What I've Learned

Lindsay and our friend Miro at the cafe in Prague.

I said at the start of this adventure that I want to learn at least as much as I teach. We’re almost at the end of the work, so I thought I’d take a first cut at what I’ve learned.

Here’s what I said at the start:

“Thinking about what I want to learn from this trip, as well as what I want to teach. To learn, I think, what the essence, the unchangeable center is - this is what separates organizing from all the other stuff you could do. To further explore the edges of that, the frontiers, where the work is different - and it's always different - but the essence is in place.”

So here’s what I’ve learned:

First, about myself. I like to train. I really like to do training. There’s the thrill of danger – will it work? Can I make sense to this new group of people? Will it make any difference? And then, if you’re lucky, the “click” when folks get it – when it does work. It’s intense, and three two-day workshops in a strange language, each with a different collection of folks in radically different settings – it’s an Extreme Sport. But I liked it.

Next, about the work. Every place has good people, trying their best to make it better in spite of the odds. I learn this everywhere I go, in the States, in Canada, in Australia. It’s still an exhilarating lesson.

Clearly, organizing “the US way” will never work here – but the core truths, the important principles, the essentials are powerful, important and apply here. For example, The “Ten Rules” from my little green book, which include brilliant obviosities (not a word, I know) like “Nobody will come out unless they know about the meeting”, really connected for people. They had their own ways, maybe not phone lists or printed flyers, but intentional and accountable and intense outreach is a step that nobody can skip, and it’s easily translated into the local ways.

Words matter – not just the literal translation, but understanding the context and the meaning of the literal translation. It takes listening and time but it’s essential. You have to know the difference between a disagreement over the core principles and the wrong word. Hard lesson: I said to somebody at dinner in rural Poland, meaning the most positive of compliments – “You’ve been a wonderful collaborator.” Everybody’s face fell, and I remembered that collaborators were those who helped the Nazis against their own people. They graciously explained, but I knew I had stepped in the smelly stuff.

The most critical of these “word” issues was my favorite little mnemonic – “Organizers Organize Organizations”. I stole this long ago from Heather Booth of the Midwest Academy (I think), and it captures the key question for me – what are you building? I was delighted to discover that in both Slovak and Polish the acronym is the same – OOO. But at each of the three sessions in Poland I was met with concerns, objections, misunderstandings and disagreements – including from folks who seemed to “get” most of the other points about organizing. In the end, I found that the implications of the word for “organization” were very clearly those of an agency, a corporation, a formal legal structure. What I seemed to be saying was “organizers build corporations”. Much better would be something like “community organizers build community groups”. I’ll be talking with the translators for help in the re-write.

There’s a difference between backing down on core concepts and adapting to the context. Another example – Slawek, the translator in Szczecin, explained that after the end of communism, the vultures and scam artists descended on Poland, and one was Amway – lots of people believed the hype, went door-to-door pestering their neighbors and friends and lost lots and lots of money on product they bought but couldn’t sell. So calling what we do to reach out “door-to-door” conjures up those horrible associations. The poetic sounding “oko w oko” (said “ohkoh vohcoh”) works better – it means “eye to eye”.

Finally, money matters. Like everywhere, good people who speak out on one issue and win, learn and want to keep going and building power – eventually they figure out that you have more power if you hire somebody to specialize as the organizer. Where the resources to do that are scarce – whether in Poland or Slovakia or Alabama – you end up with a bit of government money and a church grant and a bit of dues – and the source of the money can distort the work. The philanthropic sector here – in all the countries I’ve seen – is very limited, and the legal and tax context works against effective local grassroots fundraising. It’s not impossible, but it’s tough. Just as Needmor works to expand money for organizing in the US, I think there’s a real need to systematically take on the obstacles to funding power oriented grassroots work all over Europe. In my most convoluted challenge to the Polish translators, I said in Szczecin, “Think about taking collective action to increase the money available to support taking collective action.” (It needs translating into English, too I think.)

And of course, the pig is the holiest and best creature given to the Universe, and in every form it is wonderful. Poland is the peak of the pig’s many homes.

