science</a>,' which "usually involves much less expensive equi
pment. Some people become grassroots scientists because they love to learn about
nature but have no opportunity or no desire to undertake a professional career
in science. Others want to challenge orthodox theories. Yet others believe tha
t professional science is biased toward corporate and government priorities and
that grassroots science provides a way to truths that are otherwise ignored or o
bscured by vested interests. (In truth), (t)he boundaries between grassroots and
professional science are blurry and changeable, and so are the boundaries betwe
en science and nonscience."
The fulcrum of everything presented here, underpinning everything that i
s possible to imagine from this spinning out of possibility, is a manifestation
of community power, to which I've also often pointed, <a href="http://www.safs.m
su.edu/culturaldiv/buildingcommunity.htm">Wendell Berry</a> can guide us once mo
re. "A community is not something that you have, like a camcorder or a breakfas
t nook. No, it is something you do. And you have to do it all the time," he co
ntends, all the while acceding that this, particularly today, is basically impos
sible.
My final point here flows sweetly from Mr. Berry's rueful paradox, somet
hing to which I have, infrequently but pointedly, alluded. Moreover, it has lon
g been missing from the sociopolitical arena in the United States. This is a co
nsciousness of dialectic.
Almost everyone sees the false dualities that daily seem to dominate dia
log about our erstwhile democracy. From 'Firing Line' to the Op-Ed pages of pap
ers such as AJC, folks hurl tepid insults at each other to make clear that <stro
ng>"I disagree, d*** it! Red is better than Blue,"</strong> or vice versa.
PIC DIME In actuality, all that such diatribes demonstrate is a <STRONG>f
alse opposition</STRONG> between positions that are so similar that one would st
ruggle to divide them with a dime. This notion, that "not a dime's worth of dif
ference" divides many things that we hear constantly are <a href="http://books.g
oogle.com/books?id=SDuX26cg5mwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=dime%27s+worth+of+differe
nce&source=bl&ots=D5FJNrqFI8&sig=542ovfHb1eJV1MAyxKMxf5Mc2rQ&hl=en&ei=7R-lTKawEI
KBlAeN_fWHDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&
f=false">miles apart</a>, like DemoPublicans and Republocrats, goes back to the
crusty George Wallace, and arguably reflects empirical reality, as an assessment
of the corporate portion of national political parties' balance sheets might de
monstrate.
If as many wise thinkers suggest, we want to move beyond these nutty and
 non-existent oppositions that both divide our minds and confuse our senses,we m
ight start with a basic definition of dialectic, which is something real and pra
cticable. As an abstract noun, it applies to everything in existence. Thus a d
ialectic is the way that anything observable or definable consists of a motion o
r development that stems from diametrically opposed poles.
Or, as Princeton proffers, in one of its <a href="http://wordnetweb.prin
ceton.edu/perl/webwn">multiple iterations</a> of the term, "a contradiction of i
deas that serves as the determining factor in their interaction; 'this situation
created the inner dialectic of American history.'"
Mark Rudd speaks to an important aspect of this dialectic today. <table
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<td>"Something's missing. I first got an insight into articulating what it is
when I picked up <em>Letters from Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out</em
>,€(in which) Andy Cornell... criticizes the conflation of the terms 'activism' an
d 'organizing.'€He writes, 'activists are individuals who dedicate their time and
energy to various efforts they hope will contribute to social, political, or eco
nomic change.€ Organizers€are activists who, in addition to their own participation,
work to move other people to take action and help them develop skills, politica
l analysis and confidence within the context of organizations. Organizing is a
process – creating long-term campaigns that mobilize a certain constituency to pre
ss for specific demands from a particular target, using a defined strategy and e
scalating tactics.'€In other words, it's not enough... to continually express thei
r contempt for mainstream values (people have) got to move toward 'organizing ma
sses of people.'"</td>
</tr>
</table>
The former Weatherman voices for us 'the inner dialectic' of the current
moment, in terms of education, capacitation, democracy, and community. Should
we take this seriously?
Dialectical development is a scientific notion, perhaps not as widely po
pularized as the theory of evolution through natural selection of adaptive indiv
idual differences, but nonetheless firmly grounded in reality and, at least at t
he most basic levels of physics and chemistry and other empirically observable d
escriptions of all-that-is, incontrovertible. That protons and electrons dance
a balance, that catalyst ever ignites its opposite, that male and female do a 'R
ed-Queen' tango throughout nature, and on and on and on, are not matters of disp
ute.
