Salute to Mr. Wynn

One of the great blessings of my professional life is that it started out in a frying pan.  I didn’t have a slow ramp-up where everyone at my job spent time training me and helping me get my bearings by giving me insignificant work I couldn’t mess up.  I started at the Social Development Commission and on the first day I was told to write a proposal for Tom Wynn. 

Not the Tom Wynn you see in this picture.  This picture (which I labeled Tom Wynn Nice) sure does look like him.  Because he was handsome and he had a smile that could quiet down a very noisy room.  The Tom Wynn I met on Day One at the Social Development Commission was the head of the National Association of Black Veterans and IVOCC (Interested Veterans of the Central City) and right from the jump, he was mad.  Mad that what he’d asked for was help getting a proposal done and what he got was me.  And mad at me because he assumed (rightly) that I was an ivory tower white girl who was against the Vietnam War and didn’t know anything about Black people.

That’s where our relationship started.  But it got better.  Over the years I did a lot of work for Tom Wynn, wrote a lot of proposals, did research on bad discharges and lack of access to services.  He would be polite and friendly, courtly even, until he sensed resistence or lack of high priority, and then he would let me have it.  And that’s where I learned a) to listen to an angry Black man without running away; and b) hold my own when I knew I was right.

Tom Wynn never really trusted me but he came to trust my skills – I guess that means he respected me.  I certainly respected him.  He was the first person I knew who lived his commitment to a cause every second of every day.  He carried the problems of Black veterans on his back and for a long time did it almost all alone.  He was fierce, that man.  Fierce and insistent and undeterred.

At his retirement party in 2004, when everyone knew that he was dying, people lined up in front of the chair where he was sitting – to shake his hand and have a few words.  When it was my turn, he gave me one of his Africa pins and we both at the same time, said “Thank you.” And he shot me one of those smiles.  Like in the picture.

So — when I drive by 35th and Wisconsin Avenue, I look up at the brand new beautiful 52-unit Thomas H. Wynn, Sr., Veterans Manor for homeless veterans, and I think – what a good, wonderful thing that is.  What a really fine salute to Mr. Wynn.  And I think how lucky I was to have him as my drill instructor.

When is it OK to Judge People?

I can’t imagine actually being a judge.  Every time I read about someone in the paper who is accused of a crime, I start thinking of reasons why he/she should be let off the hook.  I marvel at judges I know who can drop the hammer on a defendent – 10 years, 20 years, life without parole.  I could never do that.  I think I’m an extreme case, though.  A person who overdosed on Joan Baez in my formative years, who can get obsessed with thinking that ‘there but for fortune (or the grace of God) go I.’ 

Judgments about people aren’t just personal — they’re very often professional.  By that, I mean that our judgments about a group of people, say, teen fathers or drug-using moms or high school dropouts or gambling addicts, influences how we respond to them.  If we’re in a position to design programs or organize services, the essence of our judgment is manifest in those programs or services. How much we value people who have the problem we are trying to fix, what we think they are capable of in terms of managing their own lives, how much we blame them for being in the situation that requires our help.

It’s the last thing – the blaming – that surprises me the most.  Over the past year, in my professional life and my volunteer work, I’ve been astonished at the ease with which professional helpers – social workers, therapists, human service workers – seem ok with blaming clients for their situations, even when the clients are children. Acting as if their middle class playbook is the only one on the shelf, they are indignant that their clients aren’t playing by the rules.  Aggravated that phone calls aren’t returned in a timely fashion, convinced that clients lack motivation when they miss appointments, personally offended when clients — with years of addiction or mental illness — suffer a resurgence of their symptoms. 

And this isn’t just about individuals judging — it’s ultimately about how their combined judgemental attitude shapes a program or an organization.  In other words, the judgmentalism becomes embodied in the organizational culture – in everyday interaction, policies, expectations.  All of these things act out what the people in charge think of the people who want help.

But even in this tsk-tsk littered landscape, there are those professional helpers who know how to make it real – who understand people’s situations and can offer paths to recovery that are realistic and attuned to their reality.  Moreover, they know how to help people in a respectful way. I admire those people and strive to be like them. 

But it’s really challenging.  For the past year, I’ve been working on helping someone get their life straight and, in the process, chastising others who have been quick with their judgments and disdain.  I moved ahead like Switzerland – always neutral, just interested in peace and progress.  But I’m feeling my non-judgmental self cracking.  I’m getting tired of excuses, aggravated with the drama, and frustrated with the lack of results.  I feel myself kicking into serious judging but also realize that this is probably where the rubber hits the road, that now is when it really gets tempting to flip open the playbook and point to the right formation.  “Here, play it this way!”

I guess this is what separate what’s easy from what’s hard.  It’s easy and completely understandable to get fed up after an unfruitful year of trying to help someone.  Everyone would understand.  It’s hard to find yet another tack and take another run at it.  To be patient and not judge.  Which is, I guess, what you have to do if you buy into this ‘there but fortune’ business.

