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Publié par	Kettering Foundation Press
Date de parution	17 août 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781945577628
Langue	English

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ASSOCIATIONAL LIFE
__________
Democracy’s Power Source

John L. McKnight
Edited by Paula Ellis and Wendy Willis
© 2022 by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Associational Life: Democracy’s Power Source is published by the Kettering Foundation Press. The interpretations and conclusions contained in the book represent the views of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, its directors, or its officers.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to:
Permissions
Kettering Foundation Press
200 Commons Road
Dayton, Ohio 45459
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
First edition, 2022
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN: (print) 978-1-945577-60-4
ISBN: (ePDF) 978-1-945577-61-1
ISBN: (ePUB) 978-1-945577-62-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021952705
Contents
FOREWORD
by Paula Ellis and Wendy Willis
INTRODUCTION
Asset-Based Community Development and the Science of Association
INDIVIDUAL CAPACITIES
Discovering the Source of Power
Community Dreams: The Power of Citizen Authority
Waiting to Contribute: The Key to Maximizing Citizen Participation
ASSOCIATIONS
Why: The Core of Democratic Society
The Mother Science
Local Associations as Schools for Democratic Practice
Associations and the Power of Being Small
The Base of Powerful Movements: Understanding the Role of Local Associations
The Civic Legacy of Saul Alinsky
What: The Distinguishing Features
Differentiating the Functions of Institutions and Associations: A Geometry Lesson
Schools and Associations: Two Different Kinds of Educators
Where: The Citizen-Centered World of Neighborhoods
Becoming Trustworthy
In Search of the Tie That Binds
ABCD, Jazz, and the Structure of Powerful Communities
Who Represents the Neighbors?
How: The Nuts and Bolts of Associations
The Dilemma of Meetings
The Affinity Dilemma
Money and the Civic Impulse
Wicked Issues for Neighborhood Leaders and Organizers
What Counts?
INSTITUTIONS
Being Heard: Turning America Downside Up
Who Should Have the Final Say? Learning from Pilots, Pastors, and Guards
Still on Top: A Manager’s Story
Institutional Precipitation
Grants for Blocks
Idea Jam
A Guide for Government Officials Seeking to Promote Productive Citizen Participation
Before Coproduction: Look First to Residents
Community Security and the Institutional Assumption
Refunctioning: A New Community Development Strategy for the Future
Servants of Citizenship: Understanding the Basic Function of Newspapers in a Democracy
IMPACT
A Neighborhood Impact Statement: Changing the Burden of Proof
Status and Functions of Citizens
Measuring the Impacts
AFTERTHOUGHTS
by David Mathews
FOREWORD
IN HIS FAREWELL SPEECH TO THE NATION, John McKnight’s most famous student—President Barack Obama—turned his attention away from the vitriol of the 2016 campaign and toward the day-to-day lives of the people of the United States, urging them to “embrace the joyous task we have been given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours. Because for all our outward differences, we, in fact, all share the same proud title, the most important office in a democracy: Citizen.” Obama then returned to his well-documented roots: “If something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and do some organizing.”
President Obama’s words came straight out of the John McKnight playbook. As McKnight himself said in a 2015 interview, “There’s this idea, which really has grown hugely in my lifetime, that somehow if you surround people with enough services, that’s what makes a good life. What makes a good life is being surrounded by friends who are mutually productive with you so that you have greatly diminished the services you need or use.”
As you will find in this collection of McKnight’s writings, produced in partnership with the Kettering Foundation between 2016 and 2021, he is an evangelist for the power of associations. He believes that associations are both the secret sauce for individuals who want to get things done and the glue that holds communities together. Formal and informal associations—clubs, groups, organizations, and the like—are the “mother science” of democracy, as the famous 19th century French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville observed. And McKnight has spent his career proving Tocqueville’s hypothesis.
