Today, I’m happy to publicly invite others in Richmond and Wayne County to join in this effort to raise the level of public discourse in our area.  Whether it’s commentary on the local arts scene, restaurant reviews, political news analysis, your experiences with religion and spirituality, technology tools, sustainability tips or perspectives on education, we welcome contributions from those who feel they can provide a local connection and provoke conversation that might help move the community forward in some form.

What’s more, you can make a little money while you do it.  We want to encourage compelling writing while valuing the time of our contributors, and so we’re also offering a small amount of compensation as an incentive, currently US$20 for each contribution accepted for publication on the site.

You can learn more about what it means to become a contributor to ProgressiveWayneCounty.org, and I hope you’ll help spread the word about this opportunity to encourage new kinds of dialog in our community.

The article contains some interviews with downtown business owners, some perspective on the history of the Main Street organization there, and some talk of renewed activity from merchants and business owners (myself among them) in helping make the area thrive.  But there’s something missing from the picture the article paints.

One key angle that the article glosses over is the role that the rest of the community plays in creating and maintaining a thriving downtown.  While there’s certainly some role for business owners and merchants to play in creating a thriving downtown, it’s not entirely their burden to bear.  Retail districts live and die by the shopping choices of their customers, and so it seems important to recognize in any conversation about the health of a downtown that at least some of it is dictated by the “consumer culture” of the surrounding community.

It would be interesting to interview some “regular citizens” and ask them where they tend to shop, and how they perceive the downtown area.  “Given the choice between going downtown to support a business there and going to the mall or a big box store, how do you decide?”  Are they willing to pay a little more for products and services knowing those dollars stay in the community longer (thus supporting the long-term health of the area), or will they always prioritize convenience and the lowest available price?

It also seems worth looking at the environment of governmental and political support surrounding downtown.  Is it possible that city, county and state laws might be negatively impacting the ability of downtown business to thrive?  Is it possible that our approach to zoning, transportation, taxpayer-funded economic development and taxation are favoring non-local chain businesses over those who would choose to start and grow a small business in the place they live?  Is it possible that politics and personalities are at times standing in the way of a thriving central business district instead of nurturing it?

I’ve blogged about these ideas before:

The value we get from a strong and diverse local business community is hard to see when compared as a “bottom line deal” against the attractions of the “big box” stores. And I’m not suggesting that these larger retailers don’t have a place in a strong local economy. But my hope is that we’ll see the Target store closing as yet another indicator of an important trend. By putting so many of our eggs in baskets that lack the personal ties and community investments that our local businesses are built around, we set ourselves up for even greater disappointments and more noticeable disappearance of the business ethic, entrepreneurship, and innovative spirit around which Richmond has historically been built.

There’s no question that the economic health of our downtown is based on complex systems with lots of variables.  The business owners and downtown merchants are mostly already doing their part – they’re running their businesses and they’re engaged in the life of the business district and the wider community.  As a small business owner myself, I know that there’s probably not a whole lot of time left over for those hard-working folks to ALSO do the marketing, advocacy, legislative and policy work needed to help downtown compete against strip malls and big box stores.

So what role does the rest of the Richmond community have in creating a thriving main street area?  How do your choices make a difference in the health of downtown?

I’ve gone from subscribing to the paper seven days a week, to just the Friday/Saturday/Sunday package, to just the Sunday edition.  Here’s why I’m going to finally let go of receiving a print edition altogether:

