White Courtesy Telephone

From Lagos, Sochi, Kampala, and Beyond: The Long, Strange Trip of LGBT Asylum Seekers

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       M   A   X

Guest blogger Max Niedzwiecki is the founder and coordinator of the LGBT Faith & Asylum Network and a consultant with the Daylight Consulting Group.*

Homer’s Odyssey is compelling in part because it’s such an extraordinary love story. The hero, Odysseus, endures shipwreck, the Cyclops, and the Land of the Dead to be reunited with his beloved Penelope.

We feel empty when our capacity to love is thwarted. We go to great lengths to find the person to whom we can give ourselves unconditionally. Sometimes what gets in the way is far less romantic than great sweeps of time and space. It’s human ignorance. It’s simple bigotry codified as law.

That’s the challenge faced by a man—we’ll call him David—who flew 6,000 miles from Nigeria to search for the freedom to love in our country.

Being gay carries the death penalty in parts of northern Nigeria. Throughout the country, same-sex behavior is criminalized, and prison terms of up to 14 years can be imposed on people for entering into committed same-sex relationships. Mobs can attack LGBT people with impunity, and membership in any kind of gay society or organization can bring prison terms of up to ten years.

When David arrived in the US and informed a customs officer that he intended to file for asylum, he was jailed. He has no legal right to a lawyer. If he’s released, he will be barred from working for at least six months before filing for asylum.

David is not a rich man, so his options are limited. He’s now in detention, where he’s likely to be abused because he’s gay. If and when he gets out before a successful asylum application, he’ll rely entirely on the kindness of strangers to keep him off the street. If his asylum application is rejected – which is likely unless he can find a good pro bono lawyer – he’ll be returned to a country where he is likely to be beaten, imprisoned, or killed.

David is one of thousands of people who come to the US every year seeking safety from persecution that is motivated by homophobia and transphobia. It’s illegal to be gay in nearly 80 countries, seven impose the death penalty, and in many more there is no accountability for people who attack or murder people just because they are LGBT. Russia has gotten a lot of press lately, but it is not the worst place to be queer.

Invisibility is imposed on LGBT asylum seekers in the US, just as it is in their countries of origin. In the US, many are hidden in an immigration detention system that is required by law to fill at least 34,000 beds every night. Others live on the streets or in the shadows because it’s illegal for them to work or use most social service programs. Unlike most other immigrants, they usually arrive in this country alone, and because of continued prejudice they choose to hide from their former compatriots. If they aren’t fluent in English, this isolation makes it even harder for them to find safety.

LGBT asylum seekers are also invisible to American grantmakers and nonprofit organizations. Asylum seekers are barred from receiving almost all services supported by government funds, and the foundation world has yet to come around: only one American foundation – and a small one at that – has started to make grants to a group that is helping LGBT asylum seekers with necessities such as shelter, food, clothing, and medical care.

In June of 2012 a few advocates and service providers joined together for the first time to talk about what could be done do to help LGBT asylum seekers live through the period between their arrival in the US and the resolution of their applications for asylum. The LGBT Faith & Asylum Network (LGBT-FAN) has since created a community where people engaged in the work could encourage and learn from one another.

LGBT-FAN has also created a referral network connecting all regions of this country. In January of 2014, it organized a well-attended congressional briefing with support from the LGBT Equality Caucus, Center for American Progress, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Heartland Alliance, Unitarian Universalist Association, and others. LGBT-FAN has  established a charitable fund at a community foundation that will dedicate 99% of all money collected to providing shelter, food, medical assistance, and other basic necessities to LGBT asylum seekers. You can contribute to this fund by visiting this page.* You can also sign a petition here.

There’s still a long journey ahead for David and the thousands of other asylum seekers who every year cross land and sea in search of basic human dignity. Driven from their countries of origin, they seek compassion and a simple gesture of welcome, in places very far from home.

----------

* Disclosure statement: Max Niedzwiecki is married to White Courtesy Telephone founding editor, Albert Ruesga.  The charitable fund established by LGBT-FAN is held at the Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF) where Albert serves as president & CEO.  As is standard for donor-advised funds at GNOF, the Foundation charges the fund a one percent per annum administration fee.

Related articles

U.S. Policies Fail LGBT Asylum-Seekers

Capitol Hill Briefing on Asylum as LGBT Persecution Escalates

U.S.A. Perpetuates the Criminalization of LGBT Asylum Seekers

Downing Street protest in support of LGBT asylum seekers

“Sullivan Principles” for Progressive Funders?

Old dingoes like me who remember the 1980s campaigns to encourage disinvestment from companies doing business in apartheid-era South Africa might also remember the role played by the Reverend Leon Sullivan, a Baptist minister who at the time was a board member of General Motors. He developed a set of principles for companies doing business in that country which essentially required equal treatment and access to opportunity for all workers regardless of their race.