The Kettering Foundation and McKnight were on a similar path of discovery when they found one another. The foundation had been experimenting with asset mapping in its education work as it explored how communities—drawing on their own assets—could help educate students rather than rely exclusively on formal school systems. The foundation also was exploring how people who were often labeled as impoverished or underserved could recognize their own power, identify their assets, and band together to solve problems.
Questions about how to identify and unlock the capacities of a community were proliferating when, in 1993, McKnight and John P. (Jody) Kretzmann published their groundbreaking book, Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets . The book served as a guide for community organizers like themselves who wanted to experiment with the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute’s ideas and practices. Since then, the institute’s network of faculty, now known as stewards, has grown from 24 to 62, plus 12 emeriti.
Having found fertile and common ground, McKnight and Kettering formalized their relationship in 2011 after McKnight and Kretzmann presented their ideas at one of the foundation’s monthly research sessions. Through learning exchanges and published articles, McKnight, now a Kettering senior associate, continues to develop and evolve his thinking and that of the foundation’s staff and associates.
Today, McKnight’s ongoing work helps inform Kettering research on how citizens and institutions can work together to produce public goods. Both McKnight and foundation staff members have argued that as the work of citizenship has become professionalized, citizens themselves have been crowded out—reduced to clients and consumers rather than active producers. Despite the increased professionalization of civic life, both McKnight and the foundation have connected with and amplified the work of hundreds of civic innovators who are connected to their neighbors in the mutual work of building and improving their communities.
With the recent release of his latest report, With the People: An Introduction to an Idea , Kettering President Emeritus David Mathews has catalyzed a renewed interest in the practice of citizens, associations, and institutions working together, all fulfilling their own unique functions. Kettering and its vast network of researchers and experimenters are focused on finding examples of with at work and examining strategies that could be useful to others.
Working with Kettering over the years, McKnight has documented what he and his network of ABCD experimenters were learning from their work in communities. What they learned seems especially useful now as we explore the with strategies set forth in Mathews’ book.
It has been our great pleasure to return to some of the most recent of McKnight’s observations. In this book, each of the short pieces that McKnight came to call “learnings” was written as part of his partnership with the foundation. We have organized them with an eye toward the asset-based community development framework, beginning with individual strengths and moving through communities’ relationships with institutions to how those relationships might be evaluated. The heart of this publication, however—like the heart of McKnight’s work—lies in the associations that citizens form in their communities to organize their lives and conduct shared business.
In his piece entitled “The Base of Powerful Movements: Understanding the Role of Local Associations,” for example, McKnight reminds us that social movements bent on seeking justice depend not only on inspirational leaders, but also on the associations that have shaped the leaders and their ideas. He offers the churches of the 1960s and today’s Black Lives Matter movement as examples. In the final piece in this collection, McKnight proposes a major innovation in how governments might measure the impact of proposed programs and activities on the communities they intend to serve.
At this moment in American history, McKnight’s cogent and grounded observations are available to inspire a new generation of organizers and community-based practitioners. It was our good fortune that the Kettering Foundation asked us to put this collection together, and now it is our pleasure to offer it to readers who are joining their neighbors in work for the common good of their communities. That is a joyous task indeed.
Paula Ellis and Wendy Willis
_________________________
Paula Ellis , a senior associate at the Kettering Foundation, is a journalist, former news executive, foundation officer, and member of numerous nonprofit boards.
A writer, an attorney, and a national leader in the field of civic engagement, Wendy Willis directs several deliberative democracy organizations housed at Portland State University.
INTRODUCTION
Asset-Based Community Development and the Science of Association
IN RECENT DAYS, I have noticed two common habits in framing local issues. First, in meeting with public managers, I am often struck by how universally they focus on community problems. Certainly, problems are one way of defining the kinds of relationships government or any institution might have with people in a neighborhood. However, the possibilities of creative citizen productivity are limited by the idea that what we are about is problems.
Second, many current programs, policies, plans, and initiatives are described as