Principles for Equitable and Inclusive Civic Engagement

A GUIDE TO

TRANSFORMATIVE

CHANGE

BY KIP HOLLEY

Equitable and Inclusive

Civic Engagement

THE PRINCIPLES FOR

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The Principles for Equitable and Inclusive Civic Engagement Kip Holley

The Ohio State University

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Columbus, Ohio 43201

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For More Information

The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State

University is known and respected nationally and deeply engaged in

social issues. We are focused on projects that are integrated with sound

research, strategic communication, and advocacy. To learn more, visit

www.kirwaninstitute.osu.edu.

This publication was produced by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of

Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. As a university-wide,

interdisciplinary research institute, the Kirwan Institute works to deepen

understanding of the causes of—and solutions to—racial and ethnic disparities

worldwide and to bring about a society that is fair and just for all people.

Our research is designed to be actively used to solve problems in society.

Research and sta expertise are shared through an extensive network of

colleagues and partners, ranging from other researchers, grassroots social

justice advocates, policymakers, and community leaders nationally and

globally, who can quickly put ideas into action.

KIP HOLLEY

with contributions from

Sharon Davies, Christy Rogers, Jason Reece,

David Norris, Jillian Olinger, Cheryl Staats,

Charles Noble III, and Matt Martin

design by

Jason Duffield

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Equitable and Inclusive

Civic Engagement

THE PRINCIPLES FOR

Table of Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...............................................................................6

PREFACE .................................................................................................. 7

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................8

What is Civic Engagement? ...................................................... 9

An exploration of the various deﬁnitions in the literature and

an introduction to the Kirwan Institute’s deﬁnition of civic engagement

Social Inequities in Civic Engagement ................................. 13

A quick summary of the challenges to equitable civic engagement

based on our experiences

Transforming the Civic Engagement Environment ...........17

Detailing the nature of robust change in civic engagement

in our communities

The Six Principles for Civic Engagement ............................. 21

Detailing the principles that can form the basis of equitable

and eective civic engagement for everyone in our communities

1 Embracing the Gifts of Diversity .....................................................25

2 Realizing the Role of Race, Power, and Injustice ...............................33

3 Radical Hospitality: Invitation and Listening ..................................... 41

4 Trust-Building and Commitment .....................................................49

5 Honoring Dissent and Embracing Protest ........................................55

6 Adaptability to Community Change ................................................ 61

Conclusion .................................................................................... 66

WORKS CITED ......................................................................................... 68

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Civic engagement is more than collection of meet-

ings, techniques, and tools. It takes place in an

environment made up of diverse people, practic-

es, conditions, and values. Our civic environments

are where we derive our opportunities to succeed.

Some communities have healthy, sustainable and

rich civic and built environments. Others suered

from decades of segregation and disinvestment,

leaving residents segregated from opportunities

and unable to strongly inﬂuence the policies that

drive community investment.

As a result, residents in these communities have

lost the structural and cultural supports neces-

sary to ensure justice and to achieve successful

outcomes in their lives. The result is that civic en-

gagement is often viewed as a means of gath-

ering consent for initiatives supported by those

with wealth and power, rather than a vehicle for

delivering civic power to the community. Because

of these circumstances, civic engagement has

begun to lose legitimacy and eectiveness, as

people look elsewhere to make change, partic-

ularly in communities that are struggling.

To restore the power and stature of civic engage-

ment, we must become mindful that those who

are excluded from community-based decisions

are not excluded from community development

impacts. Social inequities can lead to highly polar-

ized and uncertain civic environments, conditions

that can discourage free and open exchanges of

ideas. In turn, these constraints can lead to ineq-

uitable investments, which again lead to lack of

trust, polarization, and even more retrenchment.

For people to exercise their civic power and

voice equitably, we must change the way we think

about civic engagement, making transformative

changes in our longstanding customs, assump-

tions, and institutions. It also means moving our

conversations away from those that foster polar-

ization and towards those that build relationships,

foster mutual accountability, and strive for under-

standing among neighbors.

Transforming the civic engagement environment

is a change in both context and culture. The le-

gitimacy of outreach eorts is tied to the amount

of opportunities that community members have

to exercise leadership.

Changing the civic engagement environment so

that it is based on principles of honesty, hospitality,

trust, a respect for the power of dissent, and most

importantly of all, the sharing and honoring of gifts,

can be instrumental in creating an environment

where all can share in our communities’ bounties.

Empowerment can begin by sharing gifts. For in-

dividual community members to share their gifts

and move from being spectators to co-creators,

large-scale projects must be directed by robust

community-led engagement.

Creating an engagement environment that links

neighborhood concerns to larger regional or

societal issues encourages residents to realize

their full potential to change circumstances on

a larger stage.

Substantive community change

happens when people form authentic connec-

tions with each other at any scale. Realizing the

interconnectedness of the stakeholders in our

civic environment can help further bind our com-

munities together while empowering the individ-

ual to make change on a larger level. Embracing

this type of bottom-up community decision-mak-

ing and community-based resources creates a

more meaningful engagement environment and

fosters a sense of community ownership that is

at the heart of long-lasting change.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PREFACE

Our neighborhoods and our nation are in the

middle of a massive wave of demographic and

economic shifts. More and more Americans are

people of color and immigrants. Many people

are living longer, but can suer ﬁnancial inse-

curity and health challenges in their retirement.

Poverty rates, especially for children of color, are

rising. The educational achievement necessary

for creativity to ﬂourish and to meet the needs

of a changing economy lags in many commu-

nities across America. Income inequality is at

“Gilded Age” levels, and economic mobility has

decreased since the post-World War II rise of the

middle class. Credit remains tight, and debt is

rising for many families. Vacant and abandoned

properties remain a signiﬁcant challenge for many

cities and regions. Predatory lending practices

and the foreclosure crisis disproportionately im-

pacted neighborhoods of color, contributing to

a four-fold increase in the black-white wealth

gap. Concentrated poverty is growing, as is the

research showing the detriments of concentrat-

ed disadvantage to child and family well-being.

In many ways, we are becoming more diverse

and divided at once. Our neighborhoods are in-

creasingly becoming marked by troubling levels

of extreme poverty and extreme wealth.

For more than ten years, the Kirwan Institute has

worked with communities across the country to

challenge these social inequities. From Detroit,

Michigan to Gulfport, Mississippi, to Merced, Cal-

ifornia, the challenges to ensuring equity and op-

portunity for all are varied, as are the solutions

proposed to address them. However, a critical

factor in successful community development and

expanded opportunity is civic engagement.

Robust civic engagement and timely communi-

ty development can productively occur togeth-

er, expanding opportunity for more people and

families. However, if they are radically separated,

isolated, episodic, and solely process-focused,

both civic engagement and community devel-

opment can fall short of their aspirational goals.

Worse yet, they can contribute to a community’s

divisions across racial and economic lines. If civic

engagement and community development deci-

sions leave out the people most aected by those

decisions; if they do not foreground meeting the

needs of our most vulnerable citizens and families,

then we can see a downward spiral of communi-

ty disengagement and disinvestment.

The Principles for Equitable and Inclusive

Civic Engagement invites community leaders,

policy makers, planners, and community devel-

opers to share in Kirwan’s collective knowledge

and experience with promoting equitable civic

engagement and community development. We

hope to see more community dialogue that re-

ﬂects the diverse voices in our communities, con-

siders the assets of traditionally marginalized

or underrepresented community members, and

contributes to sustainable, diverse, equitable and

healthy communities. We can use the assets and

power inherent in our people and communities

to bring about justice, opportunity, and eective

democracy for all.

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

At the Kirwan Institute, we believe that everyone

has the potential to contribute to our communi-

ties and that the diversity of experiences, back-

grounds and traditions that people possess are

the ingredients that make our communities rich

and vibrant. To realize these assets, we believe

that everyone must have equal opportunity to

express their voice when community decisions

are made.

Much of what we have learned in regards to com-

munity voice and community development over

the last ten years has been in conversation and

co-learning with our partners. Through our part-

nership with ISAIAH in Minnesota, we learned that

personal stories and structured dialogue between

community members could be a useful tool in

understanding implicit and structural barriers to

opportunity. In our hometown of Columbus, Ohio,

we saw how important neighborhood institutions

and social capital are to expanding opportunity

in a racially diverse, mixed-income, revitalizing

neighborhood. While working with the Detroit

Civic Engagement Fellows in Southeast Michigan,

we reexamined our assumptions about civic en-

gagement in a 21

Century economy.

This document draws from these on-the-ground

experiences, and from our previous writing,

notably “Growing Together for a Sustainable

Future: Strategies and Best Practices for Engag-

ing with Disadvantaged Communities on Issues

of Sustainable Development and Regional Plan-

ning,” “Expanding Democracy: A Framework for

Bolstering Civic Power and Rebuilding Commu-

nities,” and “Shining the Light: A Practical Guide

to Co-Creating Healthy Communities.”

The proceeding pages are also inﬂuenced by a

series of conversations that we conducted with

some of our community partners after our work

was completed. The authors would like to thank

Ponsella Hardaway of MOSES, Dessa Cosma

and Danielle Atkinson of Economic Justice Alli-

ance of Michigan, Steve Sterrett of the Weinland

Park Collaborative, Reverend John Edgar of The

Church for All People, Tatiana Vizcaino-Stewart of

Better Healthy Communities Merced, and Doran

Schrantz of ISAIAH of Minnesota for their wisdom

and generosity.

We were also greatly inﬂuenced by the writings

of Peter Block, most notably “Civic Engagement

and the Restoration of Community” and The Abun-

dant Community, and Eric Uslaner, “Civic Engage

ment in America.”

The lead author would like to thank Sharon Davies,

Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the

Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State Uni-

versity, as well as Christy Rogers, Jason Reece,

David Norris, Jillian Olinger, Cheryl Staats, Charles

Noble III, and Matt Martin of the Kirwan Institute,

for their contributions to this document.

KIP HOLLEY is a researcher at the Kirwan Institute. His primary area of focus

is community engagement, social capital, and civic leadership. Kip works to

equip minority and low-income peoples with the tools needed to bring equity

to the civic engagement environment, helping the Kirwan Institute to fulﬁll its

mission to promote a just and fair society.

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KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

CHAPTER 1

What is

Civic Engagement?

Civic engagement has been discussed in many academic disciplines, from

geography and sociology to business and public administration, making

consensus on a deﬁnition elusive. e term civic engagement is also used

interchangeably with related terms, such as community engagement, public

participation, and civic life. A deﬁnition of public engagement provided by

the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation notes that it is “oen

used interchangeably with the term ‘civic engagement,’”

which points to

the confusion and closeness of these terms.

hile one can argue that terms such

as ‘civic’, ‘pubic’, and ‘community’

describe dierent contexts for en-

gagement, we have found that these terms

tend to be used interchangeably in practical

applications. erefore, for the purposes of

our work, we tend to use all such terms to de-

scribe acts where community members of all

statuses make and appraise community deci-

sions, either formally or informally.

The American Planning Association

deﬁnes civic engagement as “the process of

working collaboratively with individuals and

groups to achieve speciﬁc goals,”

while the In-

ternational Association of Public Participation

deﬁnes public participation as “any process

that involves the public in problem solving

or decision making and uses public input to

make decisions.”

e National Coalition for

Dialogue and Deliberation further deﬁnes

civic capacity (i.e., “the capacity for commu-

nities, organizations, and societies to make

wise collective decisions and to create and

sustain smart collective action”) and public

engagement in similar terms (“various forms

of highly inclusive public dialogue and delib-

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

eration that are critical steps towards policy

development, collaborative civic action, and

other forms of public problem solving”).

Other deﬁnitions are narrow and distinct.

e Public Participation Handbook deﬁnes

public participation as “a process by which

public concerns, needs, and values are in-

corporated into governmental and corpo-

rate decision-making.”

e handbook then

gives qualifying statements that denote what

public participation isn’t. According to the

text, public participation relates only to ad-

ministrative decisions by public agencies or

private organizations (not public ocials or

judges), occurs only between people and or-

ganizations, and is an “organized process.”

Robert Putnam, a noted scholar on social

capital, argues that civic engagement is meant

to “refer to people’s connections with the life

of their communities, not only with politics.”

e organization Philanthropy for Active Civic

Engagement (PACE) posits that “the deﬁning

characteristic of active civic engagement is the

commitment to participate and contribute to

the improvement of one’s community, neigh-

borhood and nation.”

ese latter deﬁnitions

describe a set of conditions, rather than a

series of actions. e National Civic League

follows suit with its deﬁnition of civic infra-

structure as “formal and informal processes

and networks through which communities

make decisions and attempt to solve prob-

lems.”

Similarly, e World Bank deﬁnes

civic engagement as “an environment made

up of the legal, social, and administrative pro-

cesses that give the community a voice in gov-

ernment matters.”

CASE STUDY PROFILE

Building Healthy Communities: Merced

Tatiana Vizcaino-Stewart is the Hub Manager for Building Healthy Communities: Merced

Hub. (BHC Merced) BHC Merced is part of a statewide 10-year plan from The California

Endowment. BHC Merced is a partnership made up of community residents, public agency

leaders, community beneﬁt organizations and other interested individuals and organizations

aimed at taking action to their communities a healthier and happier place to live. The HUB

will be coordinated and managed by the host agency (United Way of Merced County) and

the HUB Steering Committee.

The Kirwan Institute was commissioned by The California Endowment to embark on a

community engagement and opportunity mapping process as part of the Endowment’s

Building Healthy Communities initiative in Merced. As part of this process, Kirwan partnered

with BHC Merced to identify existing assets in the community, seek opportunities for asset

development, and build capacity around the use of Kirwan’s Opportunity Mapping approach

and systemic policy change. From the outset, we all understood that the opportunity maps

produced as part of this project were a means to an end. Our primary focus was to increase

the capacity of the community to communicate their needs and make positive changes.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

these eorts are directly informed by the prin-

ciples of community members and match

community engagement patterns, including

programs to promote local businesses, and the

use of community events such as fairs and fes-

tivals as engagement and empowerment op-

portunities. e environment also has support

from organizations and businesses, but is still

led by community members.