1. The print edition has been taken over by advertising. I understand that ads have long-been the bread and butter of a newspaper’s business model, and I’m willing to tolerate some reasonable proportion of ads to content in order to get the content.  But when the roll of paper that shows up on my porch is seemingly made up of 95% advertising and 5% content, I can’t justify it.  The resource usage is ridiculous given that I immediately recycle or throw away that 95%, and I just don’t like the sense that I’m primarily paying to support a conduit for advertisers to influence me, instead of for something that’s primarily a journalism product.  (For what it’s worth, the online edition has also been taken over by advertising, but at least there I can automatically block out the ads with software.)
2. The local news coverage is understandably but unacceptably thin. With a shrinking staff of reporters and more pressure than ever before to produce headlines that sell papers, I find the coverage of local and regional issues and news to be lacking (at least according to the standard I put forth two years ago).  When they do cover local issues, it’s rarely with a depth and perspective that challenges and engages me as a reader and citizen.  I believe the Pal-Item staff has great intentions and are working their butts off to cover as much as they can, but that doesn’t mean the P-I is sufficiently living up to its role as the local newspaper.
3. The Palladium-Item hosts some of the most toxic public conversations happening in our community. If you read any given article on the Pal-Item website, there’s usually at least one person (and sometimes many people) offering uninformed, insulting, immature or outright hateful comments.  The most egregious comment-makers are sometimes reprimanded or even banned, but it hasn’t changed the tone of the general conversation.  When I talk to other people out in Richmond about the Pal-Item website, our conversation almost always turn to the harm being done by the online discussions happening at pal-item.com.  On principle, I don’t want to help fund that conversation space any more.  It’s only fair to note that the Pal-Item also facilitates some very helpful conversations too via their “PI Live!” online interview segments – more on that below.
4. It’s not my job to support a struggling business for the sake of offering support alone. I’m sad about the decline of print journalism, and I’m especially sad that it’s declined so far in my town, which sorely needs a good local paper.  But I don’t think it’s my job to keep funding a model that isn’t working, just because I’m nostalgic.  I’ve stayed on with my subscription as long as I have somewhat out of guilt – “oh no, I don’t want to contribute to the downfall of the newspaper industry” – but it’s increasingly clear that that industry hasn’t sufficiently regarded trends threatening its existing business models, and it’s not my job to bail them out.
5. I can get the same information for free online. I’m Internet-connected to the point of lunacy, and so I can pull up the tidbits of Palladium-Item content that I’m interested in at a moment’s notice on one of the glowing rectangles I surround myself with all day.  Sometimes I even learn that information sooner via social networking sites and other community resources.

So, with all of those things considered, I can’t think of a reason to keep paying to have a roll of ads (with a sprinkle of articles thrown in) show up every week.

But make no mistake, I WILL give the Palladium-Item my money again – maybe even MORE money – if the conditions are right!  Some possible scenarios:

1. They find a way to bring in additional reporters or other staff to produce a more substantial and well-rounded news product.
2. They allow me to pay a slightly higher subscription fee in order to not receive all of the ads that come with the Sunday edition.
3. They make available an online edition that doesn’t have advertising at all, or that at least implements it much less intrusively and much more tastefully.
4. They charge a small fee for live viewing of community events and interviews with community leaders (and then make a time-delayed version available a bit later).
5. They more fully embrace citizen journalism and crowd-sourced content, while avoiding ridiculous copyright/licensing policies.

Print journalism will either reinvent itself, or it will fade away.  The Palladium-Item will either reinvent itself, or it will fade away.  In the meantime, I’m done with supporting the in-between option – it doesn’t work for me.

What about you?  If you’ve kept your subscription to a print newspaper, what factors support that?  If you canceled or never had one in the first place, why?

1. Watchdog journalism involves writing stories that hold public officials accountable for their actions or stories that help to right wrongs in the community, for example. In what ways could we improve in this area?

The Palladium-Item is to be commended for its consistent presence at government and institutional meetings, no matter how boring or routine they are.  That said, the paper often seems to be getting its stories out the door about important or controversial issues just as those items are reaching some sort of final decision point.

At some level I’m sure this is what many decision makers and news makers would prefer – their jobs are easier when there’s less time for the public to be outraged before it’s “too late.”  And it’s true that it’s still the responsibility of the citizenry to make itself aware of what issues are before, say, Common Council, and not depend entirely on the paper to note items of possible interest.  But I would be pleased to see the Palladium-Item try to maintain even more context on community issues that are under discussion, before they’ve reached a point of ostensible “no return.”