The Sullivan Principles, as they came to be known, were adopted by over a hundred companies that had operations in South Africa, and they were used effectively by many advocates for divestment.

What’s most striking about these principles is that (1) they were voluntary: there was no regulatory body that required compliance; (2) they helped coordinate activity across a broad range of stakeholders; (3) they united activists in common cause with the business community; and (4) they contributed to a great social good: the end of apartheid in South Africa.

What if progressive funders were to develop and voluntarily adopt a set of principles that governed the way they worked with one another, that strengthened their collective efforts? What would such a set of principles look like?

Here are some I would introduce for discussion:

1. The “Do ‘With’ Rather Than ‘To’ Principle”: This principle would be suitably elaborated for different kinds of actors. It would govern how grantmakers treat their grantees, and how each of these treats the communities they serve. A national funder operating under this principle, for example, would never dream of parachuting into a given geography without first meaningfully engaging local partners in the analysis, choice of strategies, selection of tactics, and overall program design for his intervention. This principle is intimately related to …
2. The Maximization of Coordination Principle: It would be a natural part of the planning work of the aforementioned national funder to gather together colleagues—both national and local—who were working in the same geography (or issue area) to map each of their proposed contributions, understand their theories of change and strategies, and explore ways to support one another’s work. Local funders would be expected to do the same with their colleagues. The “Do ‘With’ Rather Than ‘To’ Principle” alluded to earlier would help ensure that grantees and other stakeholders were included in these conversations. Another aspect of this principle that would need elaboration is the coordination of advocacy and community organizing activities—coordination horizontally, so local (or national advocates) know what their colleagues are doing, and vertically, so that national advocacy efforts connect in meaningful ways to local advocacy efforts, avoiding the “random advocacy walks” we so often see.
3. The Drop Everything Else You’re Doing Principle: To repeat what I’ve written elsewhere, the next time an issue—let’s say it’s immigration reform—garners sustained national public attention, all of us who are progressive funders, advocates, and community organizers should drop whatever else we’re doing and get behind the issue. Even if immigration reform is not our thing, we should devote a substantial part of our organizations’ resources to helping the progressive advocates for that issue win their legislative or policy victory, and we should encourage our partners to do so. Progressives got clobbered two years ago during the national debates on health care reform. Here was an issue that would affect the fates of people in low-income communities for years to come. Yet while many health advocates struggled valiantly to win support for a national health care system, many more activists ignored the issue because it simply wasn’t theirs. They saw themselves as education advocates, or housing advocates, or criminal justice reform advocates, or something other than simply advocates for low-income people. Imagine what would have happened if funders, advocates, and community organizers across the country had adopted the Drop Whatever Else You’re Doing Principle. Imagine if the voices in the pews, in the schools, in the neighborhood centers had been able to shout down the opposition. This is related to ...
4. The Get The Money Out Of Politics Principle: One of the main problems with American democracy is how to acquire it. With only 535 senators and representatives, it’s small wonder that progressives can’t afford to buy one. The amount of money spent on getting elected is obscene, and in contemporary congressional races, the biggest spender has almost always won.¹ The issue of money in politics cuts across all areas of progressive work and often puts a full stop to our best advocacy efforts. We should all be devoting attention and resources to this issue.
5. The Everything is Connected Principle: While LGBTIQ advocates, for example, clearly have specific agendas (e.g., equal rights, anti-bullying legislation, etc.), they, like all progressives, need to understand the broader context in which their particular struggles take place. This is one gay man’s opinion: we can disconnect the struggle for LGBTIQ rights from other civil rights issues, but in doing so we evince a profound misunderstanding of what it is that gives power to our calls for justice.
6. The Empowerment Principle: We should always be striving to yield power to our grantees and to the communities they serve. When doing capacity building work, for example, rather than inflict a consultant on a grantee, we should make a grant to that organization so it can hire its own consultant.
7. The Globalization Principle: We often work in our little part of the world, on our own small set of issues, and we lose sight of the emerging World Order that affects our work in ways seen and unseen. The Globalization Principle would help ensure that it’s part of our collective efforts to understand how globalization increasingly affects us and our colleagues overseas.

Please feel free to suggest your own principles or elaborate on those listed above. I see the development of these principles as much more than another idle flipchart exercise, and hope there’s enough interest in continuing the discussion.

Progressives in the US context are consistently outflanked and outspent. These principles constitute one suggestion for how to give our efforts some conherence and some teeth. How would you go about it?