Meanwhile, on the west side of Columbus

where the author spent most of his childhood,

the economic conditions are much dierent.

e per capita income is lower than the nation-

al average, with many residents living on ﬁxed

incomes and working more oen in blue collar

and service jobs. Many of the people whom he

went to high school with did not ﬁnish college.

e neighborhood is becoming increasingly

diverse, with signiﬁcant numbers of Hispanic

and Somalian community members. Commu-

nity-wide principles for civic engagement are

The Kirwan Institute’s Deﬁnition

of Civic Engagement

We believe that civic engagement is more than

just a set of practices; it is also a set of condi-

tions. e civic engagement environment is

not only informed by what we practice, but

by how we are positioned in our communities.

e civic engagement environment exists in

the interconnection of our community and in-

dividual lives. How we practice civic engage-

ment is tied to our access to resources and

opportunities, which is dependent upon the

(perceived and intended) motivations behind

issue-speciﬁc public engagements.

For instance, in the Town and Village of

Essex, Vermont, the engagement environment

is spearheaded by Heart and Soul Essex, a

civic engagement program sponsored by the

Orton Family Foundation. e civic engage-

ment environment is marked by principles

such as ‘Community Connections,’ ‘ought-

ful Growth,’ and a dedication to upliing the

local economy. e community of 20,000 is

overwhelmingly White, with a median house-

hold income that is higher than the national

average. It is home to IBM Microelectronics

as well as a number of ski resorts and private

schools. Many of the principles that guide

“People need relationships to see how they can do

something…bring them into communities where people

can see themselves as a bunch of Davids, working on

a small scale to make change. It’s only found through

community, a space where they can share their story,

trust being developed and can feel conﬁdent that we can

take this on.”

Ponsella Hardaway – Executive Director, MOSES

“civic engagement is more than

just a set of practices;

it is also a set of conditions.”

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

not documented in any manner, and practices

speciﬁcally designed to aect community de-

cisions are relegated to public meetings, oen

held on weekday evenings and with little in-

herent power built in for individual commu-

nity members to aect community changes.

Institutional support has traditionally been

low, with many area businesses generally only

superﬁcially involved in community activities.

In both of these cases, the practices and prin-

ciples of the civic engagement environment

are linked to the socioeconomic conditions

of the residents.

We believe that civic engagement describes

the practices, principles and socioeconomic

conditions that comprise the environment in

which people interact with their community

and come together to make and implement

community decisions that provide justice

and opportunity for all community members.

Community decision-making is the founda-

tion of access to opportunities and justice.

Certainly state and federal laws and regula-

tions, as well as a rapidly globalizing world,

impact our lives. Yet how we experience and

deﬁne our communities on an everyday level—

interactions with our neighbors, service pro-

viders, local businesses, religious leaders, and

ocials—helps to give shape to the ideas like

“neighborhood” and “community” and provides

a space for people to act with power no matter

their circumstances. City hall meetings and

voting booths are not the only places for our

voices to be heard. People engage with their

communities in a multitude of ways, from

community festivals and PTA meetings to

shopping at local businesses and participat-

ing in block watches. ese interactions are

central to the idea of community, and provide

people with a rich environment for creating

opportunities for everyone.

At its most basic, civic engagement is how

we exercise our political power, individually

and collectively. Research shows that civic

engagement is the tool that people tend to in-

teract with policymakers and others with the

power to act on our communities directly.

Civic engagement is how we as people make

community policies more responsive and

ensure that those decisions are beneﬁcial.

On one hand, in a democracy, the voices of

those who participate most are most likely to

be heard and heeded by decision-makers.

the other hand, inequitable access to meaning-

ful civic engagement opportunities can lead

to inequitable participation—and thus, unjust

investments, conditions, and outcomes. n

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

CHAPTER 2

Social Inequities in

Civic Engagement

Many communities suer from an inadequate civic engagement

environment. It is not surprising that membership in communi-

ty organizations has fallen across the country and that surveys

have shown that attendance at public meetings and political

events has also fallen over the past half century.

ne diculty is that in many com-

munities across the country, the en-

gagement environment is built for

eciency in terms of time and money.

is

attitude has increased as communities across

the country have faced tighter budgets, but

the principle of eciency is oen written into

the rules for civic engagement in many com-

munities.

e open meetings laws across

the country tend to be tightly regimented

and constructed to produce standardization,

rather than voice and power.

For instance,

the Brown Act in California contains rigid

procedures for how ocials and residents

can communicate during meetings and oth-

erwise.

Unfortunately, “eciency” is still a

priority for public meetings in many places.

For instance, during a recent conversation

with a metropolitan planning organization

concerning engagement with equity advo-

cates and residents from areas of racially con-

centrated poverty, ocials claimed that time

and resource constraints made it impossible

to spend a great deal of time on “niche” con-

cerns of the advocates and residents. As the

comment on “niche” concerns demonstrates,

an emphasis on eciency does not necessar-

ily lead to equity in civic voice. Studies show

that when civic engagement activities empha-

size eciency over empowerment, the result

is a loss of inﬂuence for residents, particularly

those whom are already at a socioeconomic

disadvantage.

Additionally, people are le out of the con-

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

versation for reasons of politics or preference.

In one study of civic engagement, community

members in Clearwater, Florida related that

local meetings did not include the communi-

ty’s diverse population, but limited them to

“the usual suspects,” who were also on several

boards.

In a similar study, New Jersey res-

idents complained in a survey that elected

ocials oen appoint community members

to engagement who have their own partic

ular agenda.

When community members

are invited to participate in the engagement

process more readily, they can ﬁnd their

voices muted by the use of aloof and unfa-

miliar jargon, or meeting procedures that are

completely foreign to the manner in which

they oen interact with the community. In

our work in Detroit, a regular complaint from

community advocates was that the community

engagement meetings for the city’s planning

initiatives were oen too technical for resi-

dents to understand. Our community partners

also pointed out that in many communities in

the city, the connections between low-income

and minority community members and the

people, places, and activities that comprised

the engagement environment in the city were

weak and had little bearing on their lives. More

people than ever are unclear about how to

engage in community decision-making, so

they don’t engage at all.

Despite the variety of civic engagement

techniques available, much of the engagement

environment in many communities still con-

sists of meetings and hearings that are some-

times inaccessible or outright unknown to

most residents. In Detroit for instance, re-en-

tering citizens, immigrants, the disabled, the

homeless, and other residents make up a sig-

niﬁcant portion of the community, but oen

do not have a signiﬁcant voice when decisions

are made, largely because they are unable to

attend public meetings due to resource con-

straints.

Yet these are the people who tend

to be the most aected by community policy

decisions.

e growing divide between the haves and

have-nots in the civic engagement environ-

ment mirrors the growing divide in our com-

munities. e decline in civic life is occur-

ring alongside a widening wealth gap and

a shrinking middle class, where more and

more Americans are struggling to make ends

meet.

In our more disadvantaged commu-

nities, decades of neglect and disinvestment,

along with economic and racial inequality,

have robbed these communities of healthy

civic engagement supports. is results in

bleak engagement environments that oen

separate vulnerable residents from oppor-

tunities to make a dierence in their com-

munities.

Further, inadequate support for

engagement weakens their ability to inﬂu-

ence the policies that drive community invest-

ment.

Residents in these communities have

been deprived of the resources necessary to

collaborate eectively to ensure justice and

create meaningful opportunities to succeed

through investments in schools, parks, fresh

and aordable food, preventative health care

facilities, day care, community policing, block

watches, credit for home improvements and

green weatherizing, community gardens, and

a host of other opportunities.

All of this is occurring at a time of rising

income inequality and heightening levels

of poverty, particularly among communities

“e decline in civic life is

occurring alongside a widening

wealth gap and a shrinking

middle class, where more and

more Americans are struggling

to make ends meet”

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

of color. While the growing gap between the

wealthiest Americans and the least wealthy

Americans has been well documented, the

racialized income gap is even worse, with

Whites earning 19 times as much as African

Americans and 15 times as much as Hispan-

ics at the beginning of 2000.

e unemploy-

ment rate for African-Americans is over twice

as high as the national average, and in 2012,

9.7% of non-Hispanic Whites were living in

poverty, compared to over 25% of Hispan-

ics and African-Americans.

People of color

are more oen learning in poorer perform-

ing schools, and living in more impoverished

neighborhoods.

ese economic trends are important

because rising income inequality is a major

contributor to unequal access to public power

along racial and economic lines.

According

to University of Maryland Professor of Govern-

ment and Politics, Eric M. Uslaner, ineective

civic engagement in communities with high

minority populations and those with few re-

sources reinforce structural inequalities and

can entrench unexamined biases.

Rising

income inequality has made it dicult for

an increasing number of people to become in-

volved in civic life.

Income inequality creates

fewer opportunities to cooperate, and more

stress for those below the median income, cre-

ating real barriers to helping shape community

policy.

Faced with this inequality, those with

fewer resources oen ﬁnd participation less

useful or impossible, leading them to stop par-

ticipating in engagement activities altogeth-

er, widening the gap in civic voice and power,

leading to even more social inequality.

In a

report on economic inequality and political

access by the public policy research group

Demos, researchers found that the majority of

African Americans and nearly half of Latino

Americans earned too little to impact their

elected representatives, despite the fact that

they stand to be the most eected by public

policies on issues such as economic and ed-

ucation policy.

Without adequate access to

power, people of color and economically dis-

advantaged people tend to ﬁnd themselves

on the outside of important democratic pro-

cesses and removed from opportunities to

succeed and thrive.

Meanwhile, studies have shown that those

who have access to more income and better

educational opportunities are more likely to

have a more profound impact on public de-

cision-making than those without access to

those resources.

People who have greater

access to resources are also able to frame com-

munity conversations to their beneﬁt, leaving

those without resources completely out of

the conversation in certain circumstances.

A survey of the wealthiest 20% of Americans

found that they are substantially more likely to

have regular contact with elected ocials, and

are much more likely to be involved in civic

groups and political campaigns, increasing

“[The] relationship shift needs to be done in a way that

creates reciprocal accountability—so that residents and

government and business all see mutual respect as

essential [for healthy communities] as it is.”

Dessa Cosma – Economic Justice Across Michigan

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

their inﬂuence over public policy.

In a civic

engagement environment that is increasing-

ly smaller and less accessible to the general

public, those with more wealth have an advan-

tage and those without are practically voice-

less. It is clear that inequitable investment

and inequitable engagement are tied togeth-

er, and represent an inescapable downward

spiral for many communities.

ese economic and racial disparities also

rob the civic engagement environment of its

most precious asset: public trust. Trust in

civic institutions is typically cited as funda-

mental ingredient to eective civic engage-

ment,

and Americans have been losing trust

in social and civic institutions steadily since

1972.

Research has found that trust in civic

engagement processes rests on a foundation

of economic equity.

When resources are dis-

tributed inequitably, people tend to become

discouraged with the ability of civic institu-

tions to add positive value to their lives. In ad-

dition, people at the very top and the bottom

of the income scales oen do not see each

other as sharing the same fates.

Many studies

have connected wide economic inequities to

a breakdown of democratic institutions.

short, social inequities can lead to highly po-

larized and uncertain civic engagement en-

vironments, conditions that can discourage

free and open exchanges of ideas. ese con-

straints can lead to inequitable investments,

which again lead to lack of trust, polarization,

and even more retrenchment.

e shi towards more diverse neighbor-

hoods, combined with growing racialized

poverty in many of our communities, means

that more people experience a civic environ-

ment characterized by resource constraints

and a growing lack of trust. e eect has not

only been devastating for struggling commu-

nities, but for our civic engagement environ-

ment as a whole and by extension, democracy

itself. e enormous and growing, wealth and

resource gap among people and communities

threatens to rob communities of the trust and

sense of community needed for a civic engage-

ment environment to thrive.

Notably, traditional civic engagement prac-

tices are oen inadequate at bringing diverse

community members together at best—and a

culprit in widening the divide at worst. Given

these challenges, civic engagement is increas-

ingly structured to gathering consent for ini-

tiatives supported by those with wealth and

power, rather than a vehicle for communi

ty facilitating the expansion of civic power

among everyday residents. When civic insti-

tutions are no longer able to provide oppor-

tunities for citizens to exercise power over

their communities, our communities lose their

inherent ability to provide the necessary re-

sources. Good schools, healthy citizens, safe

neighborhoods, and economic opportunity

have all been tied to a healthy and equita-

ble civic engagement environment. However,

when trust in civic institutions erodes, com-

munities decay and our future prosperity and

democracy can be permanently imperiled. n

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

CHAPTER 3

Transforming the

Civic Engagement

Environment

When confronted with challenges related to civic engagement, a common

response is an attempt to improve participation through a change in tech-

nique. We have worked with a number of communities trying to engage

with communities of color through the Sustainable Communities Initiative.

hile we underscored the dierent

life experiences and structural bar-

riers that people of color can still

face today, many ocials still ended up asking

for civic engagement techniques to communi-

cate at residents (i.e., impart information from

planning eorts and solicit feedback) rather

than engage with them as equal partners in

order to address their barriers to meaningful

engagement. Oen, this was due to the con-

straints put on their engagement eorts by

the aforementioned challenges.

Regardless, these techniques alone cannot

easily address the decades of community

neglect and disinvestment that lead to the

distrust, apathy, and inequity that character-

ize dysfunctional engagement environments.