On the other side of the matter, there’s the issue of accountability once a wrong or disservice has been committed.  The general “media strategy” practiced by most public figures in this community when they’re involved in something controversial is “wait a few days and everyone will have moved on to something else.” They’re generally right that the collective memory of the community is subject to manipulation and distraction – hey, what’s that shiny thing over THERE….oh wait, sorry – and so we do need the paper to look back at how decisions were made and hold the decision-makers accountable.  It can be tough sometimes when the mindset of the reporter understandably becomes “how many more stories can I do about disingenuous plotting by council members to de-fund the Human Rights Commission, we already DID that one?”   But know that nonetheless, I think there’s a real thirst in this town for follow-up and perspective on those kinds of things, because they help us remember what we did wrong, and how we can do better next time.

And when election time rolls around, don’t just print the candidates` answers to questionnaires and their prepared responses at a debate – show us their voting record, their public statements (or noticeable lack thereof) about important issues, their actual contributions to the community (instead of their provided list of affiliations).  Tell us their story in a way that fits into the larger narrative of the community, and don’t take their word for it.

2. The Sunday edition of the Palladium-Item has, by far, our biggest single-day circulation. Past feedback tell us its the day our readers have the most time to spend with the paper. It’s also an important day to our advertisers because of the bigger audience it enjoys. What could we do to make that edition special for you?

When I sit down to read the Sunday paper, I don’t want to just read articles, I want to have an experience.  Yes, I want it to be like reading the New York Times.  I want there to be options, different subject mater, formats and voices.  I want to be challenged and amused and provoked, and then I want to sit back and think about that, and then I want to move on to another article or section and do it all over again.

The current experience of reading the Palladium-Item on Sunday is about a 10-15 minute process on average, and some of that is getting all of the advertising circulars separated out and thrown away so I can tell how much “real” content is left.  That’s not even enough time to get me through a cup of coffee and breakfast, let alone a lazy Sunday morning.

Okay, I know that it’s unlikely the Pal-Item is going to be able to ramp up content production to NYT Sunday levels.  And I know that short of a rich uncle depositing some bags of money in your laps, you’re physically limited by the number of staff you can afford to have working on that edition.  But if you have resources to expend on making the Sunday edition “special,” please make sure you focus on expanding your reporting and news analysis – that would feel very special to me.

3. We want our Web site to be viewed as a primary source for breaking news in our area. How can we make that happen? What would that look like on pal-item.com?

I’ll tell you exactly what it looks like: collaboration with other sources of local news to display their headlines and links to their stories on your site.  Yes, I really said that and no, I’m not kidding.  With your current staff resources, you can’t expect to always be the first news organization to break a story, and so you have to position yourself to still be the place where people come to read about breaking news, even if it’s not your content. If they know that if they go to Kicks96/WHON and G101.3/WKBV and Twitter and the EDC site and the Chamber site and WayNet.org and so on to find stories and information you don’t have yet, then pal-item.com will always just be one stop along the way for most users, not a primary source.  You need critical mass.

The nice thing is that the pieces are all almost in place for this to happen.  If you can collaborate with other news reporting / news breaking entities to insure that RSS feeds are readily available, you can build a “breaking news portal” with little technical effort.  Yes, they might build their own breaking news portal too, but that’s okay.  Really, trust me.

Also, crowdsource it.  Find trusted local readers (even if they have conflicts of interest and affiliations and biases) and give them the power to post information directly on your breaking news pages (or via their own RSS feeds, Twitter streams, etc).  Don’t moderate it, don’t filter it, or if you do, let other readers do the filtering and moderating along with you.  Yes I really said that, no I’m not kidding.

4. Traditionally, newspapers have had a leadership role in their communities, and that’s something we would like to continue here. How would you suggest we take a greater role in that?

As I think you and your colleagues know, being in a true leadership role is not something you can necessarily choose or create, it’s something that’s earned over time by consistent acts that bring something to the community with integrity and perspective.  The paper has one of the loudest voices in town when it comes to shaping the thoughts and conversations of our everyday lives.  If I were running the Pal-Item, I would ask every day, “does our news product and the work of our staff use our loud voice in a way that builds up the community, informs and challenges our readers with new and different perspectives they’re not getting elsewhere, and helps create or promote a vision for a sustainable, enjoyable future that can be enjoyed by all?”  If there are times when the answer is “no,” make changes and move on.  If there are times when the answer is “yes,” then you’re serving in an important leadership role, keep it up.