Bonehead Move: The Destruction of the Downtown Residential Hotels

My new favorite term is generational error.  Developer Gary Grunau used this phrase to describe Governor Walker’s refusal of $810 million in federal high speed rail funding.  Blowing up downtown hotels that provided housing for hundreds of low-income singles in 1980 is another epic generational error.  The Randolph, Antlers, and Plankinton House provided over a 1,000 units of what would now be known as SRO (Single Room Occupancy) housing.

The downtown hotels offered cheap rooms — $8 a night plus a $2 key deposit in 1974 — coffee shops, a sense of community, access to stores and services in the community (what there were at that time), and independence.  People with disabilities or long-term addictions or family estrangement could just plain live on their own.  It was affordable and available. 

In the place of the downtown hotels, we have the fabulously successful Grand Avenue Mall, a development that has suffered in concept and reality practically since the day it opened.  We have rows upon rows of condos. And a lot of new buildings with the retro look that John Norquist loved so much and that is so reminiscent of of the old residential hotel era.

And we have a lot of homeless people – most of them single adults (76%) – and a large shelter system.  I’m not saying that these two facts are directly linked (well, I guess I am) but it’s an interesting coincidence that the Antlers and Plankintown Hotels were blown up in 1980 and the Guest House Emergency Shelter for Men opened in 1982.

The City of Milwaukee’s decision to acquire and raze the homes of about a thousand poor people was tied to the belief that commercial redevelopment of the downtown was a higher value — that the area’s economic resurgence would benefit the entire City.  Truth be told, it wasn’t just the downtown hotels that interfered with strategy, it was the people who lived in the hotels.  They weren’t good for downtown’s image and so they had to go.  And they did.  But we’re not better off.  We’re worse off. 

The community is scrambling to create truly affordable housing for very low-income people.  We had the opportunity to do that in 1980 when, if we had followed the lead of other cities like New York and Los Angeles, we could have upgraded the residential hotels to be more acceptable neighbors in the revamped downtown.  It could have been done.

That it wasn’t, that these historic buildings were blown up with so little regard for where poor people could afford to live is one massive generational error.  And we’re still paying for it.

When in Doubt, Blame: Reflections on Milwaukee’s Infant Mortality Problem

This isn’t the first time that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has gone on a star search.  Remember last year’s fawning over Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone?   What was the matter with Milwaukee?  How come we don’t have a Geoffrey Canada?  Why aren’t we having phenomenal success educating low-income, African American kids?  What’s wrong with us?  If the education establishment knew what it was doing, it would replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in Milwaukee.

Now, about a year later, the new subject of adoration is Mario Drummonds, leader of the Northern Manhatten Perinatal Partnership.  Like Mr. Canada, Mr. Drummonds is a charismatic figure whose zeal, commitment and talent organized a blitzkrieg of activities on a single housing project, the 1,500 unit St. Nicholas Houses in Harlem.  (See “Milwaukee infant mortality rate still high, despite years of effort, millions spent,” in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 5/7/11))  http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/121449039.html

Immediately, the conclusion is drawn that if Milwaukee had its act together, our infant mortality rate would plummet.  If Milwaukee would marshal its resources and not have 112 different initiatives working throughout the city (a list which, by the way, seems to include every parenting program, research project, and child development effort in the city in addition to programs specifically addressing infant mortality), then we could beat this problem and get out from under being one of the worse places in the U.S. to be a baby.  In essence, if we could replicate Mario Drummonds’ program in Milwaukee, we’d have it made.

It doesn’t work like that, folks.

Because it’s not about Mario Drummonds’ program.  It’s about Mario Drummonds.  Just like it’s not about the Harlem Children’s Zone.  It’s about Geoffrey Canada. Each of these men is what is called a Monomaniac on a Mission (MOM), a very technical term for the one person who is willing to move heaven and earth to achieve something and can convince other people to leave their cars running in the street to come and help.

There are a million things that are different about the places where Mr. Drummonds and Mr. Canada developed their projects.  History, politics, access to wealth, receptiveness to innovation, diversity, and culture of challenge and confrontation are some of the elements to be considered.  Their programs were shaped by the environment, by opportunities that were presented, and by their own personal ability to convince others to invest substantial resources — millions of dollars — in achieving the desired results.

Rather than blaming the hundred small, shoestring agencies that are trying to help young parents do a better job, maybe we ought to look at what kind of environment Milwaukee provides for budding MOMs.  When one comes along, do we listen or tell him/her to sit down and wait their turn?  Do we get behind big dreams or resent them?  Embrace vision or write it off as tilting at windmills?  Do we recognize community anger and frustration as the growing power of change or run away from it?