<a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/works/history/ch13.htm">
Such a view</a>, that (t)he laws of dialectics, which have arisen out of the inv
estigation of universal processes of becoming and modes of being, apply to all p
henomena," is arguably accurate in every realm. <em>"Although each level of bei
ng has its own specific laws, these merge with general laws covering all spheres
of existence and development."</em>
"So too," moreover "at every juncture of friction and change, dialectics
is at work in politics." Only we don't see it, as often as not, number one bec
ause we don't make the fundamental choice to recognize its presence and our job
to discern it, and number two, because all the aforementioned faux dualisms pred
ominate the mediation of consciousness by rulers who don't necessarily want us t
o begin thinking like masterful dialecticians.
Thus, in today's essay, we explore some basic issues of how democracy ca
n happen. We also delve what the various factors are that have to comprise demo
cratic development. In addition, however, as much as my meager ability allows,
we will follow this unfolding of democracy's potential growth in our lives with
the clear comprehension that necessity compels us, if we want progress, to think
and act with dialectical consciousness and purpose.
<H2>INTRODUCTION</H2>
I've known Dr. Douglas Taylor for many years; I've watched his work from
afar, and sometimes I've had inputs and impacts to offer that served some purpo
se in the efforts that he launched. He is one of the country's primary hands-on
experts on the practice of Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR).
The Southeast Community Research Center (SCRC), of which Dr. Taylor is t
he founder and director, is a prime practitioner of CBPR, especially in the Sout
hern United States where so many of my articles have <A HREF="http://www.justmea
ns.com/editorials?action=readeditorial&p=31606">pointed out</A> that the capacit
ies of community and democracy face the sternest tests that the 'land of the fre
e and the home of the brave' have on display. Today's report revolves around th
is acronym that 90% or more of JustMeans readers have never heard before.
Their ignorance emanates in large measure from the lack of grounding in
dialectics noted above. This is probable to the point of certainty because, for
anyone who is thinking dialectically, the development of such tools as CBPR is
not only obvious as a presence, but it is also an important phenomenon to study
and engage, whatever ones values, aspirations, etc.
PIC CBPR The origins of CBPR go back, at the very least, both to material
that we've confronted before and to new information: <A HREF="http://books.goog
le.com/books?id=zEWsZ81Bd3YC&pg=PA396&lpg=PA396&dq=cio+%2B+%22worker+education%2
2+%2B+history+%2B+1930%27s&source=bl&ots=zzZ40ao5EO&sig=35ya6ablfpu_x-Xb-TDaZVhV
Vdk&hl=en&ei=1jGlTPDXF8T7lwedwf2-DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0
CCQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">the CIO and worker-education</A> in the 1930's;
the "science shop" developments that followed <A HREF="http://www.scienceshopswa
les.org.uk/">WWII in Europe</A>; civil society and popular education models that
we have seen several times before; among other sources. The upshot of this is
that CBPR did not originate from the ether but from specific and tangible attemp
ts by working people to gain power, knowledge, and active democratic capacity.
More particularly, their surging forth in the U.S. over the past two dec
ades, so that the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes for H
ealth, and many more rock-ribbed elements of established policy implementation i
ncorporate CBPR as 'best practice,' ties to the creation of <a href="http://www.
justmeans.com/editorials?action=readeditorial&p=32382">environmental justice</a>
and <a href="http://www.justmeans.com/editorials?action=readeditorial&p=28487">
social justice struggles</a> that we have already noticed, if we've been reading
attentively.
An operational definition of CBPR is discernible in the work of the <a h
ref="http://www.cbpr.org">SCRC</a>, and a multitude of documents further develop
this understanding. Essentially, a CBPR approach involves half a dozen compone
nts or more.
*It begins with the assumption that, whatever outcome a project anticipates--
whether it is a study of diabetes, an installation of solar heating options, an
assessment of a State energy policy, or any of the infinite other possibilities
of people in action together--the community locus of the program stands in an eq
ual, or even a superior, position to other stakeholders, participants, etc.;
*It always proceeds to tease out the parameters of work in a dialogic process
that considers community voices, and community knowledge, as equally worthy and
valid as other perspectives;
 *In carrying the activities decided upon forward, community members continue
to participate and have equal access to and a large measure of input into the un
folding process;
*Whatever knowledge or other production occurs creates a vested community int
erest in that product or service;
*Ongoing ventures, such as publication, presentation, or simple business oppo
rtunities, are equally the option of community members as of others involved;
*The development plans always anticipate leaving the community better off, wi
th tangible increases in capital and capacity.