I know the values implied in this question are very different from the traditional journalistic imperatives that shaped a newspaper’s role in a town for so long, but times they are a changin`.

5. What can we do to improve customer service?

I’ve never had a negative customer service experience with the Palladium-Item.  That said, one weird thing you could resolve is the way you ask people to submit information or letters to you through your website.  There’s the filling out of a form and the cramming of text into a small text box, which is totally inconvenient if you’re submitting a press release that’s already been prepared as a PDF or Word DOC.  It’s understood that the Pal-Item staff use e-mail (and sometimes you print their addresses in the paper), so why not provide direct e-mail as an alternative to the weird form?

Also, take the lead in getting this community to use QR Codes.  Please? Thanks.

…

Thanks to Jason for asking for reader/public input on the paper’s operations and future.  If you have your own thoughts on what the local paper needs to do to stay relevant, engaging, and, ahem, solvent, feel free to share here or on Jason’s blog post.

It’s at 3:30 PM at Ivy Tech Community College, 3421 Johnson Hall – I hope you can join us.

In case you won’t be able to attend, here’s a list of 12 reasons that it’s a good idea to support the production and consumption of locally grown food (adopted from a list produced by The Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association):

1. Freshness – Locally-grown organic fruits and vegetables are usually harvested within 24 hours of being purchased by the consumer. Produce from California can’t be that fresh.
2. Taste – Produce picked and eaten at the height of freshness tastes better.
3. Nutrition – Nutritional value declines, often dramatically, as time passes after harvest. Because locally-grown produce is freshest, it is more nutritionally complete.
4. Purity – Eighty percent of American adults say they are concerned about the safety of the food they eat. They worry about residues of pesticides and fungicides. These materials are not permitted in an organic production system either before or after harvest.
5. Regional Economic Health – Buying locally grown food keeps money within the community. This contributes to the health of all sectors of the local economy, increasing the local quality of life.
6. Variety – Organic farmers selling locally are not limited to the few varieties that are bred for long distance shipping, high yields, and shelf life. Often they raise and sell wonderful unusual varieties you will never find on supermarket shelves.
7. Soil Stewardship – Soil health is essential for the survival of our species. Conventional farming practices are rapidly depleting topsoil fertility. Creating and sustaining soil fertility is the major objective for organic growers.
8. Energy Conservation – Buying locally grown organic foods decreases dependence on petroleum, a non- renewable energy source. One fifth of all petroleum now used in the United States is used in Agriculture. Organic production systems do not rely upon the input of petroleum derived fertilizers and pesticides and thus save energy at the farm. Buying from local producers conserves additional energy at the distribution level.
9. Environmental Protection – Soil erosion; pesticide contamination of soil, air, and water; nitrate loading of waterways and wells; and elimination of planetary biodiversity are some of the problems associated with today’s predominate farming methods. Organic growers use practices that protect soil, air, and water resources; and that promote biodiversity.
10. Cost – Conventional food processes don’t reflect the hidden costs of the environmental, health and social consequences of predominate production practices- of, for instance, correcting a water supply polluted by agricultural runoff, or obtaining medical treatment for pesticide induced illness suffered by farmers or consumers. When these and other hidden costs are taken into account, as they should be, locally grown organic foods are seen clearly for the value they are, even if they cost a few pennies more.
11. A Step Toward Regional Food Self Reliance – Dependency on far away food sources leaves a region vulnerable to supply disruptions, and removes any real accountability of producer to consumer. It also tends to promote larger, less diversified farms that hurt both the environment and local economies/communities. Regional food production systems, on the other hand, keep the food supply in the hands of many, providing interesting job and self-employment opportunities, and enabling people to influence how their food is grown.
12. Passing on the Stewardship Ethic – When you buy locally produced organic food you cannot help but raise the consciousness of your friends and family about how food buying decisions can make a difference in your life and the life of your community; and about how this basic act is connected to planetary issues.

What might an improved attentiveness to local food consumption look like in your community?