-----

¹ If you consider all congressional elections with at least two general election candidates during the last six election cycles, the candidate with the largest war chest won 8 out of 10 Senate races, 9 out of 10 races in the House. These figures do not reflect the very high cost of being able to run in the first place, much less successfully. It’s no accident that 47 percent of congressmen (250 members) are millionaires. The influence of the new Super PACs is yet to be determined. But the plain old vanilla political action committees follow a familiar pattern. Of the top ten PACs (measured by total giving in the 2012 election cycle), 8 represent corporate interests, 2 represent labor. The data are consistent and overwhelming.

The Drop Whatever Else You’re Doing Rule

Until those of us who are progressive funders and advocates learn to better coordinate our efforts, we will lose consistently to the well bankrolled forces who oppose us.

Here’s the good news: we don’t have to sit through tedious convenings or master the newest social media technologies to attain this coordination.  To borrow from the language of the Wall Street occupiers, there is a no-cost “horizontal, autonomous, leaderless, modified-consensus-based” way to work together more effectively for social justice.

The idea is simple: The next time an issue—let’s say it’s immigration reform—garners sustained national public attention, all of us who are progressive funders, advocates, and community organizers should drop whatever we’re doing and get behind the issue. Even if immigration reform is not our thing, we should devote a substantial part of our organizations’ resources to helping the progressive advocates for that issue win their legislative or policy victory.

Call this the “Drop Whatever Else You’re Doing Rule,” if you like.

Recall what happened two years ago during the national debates on health care reform.  Here was an issue that would affect the fates of people in low-income communities for years to come.  Yet while many health advocates struggled valiantly to win support for a national health care system, I saw many more activists ignore the issue because it simply wasn’t theirs.  They saw themselves as education advocates, or housing advocates, or criminal justice reform advocates, or something other than simply advocates for low-income people.

Imagine what would have happened if funders, advocates, and community organizers across the country had adopted the Drop Whatever Else You’re Doing Rule.  Imagine if the voices in the pews, in the schools, in the neighborhood centers had been able to shout down the policy-makers who had been bought by powerful interests.

Now in the advent of the Arab Spring, with the rise of multiple people-led movements in the United States, we’ll be challenged again to break out of our siloes and support Americans who are taking to the streets for economic justice.

Consider supporting the Drop Whatever Else You’re Doing Rule.  Bring it up and debate it with your friends and colleagues.  If you have other ideas for coordinating progressive action, please share them.  How do we keep progressive advocacy from becoming a random walk? 

 

The Twelve Most Common Objections to Social Justice Philanthropy

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       A   L   B   E   R  T

Inside the painfully polite, frequently conservative world of mainstream U.S. philanthropy, the term “social justice philanthropy” often suggests an unwholesome radicalism in one’s approach to grantmaking.  This fact, if it is a fact, should give us pause.  What kind of an enterprise is mainstream philanthropy that it can be so easily rattled by the notion of social justice?

The 2005 publication, Social Justice Grantmaking: A Report on Foundation Trends, did much to help make the philanthropic world safer for discussions of social justice.  It attempted to step carefully around—or rather through—the thornier questions, some of them related to a precise definition of the term “social justice philanthropy.”  The report’s working definition was this:

Social justice philanthropy is the granting of philanthropic contributions to nonprofit organizations based in the United States and other countries that work for structural change in order to increase the opportunity of those who are least well off politically, economically, and socially.

The authors of that report did an admirable job of balancing competing perspectives.*  Going forward, while there might be some skirmishes related to the category of the “least well off,” most of the battle will shift, in my view, to the kind of “structural change” that effectively addresses the roots of social injustice.

Of special interest in the report was a chapter written by Henry Ramos and Scott Nielsen in which they described their interviews with program officers and foundation executives, some of whom were apparently skeptical about the project of social justice philanthropy.  These interviews uncovered an eye-opening—and sometimes eye-popping—array of objections to social justice as an organizing concept.

What follows is my attempt to address the objections I believe are most commonly raised against social justice grantmaking.  Some of these are drawn from the work of Ramos and Nielsen; many come from my own experience as an apologist for the field.

So here goes, in no particular order.  Hold on to your megaphones …

1.  The poor will always be with us.  

The unfair advantages accorded one group over another might or might not result in substantial income and wealth disparities, so that while a strikingly unequal distribution of income and wealth is frequently an outcome of social injustice, it isn’t necessarily so.  Racial discrimination, second-class citizenship for gays and lesbians, draconian treatment of legal immigrants under IIRAIRA laws: these are unjust in and of themselves, whether or not they lead to significant income disparities. 

There’s no denying that in Matthew 26:11 Christ tells us that the poor are always with us.  But a sensitive reader of the Gospels would not on this basis conclude that we should do nothing to reduce their numbers or alleviate their suffering.

