Building Bridges in Kalamazoo and Beyond

For the past decade, pundits and social scientists alike have bemoaned the decreased participation of Americans in civic life. In a groundbreaking book published in 2000, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Harvard Professor Robert D. Putnam explored how Americans sign fewer petitions, join fewer organizations, don’t know their neighbors and get together with their friends and their families less often. We’re even bowling alone, no longer in the leagues that used to be the hallmark of American life.

These social trends reverberate throughout our society. They also have had a disproportionate effect on membership organizations like Citizens for Global Solutions. In the past, we relied on an advocacy model based on organizing members into small, local chapters that met regularly to discuss issues and take action. Today we are experimenting with adding new and innovative ways to work with activists. From exciting multimedia outreach to youth, like our Flash Movie Contest, to our programs on Connecting Global to Local and the Urban Environmental Accords, Citizens for Global Solutions is actively increasing our activist base to achieve our mission.

Val and Scott’s Excellent Adventure
In April, Citizens for Global Solutions’ Valerie Schrock and Scott Paul traveled to Kalamazoo, Michigan. They arrived with nothing more than a good idea, a place to stay and a handful of contacts. Their mission: to stir up interest and support for a pilot project on the Urban Environmental Accords, a part of our Livable Cities, Livable World program. The accords are a set of 21 specific, achievable commitments embraced by local governments around the world to address environmental and health concerns in concrete ways. These commitments aim to make local communities and the global environment stronger and healthier.

One of the first people Val and Scott contacted was Dan Lipson, a political science professor from Kalamazoo College. He briefed Val and Scott on the web of key individuals and organizations involved in environmental activism in the community. They then met with Mayor Hannah McKinney, also a professor at Kalamazoo College. Mayor McKinney had already heard of similar local initiatives on global climate change, but the Urban Environmental Accords were new to her. Val and Scott briefed her on the accords and gave her an article about how Syracuse, NY saved $1 million a year by replacing their stoplights with LED lights. Two things about the accords piqued her interest: One, there was an existing community of mayors working with Local
Governments for Sustainability and the Urban Accords Institute to share best practices in implementation; second was the approach we were taking to create an ongoing dialogue between community leaders and citizens on sustainability issues.

Bridging the divide between local student groups, concerned citizens and community organizations is at the heart of grassroots organizing. It also is the first step to build an effective coalition. In Kalamazoo, the students and faculty created a base which opened a dialogue on the issues and showed Mayor McKinney that local Kalamazoo citizens are concerned about environmental issues and want to find solutions. Val and Scott began to contact an array of student groups, professors, and activists, including members of the Kalamazoo Environmental Council.

Ravenwood Coffee, a local independent coffee house, was selected as the ideal place for a first meeting of the group. While waiting for people to arrive, Val and Scott spoke with one of the staff. She was so excited about the initiative that she declared their drinks “on the house,” and pointed out that the current issue of Time magazine had a cover story on climate change.

Ultimately, 16 people, many of them community leaders engaged in urban sustainability issues, came to the meeting. Several other people sent regret notes and expressed their interest to remain involved.

Everyone was interested in the accords. They discovered how this platform could bolster their ongoing work. In fact, during the meeting, community leaders found there were a lot of groups working on similar issues who did not know each other: the project was already bringing people together across issue areas!

Ultimately, the group agreed that they were very interested in working together on the accords, and asked Citizens for Global Solutions to create an online resource center and email list. This will help them share information on what’s already happening and coordinate their work on new areas of action.

The excitement of the group was obvious. It was captured on film by Dan Jones, a friend of Scott’s from his work with Sustain US, the U.S. youth network for sustainable development. Dan, an amateur filmmaker, was interested in making a short film documenting Kalamazoo citizens’ efforts to pass the accords. Ultimately, Dan’s film will serve as the centerpiece of an activist kit for citizens in other cities that want to pass the accords.

Kalamazoo and Beyond
Since April, individuals in Kalamazoo, in conjunction with our national office, have continued to work on building a broad coalition of supporters, many of whom already have been advocating on several of the action items in the accords. We have hired an extern to coordinate these efforts. He will continue to bridge the gaps between individuals and organizations in Kalamazoo working on sustainability issues.

The community leaders with whom our staff met in Kalamazoo expressed a strong interest in bringing this model to other communities in their region. This energy has inspired us to develop the pilot project around a regional approach for southwest Michigan. Among the other localities we are considering are Grand Rapids, Battle Creek, Lansing and Portage.

In each community, we will begin by reaching out to diverse community groups to develop a local coalition. The Kalamazoo coalition plans to hold public hearings, in conjunction with the Kalamazoo Environmental Council, to discuss activities that have begun to address the action items in the accords. They will also map out ideas for next steps on the accords in Kalamazoo. Following these hearings, there will be a public lobbying campaign coordinated by our extern and the coalition. The adoption of the accords requires the support of four of the seven local council members. The ideal outcome is for the adoption of the accords in Kalamazoo. This would lead to a facilitated, inclusive, visionary dialogue between the coalition and local council members dealing with Kalamazoo’s sustainability programs.

Coalition members will then work together to develop best practices to address the action items in the accords. They will nurture existing cooperative relationships and foster new partnerships. After they have been adopted, we will continue to work with the local coalitions to monitor implementation of the accords and facilitate communication with other participating mayors. We will focus on the significance of climate change issues – first at a local level, then on the global level. Making these cross-issue, global-to-local connections will serve to highlight how citizens and governments can work together on environmental issues.

Bringing People Together
The Livable Cities, Livable World Urban Environmental Accords project is just one of the many exciting initiatives we are implementing to increase the number of Americans working to build a more cooperative U.S. foreign policy. In the past two years alone, our e-advocacy list has grown more than eight-fold, from 3,000 activists to 25,000. What’s more, we know that the majority of these new activists are under the age of 30, because they joined as a result of our innovative, new multimedia contests.

We are also working directly with community groups in 12 localities, encouraging them to discover the impact that U.S. foreign policy choices have on their communities. The goal is to organize them and urge them to tell their elected officials at all levels of government that a cooperative, principled U.S. foreign policy is important to the well-being of their constituency.

Over the coming months, we will develop a new, online capacity for our members to identify which issues inspire them. This will enable them to meet others who share their interests and take action. The most exciting thing about these new endeavors is that all of them rely on rebuilding real communities – online and offline – that connect people who are passionate about the change we want to see in the world. Perhaps by working together we can reverse the trend toward bowling alone.

Contributing Writer: Heather B. Hamilton


Updated June 30, 2006