Distrust, apathy, and inequity are challenges

that require a transformation in our approach

to civic engagement rather than more tech-

niques. Peter Block deﬁnes transformation

as a shi in context and a shi in language

and conversation.

Researchers Burke and

Litwin distinguish transformational change as

a change in behaviors and a shi in values.

order to truly transform the civic engagement

environment in communities, we must shi

from a civic engagement led by techniques

to an engagement environment based on in-

clusive principles, allowing communities to

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

create relevant practices that manifest those

principles in the engagement environment.

Our experiences have shown that care-

fully considered and articulated values and

principles can act as positive, guiding forces

in successful community engagement. Peter

Block contends that communities cannot prob-

lem-solve their way into fundamental change,

but that real change comes from a change in

ideas.

While wealth and access to resources

generally provide more opportunities for en-

gagement, the principles that underlie com-

munity engagement tend to shape the civic en-

gagement environment. In our experience, we

have found that principles that are acted upon

oen determine whether or not civic engage-

ment is a trusted community process. During

our ﬁrst meeting with a group of community

activists in Detroit, it quickly became clear that

people were not interested in talking about

yet another civic engagement plan; rather,

they wanted to discuss what civic engage-

ment was supposed to accomplish, and for

whom, at a most basic level. As the conver-

sation deepened, we found that residents in

Detroit had come to see a basic democratic

principle—public accountability—as funda-

mentally broken in their city.

During a recent project with residents from

Merced, California, rural farm workers com-

plained that they had diculty speaking with

health and education ocials about health

care and recreation access for children. e

reason was that these institutions held open

meetings to discuss service delivery problems

in the middle of the day, while many of these

residents were at work. Despite this seeming-

ly obvious deﬁciency in community voice, the

institutions had been unwilling to make any

changes in their schedule. It seemed to the

residents—many of whom were Latino and

working-class—that these institutions did not

value their input, and so the residents became

even more reluctant to engage, despite the

wealth of engagement “techniques” oered

to them later on.

CASE STUDY PROFILE

Detroit Civic Engagement Fellows

Dessa Cosma-King is the Program Director for The Center for Progressive Leadership:

Michigan. She and other Detroit area civic engagement leaders participated in the Detroit

Civic Engagement Fellows project between 2012 and 2013. The project was initiated by

Ponsella Hardaway, the Director of MOSES in Detroit, who saw a need to dive deeper into

issues of equitable civic empowerment and community marginalization across the Detroit

region. With a planning grant from the W. K. Kellogg foundation, she partnered with the

Kirwan Institute as well as a group of creative community leaders who had worked tirelessly

around issues of engagement in the region for years.

The goal of the group was to create a concept model for equitable civic engagement that

could be used throughout the region. The model and the resulting principles were designed

to create a signiﬁcant change in the relationship between decision-makers in the region and

residents that would shift community decision-making power closer to residents, particularly

in majority-minority and low-income neighborhoods.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

A change in principles—for example,

valuing someone else’s time constraints—is

a better place to start a relationship with fellow

neighbors. In our work, we have identiﬁed

three fundamental transformations that oen

need to occur in the community engagement

environment to move from superﬁcial inter-

ventions towards truly transformational rem-

edies to community challenges: a change in

the structure of the civic engagement environ-

ment, a change in how communities measure

successful civic engagement, and a change in

the motivations for engagement.

Structural Changes

e ability to eectively ground civic engage-

ment activities in a set of shared, local commu-

nity principles, and then ﬁnding techniques

and practices to ﬁt them, requires a big shi in

the language, structure, and intent of civic en-

gagement. Until this transformation happens,

the tools that we use to achieve robust engage-

ment are bound to have only a limited eect

on the challenges we face in civic engagement

and sustainable community development. In

a very real way, a shi towards principle-based

civic engagement is to decide to change the

shape of the engagement table, rather than

changing what’s on the table. A transformative

grounding in equitable and inclusive princi-

ples requires revisiting the history, customs,

assumptions, and structures of the relation-

ships we have as community members, with

each other and with our local community

institutions. Customs, language, practices,

metaphors, and objects that are a part of our

engagement environments oen are a power-

ful indicator of who has power and who does

not.

Transformational engagement interven-

tions require these factors to be acknowledged.

We must also learn how to work and com-

municate across our comfort zones, focus on

strengthening relationships with community

residents that we may rarely associate with,

and change the relationships with those that

we do.

is requires more than reaching out

to others or providing aid to those who may

be struggling. We must commit to connecting

individual concerns to community issues and

reach out to those who are generally le out

of the community conversation. Transform-

ing the civic environment requires that we

commit to building relationships character-

ized by empathy, mutuality, and a commitment

to resident and stakeholder empowerment.

“We have to be in touch with our own story when

we engage with others about who we are, our own

oppression, what is our own struggle, bringing who we

are to these situation will help us connect in terms of

changing and engaging people.”

Ponsella Hardaway – Executive Director, MOSES

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

Success Measures

Transformational change also requires re-de-

ﬁning the outcome of an engagement initia-

tive. e success or failure of many tradi-

tional civic engagement techniques is based

on numbers: the number of meetings, the

amount of people who attended. However,

those numbers tell us little about what hap-

pened at those meetings. Were new connec-

tions made at the meeting? Were the voices

of the most marginalized heard? Did people

come away with a new understanding of each

other? Were people empowered to change

their circumstances?

According to Pastor et. al. in Transforma-

tions, Transactions and Translations: Metrics

for Building, Scaling, and Funding Social

Movements, many of the familiar measures

of success are no longer as eective as they

used to be.

is can be particularly true of

countable measures in an era of generally de-

clining engagement numbers and new ways

to engage that may not be calculable using

traditional means.

More than ever, the health and quality of

community relationships seems to be a de-

ﬁning factor in determining how relevant

community engagement is to community

members. Community leaders need to know

not how many people attended a meeting, but

how community members have been changed

through their meeting. It is more important

than ever to know how engagement activi-

ties can build and promote community ca-

pacity and social capital, so that people can

continue to engage in the community long

aer we have le. ose responsible for en-

gagement activities must expand the ways in

which they measure change by planting it in

a vision of community togetherness, making

it possible to judge how far residents have

come collectively by the experiences of com-

munity members rather than on head counts

at meetings.

Motivations for Engagement

e common factor in each of these changes

is a deep sense of intentionality. From our ex-

perience, we have learned that true equality

comes through an intended eort to create

it. Much like one must intentionally set out

to start a new personal habit, communities

must intentionally set out to make the shis,

changes, and imagination needed for equity

to thrive. One of our partners, Doran Schrantz

from ISAIAH in Minnesota put it best: “Com-

mitment to the outcome, not just the process.”

is commitment is crucial to transforming

the engagement environment.

at shi starts with the development of

shared equitable principles, not with pre-as-

signed techniques. If we are to widen the en-

gagement environment so that the diversity

within our communities will be truly repre-

sented, then change in the civic engagement

process must bring about a democratic, in-

clusive environment, one where all commu-

nity members can contribute meaningfully

as they choose.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

CHAPTER 4

The Six Principles for

Civic Engagement

e principles that are necessary to create an equitable civic engagement en

vironment are those that are able bolster civic opportunity for everyone. is

is particularly for those who are oen le out of community decision-mak-

ing. e most meaningful principles to follow are those that promote an

engagement environment that is characterized fairness and acceptance by

fosters an inclusive, authentic, and dynamic engagement that encompass a

diverse set of participants, locations, languages, and processess.

n that spirit, we would like to share the

principles that we have found to be suc-

cessful in achieving such environments.

ese include: Embracing the gis of diverse

communities; facing the eects of race, history,

and power inequities as a community; prac-

ticing radical community hospitality; build-

ing trust and commitment in the community

engagement environment; honoring dissent

and protests as expressions of civic voice; and

adapting to community changes.

In the following pages, we will share the

knowledge and experiences of ourselves and

our community partners to illustrate the im-

portant characteristics of these principles and

how they can create environments where ev-

eryone has the ability to have a say in com-

munity developments and the ability to make

community decisions together.

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

The Six Principles

for CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

These six principles are necessary to create an

equitable civic engagement environment best suited

to bolster civic opportunity for everyone—particularly

those who are often left out.

Embracing the Gifts of Diversity pg. 25

Realizing the Role of Race, Power, and Injustice pg. 33

Radical Hospitality: Invitation and Listening pg. 41

Trust-Building and Commitment pg. 49

Honoring Dissent and Embracing Protest pg. 55

Adaptability to Community Change pg. 61

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

“

SOMETIMES IT’S NOT

ABOUT MONEY; IT’S ABOUT

KEEPING PEOPLE ENGAGED…

WE DON’T HAVE WEALTH, BUT

WE DO HAVE COMMUNITY

RELATIONSHIPS THAT ARE

OUR STRENGTH.

White Center, WA Resident

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

Embracing the

Gis of Diversity

⊲ A healthy and equitable civic engagement environment is

built around gis that community members contribute and

their ability to capitalize on the beneﬁts of creative gis.

⊲ Communities tend to have many dierent people who take

on leadership roles at various times.

⊲ Social capital can be a powerful source of wealth for

communities by making more resources available

throughout the community, encouraging neighbor-to-

neighbor connections.

A community is rich with people and insti-

tutions that are capable of creating more op-

portunities for community members—or re-

stricting them. From elections and city council

meetings to church services and block watches,

community events are where people demon-

strate their ability to express ideas and change

circumstances. Our communities are where

we share our gis, and sharing gis is vital,

not only for the health of our communities,

but for our individual health. For example,

personal satisfaction is highly correlated with

sharing our talents and skills with others.

However, some people are repeatedly denied

the opportunity to identify, develop, and share

their gis. e lack of access to educational

and economic opportunity has been cited as

the main barrier for minorities and those with

low-income to participate in public life.

healthy and equitable civic engagement en-

vironment built around the assets of commu-

nity members can capitalize on the beneﬁts

PRINCIPLE

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

of a diverse set of gis.

Building strong com-

munities starts with recognizing the power

that already exists in typically undervalued

people and neighborhoods.

Using ‘Bridging’ Social Capital to

Increase Meaningful Engagement

People have a wealth of power in their com-

bined social capital—the networks, norms, and

trust that enable participants to act together

more eectively to pursue shared objectives.

e local PTA, a neighborhood garden, and

church drives are the types of activities that

can help create strong connections that more

formal engagement activities oen cannot.

For many racially and economically diverse

communities, uncovering and utilizing this

social capital between community members

can be dicult. ese eorts are oen fraught

with tension and unease due to the eects of

historical and structural racism. ese unre-

solved tensions are why many communities

struggle to build social capital. However, di-

versity is a challenge to trust only when it is

not accompanied by vigorous social interac-

tion.

Verna Myers, a well-known diversity

consultant for legal ﬁrms, sums up this idea

by saying:

So, many black and white people have never

had a real opportunity to get to know each

other as individuals, to live and play next to

each other. We also neglected the tough con-

versations needed to reconcile after so many

years of racial bigotry and to process what

we learned and needed to unlearn.

Intentionally using the community engage-

ment environment to build bridging social

capital—social capital that is built among

diverse community members—has been

shown to help create new connections

between diverse community members and

make resources available within the commu-

nity, encouraging community members to

become involved in the lives of their neigh

bors. ese connections reﬂect strong attach-

ments to communities and a commitment to

making them better places to live for everyone.

For instance, in Weinland Park, a neigh-

borhood in Columbus, Ohio that is emerging

from years of economic and safety problems,

the Weinland Park Neighborhood Festival is

an annual event that has been held in the

neighborhood for seven years and has grown

to attract 300–500 residents. Steve Sterrett, a

community leader and activist in the Weinland

Park neighborhood describes the success of

the festival in creating bridges across diverse

neighborhood groups, “when you can bring

Complete a Capacity Inventory

One critical part of building a healthy community is ﬁnding out what

individual capacities each resident possesses. A Community Capacity Inventory can

be a powerful “tool” that can be used to address problems, promote growth, and

enhance the quality of local life. The inventory collects information about community

assets from the individual to the associational and institutional level in order to get

a true sense of what community members can oer each other in order to solve

common problems.

Find out more about Community Capacity Inventories:

The Asset-Based Community Development Institute

http://www.abcdinstitute.org/docs/CapacityInventories(1).pdf

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KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

300 people together and they really do repre-

sent the diversity of the neighborhood, you

can’t help but feel that there is value in people

seeing each other.” rough events such as the

Weinland Park Neighborhood Festival, diverse

people are able to recognize their linked fates.

Bridging social capital can happen at a

church with diverse membership, or in a civic

group that rallies residents from dierent

neighborhoods together under a common

banner. For instance, Beyond Welfare, a

program in Ames, Iowa that helps foster re-

lationships between families receiving public

assistance and families with higher incomes,

creates bonds between people from dierent

walks of life that can create a ladder to op-

portunity for those with fewer resources, and

makes it easier for those community members

to demonstrate their skills.

e most meaningful beneﬁts of diverse

social capital may ultimately be for the next

generation. Research has shown that early

exposure to diverse cultures can help chil-

dren develop more empathy for others and

navigate interpersonal relationships later in

life.

Socializing with people from diverse

racial and ethnic backgrounds can contrib-

ute to student academic development, and in-

creased adaptability in business settings later

in life.

e long-term beneﬁts from building

strong social relationships in diverse neigh-

borhoods may provide our children the tools

and skills that they need to thrive in the 21

century economy. Building strong bonds in

diverse communities is an important aspect

of unlocking the potential for the community

to provide assets and opportunities now and

into the future.

Understanding That Communities

Are Not Monolithic

It can be tempting to think of a neighborhood

or a city as uniform and to ascribe common

ideas, goals, and themes to all community

members. is can be especially common

when discussing minority-majority communi-

ties.