The deeper question here is, what can social justice philanthropy reasonably hope to accomplish for the poor (see objection 8, below)?  We have a fairly clear idea of how to help individuals and individual families escape poverty.  The challenge in the U.S. context is to better understand how our values, habits of mind, institutions, and economic and political structures enable poverty to persist in marginalized communities defined by race, ethnicity, class, national origin, and other characteristics.

Finally, if eliminating poverty were the only goal of social justice work, this objection might carry some weight.  But it isn’t, so it doesn’t.

2.  Social justice work is anachronistic at best and radical at worst: my board would never agree to it.   

The objection here, if I understand it correctly, is that the trustees of U.S. foundations would generally resist the notion of social justice.  If that’s the case, could there be a stronger argument for damning the enterprise of American philanthropy and dismantling its institutions?  If the notion of fairness raises so many objections in the boardroom, hasn’t the American foundation stopped serving a useful social purpose?

I’m not convinced, however, that notions of justice or equality of opportunity will ultimately prove so alienating to trustees.  Remove the rhetoric, the partisanship, the unpleasant associations, and you’re left with an idea—justice as fairness—that all good people can embrace.

As for the charge of anachronism, it’s true that discussions of social justice have an ancient pedigree.  Mencius, Plato, Christ, and thousands of others have weighed in.  But we’ve been arguing about morality for as long a time, and nobody’s suggesting we move past the notion of ethical behavior.

3.  Social justice philanthropy can’t be properly evaluated.  

It can be and has been.  Many frameworks for assessing social justice philanthropy have been developed over the years.  Here’s a link to just a few.

4.  Funding for social services or youth enrichment programs or housing development etc.  is social justice funding.

I’ll cede the point: there’s no use arguing over the ownership of the term “social justice.”  Moreover, I can imagine contexts in which giving a hungry man a piece of bread would count as a deeply political act.  It’s true that funding social services or youth programs, for example, fails the definition I’ve given above of social justice philanthropy.  After all, providing funding for these services doesn’t typically lead to structural change and might in some cases impede it.  Nevertheless there’s something wonderfully human, deeply just about giving assistance to someone who needs our help.

There is, however, another kind of funding that aims to address the upstream causes of our downstream problems, that asks why some communities are much more desperately in need of social services or affordable housing than others, or why the young people in these communities attend schools that are falling down around their heads.  It’s the kind of philanthropy that analyzes how power and privilege are brokered and maintained in this country.  It’s the kind of philanthropy I’m championing here.  I’ll call it “social justice philanthropy plus” perhaps, “or turbo philanthropy” or “Maureen.”  Rather than fight for possession of the term social justice philanthropy, I’d happily yield it to whomever would claim it since ultimately it doesn’t matter what we call it, it matters only that we do it.

5.  We fund social services or youth enrichment or housing etc.  Social justice philanthropy has nothing to do with us.

Periodically, history affords us a few moments of clarity.  By the grace of a higher power, or by chance, the light of insight burns away the mists and we come to understand more clearly who we are and what we do.  Hurricane Katrina was for many not only an opportunity to respond but also to reflect.  Few events in recent U.S. history have so clearly put the lie to the idea that we can effectively address the challenges faced by low-income communities by ignoring the effects of race and class or by side-stepping issues of power and privilege.

6.  Social justice philanthropy is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.

In an NCRP publication titled Understanding Social Justice Philanthropy the contradiction was expressed this way:

Foundations are tax-exempt institutions with the dual purpose of holding excess wealth and benefiting the public good.  This excess wealth is quite often the result of the inequitable distribution of economic, political or social power.  The question becomes then, “How can tax exempt institutions that benefit from power inequalities and control great wealth work toward equal opportunity and social, economic and political power for those without it?”  Without market (economic or political) signals to determine the demand for social justice, how can institutions that are the result of the private market and inventions of public policy determine such a demand?

Along these same lines, there are critics who argue that it’s no accident that grand philanthropic gestures coincide with moments in our history when wealth becomes concentrated in very few hands and the gap between the rich and the poor grows unacceptably large.  (Consider, for example, the founding of the first large American foundations around the time of the Robber Barons, or the record-breaking foundations being created today.)  These critics argue that now, as in ages past, philanthropy has functioned as a social safety valve, redistributing just enough wealth to keep people in low-income communities from becoming uncontrollably militant.  In a context such as this, they ask, is it really possible for philanthropy to become the snake that bites its own tail, to challenge the very institutions from which it draws its power?

Some of these critics assume that social justice philanthropy will necessarily lead to revolution rather than evolution; that any effort to help the marginalized will require bringing capitalism to its knees.  This is an absurdity of the first water, equal in absurdity, perhaps, to the claim that a perfectly efficient market will solve all of our social ills.