Walking Prague

The statue of Wenceslaus in the long square where the big rallies were held, and the square where the inauguration took place. Plus me, singing to the Commendatore.



Very briefly...Miro took us on a walking tour of Prague today - took the tram up to the Prague Castle and wandered the streets and cafes to the top of Wenceslaus Square - cold but informative, beautiful buildings, and a couple of refreshing stops for food and drink.

For me, highlights included the statue at the top of the square where the big rallies of the Velvet Revolution made change inevitable, and the big square where the newly elected Vaclav Havel was inaugurated, the victory partty to top all victory parties!

And of course the opera house where Mozart debuted his new work, Don Giovanni!

The pictures may speak for themselves - more later, including a Top Ten Cakes spot that Miro knew!

Extra Organizer Points to him for being a cheerful, informative guide and a great companion! (and we actually got to talk lots of work stuff in between castles and churches. He's an impressive young man. He really liked training in Sklarska - I predict he'll be good at it!

Tomorrow, we meet up in Bratislava.

Czech Republic!

Sklarska Poremba Class of 2010

Sitting in the bar at our new home, a tidy hotel in Prague. Just walked to the old castle on the river called Vysehrad - high castle - and looked out over the river at the city lights, the really big castle across the river, just beautiful.

Second day's over of our third - and last formal - workshop. See the picture above - very messy, not "training" at all, but a lively, freewheeling exploration of what I mean by real organizing, what folks are already working on, how they could get more people and more power out of it - and in the end, really exciting because it was so real. We ended up strategising on how the folks in one part of the community could get the director of the community center to open it up more hours, weekends, for more activities - perhaps a weekly 'festival of the locked-out' with events outside that couldn't get permission to go inside? I asked Miro to give an overview of the issue process - listen, research, action - and tell the story of the Sidewalk of Victory from Zvolen, Slovakia - it was a big hit, he was engaging and clear, and the folks really got it!

Tomorrow pure touring in this classic old city, then on to Bratislava to meet up with Paul Cromwell and Chuck Hirt and Kaijo to debrief.
More later on Food and on What I've Learned.

Valentine's Day in the Polish Mountains

The picture shows Miro Ragac, organizer with the Center for Community Organizing in Slovakia and our bodyguard, guide, mentor and navigator on the second half of the Polish journey; Irena, local volunteer and very sharp, clear on what organizing is, a key actor in the local work; me and Lindsay enjoying Valentine's Day in the snow and Marzena - the local host and active in the Association of Local Leaders.

Dave writes:
Day One of this training - really more of a consultation. We're in a beautiful village that sprawls all over these hills, with three or four main centers and a region of older, less touristic and more farm or industrial oriented towns. After an intro session marked by bold interruptions and lively engagement - these are older, wiser, more experienced folk and they know what they know - we addressed the question: do you want to build a powerful organization in this community? After a very enlightening scramble - one community? three? one group? does that mean we abandon the groups we have? who's the organizer? what's the issue? They settled on one group, geography very clear, and the issues organizer and shape and form to be worked out over time...Then on to a rough version power analysis - who's here? what do they do? What institutions do we have? Who has power? More tomorrow.

Then to a bit of touring - an incredible frozen falls (picture above - reminded us of New Hampshire) and a yummy meal. Walked around in the town a bit - lots of tourist shops, some serious ski and snow sports, and mineral and gem shops - most of it from Japan and Thailand, but we managed to find quartz crystals mined nearby - it's a famous mineral mining center.

From Lindsay: Sorry, photo's background askew. Town is full of diesel fumes - low cloud cover, definitely a worse smell than the wood and coal smoke of the towns as we drove up to Skarskla Poreba. Was going to do the food post (just in case you travel this way) but too many blanks - what was that resto called, what was that soup named? Will try to remember to quiz Miro tomorrow to fill in the blanks and try later. Daughter Schuyler, for one, is dying to know.