However, we have found that communi-

ties, no matter how challenged, are comprised

of a myriad of dierent stakeholders, ranging

from individual residents to small businesses,

churches, schools, community groups, and in-

formal associations. Community stakeholders

come from all walks of life; new immigrants,

young people, the elderly returning citizens,

those with disabilities and homeless fami-

lies are all members of many communities,

though they are oen not thought of as true

community stakeholders.

Furthermore, these various community

stakeholders may sometimes have goals and

values that are not complementary. In White

Center, Washington, community members

found that “mysterious” resistance for a pos-

sible annexation was coming from a commu-

nity group that had not felt included in many

of the ocial conversations on the matter,

so they created their own community orga-

nization in order to raise their concerns on

the subject. By ﬁnally recognizing this group,

stakeholders were exposed to factors that had

not been previously discussed in the poten-

tial annexation.

Many communities are also becoming

more racially and ethnically diverse. e US

is projected to become a minority-majority

country by 2043, meaning that many commu-

“early exposure

to diverse cultures can

help children develop more

empathy for others and

navigate interpersonal

relationships later in life”

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

nities that are currently comprised primarily

of White residents will most likely become

much more diverse.

Communities will house

people with an increasingly wide range of

ideas, beliefs, customs, and relationships. e

story that one community member has about

her community may be completely dierent

than her neighbor’s. Recognizing the multiple

truths experienced by community members

from many dierent walks of life is crucial

to a healthy and equitable engagement envi-

ronment. For example, the community orga-

nization Better Healthy Communities Merced

recognizes the need for embracing diversity

in engaging the Hmong population in their

county. Although strategies for outreach are

still being discussed, there is acknowledgment

of a need to understand and adapt their out-

reach eorts to meet cultural dierences and

the creation of spaces for honest conversation.

In Weinland Park, the Weinland Park Collab-

orative and the Weinland Park Community

Civic Association regularly lead neighborhood

dialogues to encourage constructive conver-

sations around the needs of the community’s

diverse population.

Valuing All Scales

of Civic Engagement

Civic engagement can be as simple as two

neighbors talking about a local issue over a

backyard fence or as large and complex as

a summit of economic, political, and com-

munity leaders to discuss regional growth.

Civic engagement activities at these dierent

scales are ultimately related, because com-

munity stakeholders at each level share the

same community and are aected by similar

issues. Civic engagement can also take place

on multiple political scales. e engagement

initiatives initiated by community members

in Weinland Park and on the South Side of

Columbus are good examples of neighbor-

hood-level engagement, while the work of

Better Healthy Communities Merced exem-

pliﬁes city and county-level engagement. In

Minnesota, ISIAH is involved in state-level

civic engagement initiatives.

e strongest initiatives for change and ful-

ﬁllment oen come from within the commu-

nity. Informal leadership is especially helpful

for creating change and providing support in

rural communities. For example, in his study

of community helpers in rural communities in

Appalachian Pennsylvania, social researcher

Robert D’Augelli found that coworkers, neigh-

bors, and spouses helped friends and relatives

most frequently.

Sociologist Omar McRob-

erts observed some black urban churches pro-

viding congregants with information on jobs,

medical care, educational opportunities, nat-

uralization services, and other resources, in

part through the church’s ties to other organi-

zations.

ese experiences are what Ponsel-

la Hardaway, one of the Detroit Civic Engage-

ment Fellows with whom we worked with in

Detroit, calls ‘David Moments’—community

engagement experiences where individual

community members can see how their own

eorts and the eorts of those around them

can help change community circumstances.

ough they oen don’t involve direct involve-

ment from larger stakeholders, the Fellows

found that these experiences are crucial to

ensuring that community members are able

to fulﬁll community needs and advocate for

the community at a larger scale.

Ultimately, we have found that the best

community partnerships oen involve resi-

dents experiencing challenges and people who

can inﬂuence neighborhood conditions, such

as business and grass roots leaders.

is is

perhaps best exempliﬁed by the approach of

the Weinland Park Collaborative and Weinland

Park Civic Association. Community ocials

work with community members through the

neighborhood dialogues, allowing the com-

munity to determine community goals and

assisting with resources for their implemen-

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

tation, to transform the neighborhood into

an inclusive, opportunity-rich environment.

In many top-down community dialogues,

power is concentrated at the top and many

gis, particularly those of the racial minori-

ties and those with low-incomes tend to be

under-utilized. Community eorts that start

from the community allow more people to use

their natural gis. Sharing gis is an empow-

ering experience, oen leading to extraordi-

nary changes in circumstances.

In Merced, California, we witnessed com-

munity members come together for an annual

community festival. At this festival, communi-

ty members share their gis and talents. e

fair features local foods, cras, and activities

for people from all walks of life. While this

festival is largely informal, it is also a very im-

portant civic engagement venue. Young people

learn new skills, and are introduced to many

of the cultural gis within the community in

the midst of a supportive educational envi-

ronment. e festival also serves as a venue

for families to ﬁnd out more about local ser-

vices from government and local business

partners. e sharing of these gis raises ev-

eryone’s individual power and connectivity.

To quote Peter Block, “gis need to be named

and exchanged for them to have meaning.”

Community empowerment oen begins

by sharing gis. For individual community

members to share their gis and move from

being spectators to co-creators in the commu-

nity, large-scale projects must be directed by

robust community-led engagement.

Creat-

ing an engagement environment that links

neighborhood concerns to larger regional or

societal issues encourages residents to engage

meaningfully and realize their full potential

to change circumstances on a larger stage in

the community.

Asset Usage Mapping

Who uses these assets? When? How? Asset Usage Mapping is

aimed at identifying the role and location of resources that help to expand opportunity

within communities. While most asset mapping stops here, we suggest going further

and listing the various community members who use each asset and how they add to

that resource’s ability to make the community better.

For instance, if the local park is an asset, what sorts of activities in the park make

it an even better asset? Are there popular ethnic festivals that take place? Field

trips from the local school? Local vendors selling food or other wares? This not only

helps identify the assets themselves, but also points to the gifts that people bring to

community assets.

Seek Out Multi-lingual Volunteers

In our experience, people want to use their gifts, particularly to better the community

around them and there are often plenty of ways for them to be helpful in a meaningful

way. One of the primary barriers that new immigrants have to engaging in community

activities is the language barrier. Community members can help someone use their gift

of translation to make activities more inviting for more community members.

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THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

Recognizing the Many Types

of Community Leadership

Community leadership is oen thought of as

hierarchal. ough some key leaders may be

best positioned to facilitate change, reliance

on them as the sole agents of change may in-

advertently heighten the disparity of inﬂuence

between the haves and have-nots within the

community.

In many communities, leader-

ship is more oen horizontal, decentralized,

and based within networks of community

members.

Robert Putnam suggests that civic

associations and similar institutions are im-

portant, in part, because they are horizontally

structured, and they help bridge diverse social

networks while increasing the availability of

the social capital within a community.

Terri

Bailey, a noted civic engagement consultant,

described leadership in the communities that

she worked with in Ties that Bind as “an expec-

tation of all members rather than a position

enjoyed by a few.”

e strongest networks,

she continues, are those in which members

take over leadership roles and constantly en-

courage others to do the same. In this way,

community leadership is expanded to become

part of the lives of all community members.

In our experiences, we have found that

communities tend to have many dierent

people who take on leadership roles at various

times. Community members may be natural

connectors who move between organizations

and groups and create relationships that can

help build community opportunity.

In e

Abundant Community, the authors note that:

...compared with a leader, a connector has

a very dierent role in the community. A con-

nector is in the center of the room, often un-

recognized but always creating new relation-

ships and often acting in a modest way.

From their vantage point as laypeople, these

leaders are responsible for encouraging others

to get involved and play an important role in

holding social capital in reserve for future

use by using their skills at maintaining rela-

tionships between neighbors.

Connectors

also provide communities with opportunities

to build relationships with other communi-

ties, discovering new allies in facing shared

challenges by helping community members

from diverse backgrounds understand the

connections between each of their individual

concerns and shared community challenges.

Other valuable community actors have been

described as catalysts, people who use ev-

eryday expertise and wisdom to bring fresh

perspective to problem solving.

In addition

to more traditional leaders, these community

members are responsible for upliing commu-

nity voice and for trying to improve access to

opportunity for more residents.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PRINCIPLE #1: A CLOSER LOOK

Embracing the Gifts of Diversity

The gifts that people bring to their communities represent the brick and

mortar of the communities. The abilities, competencies, and experiences

that community members share with each other often form the bedrock of

that community and give them the tools to meet the many challenges in our

society. When those gifts are diverse, the community itself beneﬁts by being

able to apply them to the many needs within the community. By embracing the

power of the diverse gifts of all of our community members, we not only give

ourselves and our neighbors more tools to confront our shared diculties, but

we help empower each other and help one another uplift our strengths.

Deeper Understanding

1. Think about your community. What would you most like to show a friend

who was visiting for the ﬁrst time? Who would you want them to meet?

What activities would you be most anxious to show o? What aspect of the

community would you say deﬁnes it?

2. Who are informal leaders in your community? Who are some important

people? Elders? Characters? Friendly people? Think about how these

characteristics can be used to provide leadership in the community.

3. Communities are often home to many activities, ranging from zoning

meetings to book clubs, all of which provide the opportunity for people

to demonstrate their gifts. Can you name some informal/formal activities

that happen in the community within a given year? Who in your community

could tell you more?

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

ONLY AN HONEST

CONFRONTATION

WITH REALITY

CAN BRING REAL

HEALING. SUPERFICIAL

RECONCILIATION

CAN BRING ONLY

SUPERFICIAL HEALING.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PRINCIPLE

Realizing the

Role of Race, Power,

and Injustice

⊲ Communities are stronger when they recognize and

acknowledge the roles that racism and inequality play in

the engagement experiences of community members.

⊲ When community members become aware of the power

imbalances in their community, they are more able to

change those power dynamics by validating the experiences

of traditionally less powerful community members.

⊲ Addressing power imbalances within the community

oen requires signiﬁcant and challenging changes that

will most likely be resisted by those who are the most

powerful in the community.

Acknowledging the life experiences of

our neighbors is oen an important part of en-

suring that they feel welcomed in the commu-

nity.

People interpret behaviors, information,

and situations through the lenses of their own

experiences and cultural narratives.

If you

live in a community where people are friendly

and the environment is safe and healthy, you

may see the community as a warm, open, safe

place. However, if you’ve experienced discrim-

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

ination at a grocery store or a robbery at your

home, it may lead you towards a very dier-

ent picture of your community. Unfortunate-

ly, the experiences, concerns and perceptions

of the most vulnerable people and families in

our communities oen go unheard.

In our work, we have found that in order

to build an inclusive community engagement

environment, neighbors cannot aord to mar-

ginalize one another’s experiences. Commu-

nities are stronger for acknowledging the his-

torical context in which their neighbors are

engaging in the community. Discrimination,

marginalization, and unequal community

power dynamics have played a central role

in shaping many of the habits and relation-

ships in our communities.

Recognizing their

eect on the experiences of our neighbors can

help us forge a new future from the lessons

from those experiences. When community

members ignore or avoid the injustices experi

enced by their neighbors, they risk alienating

those whose lives have been colored by them,

and losing important knowledge and wisdom

to help solve our collective challenges.

Recognizing the Historical

Inequities in Our Communities

Our communities have histories. e histories

of many communities are marked by a terri-

ble exclusion of people on the basis of racial

and ethnic background or economic circum-

stances. e inequities that are present in our

communities today are built on decades of

structural inequality.

As a result, the prior

experiences of community members have a

very real and powerful eect on their present

relationships and expectations.

We need to acknowledge in constructive

dialogue the role that race and discrimina-

tion has played, and continues to play, in

creating opportunities for some individuals

while denying them for others. We need to

be mindful of race and class when we iden-

tify dominant assumptions, deﬁne meaning-

Community Policy Timeline

When we think about our nation’s past, it can be dicult to

understand how the many changes that we have gone through have aected the

community in which we live. America has witnessed many policy changes, from the

New Deal and Suburbanization to School Desegregation and NAFTA.

Make a timeline of signiﬁcant policy changes over the past century, then ask

community members from dierent walks of life what their experiences of these

events was like, and how it aected their relationship with the community. Put those

experiences on the timeline and share it with others to help them understand the

dierent path that people have walked in the community.

Power Mapping

Who has the power to inﬂuence community decision-making in your community?

Are there organizations or people who tend to make or support decisions that aect

education, jobs, housing, etc.? Power mapping enables you to identify powerful

stakeholders in your community and determine how they are connected to each

other and other community members. This tool is invaluable to understanding power

dynamics in your community.

Try This!

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

ful outcomes, and assign accountability to

people and institutions for the decisions they

make. It is not only a matter of relating to each

other as people and valuing each other, but

understanding how our institutions and deci-

sions, past and present, impact opportunities

for ourselves and others.

Civic engagement

doesn’t occur in a historical vacuum, and we

have found that it is counterproductive to

attempt to ignore or minimize history in our

community conversations. When community

members become more aware of how histori-

cal inequities eect the engagement patterns

of our communities today, a common under-

standing is formed, validating the experienc-

es of all stakeholders and inviting everyone

to more thoughtfully create a new future for

the community.

Honest leadership in the form of leaders

who can admit their own and their organiza-

tion’s imperfections are key components to

creating an environment where these truths

can be discussed. Steve Sterret of the Wein

land Park Collaborative refers to this type of

leadership as leaderships with the “virtue of

humility” whereas Doran Schrantz of ISIAH

simply calls this quality “vulnerable leader-

ship.” Community members that are able to

exhibit these behaviors in community engage-

ment activities are able to help create equita-

ble and inclusive communities by modeling

honesty about the eects of long-standing

structural inequities in community dialogue

and helping others understand how those

inequities aect community dialogue today.