We have not, in my view, taken the first step toward change, which is simply to see, to understand where we are and why.  If and when we attempt this, I would urge us to avoid what I call the “systems heresy”—the idea that just systems will necessarily lead to just people who produce just outcomes.  Let’s not presuppose what the solutions will be until we clearly understand the problems.

Selling Soap, Saving Lives

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       A   L   B   E   R  T

Susan Herr’s recent post on Filmanthropy raises some interesting questions in aesthetics: Why is it so difficult to marry art with advocacy?  Why is so much political art shrill or heavy-handed?

Population Communications International, a New York-based nonprofit organization, has, for the past twenty years, pioneered the use of telenovelas in the fight against poverty, AIDS, and other social ills.  The organization has politely rejected every socially conscious script I’ve sent them, including this latest, titled, La Flor Apolonia:

(Apolonia is a beautiful woman with big beauty-parlor hair and long nails.  Her dress makes a small “X” across her chest, barely concealing her breasts.  Marta, her closest friend, wears a white mini-skirt, a bright blue Spandex top, and long, bangly earrings.  She has applied her makeup with unmatched zeal.  The two women speak in quick, unaccented Spanish.)

Apolonia:  Enrique told me that his parents had disowned him.  I pitied him, Marta—you’ve seen those big brown eyes of his!  (Apolonia juts out her chin defiantly.)  The barbarian repaid my kindness by forcing himself on me.  (The orchestra swells, heavy on the strings, as Apolonia clenches her teeth.)  Now I’m pregnant with Enrique’s baby and I’m afraid I might have AIDS!  (Music sting.)

Marta:  You were clearly born to suffer, Apolonia!  Listen, I know a woman who works at the local health collective.  Just the other day she was telling me how they had convened diverse community stakeholders around issues relating to the sourcing of positive health outcomes for economically-challenged persons of female.  Let’s go see her …

What’s the secret of seamlessly integrating the preachy earnestness of poverty-fighting messages, say, into melodramas starring sexy Latinas and hunky vaqueros?  Apart from being one of the greatest playwrights of the last century, what made Bertolt Brecht so good at using theatre as a forum for political ideas?

Profiles in Nonprofit Advocacy

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       S   T   U   A   R   T

A recent item from America’s Finest News Source:

Third Amendment Rights Group Celebrates Another Successful Year

WASHINGTON, DC —Thanks to the group’s tireless efforts, six generations of civilians have never known the cruelty and duress of quartering unruly foot-soldiers.

I admire people who act on the courage of their convictions.

In Case Anybody Asks: Notes on the Report of the CAP Taskforce on Poverty

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       S   A   L   L   Y

This past April, and without much fanfare, the Center for American Progress released the final report of its Taskforce on Poverty.  The report, titled From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half, lays out twelve recommendations the authors believe could cut poverty* in half over the next ten years.  Taskforce recommendations range from raising and indexing the minimum wage to promoting unionization to helping former prisoners reintegrate with their communities.  Omitted from the list of recommendations is any mention of universal health care, but who’s going to quibble with a plan that promises to reduce the ranks of the poor so dramatically?

You can download a copy of the report here.   The Poverty and Race Research Action Council invited a range of policy experts and activists to comment on the plan in its July/August 2007 newsletter, available here.

If the body of the Taskforce report provides food for thought, its “Next Steps” section makes for an unsatisfying end to the meal:

In 2009, we will have a new president and a new Congress. Across the nation, there is a yearning for a shared national commitment to build a better, fairer, more prosperous country, with opportunity for all.

There can, and should, be active debate about the best ways to reach a national goal of cutting poverty in half. We hope and believe there is a potential for people of differing parties, ideologies, and stations in life to come together in shared commitment to the goal.

At the same time, we need not and should not wait for the federal government to act. In communities across the nation, policymakers, business leaders, people of faith, and concerned citizens can come together to ask what they can do within their community and how they can join with others to seek a national commitment to cut poverty in half in 10 years …

Yes, I suppose they can. 

In his comments on the report, Herbert Gans, professor of sociology emeritus at Columbia University, calls this a bit of “consensual rhetoric,” pointing out, if I may paraphrase, that the American public doesn’t generally give a pig’s freckle about the poor.

If and when we hear that joyful tintinnabulation of the bells in 2009, will this report be remembered, I wonder?  Will it resonate with a polity that was all too quick to forget the more immediate and powerful promptings of Hurricane Katrina?

_____

* A family of four is considered poor if the family’s income is below $19,971.  By this standard, roughly one in eight Americans were poor in 2005; one in three had incomes below 200 npercent of the federal poverty threshold.

Image source: phillyringers.com

Refreshing Candor From An Immigrant Rights Advocate

We asked Q—, a national immigrant rights advocate, to describe the current environment in her field.*  Here’s her surprising answer …

“The immigrant rights movement is going through an overwhelming, tense, and confused time, which is hopefully setting the stage for changes that have been needed for a long time.