*Feedback and evaluation is as much the right and duty of community participa
nts as these tasks are of any others who take part in the project.
As a model of democracy in action, readers might refer to some of the case notes
below, or they might recall that these same sorts of requirements were aspects
of the Snelling Institute for Government's groundwork in Vermont's citizen input
s into energy policy.
In the words of a CBPR handbook in use at SCRC, this process appears as
follows:
Traditionally, community members have been included in the research proc
ess only as subjects.€ The "research subject" has something that the researcher ne
eds in order to investigate a question, and the researcher determines the best w
ay of getting that information.€ In more traditional research - priorities, metho
ds, and use of the results are all set exclusively by professionals who have mos
tly an academic or career interest in a
This way of doing things, combined with some very unscientific social bi
ases, has led to a spectrum of ethical conflicts in the way researchers have int
eracted with communities.
PIC LADDER PART-- CBPR is a method directed toward solving real-world prob
lems that affect people’s lives.
CBPR values the experience and knowledge of those who have 1st-hand know
ledge of the problem. It requires that the people who have real-world knowledge
of a problem are decisive in determining what research is necessary, and be incl
uded as equal partners throughout the research process.
CBPR also assures that the community shares ownership of the Products of
the research.€ Thus, enabling them to take action on the new information and not
simply get left behind when they are no longer needed as "subjects" of the resea
rch. particular question.
The history of this, as noted above, relates to the primacy of environme
ntal justice as a way of conceptualizing a healthy relation among individuals, c
ommunities, institutions, and businesses. As Dr. Taylor has written, "we began
to employ participatory methods to assist communities in the Deep South in their
fight for social and economic justice."
Dr. Taylor s entry into this work dates to the late 1960 s, so he has be
en an active participant, in the process of which he has earned his doctorate, b
uilt several organizations, and facilitated so many campaigns and taught so many
workshops that it sometimes seems like an endless whorl of organizing and strug
gle since time immemorial. But he has made a difference.
While a complete listing of his bona fides and accomplishments would nec
essitate a CV of twenty pages or so, just a taste of how the SCRC has developed
might orient the reader to this work. <table style="background-color:white;back
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 <td>"In 1999, representatives from three organizations—the Brisbane Institute at
Morehouse College (a university center) Project South (a community-based organi
zation) and The Loka Institute (a national non-governmental organization)—came tog
ether to create a center in the Deep South to promote community-based participat
ory research. We agreed that it was important to establish a center that reflec
ted the unique history, problems, and strengths of the Southeast. We were commi
tted to building a center that involved research institutions and practitioners,
but one that was truly community centered and community directed."</td>
</tr>
</table> Now representing a way to move democracy to the front row of pol
icy, in which empowered communities can lead the way toward what we say that we
want to achieve, CBPR is a thorny godsend. Its spininess is unavoidable because
, as Frederick Douglass has instructed us, "life is struggle," especially in reg
ard to seeking power that presently inheres in the treasure chests of rulers and
large institutions.
It is a gift of the cosmos in the sense that it addresses all of the ele
ments that we have identified as essential to build a movement for a socially ju
st transformation, an evolution of social space that permits humanity to flower
instead of squashing it like a little bug, on the oncoming windshield of implaca
ble historical forces. It starts with community, proceeds through democracy, an
d builds on present knowledge to create new learning and the action to obtain po
pular goals as the end result.
<h2>CBPR PROJECTS AND POSSIBILITIES</h2>
Like all local, action-oriented processes, CBPR programs inevitably ma
ke some powerful positive gains and grapple with significant difficult challenge
s. In addition to the projects that the SCRC website lists, the efforts of <a h
ref="http://www.projectsouth.org/">Project South</a>, the actions chronicled in
earlier drafts about ongoing developments in Vermont, the global impacts of the
Energy Justice Network, and the stalwart interventions of the Blue Ridge Environ
mental Defense League all manifest elements of the decades long involvement of D
r. Taylor in this field of social justice and democracy.################
Dr. Taylor laughs that the "Jackson Road Map was the "most successful" of a scor
e of Southern projects but that this didn t mean that it was easy. He handled t
he task of acting as a combination of gateway and bridge, for information and me
thodology and conceptualization in the first case, and between community leaders
and experts and organizers and administrators, on the other hand, over the cour
se of several years, yielding several tangible gains that at the inception of th
e process seemed all but fantastical.