Awareness of Racial Bias

in Community Dialogue

Although many communities have made great

strides to eliminate overt forms of racism, im-

plicit racial biases and unexplored assump-

tions still play a signiﬁcant role in community

dialogue and decision-making.

e problem

of racism in our communities now deals less

with an individual’s conscious biases, but

rather with the unconscious biases that are

held within our society and the structural

barriers that are created because of them.

Implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereo-

types that aect our understanding, actions,

and decisions in an unconscious manner.

ese biases and assumptions are oen

communicated through unconscious respons-

es to conscious observations such as phys-

ical mannerisms, speech patterns, and ra-

cially exclusive social patterns.

Research in

social psychology has shown that automatic

racial stereotypes can persist, regardless of

conscious or personal rejection of prejudice

toward blacks.

For instance, African-Ameri-

cans are more likely to receive impolite treat-

ment at stores and restaurants and are more

likely to pay more for goods and services, etc.

is also suggests that minorities are more

likely to be marginalized in community meet-

ings, despite the fact that racial discrimination

is oen expressly prohibited.

Recognizing these biases and assumptions

and creating community engagement strate-

gies that account for their presence is vital to

an inclusive and healthy engagement environ-

ment. In many communities, increasing op-

portunities for diverse community members

to talk about racial attitudes within an envi-

ronment that is structured to produce rec-

onciliation have produced a greater sense

of community among all members. Among

the community leaders that we’ve worked

with over the years, almost all of them have

stressed the importance of intentionally ex-

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

ploring implicit biases and assumptions in

creating an inclusive community.

Reverend John Edgar of e Church for

All People speaks about his experiences con-

fronting these issues with parishioners on the

South Side of Columbus:

Every Sunday morning we have 175 folks who

are gathered for worship and interact in hall-

ways and small group settings. In those kinds

of interactions, we’ve had the chance to invite

people to interact around key issues of qual-

ities of life, including race and various types

of inequality. We ﬁnd that within that smaller

microcosm, we really make progress, those

things matter. So even if it’s not replicable in

a non-faith setting, when people worship to-

gether, it breaks down barriers, when people

talk about their hopes and dreams with each

other and pray for each other it can have an

eect. Then we can name the elephant in the

room about racial injustice.

Uncovering the assumptions, biases, and

silent language of racism within the com

munity engagement environment can be a

challenging undertaking. However, when de-

veloped with an intention to create a more in-

clusive community, the result is oen a more

vibrant and equitable community.

Awareness of Structural

Power Imbalances

Many challenges in civic engagement are

related to unequal power among communi-

ty members. Conversations about topics such

as gentriﬁcation and crime in the community

oen are marked by dierences in power and

can be superﬁcial in nature. In communities

as dierent as Gulfport, MS and Merced, CA,

poor and disenfranchised residents have re-

ported feeling powerless to inﬂuence com-

munity decisions. Many residents explained

that they were not even aware of who could

help address their concerns.

Communities oen have multiple centers

of power, and we have found that it is wise

to be aware of power dynamics within the

CASE STUDY PROFILE

Weinland Park – Columbus, Ohio

Steve Sterrett is a member of the Weinland Park Civic Association and a longtime community

resident and partner. The Weinland Park Civic Association works to engage with the diverse

community stakeholders in the neighborhood and work together with them to improve the

quality of life in the Weinland Park neighborhood.

In 2012, the Kirwan Institute was asked to facilitate a community meeting in Weinland Park

hosted by the Weinland Park Civic Association aimed at helping community residents

communicate honestly and productively about race, income, and dierence in their

community and develop a shared community vision for the future. As a result of this

engagement, we were able to learn how each of these residents saw the community

dierently based on the experiences of themselves, their friends, and people who were

similarly situated. It was a reminder that the engagement environment can be dierent not

only from community to community, but for people within communities.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

top-down engagement processes that can lead

to further alienation of those who are already

marginalized in the community, and result in

less eective community policies.

ose who tend to have less access to

power in the community oen ﬁnd them

selves at the mercy of a community that they

had little hand in creating, likely contributing

to an atmosphere of apathy and despair. In

order to remedy these power imbalances, all

community stakeholders must be generally

aware of their role in the community engage-

ment environment, from public meetings to

community that may impact engagement.

For example, One Voice Louisiana’s Ashley

Shelton spoke of the multiple centers of power

within her community such as churches, local

business associations, and local educational

institutions and that their level of inﬂuence

is not always equal and is oen dependent on

the issue or setting. In many of the commu-

nities where we have worked, when import-

ant decisions are made, powerful community

stakeholders tend to ignore informal engage-

ment activities at smaller scales, particularly

those led by people of color, in favor of larger,

“We have to be in touch with our own story when

we engage with others about who we are, our own

oppression, what is our own struggle, bringing who we

are to these situation will help us connect in terms of

changing and engaging people.”

Ponsella Hardaway – Executive Director, MOSES

Ethnic Roots Story

This exercise is designed to help people see where race, dierence,

power, and discrimination may have played a part in their own family history. By

looking backwards at people in our own families, grandparents, ancestors, etc.,

participants can open their minds to the fact that race and ethnicity play a part in our

American experiences in a fairly safe way.

Meeting Evaluation

Before the next community meeting, have one or more meeting ocials complete a

Meeting Evaluation. Based McGraw-Hill’s Cultural Indicators of Power, this inventory

can help meeting ocials understand how vocabulary, practices, objects, and other

components of meeting can reﬂect power dynamics in the larger community and

create unequal access to community voice and power in the community.

More about this exercise can be found on McGraw-Hill’s Student Section.

http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/comm/group/students/power.htm

Try This!

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

neighborhood watches, and how those roles

reinforce or change power imbalances. Aware-

ness and acceptance of community power

dynamics and their consequences can help

create the atmosphere conducive to chang-

ing these power dynamics.

Understanding that Power Sharing

Involves Conﬂict

Shiing or sharing power requires fundamen-

tal changes. Power dynamics are oen a major

factor that shapes one’s experience in a com-

munity. So it is oen impossible to change

power dynamics without some disruptions.

While working with advocates for Afri-

can-American leadership in Portland, Ore-

gon—a community not normally known for

racial divisions—we found that a gradual

change in community leadership to reﬂect

African-American concerns was met with

quite a bit of resistance in some commu

nities.

Members of ISIAH of Minneapolis,

shared that they faced conﬂict, both inside

and outside of their organization, as their

relationship with more powerful state-level

stakeholders changed. Conﬂicts arose from

those inside of government who now had to

adjust to a new relationship with the group

and their focus on racial equity and struc-

tural change. While inside the organization,

conﬂict arose with those who had been more

comfortable working to make change outside

of the power structure.

These examples illustrate a common

ﬁnding about organizational change: people,

no matter how well intentioned, rarely relish

giving up power without resistance.

Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out, “History

is the long and tragic story of the fact that

privileged groups seldom give up their privi-

leges voluntarily.”

100

Strengthening our civic

engagement practices means honestly con

fronting resistance to share power from tra-

ditionally powerful community members and

organizations in communities.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PRINCIPLE #2: A CLOSER LOOK

Realizing the Role of Race,

Power, and Injustice

The eects of historical and present economic and social marginalization

play a crucial role in shaping our community dialogues and in forming our

public places and policies. In many cities, the neglect and isolation of entire

communities of people is written into the fabric of the built environment,

from informally segregated spaces, to crumbling infrastructure, to a lack of

basic amenities for child health and safety. In order to have a truly inclusive,

equitable community environment, we must acknowledge the realities of these

continuing divides, and the real challenges of power dynamics and multiple,

often contrasting, truths and goals.

An acknowledgment of the realities of historical exclusion, of the experiences

of race and class divides can help set the table for authentic dialogue

about various barriers to success and move people towards collaborating

to overcome them. This can pave the way for holistic conversations that

foregrounds the investments—in both people and places—needed to build and

maintain social capital.

Deeper Understanding

1. What were the experiences of people in your community during the Civil

Rights era or during school desegregation? Can anyone speak to how the

community was before then, what happened, and what is the community

like now? How relevant are these stories to the story that people tell about

your community?

2. What does ‘civic power’ look like in your community? What are its

characteristics and how do you know when someone has it and when

someone doesn’t?

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

“

SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW,

SOMEBODY REACHES

OUT TO THEM… THAT

HAPPENED TO ME. THAT

ONE PERSON OPENS THE

DOOR FOR YOU AND HELPS

YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO.

Resident, “Ties that Bind”

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PRINCIPLE

Radical Hospitality:

Invitation and Listening

⊲ We have found that the best engagement

environments strive for a direct and meaningful

impact on the concerns of residents from every walk

of life, and are undertaken in a manner that is relevant

and respectful of all community members.

⊲ For a community to be truly inclusive, community

members must be intentional about including the most

vulnerable members of the community in a manner that

is both inviting and empowering.

⊲ Diverse groups of community members such as young

people, new immigrants, returning citizens, and people

of color can face tremendous resource barriers to

engagement and as a result, many communities fail to

incorporate their voices.

⊲ Providing community members a forum for listening

to each other’s concerns in a healthy, respectful way is

key to an understanding and supportive community

engagement environment.

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

⊲ When community members are dedicated bringing neighbors

from all walks of life into the circle of community, their

experiences, knowledge, and wisdom can help clarify issues.

Welcoming diverse voices into our communi-

ty conversations requires more than a cursory

invitation to join a meeting or event. e invi-

tation must reﬂect their needs and concerns.

If someone is concerned about drug dealing

on their street or the lack of high-performing

schools in their community, they need to see

those concerns on the agenda. Reaching out

to community members means meeting them

where their concerns are. Community hospi-

tality is best when it is tailored to those whom

you wish to reach.

Building communities where everyone

feels a sense of belonging and ownership does

not happen accidentally. Inclusion needs to

be intentional, particularly in the case of the

most vulnerable members of our commu-

nities. Civic engagement derives its impor-

tance from its impact on people beyond the

meeting, hearing, or vote. To be relevant to

people’s lives, the civic engagement environ-

ment must be seen as a space for people to

share their voices honestly and have a mean-

ingful impact on community developments.

Real hospitality requires a determined dedi-

cation to inclusion, a commitment to the idea

that when the community comes together, ev-

eryone is represented.

Bold and Courageous Hospitality

Civic engagement is about building genuine

and meaningful relationships between com-

munity members. A key component is that all

parties feel engaged and empowered.

Unfortunately, not all voices are heard

equally. In the community dialogues that the

Kirwan Institute generally engages in as part

of our opportunity mapping work, many res-

idents have complained of oen feeling dis-

engaged at community meetings and acquir-

ing a feeling of “meeting fatigue”—reﬂecting

experience with too many meetings that have

too few tangible results. A study of communi-

ty engagement found that minorities tend to

have less opportunity to engage in communi-

ty decision-making.

102

Residents have related

that engagement activities are oen poorly ad-

vertised and that the meetings are superﬁcial,

leaving them feeling shut out and unheard.

Storytelling Sessions

The ability to tell one’s story in one’s own voice can be a powerful

way to foster a sense of inclusion and belonging amongst people who would

otherwise feel left out. Create time and space for community members to share

stories about important changes or ongoing issues within the community. A library,

school, coee shop or local place of worship can provide a comfortable setting in

which community members can learn more about each other through the power of

authentic storytelling. Afterwards, have community members report what they’ve

heard and ﬁnd a venue to share stories with the wider community to increase

inclusion within the community.

Try This!

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

is lack of outreach is particularly trou-

blesome for those whose voices already tend

to go unheard. Diverse groups of community

members such as young people, new immi-

grants, returning citizens, and people of color

can face tremendous resource barriers to en-

gagement and as a result, many communities

fail to incorporate their voices. For commu-

nity decisions to be meaningful, community

leaders must decide that these voices are inte-

gral to the conversation. Targeted approaches

that are designed to speciﬁcally include hard-

to-reach populations are needed to eectively

engage with diverse residents.

103

For example, Kirwan was asked to facili-

tate a community meeting in Weinland Park

in order to help residents develop a shared

vision for the community. During our initial

meeting, many participants stressed that their

community conversations needed to integrate

the voices of Latino and Somalian communi-

ty members, who were rarely targeted for out-

reach. Without these voices, many felt that

any community meetings were inauthentic

and did not address all of the issues. Others

mentioned that those with past complications

with the law also felt unsafe coming to meet-

ings, since law enforcement ocials were

oen present and literally “standing guard”

at the meeting. Still others in the neighbor-

hood felt that it might be necessary to have

meetings “loud and in the public” in order

to attract people who might be resistant to a

typical meeting setting.

We have found that the best engagement

environments strive for a direct and meaning-

ful impact on the concerns of residents from

every walk of life, and are undertaken in a

manner that is relevant and respectful of all

community members. In Detroit, some of the

Fellows spoke of having community meetings

on neutral ground in order to allay fears of

police harassment. In White Center, commu-

nity ocials reached out to established immi-

grant community groups in order to initiate re-

lationships with new immigrants. oughtful

hospitality towards all members of the com-

munity is crucial to creating an engagement

environment with strong relationships that

can help ensure that everyone is empowered

to play a part in the community.

Community Development for All People

engages in what they term “radical hospitali-

ty” that promotes honest interactions in places

that promote hospitality and mutual respect.

A key component of hospitality is providing

these safe spaces for people to speak honestly

with one another. However, honest conversa-

tions can only be had between parties when

trust exists. Building trust requires patience,

commitment, and intentionality.

Hospitality is more than just inviting people

into the community. Particularly in diverse

communities with marginalized residents,

hospitality means inviting people to

have dicult conversations. This is a key

component in building trust in communities

where trust has been lacking. Rev. Edgar

shares a story from his work on the South

Side that illustrates this point:

“In communities across the country, issues

such as race, income inequality, public and

private resource allocation tend to be hot-

button issues and some can ﬁnd it dicult

to talk about these openly with strangers.