February 13 in Snowy Sklarska Poreba

What a drive to Sklarska Poreba. Climbing up to this town at 1300 meters near the Czech border by the Kemienna River Valley on winding road through small towns, mostly picturesque with ruins of castles in some. Then through forest of snow-covered pines and what we think are larch trees - the snow looks feathery on the branches, like the snow flakes are resting. The town stretches over the mountain with a lower part that seems to be where regular life takes place and the upper part by the ski resort which is packed with visitors, esp now, a school break. Dave drove bravely, negotiating the sheet ice portions of road with aplomb. Staying in a penzione next to (by snow covered field) the training site, a former school now used as a social service site. The penzione is beautifully retrofitted with sleeping lofts and sponge painted (?) walls, paintings all around, apparently by the owner.

Dave says:
What a day - left Szczecin around nine, drove in circles trying to get the GPS to help...finally got ourselves found and drove off and quickly crossed the almost non-existent border with Germany - and zip! the road was brand new, smooth, snow swept clean, snowbanks scraped back to the widest spot and we zoomed along at 120 - 140 kph (I'm not sure how fast that is in fahrenheit). Had one coffee stop to spend euros and use my german. At the Polish border, the road turned pothole-ridden again quickly. An hour or so in, we turned up into the country, then - as Lindsay says - into a fantastical wonderland of snow on pines and birches. I kept saying "nobody would believe it". Pictures later.

Thinking about a blogpost about food. Would this lower us in your estimation? Would we seem shallow and touristic? A preview - among our favorites - the mushroom soup in the klezmer restaurant in Krakow and the zurek - a soup made with a sour rye flavor, with potatoes and white sausage in a waterfront cafe called Columbus (as in Christopher) in Szczecin. Strangest but still good - the horsemeat carpaccio with lemon and oil in the Lvov (Ukranian) restaurant in Warsaw. (The picture above is us outside the restaurant, post-horsemeat. Our hosts - the smart, tough young women and men from the Alliance of Local Leaders.

Let me know if we should do a "restaurants and dishes".

February 12

Another two-day training done - what a gas! Young people...I usually begin my personal story by asking who was alive in 1971 when I started organizing - only two of the twenty four! A core from the host group, a local civil society group that supports leadership training and community based organizations. Local staff from the national sponsors, the Association of Local Leaders. I continue to be impressed by these tough, open hearted, smart and dedicated young people - Simon, the local staff here in Sczcecin (try this sh - ch - ech - in) turned 30 today, his wife works with him and they just found out they're expecting! Anka came from the Warsaw office - she has great English, and couldn't attend the training in Warsaw - she's been a sort of buddy to us, with strong opinions, clearly expressed - not so sure she's happy with the conventional wisdom of the official story on Polish history - for exampple, she points out that the rebuilding of Warsaw after the war included tearing down intact buildings in the former German areas of Poland (like here) and using the bricks in the capital. They took trees, too!

I only did three sort of touristy things - a walk along the bastion in front of the palace by the port (a real working port - reminded me of Toledo); a walk at dusk through the big town church with its chapels dedicated to saints and Mary and to the holocaust victims (the metal screen was styled as barbed wire) and Solidarity and railroad workers and merchant marine and shipbuiders. And last night we slogged for what seemed miles through two sections of a tunnel system built under the main train station - the first used as air raid shelter during WWII and the second prepared for retreat in the event of nuclear attack. Both had lots of artifacts and sound effects - and it struck me hard the stupidity and brutality of war, and the human scale. I saw the paranoia propaganda that was so familiar in my childhood in the 50's and sixties in the US - from the viewpoint of the "other side". And in there a room with artifacts and story and photos of Solidarity - very big here in this shipbuilding and merchant city. Those newsletters, obviously mimeographed - I heard in those days of the vw buses they outfitted with mimeos and kept in motion to outwit government opposition to their labor and anti-corruption and finally pro-democracy organizing. Pictures of buildings in the downtown, on fire after a Solidarnosc rally - included the building our training was held in! I was swept with the knowledge of the heroism and dramatic inventiveness of those who fight for good things everywhere. (there I go again)

Training went well - three young guys came by bus from Gdansk, where they run a community project that includes a web access deal and grassroots outreach - they struggled and searched and questioned and finallly admitted they had to make some big decisions - to be "journalists" and service providers or to make the leap and become organizers. Another guy, in the evaluation round, said "I got hope from this - I can't wait to put it to work!