“The down side:

“A lot of people didn’t like the immigration reform legislation in the Senate this year.  But now the only thing that might have been a solution is gone, and both political parties are saying they won’t pursue anything comprehensive and humane for at least the next several years.  And that means the lives of immigrants are likely to get a lot worse before they start to get better.

“We’re facing the entrenchment and elaboration of a separate and unequal legal system for immigrants that doesn’t provide checks and balances necessary for ensuring that the government follows the law.

“We’re facing a lack of hope among Americans—including immigration activists—that the federal government can fix anything, let alone anything as complicated as immigration policy.

“We’re facing an overwhelming number of anti-immigrant measures introduced in cities and states.  According to the National Conference of State Legislatures,

As of July 2, 2007, no fewer than 1404 pieces of legislation related to immigrants and immigration had been introduced among the 50 state legislatures.  From January to July 2nd 2007, 170 bills became law in 41 states ... State legislators have introduced roughly two-and-a-half times more bills in 2007, than in 2006.  The number of enactments from 2006 (84) has more than doubled to 170 in 2007 ... In the continued absence of a comprehensive federal reform of the United States’ challenged immigration system, states have displayed an unprecedented level of activity.

“We’re facing racial profiling, as people are being asked for their documentation on traffic stops if they look ‘foreign.’

“We’re facing attacks in Congress that keep chipping away at the rights of immigrants to argue their cases in court, the power of judges to make decisions about individual cases, and assurances that detention facilities keep people safe.

“We’re facing the enforcement of ‘material support’ laws that define immigrants and others as terrorists if they have ever provided any help to a rebel group, even if that rebel group fought alongside American troops, and even if the choice was to carry water for an army or be shot in the head.

“We’re facing a seemingly endless trail of death at the US-Mexico border.

“We’re facing the tangled interests and assumptions of African Americans, Latinos, labor, agribusiness, churches, and practically every other politically powerful interest group.

“Many immigrant rights activists are feeling overwhelmed and scared.  A lot of people are angry, and some are more reflective than they had been.

Highway Robbery: Notes on the RS 2477 Land Grab

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       A   L   B   E   R  T

I.  Enemies of the Motoring Public

As I drag my way out of a week in the Sierras and crawl up the nearest magazine rack, my vision obscured by hovering midges, I discover in the July/August issue of Mother Jones that I’ve been framed as an elitist enemy of the motoring public, a bugbear of the “non-hiking people.”*

A little known law, Revised Statute 2477, passed in 1866 to encourage development by granting rights-of-way on publicly owned lands, is being used by Washington-hating local officials and big industry lobbyists to stake road claims all over the western states.  Trails inside of wilderness areas and national parks are not exempt.

According to San Juan County (Utah) commissioner Lynn Stevens, who is championing an RS 2477 claim on a canyon leading to scenic Angel Arch, “These are cherished, beloved places among [local residents]. … It’s elitist to say if you can’t hike, you’re not entitled to have that beauty.”

The Bush administration is supporting many local claims, despite the fact that the feds are technically the defendants in these cases.

II.  The Big Gubmint Lockout

Last year, according to the Mother Jones article, the Blue Ribbon Coalition, “the voice of the American off-road rider,” sponsored an ad

featuring a trio of cigar-chomping gangsters aiming Tommy guns and wearing slouch hats labeled “Sierra Club” and “Wilderness Society.”  The headline read, “These guys wanna rub you out!  Their racket is to lock you out of YOUR public lands.”

This is a sobering reminder of the value-neutrality of the Third Sector, where one man’s tax deductible donation supports another man’s environmental nightmare.

The Democrats Dance a Box Step Around Lobbying Reform

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       J   O   H   N

Remember how, during the 2006 elections, exit pollsters reported significant voter frustration with corruption in politics?  Nancy Pelosi, then soon-to-be Speaker of the House, promised a shakedown in Congress.  “The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history,” she said in an apparently unguarded moment.

As many predicted, the Democrats have already started back-pedaling on meaningful lobbying reform, moving to strike provisions that would:

• Require lobbyists to disclose details about large donations they arrange for politicians.
• Make former lawmakers wait two years, instead of one, before lobbying Congress.
• Bar lobbyists from throwing large parties for lawmakers at national political conventions.

Apparently if it pays, it plays. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers continue their periodic assaults on nonprofit advocacy rights.  Our colleagues at the Alliance for Justice need to be ever-vigilant for legislation that would erode the ability of Third Sector organizations to speak out for or against legislation, register voters, and, in general, engage a wider spectrum of the American public in civic deliberation.