1) The Fireplace Shop at 1000 North F Street in Richmond is an amazing little brick complex that showcases all that can be done with wood and other heat sources. From traditional fireplaces to wood burning stoves to corn pellet stoves to crazy other conflagrant configurations, it was quite a wonderland of temperature control. With the added bits of atmosphere like lazy cats sprawled across warm surfaces, fireplace and chimney sweep nostalgia everywhere, and the hustle-bustle of workers in workshops catering to the demands of the cold season, it was a nice place just to be and observe. The store also adjoins a ceramic tile store (which sells the locally made Terra Green Ceramics line) and a brick/stone store, so you can knock out quite a bit of home improvement planning in one place. I can’t imagine there’s one of these in every community these days, and I’m certainly grateful to have one here.

2) Rohan India is a new-ish Indian Food restaurant in Oxford, Ohio that offers slightly faster access to this cuisine from Richmond than similar options in Dayton, Cincinnati or Indianapolis. The Chicken Shahi Korma with Mushrooms dish I had was probably the best Indian dish I’ve had at any location in the region, and when I got a spice level of 6 (out of 10), they really came through with that. The proximity of this dining option may be just enough to balance out the problems with the atmosphere and service – several large screen televisions blaring music videos, sports games, etc. dominated the visual landscape, and we had to play the “forced eye contact and hand waving” game at times just to get a server to pay attention. But overall, it was a fine experience, and quickly becoming a destination for Richmondites – I’ve heard at least three other distinct mentions of it this weekend alone.

3) At Home Kitchen and Gourmet at 414 North 10th (in “The Loft” where Ghyslain is) is a new location brought to us by the folks at Warm Glow Candles. Right now the shop features a variety of kitchen and bath items with Warm Glow candles sprinkled amongst them. Many of the items seemed “pricey” for Richmond, but they were generally quite unique and beautiful, and compared to a Williams-Sonoma visit in Chicago, probably a good value. The clerk who checked us out indicated that the inventory was largely just overstock from the main Warm Glow store in Centerville, and that after the first of the year, they’d be reworking it to focus much more on being a comprehensive kitchen and bath supplier. Even though I’m not one to go shopping for such things regularly, it was just great to see a locally owned place like this pop up here.

On top of that, I got to attend the Alternative Holiday Bazaar at the Clear Creek Food Cooperative, which showcased locally-made crafts and gifts on Saturday against the backdrop of live music and smiling faces – the items will be on sale all this week too.

Seeing these places, these events, these people reminds me that there are people investing anew in this community and in the surrounding ones, people making a living here and doing it in such fun and interesting ways – I’m thankful for that.

[W]here does this drive for relocalizing come from? Perhaps it has to do with a vague sense of ethical rightness more than anything scientifically verifiable. University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt classifies such efforts as attempts to attain (and potentially guilt others into) a sense of moral purity. “Food,” he says, “is becoming extremely moralized these days.”

The problem, of course, is that purity is hard to come by in a world as complex as ours, and simplistic answers often have consequences that their proponents do not intend. Consumers should think twice before jumping on the localvore bandwagon.

I’m all for thinking twice before jumping on any sort of wagon, but I think Mr. Hisrich’s logic is flawed in a number of places. Read on for my point-by-point analysis of his column:

In April, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University published a study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology that all of the transportation associated with the American food supply chain accounts for only 11 percent of foods’ climate impact.

You can view the full study online. The basic conclusion that they make is that the transportation of food isn’t as big a factor in carbon footprint as the production and other factors, and so that we might be able to reduce our footprint more by changing our diet — eating less meat and dairy, which create the most pollution — than we will by changing where it comes from.

This study seems well done, and convincing in its assertion that food miles are only one part of overall considerations when it comes to the environmental impact of food choices. Of course, carbon footprint is not the only reason many people like to eat local; there are lots of other benefits, including the relationships that come with knowing who is growing your food and how, and the proud self-reliance that comes from being able to eat off of the land we live on.

And, “It’s still useful to think about transport,” says David Pimentel of Cornell University, an ecologist who has conducted life-cycle analyses of food’s energy use. He recently calculated that if a typical American drives home with a 1 pound can of corn, 311 calories of fossil fuel energy are used to transport the 375-calorie corn in the can.

