SAVING OUR DEMOCRACY
STEP THREE: CONNECTING AND ENGAGING
FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
For the Bridging Model to be successful, we must be engaged in our local communities. We must connect with the institutions that shape the community. But how do we connect and engage locally?
In the Bridging Model workshops we began the process by selecting three of our bridges as the focus of our engagement exercise. We wanted three that dealt with the following:
Bridge One: a bridge involving commonly accepted goods or services, such as the mundane ones stated previously-food, shelter, health care, environmental protection, disaster relief.
Bridge Two: a bridge addressing individual value, worth and acceptance such as racial and sexual equality, equal opportunities for individual achievement, access to non-segregated housing, education and finance.
Bridge Three: a bridge dealing with the most controversial and politicalized goods, services, conditions generally stated as rights—voting rights, freedom of choice rights, abortion/birth control rights, gun ownership rights.
Each of these bridges involves quite different approaches to connection and engagement. Each must be addressed in quite different forms of institutions, laws, regulations. Each face quite different challenges regarding political and social supporters and opponents, established power groups and power brokers and entrenched interests.
We divided our workshop participants into three groups and gave each group one of the bridges. The assignment was for each group to attempt to identify the historical legacy dealing with their specific bridge, the existing institutions and laws and regulations addressing their bridge, the power brokers and the entrenched interests controlling that bridge, the major activist groups seeking change.
We then moved to the challenge of engaging for social change. That involved several action steps.
Action Step One: Establish a base for engagement in the community. That base might be an existing institution. Or it might require building a new institution.
Action Step Two: Clearly identify a given cause or objective. Target our efforts to bring about change. Not a generalized goal such as reducing racism or ameliorating white supremacy. What specific bridge will best attain such outcomes?
Action Step Three: Clearly identify the target groups you want to engage. That target group might be a minority group of color, a troubled youth group, a senior citizens group, a women’s abortion rights group.
Action Step Four: Identify the major institutions that relate to the given cause. It is through the institutions engaged in a given bridge that change will hopefully occur. Or it might require establishing a new institution.
Action Step Five: Identify respected leaders in those institutions who are willing to engage for change. Given our polarized world, this is very important. In testing our bridging model we found that the directors and staff of the institutions we wanted to engage frequently were very conservative in engaging beyond their given mandates. As they put it: “We don’t want to put our jobs or careers at risk.” We had to identify members of their boards and prominent community leaders who were willing to step up to the cause and lead the charge. Those community leaders might well be social activists or prominent ministers.
Building bridges to save our democracy is a tough and challenging undertaking.