Among the benefits of <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=
1&ved=0CBIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchethics.org%2Fuploads%2Fword%2FConfe
rence%2520Final%2520Rep.%25202-3-04.doc&ei=eFWlTJbXFsGBlAeW9YzFAg&usg=AFQjCNHZ9G
YrMyn1gT8Ypwgy4pFmpNxBNg&sig2=C00P0G5Pt-D3F2ujKJ8sgg">the work</a> were communit
y conducted research and interventions regarding various disease vectors, the es
tablishment of an overall process for addressing health disparities that saw can
cer and heart disease and other disorders at as much as nearly twice the rate am
ong working class Blacks as that experienced by upper crust Whites, and an ongoi
ng network of citizens and communities to continue the process. Not only this,
but community researchers contributed to academic journals in a way that pointed
toward continued research productivity.
An Atlanta Citizens Panel process was one of the first instances of this con
ceptualization of a jury of common people addressing a matter of policy concern.
Adopted from primarily European roots, this project brought together community
leaders from near central city Atlanta to address issues of pollution, environm
ental health and housing and zoning policy.
 <em> "Partially funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Scie
nces (NIEHS) and Morehouse College, The Built Environment, Air Quality, and Comm
unity Health Project was designed to introduce the concept of Citizen Panels, a
nd demonstrate how a Citizen Panel would help bring relief to these issues by mo
re fully involving those citizens most at risk and who have the least freedom to
improve the state of their built environment as individuals."</em>
Dr. Taylor has also labored extensively with the LouisianaEnvironmental Just
ice Community Organization
Coalition (LEJCOC) and its president Albertha Hasten, in seeking to understand a
nd address the century-long creation of "Cancer Alley" along the Mississippi Riv
er. SCRC played an important role in <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&so
urce=web&cd=1&ved=0CBQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fenvstudies.brown.edu%2Foldsite%2FWe
b%2Ftheses%2F2005-06%2520abst%2520ppt%2FThesis%2520uploads%25202006%2FHackal%2FA
ngelaHackelsoupseminarpresentation.doc.pdf&ei=7VmlTN-CIIT7lwfr_anNBQ&usg=AFQjCNH
JLoISokAXXWyDyv0yASv2mwTAiA&sig2=UskEN5lSQdKuhw3DVmehmQ">insuring</a> that commu
nity witnesses and data reached the documentation of harms and that community in
put played a role in focusing expert attention.
He also worked, along with <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=we
b&cd=2&ved=0CBkQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fenvstudies.brown.edu%2Ftheses%2FAngelaHack
elmasterthesispdf.pdf&ei=7VmlTN-CIIT7lwfr_anNBQ&usg=AFQjCNH80RCDQG6He46kuNUt0k_K
-2GI1w&sig2=OW9-tVP0JxyteLrQjY8xIw">Angela Hackel</a>, to make sure that the per
spectives and representations of the underlying "Social Determinants of Health"
in Louisiana occupied the front row center position in the data that citizens be
lieved such perspectives had to fill, if any sort of transformative energy was t
o be forthcoming. Thus, when Josh Tickell gave LEJCOC leadership pride of place
in his condemnatory film about <a href="http://www.justmeans.com/editorials?act
ion=readeditorial&p=26519">oil</a>, he was doing so in part because of the inter
section of expertise and community knowledge for which CBPR and SCRC stands.
The SCRC website provides further examples, both from the core work that the
organization conducts in the South, "New Tools/New Visions" in Georgia, combatt
ing health disparities in Texas, and more. Dr. Taylor has also consulted in mos
t of the lower 48 States, for experts and communities that seek a way forward in
solving problems so as to advance social justice.
The overarching network, the capacity to conjoin communities that are capaci
tating themselves, not just nationally but internationally too, is a logical ste
p toward accomplishing the good intentions that, by themselves, only lay down
the pavement for a pathway to hell. Folks at JustMeans should stay tuned for fo
llow-ups on this initial essay, to watch this potential birth of democracy in th
e guise of empowered groups of communities.