In fact, by focusing on local production, emissions may actually rise. This is because growing foods in the conditions best suited to their production can often offset the relatively small impact of transportation. In the United Kingdom, for instance, fewer emissions are released by importing milk and apples from New Zealand and tomatoes from Spain than devoting the energy and resources necessary to produce them locally.

One of the core tenets of the local food movement is not only to eat food that is produced locally, but to avoid foods that can’t be produced locally. Mr. Hisrich is correct that if we try to grow avocados and oranges here in Indiana in the dead of winter, we’ll of course use much more energy to do that than someone growing those foods in a climate naturally suited for it. So while the point is technically correct, it unfairly ignores some of the ethos of the local foods movement – few people are suggesting we try to grow every kind of food here just to satisfy our “exotic” cravings.

[W]hat the growing local advocates encourage often has less to do with an actual weighing of the costs and benefits of local farming than it does with a value judgment about what should be good for rural economies. While one might be able to argue that eating local improves the lot of a particular group, it is more difficult to argue that spending more for local produce improves the economic well-being of either local shoppers or the local economy as a whole.

I’d ask Mr. Hisrich to back that assertion up with some data, the “actual weighing of costs and benefits” of which he speaks. By definition, dollars that are spent on locally produced goods and services, given to vendors that live and work here, are dollars that will tend to stay in the geographical region to be spent again on other locally produced goods and services. This is why every economic development organization in the state works to bring businesses to their towns that will pay good wages to local workers who will then turn around and spend it locally. This is why local currency and time banks are popping up everywhere, and why our own Chamber of Commerce has a “buy local” program. Just because we’re talking about food, the principles don’t become any more mysterious.

What about impoverished farmers in developing countries who merely seek the chance to compete on a level playing field? This movement provides advocates of protectionism another rhetorical tool in their effort to prevent that from happening.

Quite to the contrary, the local food movement is part of a larger cultural perspective that seeks to remove the artificial protections that prevent people from sustaining themselves on their own land-base. If you take into consideration the subsidies, trade tariffs, import/export controls, immigration policies, monopolies and compulsory price controls, and injustices related to wage and labor standards that help create the “impoverished farmer in a developing country” in the first place, it’s clear that the leveling of the playing field needs to happen well before we get to the buying choices of the end consumer.

By encouraging communities to be more self-reliant, we actually help all communities move toward being able to make a sustainable living for themselves.

John Cloud, however, points out that local does not necessarily mean safe. When he asked Joseph Mendelson III, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a liberal Washington group that supports strong organic standards, whether local food should be favored, Mendelson replied, “I don’t know what local means. Do they use local pesticides? Does that mean the food is better because they produce local cancers?”

This is an unnecessarily flippant remark in a serious conversation, but I’ll address it anyway. Not every local food effort advocates the banning of all pesticides and chemicals from the growing process, and communities can set their own standards as they see fit.

The point is that when you can visit your local grower and see what practices they use to create the food you eat (or perhaps even help yourself!), you have much more control over and knowledge about what you put in your body. We only have to look back to this past summer and remember the food-borne illnesses that came from unsupervised, poorly conducted growing processes in an industrial agriculture setting to see how the safety of our food is improved when we’re more engaged in where it comes from.

So, back to the original suggestion Mr. Hisrich shared:

So where does this drive for relocalizing come from? Perhaps it has to do with a vague sense of ethical rightness more than anything scientifically verifiable.

I’ll promise not to be insulted by the suggestion that people in the relocalization movement only make certain decisions just because it might be the right thing to do, if Mr. Hisrich promises not to be insulted by my suggestion that he doesn’t quite know what he’s talking about here.

All across the country and world, communities are experiencing the forced contraction that comes with rising energy costs, failures of over-dependence on the global economy, and the isolation and disconnection of the culture of “suburbia.” Communities that are working to reclaim their identities and self-reliance are finding positive ways to move past those contractions, taking matters back into their own hands instead of waiting for the next factory closure or government bailout to set the course.