However our partners emphasize that if

spaces exist within the community that

regularly invite residents to have those

conversations in a safe environment—and

continually deliver that environment, then

those topics can be discussed which can

help communities begin to build the trust

needed to that community engagement is

healthy, equitable, and inclusive.”

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

Listening with Intention

Many community challenges are multi-fac-

eted and connected. To further complicate

things, people experience policies dierent-

ly depending on how they are situated. e

passage of a school levy may mean little to

a retired homeowner with no children in

the house, but might be crucial to a mother

of three renting an apartment nearby, and

may eventually aect the retired homeown-

er through their property values. Given that

communities are oen comprised of people

with dierences much like these, listening is

an important aspect of healthy community di-

alogue. In our work with the Detroit Fellows,

many of the Detroit Fellows shared that creat-

ing an atmosphere where people could listen

to the stories of other community members

was crucial to helping people understand how

larger political and economic forces aected

their daily lives and how they could address

these changes as a community. However, this

is also an aspect of community dialogue that

is given little attention.

As has been discussed earlier, many com-

munity engagement activities, particularly

those centered on decision-making are de-

signed to produce timely decisions, rather than

well-deliberated ones. Within these engage-

ment arenas, listening to community member

concerns is oen relegated to a few minutes

at the beginning of the meeting or other en-

gagement arenas within the community with

tenuous connections to the decision-mak-

ing process. In his book e Road Less Trav-

eled, psychologist M. Scott Peck claimed “You

cannot truly listen to someone and do some-

thing else at the same time”

104

Listening is

work that takes energy and requires concen-

tration.

105

e same can be said for commu-

nities. Listening must be intentional, allow-

ing time and space to ensure that everyone

is heard. is is because few of us truly hear

someone’s story when we ﬁrst encounter it. Ac-

cording to author David Austin Sky, when we

listen to someone’s story, we are oen hearing

it through our own experiences. In his book,

See the Forest, Hear the Trees, Sky says that

in order to truly understand someone else’s

story, we must realize that our own story can

jostle for attention, and get in the way.

106

When

people can make peace with their own stories

and can listen with an intention to hearing

something new, other people’s stories can be

better heard.

Engaging through

Frames of Opportunity

How might civic engagement help unite neigh-

bors around ideas that address shared values?

While strategies may dier, starting the con-

versation around the principle of expanding

access to opportunity for everyone has reso-

nated with many partners of ours.

For example, ISAIAH was interested in

helping community members address di-

cult questions about race and economic equity.

Kirwan and ISAIAH co-created a set of tools

for community members and advocates that

would help them address issues of race and

class and also develop a shared framework

for action. roughout the process, ISAIAH,

Kirwan, and many community members

worked to ﬁnd a new way of making commu-

nity decisions by changing the conversation

from one where community members compet-

ed over resources to redeﬁne what the “good

life” is, and whom should have access to it.

We worked with ISAIAH to hold a number

of structured conversations intended to move

the conversation from competition between

community members to using all of our re-

sources and abilities to create a better future

together. ISAIAH and Kirwan created a series

of interactive worksheets to help analyze deci-

sion-making from an equity viewpoint, such as

“Who beneﬁts from these decisions?” “What

are our basic values as a community?” “What

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

would it look like if equity was at the heart of

our decision-making process?” “What outcome

do we want and who should beneﬁt?”

107

ese

dialogues were meant to help shi the frame

from zero-sum solutions to solutions that

would help bring about a better future for

everyone.

From the resources created with Kirwan,

ISAIAH was able to implement a house

meeting process around the concepts of op-

portunity stories and situatedness. In these

meetings, 4,000 people talked about their rela-

tionships with race and equity as they shared

their own opportunity stories. Openness to un-

derstanding the circumstances of our neigh-

bors and how they are situated in the story

they tell about the community creates a new

level of understanding that is unachievable

without intention.

In e Abundant Community, Peter Block

and John McKnight posit that, “when we join

together with our neighbors, we are the archi-

tects of the future that we want to live in.”

108

Common values of opportunity, fairness, and

concern for neighbors shape a more equitable

vision of fairness and justice.

109

Linking people

and concerns through broader lenses of op-

portunity can open up new ideas.

110

Shiing

the context of conversations toward themes

of opportunity may help people start to link

their individual stories to wider structural

issues, such as mortgage lending, college ﬁ-

nancial aid, the minimum wage, improved

health care treatments, and other facets of

life.

111

is can then help them place other

people’s stories similarly into historical and

structural context.

Belongingness

A sense of belonging is important to everyone.

Whether the connection is to family members,

friends, or co-workers, people want to belong.

Unfortunately, there are people in many com-

munities—oen people of color and those

with lower incomes—who are perceived as not

being a full or deserving part of the commu-

nity, and/or who are purposely excluded. is

matters to policy and place-making, because

research has shown that people are treated

Cultural Sharing Food Festival or Picnic

Partner with local institutions and community members to facilitate

a multi-cultural food festival or community picnic. Solicit recipes and food ideas from

a diverse set of community members and work with local ocials who might be

able to provide food, equipment and space. Community members can also teach

others how to make certain dishes, increasing the understanding between diverse

community members. Learning about diversity is sometimes done best through

sharing the fruits of that diversity.

Meetings In More Central Locations

Community meetings have often been described as inaccessible or inconvenient

by the most marginalized. In Detroit, the engagement process that informed the

city’s new master plan included a ‘roaming table’ where facilitators set up a meeting

space in various neighborhoods throughout the year rather than holding a series

of central meetings that may have been more dicult to attend. Try conducting

meetings in a variety of rotating settings, or pairing them with other meetings such

as school open houses.

Try This!

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

dierently in terms of public decision-making

depending on how they are perceived.

112

Pow-

erful business and government leaders tend

to be treated as partners or with deference

by community members and policy makers,

while people returning from prison, home-

less families, racial or ethnic groups, LGBTQ

families, and those with low-incomes can be

treated very dierently.

113

For example, in Detroit, a decision to sell

several hundred acres of vacant land within

the city to an agricultural company was met

with anger by residents who did not feel

involved in community decision-making.

ough the parcels belonged to the city, the

residents felt that decision impacted not only

their feeling of community, but potentially

their property values, educational opportu-

nities, and future employment choices.

114

people feel less connected to the decisions

that impact them, the gulf between residents

and city ocials can grow. In Merced, many

community meetings that were held within the

city were dicult for rural residents to attend.

ese citizens oen included migrant workers

and the rural poor, who were deeply aected

by issues of recreational activity planning and

transportation infrastructure.

In scenarios such as these, not only do

those members who have been le out lose,

but so does the community-at-large. Just as in

the above examples, community members are

aected by community changes regardless of

their level of involvement in the decision-mak-

ing process. Too oen, communities soon ﬁnd

themselves unable to adequately address the

myriad challenges that occur when policies

are implemented without an authentic un-

derstanding of or connection with the people

most aected. Without a true understanding of

the circumstances, the remedy will not be ad-

equate. Also, many of those who are the most

likely to be le out of the community engage-

ment environment oen have skills, experi-

ences, and knowledge that are greatly needed

in the community. For instance, non-proﬁt

agencies such as Goodwill have been employ-

ing community members with disabilities suc-

cessfully for decades and recent studies have

shown that intergenerational programming

between the elderly and children can provide

beneﬁts for both groups.

115

Inclusion is not

only a good idea for those who are le out, it

is vital for a healthy, functioning community.

In “Poverty and Race rough a Belong-

ingness Lens,” john powell describes the

need to be more inclusive as “widening the

circle of our community.”

116

When communi-

ty members are dedicated to bringing neigh-

bors from all walks of life into the circle of

community, their experiences, knowledge,

and wisdom can help clarify issues. In Los

Angeles County’s Second Supervisorial Dis-

trict, e Empowerment Congress seeks to

robustly involve the community in the pub-

lic-decision making process in order to create

solutions that truly beneﬁt all.

Neighborhood associations can be vehi-

cles to empower and strengthen communities

or contribute to feelings of exclusion. Many

neighborhood associations have member-

ship rules which exclude renters. However,

in many low-income or mixed-income com-

munities, renters can make up the majority or

near majority of residents. Community part-

ners on the South Side of Columbus related

to us that similarly exclusionary rules such

as these can make working with neighbor-

hood associations dicult for organizations

like Community Development for All People.

e Weinland Park Community Civic Associ-

ation speciﬁcally changed its charter in order

to welcome renters, who had previously been

le out of the association. A community that

endeavors to truly include those who are the

most marginalized among us can then grapple

with healthy, diverse, inclusive place-making

in the midst of nationally rising income in-

equality and racial segregation.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PRINCIPLE #3: A CLOSER LOOK

Radical Hospitality: Invitation and Listening

Engaging with the entire community starts truly inviting everyone into the

community and valuing their input and leadership. It requires a commitment

to everyone belonging and to receiving input from all community members.

Starting from values of openness, belonging, and listening can lend outreach

eorts much of their energy and longevity. When more people are invited

to make community decisions our communities grow stronger and provide

opportunities for a wider range of people to grow and succeed.

Deeper Understanding

1. Think about activities in your community where you can see people

gathered as community members. Anything from neighborhood meetings

to community gardens, book clubs, PTA meetings, churches and festivals.

Then think of your community at large, or if possible, look at some quick

demographic stats. Now think about who is represented at these events

and who isn’t? Are some people more represented than others? Who

interacts with whom? How do people interact with these activities? How are

these interactions the same and how are they dierent from one another?

2. Look at the list of community members that are not often represented

at community activities. What do you think would draw them into more

community events in the future? Next, ﬁnd some of these community

members and ask them the same question. Compare and contrast your list.

Which items are the same, and which items are dierent? Were there any

other surprising results?

3. Reﬂect on the dialogue and decision-making activities surrounding some

recent development decisions in your community. What were some of

the claims made for and against those decisions? How did those claims

resonate with various people in the community? Is there a message about

the development that could have been more inclusive? Why or why not? Try

to create one with what you’ve learned in this section.

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

“

IT’S DIFFICULT TO

CONVINCE PEOPLE TO

GET INVOLVED… BECAUSE

OF LIVING THEIR LIFE

IN A DISTRESSED

NEIGHBORHOOD, OR

BECAUSE PAST EFFORTS

HAVE LED NOWHERE.

Merced County Resident, Moving Merced Communities Forward

117

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PRINCIPLE

Trust-Building

and Commitment

⊲ When community members are able to witness a program

or initiative creating real change, they are more likely to

stay involved in the community engagement environment.

⊲ When those who are the least privileged in the community

are able to demonstrate their skills and abilities in a

meaningful way, the community engagement environment

becomes a setting where mutual trust can grow.

⊲ Lasting mutual accountability cannot be created by

using punitive means to bind stakeholders to promises.

Instead the willingness to share power and responsibility

builds trust among stakeholders because it signals that

all community members are seen as valuable, equitable

partners in creating the community.

Strong communities are built on a foundation

of trust and mutual respect. If we as neighbors

cannot trust one another, we cannot build a

community together. Unfortunately, the tra-

ditional model of accountability and trust

among community stakeholders is oen ad-

versarial. is manifests itself in a “watchdog”

mentality, marked by legal actions, protests,

and boycotts.

118

ough these forms of civic

action can be useful tools, threats and pun

ishments that aim to bind stakeholders to

the promises they have made are oen not

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

sucient means to create mutual account-

ability over the long term. Instead, we have

found that trust is built by forging relation-

ships based on mutual support.

Making and Keeping Promises

Many people in the communities that we have

partnered with feel outright distrust of civic

institutions; they report that they have been

let down or outright lied to by community of-

ﬁcials. In these communities, the engagement

atmosphere tends to be fraught with suspi-

cion, doubt, and ultimately, disengagement.

Residents have reported that community pro-

grams tend to lose support due to the inabili-

ty of institutions to deliver on their promises,

leading to further distrust among residents.

People believe in what they can see. We

have found that making real commitments to

residents with respect to resources and clear,

measurable goals creates something tangible

for people to be able to trust.

119

e Detroit

Fellows concluded that this could be done by

making accountability an integral part of the

relationship between residents and elected

and appointed city ocials by way of dedi-

cated processes, policies, and standards de-

signed to promote the journey from word to

deed. One of the Fellows in Detroit pointed out

that if people see a program or initiative cre-

ating real change in the community, they are

more likely to stay involved in capacity-build-

ing activities.

120

By making and keeping com-

mitments, community members can form eq-

uitable and fair partnerships based on mutual

trust and respect.

Long-term commitment is critical to en

acting lasting change through robust civic

engagement processes. Steve Sterrett of the

Weinland Park Collaborative identiﬁes the key

roles that commitment and trust play in civic

engagement, “I think one of the reasons that

the Weinland Park Collaborative has been rel-

atively successful so far has been that we’re all

still at the table… you just build relationships

over time and people, they know who you are

and whether they can trust you or not. ey

know who you are, they know who to call, and

that makes a dierence.”

Start a Community Organization or Project With Others

Mutual accountability and trust are best gained through combined

action. Work with neighbors to start a community group or organization. It can be

anything from a block club or a community garden to an informal book club or a

garage sale. Regardless of type of group, coming together with other community

members in this way is an excellent opportunity for people to make and keep

promises to each other and understand how to support one another to complete a

shared goal.

Rotating Leadership at Local Meetings

Invite community members who are often not in a position of power to take a

leadership role in a community meeting. Community members could also be asked

to add to or even create the agenda for the next meeting. By sharing knowledge

and power within the decision-making process, members who would often be

marginalized and wary of community decisions may be more willing to support

community decisions that they have played a role in creating.

Try This!