One of the many experts who has signed on to a CBPR approach has <a hr
ef="http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/05Restivo.html">summarized</a> the achie
vements of CBPR methods in the otherwise technical, number-crunching field of ep
idemiology. Community epidemiology, he calls it.
<table style="background-color:white;background-image:url( http://farm5.static.
flickr.com/4089/4981786682_0d74b9de97.jpg );border:2px solid #40bea2;padding-lef
t:6px;padding-right:6px;">
<tr>
<td> PIC MINAMATA "In the 1970s in Japan, minamata disease was causing devast
ation... . Teams of community volunteers, aided by sympathetic scientists, used
simple techniques, including interviewing members of local communities, to track
down the source of the disease, which was poisoning by mercury pollution from i
ndustry. They did this more effectively than well-funded teams of professional
scientists using sophisticated methods... .Since then, there has been a consider
able expansion of community research, especially in the United States, with much
of the work being done in environmental and health areas, where mainstream rese
arch is often influenced by corporate and government agendas.
In terms of doing good science, community research follows the model of conven
tional scientific research, but there are several differences. Community resear
chers are usually unpaid, often without formal research training. They pick top
ics relevant to local community concerns, often challenging corporate or governm
ent agendas. They largely communicate with their local communities and other co
mmunity researchers, not necessarily seeking publication in conventional scienti
fic journals. In professional epidemiology - the study of the incidence and tra
nsmission of disease - researchers may dismiss anecdotal evidence as unworthy of
attention (sometimes in a selective fashion that may or may not be related to i
ts relevance to corporate sponsors). In popular epidemiology, in contrast, the s
ame anecdotal evidence can provide the inspiration for a more detailed investiga
tion."</td>
</tr>
</table>
Clearly, a tremendous capacity exists when people work together. When exper
ts and communities cooperate, when the listening precedes the telling, when th
e leadership of those who are struggling is acknowledged, unexpected magnificenc
e can result. This is truly capitalizing a society through capacitating its com
munities.
<h2>CONCLUSIONS</h2>
Social technology and social capital are familiar ideas to those who wan
t to promote Corporate Social Responsibility. However, with only a few exceptio
ns, the bottom-up, even-steven benchmarks that guide CBPR and make it effectiv
e as a community capacitation and socially equitable problem solving process, ra
rely enter the so-called social marketplace.
Richard Levins, whose Dialectical Biologist has gotten mention in these page
s before, <a href="http://monthlyreview.org/100301levins.php">commented</a> a fe
w months ago about the propensity of liberal good intentions, in the social ca
pital sphere and more traditionally, to go awry. His question is like a beacon.
<table style="background-color:white;background-image:url( http://farm5.stati
c.flickr.com/4089/4981786682_0d74b9de97.jpg );border:2px solid #40bea2;padding-l
eft:6px;padding-right:6px;">
<tr>
<td> "There is a pattern of a sort: narrowly focused technical solutions reshu
ffle crises. When one program after another fails again and again, and when the
failures are not random but somehow always benefit the owning class, we have to
ask, “How come?” When people, just as smart as we are, regularly design programs th
at fail to achieve their stated goals, what are they refusing to deal with?"</td
>
</tr>
</table>
This essay would advance a relatively straightforward answer to this questio
n. These smart guys, whether they are advising George Bush or Barack Obama, w
hether they work for the EPA or the WHO, whether their focus is another grant or
a profitable quarterly statement, fail to inculcate the precepts of community,
social justice, democracy, and capacitation into their projections. They cannot
succeed because they set themselves up in dialectical opposition to community n
eeds, instead of working with communities to comprehend the dialectic in play th
at might move a transformative cultural moment forward.
In particular, they do not achieve the results that they say they want becau
se they do not begin with an equitable process of dialog that engages community.
They come to help, already knowing what they want to sell to folks, about
which they seek buy-in.
In particular, their accomplishments are minimal, even counterproductive, be
cause they believe their job is to manage subjects who are the objects of t
he project. People have other ideas, of agency and activation, or simply disenga
gement, and things either fall apart or go nowhere.
In particular, their successes are often paltry and their debits substantial
, because their purpose is, even if in the guise of assistance, extractive and
proprietary. Communities not only deserve a real stake in what they co-create,
their members will walk away or sabotage what is in process if they are treated
as a vehicle to the gain of project principles.