The local food movement is a core part of this, and while participating in it will mean different things for different communities, it deserves a bit more consideration than Mr. Hisrich’s column gives.  I do really appreciate that he’s taken this issue on and generated some conversation around it! I hope he’ll join us at the next 100-Mile Radius Potluck here in Richmond so we can continue that conversation together.

It seems like QUITE an unfortunate juxtaposition to me to have this kind of announcement in that kind of setting.

Malls like the Richmond Square Mall certainly provide great shopping opportunities, but tend to be populated by businesses that are not locally owned and that give less back to the local economy and community over the long run than businesses that are locally owned. In most “buy local” campaigns across the country, one of the primary goals is to get shoppers to expand their notion of shopping opportunities beyond “the mall” to once again consider what small business districts and downtowns have to offer.

If Richmond residents think that buying local just means going to a shop within city limits, the potential impact of the buy-local message is diluted as their dollars leave the community for corporate headquarters elsewhere.

I asked the Chamber and Mayor’s office to reconsider the venue – feel free to do the same if you’re so inclined.

It wasn’t problematic for me because the attack was being used against candidate Barack Obama, although I didn’t find it to be an effective or useful expression of concern about his qualifications. Instead, I think that it was just plain insulting to the many people in communities across the world who devote their time and energy to making their local communities better places to live. Further, I think it was a hypocritical and problematic assertion given some of the other selling points being used to present Palin and McCain to voters. Here’s why:

Community organizers are people who look at the concerns and opportunities in their neighborhoods, cities, counties and regions and ask, “what can I do to make good things happen here?” They connect people with resources, people with people. They make the case to decision-makers so that better decisions can be made, though they don’t necessarily wait patiently for the machinations of government when they can be more effective using grassroots methods. They take pride in the place they call home, and aren’t afraid to acknowledge its shortcomings while presenting the case for hope in the future.

Community organizers are the thorns in the side of people who block progress by clinging to “the way things have always been” and “our best days are behind us.” They ask “what about the suffering among us?” and “how can we do more with the resources we already have?” Community organizers are the old timers, go-getters, entrepreneurs, social butterflies, visionaries, and humble leaders that serve as cornerstones in the circles they traverse – often unrecognized, but not in it for the recognition.

Are you sure you want to laugh at community organizers? Are you sure you want to paint them as people who aren’t qualified to be leaders?

I suspect that Sarah Palin and others thought laughing and finger pointing was appropriate because “Community Organizer” is a title that doesn’t fit very well into the patriarchal, bottom-line focused hierarchy of status and power that comes along with national politics. It’s like “Stay at Home Mom” or “Poet/Writer” or “Homemaker” in that all of these ways of spending time are still seen as somehow less worthy than “CEO” or “Mayor” or “President.” They don’t pay as well, you can’t list out your accomplishments as judged by some globally accepted standard, and they don’t command as much awe and respect from the workaholic, instant gratification culture that only cares about how many people you can get to do your bidding at a moment’s notice.

And so it was easy to throw the pitiable “Community Organizer” up there next to the all-important “Mayor” and laugh and point.

“Of course a Mayor is a better station in life than Community Organizer! Of course Mayors always get more done, are better leaders, and because they have an official job description, of course they’re more accountable and effective!” But when you stop to think about it, most of us can say with some certainty that this is a false narrative, and that in any given town, the Mayor (or State Representative, or Senator, or President) can be as incompetent and poor at leadership as anyone else. In fact, there’s that old adage that someone who can get themselves elected to a given public office perhaps isn’t actually qualified to be there. I don’t think all or even most elected officials fall into this category, but the point is that there’s no generalizing or assuming. Especially not when you’re talking about someone who might get to control nuclear weapons.

