Especially when the “we” in question is a legitimately multinational coalition of nations operating under the auspices of a UN resolution on a humanitarian mission to prevent the further slaughter of citizens by one of the world’s most uniformly reviled dictators.
But don’t pay any attention to them because Libya in 2011 is exactly the same as Iraq in 2003, and Obama the same as Bush, because shut up that’s why.
h/t to BWD and our own fine commenter Professional Left for reminding me to share this video.
I am glad this blog exists on the web, because I am sick and tired of defending Obama and his administration. You all here do it so plainly. Can I share for a second, a personal story that I think relates?
Here on the ground in South Central L.A., I struggle with trying to articulate a reason for community residents and business and churches and teachers and public servants to collaborate and coordinate their individual efforts towards a larger impact. In my job as a policy analyst, I write, research, and analyze each group’s interests, then help them organize their collective needs and resources to build a power structure. The goal is for community change but, change only in the ways all residents accept are in their best interest.
This is the hardest work that anyone will ever do. The California Endowment is investing billions of dollars over the next five years for pragmatic community development in neighborhoods across California. A lot of smart and talented people have joined this “human experiment” because they want to try and make democracy work for marginalized people living in neighborhoods like South (Central) Los Angeles or in East Salinas. Incremental change is slow and arduous.
As an technical assistant to a lot of these place-based initiatives (growing up I just called them “‘hoods”), I can report that despite a cadre of community organizers, tons of internal and external community expertise and a pretty substantial funding, change is still fucking hard. Community organizations are often competitive and exacerbate bad community dynamics in a fight for funds; government agencies are insular and don’t want to see their mandates expand while their budgets shrink; overburdened public servants revert to their core mission and don’t want to innovate during times of furloughs, layoffs and hiring freezes; and many hard working people willing to put forth the extra effort towards community development, still distrust agencies that preside over the shoddy neighborhood conditions. In 2011, many community activists would rather disband their police departments than sit at a lunch table with them.
You see, there is rarely any incentive at all for folks even in the same community to collaborate towards the goal of creating a better “process for change.”
Of course my colleagues and I, though we never seek credit for our facilitation efforts, are viewed with suspicion, hated by some, loved by others, and misunderstood by most. We get blamed for “not having an agenda” when our agenda is always clear: to get everyone closer to their stated goals. Of course, to see a value in such a goal, you either have to be a part of the process or support the process in some way. If your goals are all that matter, the facilitators who “just want to get things done” are not your allies, but enemy #1.
I guess I will end this overlong comment by saying, change through an asset-based, shared development model is not less difficult than change through hyper-aggressive partisanship, but it is a lot less fun and sexy. But it will probably last longer, if history taught us anything.
This administration is constrained by the massive power interests, many of which aren’t always transparent to the public. That doesn’t make the incremental progress they have achieved any less remarkable. The adherence to a process is their attempt at real Washington culture change. So far it has looked pretty laughable. To work, liberals must accept not getting everything they want and conservatives must accept not getting everything they want. The possibility of such a reality, though, is what really scares powerful interests. If collaboration returns, then iteration can return, nuance can return, compromise can return and democracy can return to America.
Wow. Great comment and lots of ideas to digest.
But I will sum them all up this way.
Thank you.
What you do every day is worth ten thousand angry bloggers pounding their keyboards with frustration that Daddy Obama refuses to use his magic wand to make all the bad things go away.
You have indeed found a place on the web where the work you do is respected and appreciated.