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

Building Trust by

Building Empowerment

e legitimacy of community outreach eorts

is tied to the amount of opportunities that

community members have to exercise lead-

ership. is is particularly true in the case

of communities that have experienced long-

time disinvestment and discrimination. Many

people who live and work in these communi-

ties are already marginalized in many other

facets of life. When this power dynamic pres-

ents itself in the community decision-making

process, it reinforces a sense of powerlessness,

and renders community participation empty

and ineective.

121

is further deepens dis-

trust and alienation of community members

from partnerships with other stakeholders.

A sense of trust is tied to a feeling of em-

powerment. When those who are the least priv-

ileged in the community are able to demon-

strate their skills and abilities in a meaningful

way, the community dialogue becomes a

setting where mutual trust can grow. Strong

community involvement will help ensure

that agreements between stakeholders are

honored, and foster continued support for

community initiatives.

One of the lessons that we learned is

that trust is often built, not through

words, but through actions. Rev. John

Edgar of Community Development for All

People puts it this way, “We’ve been at it

long enough and we’re good at getting

stu done in the community. We have a

credibility that we didn’t have before and

we’ve been able to win over some of the

civic associations that we had a hard time

with.” This shows why taking steps to

support community members in sharing

their diverse gifts are so important. Until

community stakeholders learn that they can

help one another, it can dicult to build

trust. From babysitting to coalition-building,

sharing gifts is at the core of building trust

in communities.

Mutual Accountability is Vital

to Community Engagement

Neighbors, teachers, local business owners,

and other community members play import-

ant roles in our lives. Communities are net-

works of people who share responsibilities

for contributing to the outcomes that aect

the group as a whole. e presence of a local

playground for one family might depend

on the volunteer work of their neighbors. A

job-training program run by a nearby com-

munity center or church may bolster employ-

“When we look at our own struggles, when we engage

with people we can see the connections. Engaging people

means connecting with them in an authentic way; being

humble and realizing that we’re not that dierent.”

Ponsella Hardaway – Executive Director, MOSES

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

ment for young people in the neighborhood.

is concept lies at the heart of reciprocal ac-

countability: people helping each other make

contributions to the community that they all

value. To accomplish this, community stake-

holders must be willing to oer and deliver

support to each other.

People of color and low-income residents

can sometimes feel unsupported in their

eorts to ﬁnd opportunities to contribute

meaningfully to their community. In Detroit,

the Civic Engagement Fellows reﬂected that

engagement activities oen tend to revolve

around what marginalized communities lack,

rather than focusing on their strengths. On

the other hand, the Fellows also reported that

city ocials in Detroit oen felt unsupported

by the community when advocating for com-

munity needs at the city and regional level.

Mutual accountability creates more com-

plete and honest communication between

community stakeholders. It encourages

shared responsibility and shared learning.

In our view, the willingness to share power and

responsibility builds trust among stakehold-

ers because it makes real the promise that all

stakeholders are seen as valuable, equitable

partners in creating the community. Mutual

accountability is key to making sure that the

agreements made today can withstand politi-

cal and social changes, and continue to beneﬁt

the community.

122

Likewise, vulnerable leader-

ship from those with more power to act within

the community, characterized by honesty and

humility creates hospitable environments in

which trust can be built.

CASE STUDY PROFILE

ISAIAH

Doran Schrantz is the Executive Director of ISAIAH. ISAIAH is a collection of congregations,

working together across Minnesota, who are building community power for community

policies that prioritize racial and economic justice. ISAIAH‘s values are centered on a vision

of community, hope, and God‘s abundance for all people.

In 2010, the Kirwan Institute and ISAIAH collaborated to develop a series of reports and

documents focusing on the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. These materials highlighted the

ways in which public decision-making reinforced patterns of racism and disinvestment and

provided a roadmap to creating more equitable community decision-making. During the

process, we rearmed the ideas that the fates of community members are interconnected

and that racial and ethnic hierarchies are often endemic to our civic engagement

environments and must be consciously dismantled and rebuilt with a focus on inclusion,

equality, and expanded opportunity for all.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PRINCIPLE #4: A CLOSER LOOK

Trust-Building and Commitment

Solving long-term community problems requires community members who

are willing to build long-lasting partnerships. Trust is the glue that holds these

bonds together. Communities across the country have shown us that trust

begins with honoring a commitment and keeping a promise. Communities

where people work together for common goals start with person-to-person

commitments. Residents can widen the circle of inclusion, so that more people

and families can recognize and give gifts that make their neighborhoods

stronger and healthier for all.

Deeper Understanding

1. Ask people about their most positive and most negative stories from

their history within the community. How did those experiences aect the

trustworthiness of other community members and the community at large?

2. Who is most likely to feel supported or unsupported in your community?

Ask community members from various walks of life to tell a story about

their experiences. How did those experiences color their relationship with

the community?

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

“

NONCOOPERATION AND

BOYCOTTS ARE NOT ENDS

THEMSELVES… THE END

IS REDEMPTION AND

RECONCILIATION. THE

AFTERMATH OF NONVIOLENCE

IS THE CREATION OF THE

BELOVED COMMUNITY.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PRINCIPLE

Honoring Dissent and

Embracing Protest

⊲ e strength of the diversity in our communities relies on

our ability to accept and respect our dierences.

⊲ When communities avoid controversial topics for fear

of conﬂict, they tend to produce the very conﬂict they

hoped to avoid.

⊲ Strong oppositional activities such as protests and boycotts

may be able to highlight issues that are dicult to discuss

in more traditional engagement settings.

⊲ An engagement environment that supports a space for long-

term dialogue and disagreement can help stakeholders stay

focused on new possibilities, even while holding dierent

views on issues.

Peter Block writes that “if we cannot say ‘no,’

then our ‘yes’ is meaningless.”

123

e strength

of the diversity in our communities relies on

our ability to accept and respect our dier-

ences. In strong communities, voices of dis-

agreement can actually strengthen the civic

engagement environment by oering alterna-

tives and raising tough questions. A diverse

set of ideas, visions, and backgrounds within

a community are valuable assets. When those

dierences are expressed, we ﬁnd out more

about our communities and ourselves. By

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

truly honoring dissent, we can create a civic

engagement environment where our rich con-

glomeration of ideas can be brought together

in order to build communities that are more

than the sum of their parts.

Sadly, in many of our communities, people

have forgotten the skills and abilities needed

to bring respect and attentiveness into di-

cult conversations about our shared resources.

e good news is that those skills and abilities

are still with us. As part of a program of racial

healing initiated by e Michigan Roundtable

for Diversity and Inclusion, some community

members in Detroit gather on the ﬁrst Friday

of every month to talk about important com-

munity topics ranging from gentriﬁcation to

discrimination against LGBT residents. Since

members are committed to listening to and

understanding each other, many come away

with a new understanding of what their neigh-

bors are experiencing. In order to achieve truly

inclusive communities, we must rediscover

the ability to share experiences in an environ-

ment of openness, respect, and compassion.

Dicult Conversations

Must Be Embraced

When public engagement avoids controver-

sial topics for fear of conﬂict, they tend to

produce the very conﬂict that they hoped to

avoid.

124

Community challenges cannot be met

while withholding our dierences. Dierenc-

es between people will ultimately surface, and

then the community is le without the tools

to productively navigate them.

125

In order to

discuss our dierences constructively, authen-

tic forms of dissent must be seen as a form of

care, not resistance.

126

Authentic statements

of doubt shi the culture of our engagement

towards openness and honesty, while build-

ing accountability and commitment among

residents.

127

A climate of open listening is the

backbone of a healthy engagement process.

Confronting dicult topics such as racial

and economic inequality in an environment

of respect and compassion can also foster

true understanding between neighbors and

strengthen community bonds.

128

e power

that exists within strong neighbor-to-neighbor

bonds can help unlock the hidden potential

needed to develop new solutions. Innovative

solutions demand the collective creativity,

awareness, and support of the community,

not an environment where voices are silenced

and the views and experiences of the most

disadvantaged are unwelcome. Eric Uslaner

points out that creating spaces for organiza-

tions and grassroots leaders to engage in po-

litical education allows community members

to have dicult conversations about race,

LGBT rights, criminal justice, and immigrant

rights, among others.

129

As an example, Min-

nesota’s ISAIAH worked with the Minnesota

Department of Transportation (MNDOT) to

confront racial bias in transportation con-

struction projects. Over the course of several

conversations, ISAIAH asked MNDOT workers

and management about the underlying poli-

cies, processes, and assumptions that drove

MNDOT’s investment strategies. ey also

asked what workers saw as potential solutions

to institutional inequities.

130

Making room for

constructive conﬂict as well as critical exam-

ination of the assumptions that underpin our

public decisions allows marginalized commu-

nity members to address inequality within

the public policy discussion in a way that can

bring about greater understanding.

131

When space is provided in the community

to openly talk about these issues on a

regular basis, people feel more comfortable

talking about them.

132

We have learned that

it is important to invite people to explicitly

share these experiences, repeatedly and in

an environment where they will be heard.

Doran Schrantz from ISAIAH claimed that

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

their successes in civic engagement largely

were catalyzed by conversations where

there was “no agenda and no project,” but

plenty of space to have open and honest

conversations about race, class, and

dierence. “I think the challenge with the

neighborhood dialogue,” recalled Steve

Sterrett from Weinland Park,” was that…

you set them up in a way that allows them

to ﬂow [with] the way the people dialogue,

what their interests are, it’s hard to give

them an agenda.”

Holding the Tension

of Dierent Perspectives

People are passionate about their commu-

nities and have a variety of solutions to the

challenges that their communities face. When

conﬂicts among community members arise,

they must be willing to bear the tension of

disagreement in a spirit of community and

open communication while staying dedicat-

ed to the underlying goal of restoring their

communities.

133

In order to avoid these inevitable con-

ﬂicts, community members oen withdraw

from them altogether. For example, some

residents in communities across the South

Side of Columbus, several people reported

that they are wary of attending open meet-

ings because of the “drama factor”—the fear

that the conversation may be contentious and

end in loud, screaming disagreements that

just foster more enmity between neighbors.

At the Kirwan Institute, we have found that

community members share this experience

across the country. e result of this retreat

however is that important community needs

are le unaddressed and community circum-

stances do not change.

Roger L. Conner, a specialist in public

policy advocacy, argues that civic engagement

oen requires us to suspend our assumptions

and conclusions, at least temporarily.

134

An en-

gagement environment that supports a space

for long-term dialogue and disagreement can

help stakeholders stay focused on new possi-

bilities, even while holding dierent views on

community issues.

135

e Civic Engagement

Fellows were a diverse group, and disagree-

ments about civic engagement were a regular

feature of our meetings. Oen, the Fellows

were called upon to hold the tension of varying

views on civic engagement while searching for

solutions to the city’s governance and public

accountability challenges. As a result, the

group felt encouraged and supported in gen-

erating new knowledge and novel strategies. It

also facilitated the examination of underlying

assumptions and models informing their ap-

proaches to civic engagement. An engagement

environment that prizes authentic solutions

over eciency is better able to foster strong

relationships between neighbors.

Start or Support an Alternate Legitimate Arena

If your community regularly holds meetings that have limited

space for other topics, work to establish or support the establishment of an

alternate, legitimate arena for those concerns. This will allow community members

who would otherwise feel marginalized within the current meeting structure to

have a community space where their concerns are front and center. However, for

this strategy to be eective, the alternate community space or organization must

be given full legitimacy, and some mechanism for meaningful action along with

already established community stakeholders.

Try This!

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

Just as the willingness to honestly confront

power and dierence in community can

build more trust, increased trust between

neighbors sets the stage for further honest

conversations about race and dierence.

It has been demonstrated that repeated

personal contact increases the ease in

which people can engage each other around

these topics.

Community trust is ultimately gained by

people getting the chance to know one

another. This is how bridges are built and

how honest sharing can begin. This is a

cornerstone of healthy communities

136

Protest as a Valid Expression

of Civic Voice

Civic engagement happens whether or not

a space has been created for it within the

formal engagement structure. If no place has

been created, engagement presents itself as

protest.

137

Protests can take the form of po-

litical rallies or sit-ins, boycotts, consumer

choices, or even grati. e ability to demand

fair and equitable treatment is crucial for the

health of community relationships. Engage-

ment in community decision-making is as

much about demonstrating individual po-

litical power as it is about building relation-

ships. Authentic community relationships can

only exist where all parties have the power to

choose for themselves.

According to sociologist Rhonda Baruch,

acknowledging the honest expression of frus-

tration within the community can lead to con-

structive social action.

138

Protests and other

oppositional activities highlight issues that

are dicult to discuss in more traditional en-

gagement environments. Recognizing protests

as means of bringing attention to unresolved

community issues and as an expression of

community power gives community members

an opportunity to come together to ﬁnd shared

solutions on equal footing.

139

Martin Luther

King and other civil rights leaders oen used

nonviolent direct action “to create such a crisis

and establish such creative tension that a

community which has consistently refused

to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”

140

Creating spaces for authentic expression is an

important step to ﬁnding new solutions that

are meaningful to community members from

all walks of life.

As we have learned, communities are not

monolithic. Many communities represent

a myriad of dierent community members,

groups, institutions, and visions that cannot

always be easily ﬁt together. An important

aspect of hospitality is the welcoming of

this rich tapestry of community voices and

leadership.

Legitimizing many forms of communication

also helps to avoid the marginalization

that can sometimes present itself in public

meetings. Many times, public meetings

have their basis in a rigid program structure

and a limited range of topics. For instance,

a zoning meeting is designed speciﬁcally

to discuss issues having to do with land

use. However, land use issues rarely conﬁne

themselves to regulatory consequences.

Social, economic, and political concerns

can also result from these changes.