On to what's been described as the Aspen of Poland - Sklarska Poremba, and one last 2day workshop - but first, a little sleep!

LANGUAGE NOTE - my new Polish phrase, for "one-on-ones" - oko w oko...pronounced oako-voako - it means eye to eye!

Fat Thursday, February 11

Dave says:
today is Fat Thursday! In Poland, they celebrate the beginning of Lent by eating up all the fat, so at the training in Szczecin today we hade (sounds like) Punchki - which we klnow from Toledo's Polish American community. Woohoo!

25 mostly young people here, journalists, youth advocates, the association of law students, rural and urban folks - LOTS of interest in how the tools of community organizing can come in to their work.

More later.

Lindsay says:
Today got totally confused about who took over what when and who laid ruin to Szczecin after/during which war. Beginning to sympathise with the Polish feeling of resentment to much of the rest of the world. Visited the Pomeranian Dukes' Castle where Boleslaus the Wrymouthed resided in the early 12th C. Trying to understand the Gryfits and relationship to griffins which I thought were just from fairy tales.

February 9

Lindsay’s Blog February 9, 2010

Warsaw’s Catholic churches are apparently arranged around types of people so near us in Castle Square is a young adults’ church where many hold their weddings; we passed the military church where commemorations are held and the bishop (?) is powerful; we passed the artists and writers church – the homilies speak to these groups so attendance often breaks out along these lines.

So, who are the 11 young artists at the Magazyn Praga gallery – inward-looking, certainly not joyful but also not jaded or ironic. Surprisingly, all the work involved putting a brush or pen or pencil to paper, although some also incorporated photography and computer graphics. And I liked a few of them, getting a personal challenge or pleasure.

I ate horse meat for the first time last night! Not much, but it was carpaccio so scary but also not so much chance of a really weird texture.

Dave adds:
GREAT to get back to doing training – two days seemed a great yawning tunnel of time before we started. Then we get in the room – 25 wonderful people, wide ranging work, young and medium young, strong willed and open minded…A great translator, Magdalena had lived and studied in Montreal and works with NGO’s so she was aware and sensitive to the message as well as the words. Agnieshka and Karol from the Association super efficient and on-the-job in setting stuff up, copying pictures and evaluations, running around with newsprint sheets. The Association of Local Leaders has a close working relationship with OMB Watch and Public Citizen and Common Cause, and they are steadily approaching a role in supporting the growing network of folks in Poland who are doing – or want to do – organizing. Groups ranged widely. There was a tenants’ association (3 younger working class men and a big older guy, veteran of Solidarity and street protest, fighting to protect eviction victims and challenge the privatization of housing here. A rural town group focused on community involvement and good government, five leaders including an earnest young accountant and his bright young journalist wife, who publish a newspaper locally and are struggling with how to strengthen their base and widen their leadership. A young self described anarchist woman, trying to build an alliance within a labor union that centers on women’s rights. Great questions – how to manage conflict within the community, how to keep meetings lively, how to sort leader/organizer roles. Incredible spirit, good humor. And only two days!

After the training (and a good old fashioned 45 minute debrief!) we went on a brisk (9 below zero Celsius – what’s that in US dollars?) walking tour, guided by an attorney from the association who used to be a certified guide. I was hit hard by what we saw. 90% of this area (and 65% of all Warsaw) was flattened in the Second World War, the old parts rebuilt, and monuments all over to various massacres, revolts, uprisings and heroic resistance. In the old Jewish Ghetto, the guide said “we are walking on the ruins here…literally. The cellars were filled in and the bricks leveled and the surface was about 2 meters higher when these streets were built.” And the monument to the Ghetto Uprising, built from stone brought in (but never carved) by the Germans to build a monument to Hitler. And the mound with a blunt stone commemorating the spot where the last, cornered hundred fighters from the Jewish resistance committed suicide, imitating the Jews of Masada under Roman attack. “This building on the left (which I was touching as we passed) was SS headquarters. Across the street there, the rail station to Auschwitz.” The heroism, the evil, the horror, the sweep and re-sweep of history, the sheer awful ugly and beautiful drama of it. I walked and sniffed and reeled from the thoughts and emotions.