In particular, the fail because citizens who have relationships with each ot
her and a place remember; they tell each other, <em>"Oh, yeah, these are the guy
s who left us holding the bag last time, and didn t bring more medicine, money,
equipment,"</em> or whatever else was part of an explicit or implicit agreement.

Thousands of monographs, hundreds of thousands of articles, and the common-s

ense experience of five hundred years of community experience under capital s sw
ay all speak to these failings. They direct one s attention, if one is willing
to look, and cares enough about success instead of getting ahead, to process
es such as CBPR.
Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright have written one of the <a href="http://www
.havenscenter.org/realutopias/2000">above monographs</a>, <em>Deepening Democrac
y</em>. Their insights and input, though their focus in this passage is on elec
tions, is otherwise exactly congruent with what has unfolded before readers eye
s in this article.
<table style="background-color:white;background-image:url( http://farm5.stati
c.flickr.com/4089/4981786682_0d74b9de97.jpg );border:2px solid #40bea2;padding-l
eft:6px;padding-right:6px;">
<tr>
<td> "(T)he institutional forms of liberal democracy developed in the nineteen
th century--representative democracy plus techno-bureaucratic administration--se
em increasingly ill-suited to the novel problems we face at the beginning of the
21st century. Democracy as a way of organizing the state has come to be narrow
ly identified with territorially-based competitive elections of political leader
ship for legislative and executive offices. Yet, increasingly, this mechanism o
f political representation seems ineffective in accomplishing the central ideals
of democratic politics: facilitating active political involvement of the citize
nry, forging political consensus through dialog, devising and implementing publi
c policies that ground a productive economy and a healthy society, and, in more
radical egalitarian versions of the democratic ideal, ensuring that all citizen
s benefit from the nation s wealth."</td>
</tr>
</table>
<H2>AFTERWORD</h2>
Expertise is a presumption of class and a perquisite of privilege, as we
ll as a badge of honor. Douglas Taylor wears his expertise lightly, evincing a
capacity to listen to wild ramblings and uncertain fantasy with equanimity and g
ently probing inquiry. He has also learned to remain silent, to insist that the
community members speak up and give voice to "wherever they really are."
Ralph Nader is a lot smarter than I am. He may even be smarter than Dr. Tay
lor. He s a tough customer too, as I discovered on the two occasions that I tri
ed to engage him in conversation. But a lack of raw intelligence is not the pro
blem that we confront in the world today, any more than the foundation of the pr
esent struggle is a lack of reliable data. As a result, really smart fellows li
ke Mr. Nader very often come up with really bone-headed ideation.
PIC SUPERRICH At least, if their true purpose is to improve the lives of comm
on people, if they honestly intend to induce equity, if they in any sense care a
bout justice and fairness, their conceptualizations are madness. Of course, if
some other end guides their thinking, they might be acting in a savvy fashion.
And, since I m the dumbo in the exchange, of course Mr. Nader could be right(htt
p://www.onlythesuperrich.org/blog/) that <em>Only the Super Rich Can Save Us</em
>.
In this "not...fiction...(bu)t practical utopia," the man for whom I voted f
or President takes us from Warren Buffet s self-sacrificing decision to rescue N
ew Orleans from Hurricane Katrina to a denouement in which Ted Turner and Yoko O
no croon about their happiness in having saved the world, for which the citizens
of Hawaii in particular show "their eternal recognition of (the super rich s) l
abors on behalf of justice for" all Americans.
So folks have a choice. They can buy that all of us are too willful, too st
upid, too incapable of taking care of business, even in a context of democracy a
nd capacitation to do much more in their own behalf than lament the fall of huma
nity. On the surface, examining any given segment of Fox News, listening in on
a Tea Party dialog, dropping in at an Al Qaida strategy session, or sharing part
y favors with folks from the hood, such a view of human possibility may appear
apt.
But this perspective comes at a profound, a catastrophic, cost if it is wron
g, because the presumed sheep and weaklings, whether in an organized or chaotic
fashion, will fight to become human in spite of the prediction that they are lit
tle more than turkeys, who have to be protected from the rain lest they look up
and drown. And the carnage, whether it merely culls the herd by a relatively
small percentage or dooms the lot of us, will color history in the direction of
nightmare and cesspool for centuries or more. Folks should reread my posts abou
t Hiroshima and Depleted Uranium for a sense of proportion here.