Nonprofit advocacy organizations provide a voice for low-income and other aggrieved communities.  They’re a great democratizing force, frequently challenging government and big industries on a range of issues.

Apparently in politics as in other domains, the squeaky wheel gets the grief—especially if that wheel doesn’t offer you a golf junket to Scotland.

The Seven-Storey Mountain: Are You a Social Justice Funder?

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       A   L   B   E   R  T

You’re one of those foundation folks who still resonates with Eugene Debs’s famous words: “While there is a lower class I am in it; while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”  You haven’t lost touch with your youthful idealism.  Perhaps you’re trying hard to teach your children the proper values.

But how about professionally?  Are you a social justice funder? ...

No …	The social justice framework is not one we apply or would ever consider applying to our grantmaking.
No …	The term “social justice” is laden with ideological baggage. It’s a fluff term that people use as it suits them, referring obliquely to multiple—often incompatible—theories of justice. Liberals use it to flatter themselves. But, okay, I might be wrong about this, so tell me more.
Yes, of course …	We fund organizations and projects that feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and visit those who are in prison. That’s real social justice. Everything else is rather speculative, don’t you think?
Yes …	Rather than (or in addition to) funding direct service organizations, we fund nonprofits that: Advocate on behalf of the poor with public officials and other decision-makers; Train, empower, organize, and mobilize low-income people to address issues of concern to them; and/or Conduct budget, policy, and systems research that can be used by other advocates. We place a premium on organizations that have in their leadership members of the communities that would be most affected by their work. As with direct service organizations, the nonprofits we fund are all about ensuring that the hungry are fed, the homeless are housed, and the sick are cared for. But their tools are not soup kitchens, cots, and health clinics. Their tools are budget hearings, coalitions, and city council meetings.*
Yes …	Ibid. But in addition, we have a well thought out and clearly articulated funding strategy based on a thoroughgoing analysis of how we got into this mess in the first place. Before deciding what to fund, we attempted to answer these questions as best we could: What were the basic assumptions, the habits of mind, the structures, the policies and the laws that led to the creation of social inequalities? What are the mechanisms by which these inequalities are sustained? What has been the legacy of hundreds of years of slavery, colonialism, and other forms of oppression? Our funding strategy is based not only on a sound analysis of social inequalities and their basis, but also on a clear sense of the outcomes we can reasonably expect by funding the organizations we do at the level we do. We’ve taken the time to articulate our theory of change, and we understand we’re in this for the long haul. Because our funding is strategic, we provide general operating and multi-year support whenever possible, and we do our best to minimize the bureaucratic burden on grantees.
Yes …	Ibid. and op. cit. But we realize that for our work to be most effective, we also need to invest in: Leadership development and coaching for nonprofit executive directors and their staffs Capacity-building for organizations, which includes the addition of new staff members, and traditional capacity-building concerns like strong boards, sound financial management, state-of-the-art IT, human resources, etc. Ongoing training for advocates, fundraising assistance, etc. We notice that the work of local advocates seldom connects with that of their national counterparts, and that organizations addressing one set of issues might not know the work of other organizations addressing these same issues. Our funding acknowledges and addresses this lack of communication and coordination within the advocacy community. We make it a point of coordinating our funding with that of other grantmakers.
Yes, yes, yes …	Yes to all that. But we also apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to the organizations we fund. This is reflected in our commitment to board and staff diversity; in our transparency about policies, rationales, victories and failures; and in the kinds of investments our foundation makes. We use all the resources at our command—our money, our knowledge, our convening power, our own voices—to advance the cause of social justice.

* Thanks to Victoria Dawson for this elegant way of describing the work of advocacy organizations.

The Maddening Calm: Talking Around Social Change

There’s an urgency in the deliberation of social activists that’s often missing from conversations among those of us who work at foundations.

Social activists breathe fire.  At their best, they’re deeply knowledgeable about the manner in which historical accident, human nature, and ideology have interacted to produce oppressor and oppressed.  There’s plenty of impassioned debate; the causes and the people they champion have an immediate presence.

The atmosphere changes when foundation folks gather to address social problems.  Often, in my experience, there’s a maddening calm.  We’re likely to replace fire by a polite and strangely apolitical bonhomie.  You’ll find many former activists among us, brimming with good ideas and good intentions, striving in our own way to make some kind of difference in the world.

But there’s been a subtle shift.

When somebody in the foundation circle puts the issue of race on the table, to take one example, it’s sometimes treated like Aunt Betty’s Mayonnaise Surprise—one of those potluck dishes everybody comments on but few dare sample.  Those of us in this circle have learned to preserve the outward calm, and we pass over in silence those subjects that would often add the greatest value to our philanthropic interventions.

I pray that I may live to see the day when these two benevolent circles—activists and philanthropoids—converge.  In the meantime, we foundation folks have a lot to learn from our more incandescent cousins.