Tomorrow, off to Szczecin for Thursday/Friday workshops.

Tuesday week 2

Dave and Kaio off to 2nd day of Warsaw training. I'm torn - the Poster Gallery at the castle museum 7 km from town? More likely Warsaw Uprising and Museum of Caricature, then late afternoon with Dave, perhaps Kasia, Kaio, will explore a cemetary. Yesterday tramped 4 hours in Praga - Toledoans take note, east side of Wisla River and same attitudes both directions - "those people might harm us if we venture across the river"; "we don't need you snobs, perhaps we will bop you over the head from time to time so you know your place". Some lovely old buildings to N of Solidarity Blvd, some under rehab, I assume not for locals. Cheap rent has drawn young artists to former warehouses so a pretty lively scene - alas even they seem to follow the rule - nothing open to tourists on Mondays. A gallery owner found me wandering among bldgs at Magazyn Praga - a mall of art studios and workshops though not under one roof and certainly no amenities - and took pity. She'd just taken down but not removed work from an exhibit of recent graduates so I could turn the canvases to the light and gaze to my heart's content.

Poland is Pennsylvania!

(With castles)

Ok, this is a picure of us with our old friend Nilda from Budapest, and our main sponsor/host, Chuck Hirt of the CKO organization and ECON.

Tonite we're in Warswaw, in a tidy two bedroom apartment across the square from the Castle in the Old City (actually all rebuilt in the 1950's...). We traveled yesterday from Banska Bystrica in Slovakia, up through the Carpathian Mountains of Slovakia and a corner of the Czech Republic and into Poland. Delightful to be driving with Kajo through his home town - he could tell stories of food, family and camping in castle ruins, etc. and he knew just where to stop at the roadside stand for this smoked sheepsmilk stringcheese. As Lindsay points out, like shoelace licorice only WOW!

Stopped for a vegetarian lunch and a quick howdy-do with a young civic acivist in Katowice by the name of Grzegorz...turned into six hours of enthusiasm, stories, ideas, plans, questions, answers and an impromptu tour that included the railroad station they saved with protest and a miners town where the coal mine is down at 1200meters. We saw this incredible community of brick flats and commercial buildings and then the nearby miners cottages - showed us two dramatically different approaches to company town development, and stunning examples of architecture and community design. Pictures later...In our talks, we got to the question I'm centering in on here - who is "US"? Who do you mean when you say "we're working for better transparency" or "we're trying to get the City to listen". This question gets us quickly to the membership dilemma - in the former Eastern bloc ("Newly Independent States") the ideas of voluntary associations and membership have been poisoned by their misuse by the soviets and allied governments. So what do you do about building an organization? He said at one point that they have 23 members (legally required for registration) and another 40 people who are strongly committed and involved and he has assumed they're not interested in being members but hasn't asked. Hmmm.

Thence on to Krakow, where we stayed in a pension in the Jewish District, ate at a Klezmer Restaurant (chicken schnitzel and potato pancakes with applesauce and mushroom soup from heaven!) then whisky, brandy and mineral water and cigars at a french-y cafe. ahhhh.

Sunday morning off to the city square and castle Wawel (vahvell)and geez the city square market building was under wraps with renovation but I fell in love with these goofy figures on the roof - gargoyles? grotesques? somebody? and we went in to the Church of the Assumption of Mary for an eyefull of dramatic beauty and abundant art and painted walls and ceilings. When church started, a choir of men with bass viol voices. The castle and it's church (with a statue of the former bishop here, who later got a bigger job in Rome...) was also fascinating, with tapestries and paintings of the Big Battles (tatar invasions, teutonic knights) and a great view of the city and surrounding plains. Also playful carved heads on the ceiling of one room, looked like they could easily jump out as animated cartoon figures direct from the mid sixteenth century!

On the ride north, I watched as the forest came and went, the farm fields waxed and waned, the factories smoked or sat idle, the coal fired plants and the nuclear power cooling towers steamed and I thought - Pennsylvania with castles!