The other choice is to accept the possibility that the appearance of doltish
oafishness is nothing more than a facade, a chimera moreover emanating from the
planned policies of the movers and Shakers on whom Nader calls to save us from
ourselves. In this view, whatever the warts, the occasional superating sores,
the seeming paradoxes of life among the cousins of the earth, community must fo
rm the basis for humankind to yield humanity.
"A community identifies itself by an understood mutuality of interests. But
it lives and acts by the common virtues of trust, goodwill, forbearance, self-r
estraint, compassion, and forgiveness," said Wendell Berry. Though I haven t a
clue what Dr. Taylor thinks of Berry s work, which I have so often extolled, I a
m quite certain that Community-Based Participatory Research offers something lik
e a solid, perhaps a certain, opportunity to manifest Berry s lyricism in powerf
ul ways.
A careful commentator on the denizens of democracy has recently written, emb
odying Berry s forbearance and Dr. Taylor s strategic <A HREF="http://www.scott
london.com/reviews/barber.html">technology</A>, <table style="background-color:
white;background-image:url( http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4089/4981786682_0d74b
9de97.jpg );border:2px solid #40bea2;padding-left:6px;padding-right:6px;">
<tr>
<td>"Benjamin Barber contends that while civil society has become a popular
catchphrase on both sides of the political spectrum and is often bandied around
by those more enamored of novelty than real meaning in political discourse, the
idea nevertheless captures an essential truth about our current democratic predi
cament: the public realm of government and the private sphere of commercial mark
ets cannot by themselves sustain a democratic society. What is needed is a thi
rd sector or civic terrain made up of families, clans, churches, communities,
and voluntary associations that can effectively mediate between prince and mar
ket — between big government and wholly private commercial markets, between publi
c and private, between the power of public communities and the liberty of privat
e individuals."</td>
</tr>
</table>
In case folks don t recognize the fact, in the drama of democracy versus doo
m, this is the cue for CBPR, imperfect, evolutionary, and paradoxical as it ofte
n works out to be. Business better, sustainable commercial relations, and all
the marvels of renewable energy and technological cornucopia necessitate one en
d of a dialectical response or the other. The end that looks vaguely human is s
omething akin to community-based methods. At the other pole lies pristine react
ors daily adding a new dose of death to their pools of waste, which the governme
nts and operatives can think of nothing else to do with except to make this by-p
roduct into a weapon that further decimates the one race of man, cousins all.
Writing for the <A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct
/20/economics-globaleconomy-creditcrunch">Manchester Guardian</A>, the estimable
professor Barber ushers us toward the end. Historically, one can argue that he
leans a little too far toward the liberal band of the political spectrum. But
conceptually, as his British hosts might have said, he was spot on.
PIC SOCIAL TRUST <EM>"(D)emocracy s real product was trust. As the war on go
vernment became a war on democracy, it drew down the well of social capital and
eroded trust, causing citizens to lose faith in each other and their power to go
vern themselves. Why now should consumers trust banks? Or bankers trust one an
other? Or investors trust the stock market? Or anyone at all trust the prime m
inister or the US president or his treasury secretary or the MPs and members of
Congress who don t trust their own leadership?
Trust is at once both precious and precarious, foundational but fragile. No
leveraging without trust. No housing market without faith. No stock market wi
thout fidelity. No international trade without confidence. All products of soc
ial capital, all victims of the "cash nexus" that Marx associated with capitalis
m s essence. For capitalism is rooted in selfishness and cold calculating self-
interest and necessarily dedicated to the welfare of shareholders rather than co
mmon goods, and it thus is incapable of generating the trust on which it depends
. ...The lesson? The remedy today lies not simply in de-leveraging but in re-dem
ocratising. Recreate social capital and trust will follow."</EM>
A future beckons in which hope blooms anew. But we must trust each other en
ough, in spite of all, to let the people lead. We must trust people s capacity
enough to persist in assisting to build and increase that capacity further. And
we must resist the lure of the quick fix, the bottom line orientation, the myth
os that the market will lead us to anything other than what the market has thus
far produced, which is the chaotic mixture of madness and perdition that charact
erize these oh-so interesting times.
<strong>Photo Credits;</strong>
<a href="http://www.benjaminbarber.com/">Benjamin Barber</a>
<A HREF="http://www.flickr.com/photos/spotsgot/328826/sizes/m/in/photost
ream/">Democracy Poster</a>
<a href="http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2007/10/russia_facing_a_social_c
apital.htm">Social Capital</a>