What activists tend to do well is ask the question, How did we get to this state of affairs in the first place?  The best social activists make it a point to understand the history, the basic assumptions, the habits of mind, the structures, the policies and the laws that led to the creation of social inequalities.  They ask: What are the mechanisms by which these inequalities are sustained?  What has been the legacy of hundreds of years of slavery, colonialism, and other forms of oppression?

Asking these questions is not an idle exercise.  If we fail to ask them before we engage in any kind of philanthropic activity—and, in my view, we fail to ask them roughly 99 percent of the time—we’re simply proposing a kind of triage on society’s wounded that will do good for some, but keep intact the flow of victims.

The Problem With The Internet, Part 2: The Internet and Social Change

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       S   A   L   L   Y

With all due respect to my WCT colleague, Albert Ruesga, I don’t believe the Internet is currently the best place to build a social change movement rooted in deliberation and consultation.

Deliberation leading to shared understandings that subsequently inform action; consultation broadening a social change community beyond a few committed elites—I’m convinced the brunt of this work can best happen offline.

I’m not denying that the Internet has provided communities of social activists new tools for collaboration.  It clearly has.

I’m saying there are many characteristics of the Internet and its use that get in the way of transforming a group of loosely associated individuals into a community with shared understandings about the world and how to change it.  The story of Joe Sector, described in an earlier post, begins to name some of these barriers, but there are others.

Consider the state of our critical thinking and reading skills; our general lack of media literacy; our inability or unwillingness to penetrate what some critics have called the Illusion of News.

We carry all of this baggage and more with us on our travels through Cyberspace, though we convince ourselves that we’re fleet of cyber-foot, dancing effortlessly from site to site and blog to blog.  We fill with frenzied points and clicks the time we might otherwise spend banging our collective heads against a shared problem.

The Problem With The Internet, Part 1: The Story of Joe Sector

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       A   L   B   E   R  T

Joe Sector, an environmental activist, wants to develop an advocacy strategy for the upcoming presidential election season. He longs to engage other activists in an extended discussion of the candidates and their views; tactics for engaging the media; and other election season issues. Unfortunately, the next conference for environmental activists is months away.

Joe goes online to his favorite blogs, listservs, message boards, and networking sites in search of wisdom, but the results are less than satisfactory. Here are just some of the challenges he faces:

1. Light’s on but nobody’s home   Joe submits a question to a listserv here, a message board there, but can’t depend on getting a timely answer (or any answer at all). Sometimes it takes days to get a response. In any event, Joe wants something that feels more like a real discussion.

2. The wrong people at the right time   Joe has to contend with the usual trolls, flamers, and ninnies who throw discussions off-topic. He visits various chat rooms and networking sites for activists, but, as is often the case, few people are present and contributing, and the best minds and moderators are absent.

3. Drive-by commenting   Joe finds a few warm bodies willing to engage in a discussion of the upcoming election, but they keep straying off-topic. Because nobody really “owns” the discussion, it gets sidetracked easily.

4. A million vases for a thousand flowers   Nancy, a communications wizard, likes to hang out at Omidyar.net, but Mary, a master strategist, would never darken Omidyar’s cyber-door. She much prefers Change.org. And so it goes. Joe has to visit twenty sites to have a prayer of finding the best wisdom on the upcoming election.

What’s a wired, networked, discussion-starved social activist to do?

Coming up: The problem with the Internet, part 2

Introducing Democracy to Our Nation’s Capital

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       S   T   U   A   R   T

This past November, the official website of the multinational force in Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom, told the story of Sargeant John Eldridge, 372nd Military Police Battalion, 89th MP Brigade, who had been deployed for a second time and would miss sharing Thanksgiving dinner with his family.

This story about the Washington, DC native concealed a great irony.  He had been sent overseas, according to official reports, to fight for the cause of democracy, but back home he and half a million fellow Washingtonians would be barred from full participation in the democratic process: residents of our nation’s capital have been denied a voting representative in Congress since 1801. 

Perhaps, as one wag suggested, the U.S. Marines should have invaded the District of Columbia.

Those who live in the seat of American democracy pay their taxes, are called for jury duty, and serve in the armed forces, but are denied the most basic of democratic rights.

Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) was part of a congressional delegation that went to Hong Kong and pressed leaders there to allow democracy.  Davis said a senior Hong Kong official told him, “Give your nation’s capital the right to vote and then come talk to us about democracy in Hong Kong.”

Big props to my peeps at DC Vote for their recent voting rights victory in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a first step toward righting a great historical wrong.

DC Vote is sponsoring a Voting Rights March on Emancipation Day, April 16, 2007, starting at 2:30 p.m.  For more information visit the DC Vote website.