Met up with the Warsaw team - delightful, serious, fun, intent and ready to prepare in any way that makes it better. Example - the Green Book (People Power from the Grassroots) is translated (!) and when I called it the Green Book, they (Kasia...more later) insisted that they will reprint the first page so the cover will be green. Nice people - we expect FORTY tomorrow (original estimate 15 - 20).

Anyways, to bed and to work tomorrow!

First workshop!

Twenty four leaders from an organizing project in a giant housing complex in the town of Zvolen. Started with magnificent pizza at the restaurant owned by one of the leaders and his wife, who is the organizer there - Nano and Sanja Nikolov, who came here from Croatia and are passionate, open hearted, enthusiastic and totally committed. This sprawling "neighborhood" of 12,000 families is a relic of the "bad old days" - the socialist times, the Soviet era - they built towers with very little attention to common space, green space or community. They've been privatised, so each building has an association and they chose a management company so there are a jumble of landlords to deal with. The underlying land belongs to different people altogether - getting anything done is ten times more complex than it needs to be. They've won some stuff already - I walked on the Sidewalk of Victory, which they got rebuilt by protest and demand. I presented on three questions: Apathy (how do we get folks involved) Power (how do we get some, how much do we have) and Building an Organization. More on this later, perhaps, but it went well, I was able to cheer them up (We only have 40 people! But that's great!) and invented a new metaphor for building an organization (The issues and campaigns are like a pizza, the organization is the restaurant). Deighted to have half the green book translated into Slovak.

I presented in English, of course, and was translated by the organizer, Kajo Zboril. He was great, fast and very good on the organiing nuance. He was a great sport, too -I told the story of how, when I complained to my first organizing mentor that the people were lazy and apathetic and didn't want to be organized, he said NEVER blame the people! It's YOUR job to figure out how to motivate them!" When I tell the story, I bang my hand on the table, right after NEVER! and I asked Kajo to include the BANG in his translation, which he did, with feeling!

Pictures later, stories coming - I fried the power adaptor, so the laptop is out of service.

Lindsay's a great hit, too - her winning way with people, her curiosity and openness and her experience in politics, community bulding and organizing.

Next - three workshops in Poland. Onward!

February 3

Lindsay Says:
Quick revisit to Budapest featured the much-faded glory of the Gellert Hotel but since we don’t do luxury, it was really quite nice plus the thermal baths were just the ticket for achy travelers. Nilda Bullain was certainly not faded; I recognized her beautiful long, dark hair from behind, even after 20 years.

Crossing into Slovakia, I remarked that a small town we were passing through seemed abandoned. Chuck said Slovaks work many hours, then keep to themselves. “But the shutters are pulled!” “Well, if every fifth person was an informer, you learned to be very private and those habits remain.” I can’t wait to learn how one organizes here.

Dave Says;
After soul-killing exhaustion of sleepless transatlantic flight (I long to cross by ship again!) we woke up in the Gellert Hotel, swam around in the healing waters and were refreshed!

Nilda Bullain stayed with us in Toledo TWENTY YEARS ago – she’s a leader in Europe and beyond in the effort to build a legal and political infrastructure that can permit and facilitate non-profits and a voluntary sector. LOTS of possibilities for future conversations.

And lots and lots of surprise overlaps in this big and crazy world. Here are two: Nilda stayed with us twenty years ago when she was in Ohio with a project to teach the skills of democracy. AND Chuck Hirt, the Executive Director of the Central and East European Citizens Network and an organizer of the ECON network, who picked us up from lunch with Nilda….knows her and worked closely with her six years ago!

Here’s another…as we drove through snowcovered fields and villages between Budapest and Brinska Bistrica, Slovakia where Chuck lives, we discovered that he is very close friends with the Cincinnati Ohio cartoonist Jim (?) whose house was bought by our good friends Mike Marcotte and Mary Claire Rietz!

(cue the Disney music…”it’s a small world after all….”)

I’ll try a couple photos…us with Chuck’s delightful high school junior daughter Zuska (sp?) at the Slovak restaurant tonite (venison; cherry sauce; cabbage; potato noodles….) and Lindsay on the balcony of our room in Budapest, looking at the Danube. Maybe one or two more if I can work it. (sorry couldn't work pic's)

PLEASE COMMENT – it’s like a postcard from home…