Unfortunately, the zoning meeting and its

ocials are ill-equipped to deal competently

with some of the other issues.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PRINCIPLE #5: A CLOSER LOOK

Honoring Dissent and Embracing Protest

The strength of the diversity in our communities relies upon our ability

to accept and respect our dierences. In strong communities, voices of

disagreement have the potential to strengthen the civic engagement

environment by oering alternatives and raising tough questions. Solutions

to dicult challenges are rarely realized without entering into conﬂict. By

truly honoring dissent, we can create a civic engagement environment where

our diverse bank of ideas and knowledge can be brought together to build

communities that are more than the sum of their parts.

Deeper Understanding

1. What are the characteristics of a contentious or ‘hot-button’ issue in your

community or in your experience? How have issues such as these played

out in your community activities and conversations?

2. Think about some protest actions (i.e., picketing, demonstrating) that you

felt were misguided or inappropriate. Leaving aside the protesters stance

on the issue(s), what about the protests made you feel that way? Can you

think of an aspect of these protests that strike you as valid? How do other

community members from dierent walks of life feel about these protests?

3. Think about activities or people who you may have labeled as ‘disruptive’

at community meetings or events? What made you feel this way? Can you

imagine a community forum or event where they could express themselves

and be recognized within the community?

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

“

EVERYONE THINKS OF

CHANGING THE WORLD,

BUT NO ONE THINKS

OF CHANGING HIMSELF.

Leo Tolstoy

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PRINCIPLE

Adaptability to

Community Change

⊲ A healthy civic engagement environment can provide space

for people to negotiate the challenging time between when

one set of circumstances ends and the other begins.

⊲ In order to create a supportive environment for community

change, community members must be willing to try to forgo

comfort for truth, and to give up old roles for new roles.

⊲ Honest conversations about civic power, and the potential

for abuse and what constitutes legitimate and illegitimate

power are important components of ensuring that

community changes are equitable and meaningful.

Change is dicult for many of us. Changes in

behavior, attitudes and beliefs require that a

person navigate a stressful process of inner

psychological adjustment.

141

Our communi-

ties are constantly changing. Neighbors move

in and out. Businesses close or move on. New

technologies, such as television and the Inter-

net, change the way that we communicate and

alter how we deﬁne our “community.” To be

engaged in a community for any amount of

time means entering into this dicult process

of change, possibly many times.

Communities oen ﬁnd themselves unable

to adapt to these changes. e mixture of an

attachment to tradition, institutionalized in-

equalities, and exclusive leadership models

oen leave community members out of com-

munity decisions just as they are attempting

to become a greater part of the community.

In order to respond to inevitable changes,

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

the community engagement environment

must be ﬂexible as well. e civic engagement

environment can provide space for people to

negotiate the challenging time between when

one set of circumstances ends and the other

begins. In this “neutral zone,” people can un-

derstand one another’s circumstances and

create innovative solutions.

142

In order to truly

make the transformative changes needed to

engage community members from these prin-

ciples, communities must be open to change.

Flexibility and Openness to Change

Our communities change over time, and our

civic engagement environment needs to be

able to adapt. Deep attachment to solutions

that may have been successful years ago can

create a resistance to change in the face of

new community dynamics. When community

members can admit that change is happening,

they can overcome their resistance to collab-

oration and reconciliation when it comes to

making the change happen.

143

To illustrate the power of ﬂexibility in sup-

porting community change, Roger Conner

related the experiences of Make the Road by

Walking, a community-based LGBTQ advoca-

cy group, during their eort to convince local

high school ocials to take more aggressive

measures in protecting LGBTQ youth from ha-

rassment and violence in school. e group’s

young leaders came to believe that school of-

ﬁcials were ignoring the problem and craed

a list of demands aimed at further protecting

LGBTQ youth. School ocials, however, felt

that there were few complaints and when pre-

sented with the demands—many of which in-

cluded changes to the school policy and more

intensive reporting of possible harassment—

they immediately balked.

144

Instead of responding with further protests

and demonstration, the advocacy organization

decided to take a dierent tack and decided

CASE STUDY PROFILE

Community Development for All People

Reverend John Edgar is the Pastor for The Church for All People and Executive Director

of Community Development for All People (CD4AP) a Methodist ministry and community

development organization on the South Side of Columbus. Their mission is to help engender

a whole, healthy, and engaged community all community members are empowered to

pursue their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Through both their ministerial work and in the

community, CD4AP works with community stakeholders to provide for those less fortunate

while also building a space where the voices that often go unheard within the community can

be ampliﬁed.

CD4AP partnered with the Kirwan Institute in order to create a new model of growth and

prosperity on the South Side of Columbus. The neighborhoods on the South Side are diverse,

and the project aims to use social capital and inclusive civic engagement to foster a form of

community revitalization that places diversity and equity as a primary goal, and aligns both

physical infrastructure and social investments to support this goal.

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

to look more closely at the reasons behind

the school ocials’ resistance and worked to

cra a collaborative plan that would further

protect LGBTQ students that was cognizant

and respective of the fears of the administra-

tive backlash that such changes could cause.

145

In the end, all parties had to risk chang-

ing their behavior in order to move forward.

e advocates had to give up their monopoly

over their demands and their assumption that

the school ocials needed to be pushed into

changing their action with protest actions;

the school ocials had to give up their as-

sumption that honest dialogue and sharing

the power of initiative with outside advocates

would get them into trouble. In the end, each

group was rewarded with measures to tackle

LGBTQ discrimination and respect for admin-

istrative needs.

146

We must be willing to try to forgo comfort

for truth, and to give up old roles for new

roles.

147

Within the framework of shared values,

community members have the ﬂexibility to

create programs and processes that ensure that

the engagement environment can be a vehicle

for ﬁnding solutions to common challenges.

A healthy civic engagement environment re-

ﬂects the changing needs of the community.

Changes in Civic Power

Demand Extra Attention

When community members who have been

the most marginalized in terms of community

decision-making are able to gain more power,

there is oen a great deal of excitement and

movement within the community. However,

there is also a need for heightened awareness.

Doran Schrantz, Executive Director of ISAIAH

relates that as the organization’s ability to play

an important role in state decision-making

grew, it became increasingly challenging to

resist being co-opted into positions which ran

counter to their goals. A number of communi-

ty organizations that we have partnered with

have noted that community engagement can

be dicult to understand from inside power

structures because engagement activities ini-

tiated by powerful stakeholders can actually

be a means of disempowering other commu-

nity members.

It has been observed that community en-

gagement can serve several purposes within

communities. Community engagement ac-

tivities can be used to empower community

members, but they can also be used to placate,

misinform, manipulate, and insulate more

powerful stakeholders.

148

Some community

stakeholders have related that invitations to

participate more fully in community deci-

sion-making have found themselves asked to

Comfort Zone Challenge Club

In order to build a positive experience of adapting to new changes

and moving outside of one’s ‘comfort zone,’ community members may ﬁnd it helpful to

organize groups or clubs dedicated to trying new experiences within the community.

If possible, make sure the groups are diverse and comprised of people who are open

to having new experiences. Choose some set times to meet and try something new in

the community; an ethnic food or entertainment venue, an event or religious service

in your community that you may not have been to before. This type of activity can

be even more useful when combined with storytelling session, or community-based

groups like community gardens.

Try This!

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

work against the needs of less powerful com-

munity members.

For ISAIAH, the key to helping ensure that

they were able use their community power to

empower residents, they constantly engaged

in internal conversations about their experi-

ences with community power, the temptations

that it brought, and whether what they were

doing was a legitimate extension of their core

mission. eir constant attention to these di-

culties helps to call attention to the changes in-

herent in community power while also helping

community members understand their chang-

ing relationship with the community. In order

to ensure an equitable and inclusive engage-

ment, those groups who have power, partic-

ularly those who advocate for equity, must

take concerted and intentional action to un-

derstand the nature and limits of the power

they hold within the community.

Change is a Challenging Journey

When people change, whether by choice or not,

the changes take physical, emotional and psy

chological energy. Fundamental change can

involve dicult challenges to our core ideas

about our responsibilities and identities. Ex-

ercising ﬂexibility, arming the diculty of

change, and communicating clearly with those

who are resistant are all important to creating

an environment where community members

can address resistance together.

149

For instance, Conner suggests that the

anxiety that people feel when confronted with

fundamental change calls for those advocating

for changes to answer their questions about

why the changes are needed before any negoti-

ation about how the change will begin.

150

When

we treat those who disagree as colleagues

instead of enemies, we are more likely to hear

their loss and confusion that naturally occurs

during times of change and treat those feel-

ings as legitimate.

151

Navigating change as a community means

acknowledging the dicult emotions inherent

in change. Nonetheless, if we navigate change

intentionally, we can move forward with trust,

openness, and shared opportunity.

152

Like-

wise, navigating change can be equally as

challenging for organizations. As discussed

before, ISAIAH went through a transformative

restructuring when the organization decided

to champion issues of race and inequity. ese

changes were not only dicult; they were also

met with resistance, ultimately resulting in a

handful of member congregations leaving the

organization. However, through this transfor-

mation, ISAIAH has been able to diversify its

membership, strengthen its organizational

power, and become a leading voice for equity

on a statewide level.

Refresh Meeting Charter to Meet Existing Realities

Many meetings are slow to change because their procedures,

vocabulary, and emphasis are tied to a meeting charter that may not be suitable for

the current community. If you are a meeting ocial, suggest that the leadership of the

meeting take a fresh look at the meeting charter or rules and compare them to the

concerns, realities, and cultural realities of the current community. This may also be

a time to talk with new community members or those who have felt slighted by the

process to oer feedback for new processes that may be more equitable and inclusive.

Try This!

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

PRINCIPLE #6: A CLOSER LOOK

Adaptability to Community Change

In The Abundant Community, Peter Block and John L. McKnight compared

healthy communities to a collective of jazz musicians, who all join together

to create highly improvisational music together starting from a small amount

of structure.

153

Communities, like jazz music, are not static compositions.

Much like the people within them, they change over time and with dierent

circumstances. By focusing on values and principles rather than tactics and

activities, we can create just the right amount of order needed for a wide

variety of dialogues and relationships, without being tied to limiting ideas. In

order to tap into this ﬂexibility, we must allow for the long-term adjustments,

and the personal transformations, that are necessitated by change.

Deeper Understanding

1. Look back over the answers that you’ve collected in the previous

sections. What changes would you make to your community engagement

environment given the answers to those responses? Who and what would

have to change for the environment to be dierent? How would those

changes aect community members? What do you see as the changes (i.e.,

structural/institutional/emotional/cognitive, etc.) that would have to occur in

your community to make those changes a reality? What are some ways to

support those who would make those changes?

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

CHAPTER 5

Conclusion

Healthy community-based civic engagement starts with our relationships

to each other. In order for a democracy to be authentic, the well being of all

citizens is paramount. People beneﬁt from truly democratic structures and

institutions; the primary units of democracy. e quality of the connections

formed by neighbors at every level of community interaction represents

the ﬁbers that hold our democracy together. e ability to come together

as community members is so important to a functioning democracy that

the founders of our nation made it the subject of our ﬁrst amendment.

154

e guarantees of speech, assembly, and association are the foundations

of our democratic nation.

Unfortunately, in many of our communi-

ties, people of color and low-income residents,

and many others, have oen not been invited

to speak, assemble and associate in an authen-

tic way. eir gis have gone unappreciated,

their voices have been ignored, and their ex-

periences have been repeatedly disregarded.

is is the cumulative eect that long-term

racialized inequality has wrought on the civic

engagement environment.

To move beyond isolation and separa-

tion, we need to realize our diverse, shared

strengths and vulnerabilities as well as our

common yearning to move beyond divisive

issues.

155

A healthy civic engagement environ-

ment is the space we need to hold our most

dicult conversations, and where we can ﬁnd

sustainable solutions by acknowledging our

common fates. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

pointed out:

I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all

communities and states. I cannot sit idly by

in Atlanta and not be concerned about what

happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is

a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught

in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in

a single garment of destiny. Whatever aects

one directly aects all indirectly.

156

KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY

Likewise, the equitable civic engagement

principles presented here are “caught in an

inescapable network of mutuality.” In order to

embrace the gis of diverse communities, we

must face the eects of race, history, and power

inequities in our communities. In order to prac-

tice radical hospitality, we must ﬁrst build trust

that can be achieved in part by demonstrating

commitment, and so forth. Furthermore, no

equitable civic engagement can occur without

strong and vulnerable leadership.

Fundamentally, equitable civic engage-

ment is about leveling the power dynamics

of a place, giving voice to those previously

alienated and excluded from the civic process.

e importance of understanding power struc-

tures, how to build power, and how to leverage

power are all vital to creating equitable civic

engagement initiatives and facilitating real

community change.

e time has come to strengthen and

enliven our local relationships between com-

munity members. Restoring our civic engage-

ment environment is the pathway to ensuring

that policies reﬂect the diversity and worth of

our experiences, enabling more people to con-

tribute to the community in which they are a

part and live meaningful lives.

157

When com-

munity members come together in a healthy,

empowering environment, we can engage each

other in ways that not only produce better out-

comes for our communities, and ourselves but

also produce a critical investment in civic ca-

pacity for communities.

158

is increased civic

capacity supports holistic, community-driven

investments in the neighborhood, which in-

creases social capital and helps make commu-

nity development as much about people as it

is about place. An engagement environment

that is healthy, equitable, inclusive, and pro-

vides opportunities for everyone to share

their gis is the beating heart of our democ-

racy. rough this environment, our com-

munities can produce prosperity, freedom,

and limitless possibilities for ourselves, our

families, and our neighbors. n

“People’s own self worth and ability to feel like agents

of change is hugely important in our whole endeavor

of trying to creating more inclusive, deep, broad,

meaningful civic engagement.”

Dessa Cosma – Economic Justice Across Michigan

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY • KIRWAN INSTITUTE.OSU.EDU

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