I was also surprised to hear Palin make this laughing comparison and then hold up “Hockey Mom” as a bullet point on her resume. Like Community Organizers, Hockey Moms (and sometimes Dads) tend to be people who put passion, love and energy into supporting their children, attending local events with enthusiasm, being involved in the local school system, building stronger communities, and holding it all together through the highs and lows. Surely Hockey Moms want to know that their lives and the way they spend time have worth and importance in our culture even though they too do not fit into a narrow corporate structure of how human lives are valued? It’s disingenuous to hold up one kind of non-traditional life choice as laughable while rallying around another, and it just reminds us how scripted and fake the rhetoric is.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I don’t spend much time hoping that the federal government will Do Something to make my life better. Indeed, I think most of us know that if we want to experience change in our lives, we actually have to go out and make that change happen ourselves. When I see someone who has devoted their time and energy to not only changing their own lives for the better, but also reaching out into their community and organizing for change that benefits others, I stand in awe. I do this because I know it is these among us who play a big part in actually making progress possible – people who inspire and lead, who bleed the blood of their neighbors and who celebrate loudly when joy comes to their town. This is the stuff that strong communities are made of, the stuff that makes bloated government even more unnecessary and in the way.

I can only assume that anyone who would look down on this and laugh so condescendingly is just scrambling get to the top of the power and wealth pyramid as fast as possible, no matter who they have to step on, and I see no honor or integrity in that.

For me, if my life were being remembered by friends and family, and the most that could be said was that I acted passionately for the benefit of my community, I would have lived a life that mattered.

I really appreciated that it was a “grassroots” conference, organized by Noah Coffey and Shawn Plew of Indianapolis, and not a big corporate conference organized by people trying to sell us stuff. Sure, there were corporate sponsors (Summersault was one of them), and there were some grumblings about session leaders spending too much time promoting their own products/services. But on the whole, this was a group of people who are passionate about new media and wanted to get together to see what else was out there, talk about some of the issues that come up, and just get to know each other better. Oh, and we also totally geeked out on Twitter.

I presented a session on Blogging Basics right at the start of the conference, and from what I can tell it was useful to the folks who were there – I think a few of them were starting blogs at the conference with some of my tips, which is great. As much as it was a technical talk, it was also a look at the culture and context of blogging in the Internet overall, and I really enjoyed spending some time looking at that.

I was also on a panel with Laurin Manning, Ruth Holladay, Joshua Gillespie, Steve Dalton, and Thomas Cook about how blogging and social media affects politics and the current election cycle. Things went okay, but we didn’t really have enough time to dive into some of the more interesting issues, and it was more of an orderly rotation of monologues than a panel discussion. That said, I hope it started some other conversations, and at least now I can say I was on a political panel with the Director of Political Operations for a presidential campaign.

I’m going to blog more about this later, but there’s something really great about remembering that, contrary to a lot of the messages out there about what it means to be successful on the Internet, you don’t have to be a Silicon Valley star or national figure to feel like you’re making a difference in the online world, and to some degree then, in the offline one. Travis touched on this nicely with his post about placeblogging – noting that it’s the textures of our everyday lives that end up being most relevant and interesting, not how many times we’re thrust into the spotlight in a sea of people who otherwise don’t connect very well to our own experiences. I feel more grounded in my “place” in the world of blogging and new media for having experienced those discussions with people who were not only in touch with the technologies, but who are also connected to this geographical place in some way.

This was amplified given that I was joined at the event by Richmond bloggers Anna Lisa Gross and John Dalton, and finally got to meet Doug Masson from Lafayette, whose blog I already follow regularly.

What’s next? Well, I hear that preparations for a 2009 Blog Indiana event are already underway. Locally, I’m hoping to be a part of producing a “New Media Summit” for Richmond and Wayne County, where we can explore some of these topics and do some of this education at an even more local level – stay tuned for more information on that soon, and let me know if you want to help make it happen.

Roundups and reflections from other bloggers:

• Blog Indiana 2008 Wrap-Up
• BlogIndiana conference: All good things must come to an end
• Blog Indiana Conference
• Technology-Enabled Attention Help
• BlogIndiana
• Blog Indiana Conference Notes and Presentation
• Noah’s Photos
• helloleticia’s Photos
• Photrade Gallery of Photos

Other related links:

• Blog Indiana 2008 Wiki
• Blogroll of conference participants
• Indianapolis Star article: IUPUI event helps bloggers find audience
• My delicious links tagged with “blogindiana”

And don’t forget that the Richmond blogger community is alive and well – if you have a blog missing from my list, please let me know.