Like 99% of things in the world, “it’s complicated.”  Replication of programs from other cities rarely works unless virtually all of the environmental features are the same.  The adult drug court model is an example of a very successful replication process throughout the country.  Programs that have been shaped and developed around a single personality usually fall flat.  It’s not a committee that makes those innovations work, it’s one absolutely electric person at the center.

We’ve got those live wires in Milwaukee.  We really do.  Time to let them loose and see what they can do.

It’s Knot Easy

It’s not even noon on Monday yet and this is my mental imagery.  My mother would say I am wound as ‘tight as a $2 watch” so I tried to find clip art of such a watch but it was stressing me out so I settled for the knot.

I pride myself on being able to work through a great deal of stress.  This comes from years of practice of juggling a lot of different projects at once and having a fairly interesting personal life.  But there are times when one really does just become totally discombobulated – a cutesy word like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious – which actually means to become unhinged.  Because complaining about being unhinged is likely to scare off clients, consultants use cute words like multi-tasking and juggling. 

Let’s be frank.  There are days when the harmonic convergence works in reverse.  When the dog has a seizure, child care falls through, a colleague gets annoyed, your project is late and there’s crap on your shirt.  (I just noticed that last one.)

I can remember being so stressed out that even though I had lit cigarettes burning in two different ashtrays, I picked up a pencil to smoke.  (This is a long time ago in the good old days when I smoked.)

All of this is by way of saying — man, sometimes it is really hard to focus on work.  This morning was one of those days.  Of course, I decided to add to the stress by deciding I needed to finish this blog by noon. 

The key to me is all about making a list and working the list.  Sometimes, I even make a little sticky sign that tells me “Work the list.”  What relieves my stress most of all is getting things done and knowing that even though there might be a lot of chaos and debris being flung around in my life, that I can produce what I’ve promised.

So that’s what I tell people who are flustered or stalled or paralyzed by their stress.  Make a list.  And work it.

What Would Sinbad Think? (about the suspension of democracy in his hometown)

Everyone has a hometown.  Sinbad’s is Benton Harbor, Michigan, a town that was recently taken over by the State of Michigan.  This morning, the Emergency Financial Manager tossed out members of the city’s Brownfield Redevelopment Authority and its Planning Commission and replaced them with new people.  This, after he basically ended local government on Friday by telling the City Commission it was free to continue to have meetings but not to conduct any city business. The city’s governance – not just its financial situation – is now in the hands of a person appointed by Michigan’s governor.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing, feeling Lansing’s hot breath on his neck, is trying to game the new state takeover system by seeking authority to act as an Emergency Financial Manager would – the equivalent of aggressively policing your own party so the real cops won’t show up.

I have pretty strong feelings about all this.  Starting off, I am attached to all things Michigan.  I was born in Michigan and did a little bit of a life tour of its great cities — Hudson, Hastings, Detroit, Mt. Pleasant, East Lansing, and Flint.  Like many people in the 70′s, I couldn’t wait to get out of Flint – a grimy, hard, tough as nuts city that was falling in on itself as a result of the slow, bloody death of the auto industry – and flee to Milwaukee, which at the time, seemed like the garden city of the universe.  The phrase– will the last person to leave Michigan, please turn off the light — was more serious instruction than joke.

That Michigan is hurting isn’t news.  What is news is the state’s decision to colonize one of its cities.  Because this is what this is.  The State of Michigan is essentially occupying Benton Harbor, suspending local government, and installing the equivalent of a colonial governor.  One could argue that the situation in Benton Harbor calls for drastic action and that financial mismanagement, terrible city services, and a host of other screw-ups warrant takeover by a little army of government technocrats.  The 11,000 people of Benton Harbor deserve a government that protects them from crime, saves them from fires, and keeps them safe from disease.  Absolutely. 

But I think there are other factors to consider.  First, there is the heart-stopping racial disparity evidenced by Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, its twin city, located just across the Paw Paw River.  Here’s all one needs to know on this front:  Benton Harbor’s population is 92% African American and its median household income is $17,471.  St. Joseph (wave hello across the river) is 90% white and has a median household income of $37,032.  Does anything else need to be said here?

Second, there’s that democracy thing.  For better or worse, the people of Benton Harbor elected their government.  They are free to recall their elected officials or to run against them in the next election.  They’re free to go to city commission meetings and raise hell.  Free to organize neighborhoods and community groups to protest.  They’re also free to ask for help, seek outside expertise, and engage in reform.  Or, should I say, they WERE free.

Sinbad is a smart, successful guy.  He grew up in Benton Harbor, went to high school there, went on to play ball at the University of Denver.  He’s a person of substance.  He’s not the only such person to have come out of Benton Harbor.  There are people there who know what they’re doing.  They’re not children.  They’re grown.  They’re taxpaying citizens.  They have the right to run their own damn town.  For better or worse.

I Love This….I Mean I Really Love This

There are a bunch of stories in this terrific article about Milwaukee’s Drug Treatment Court.  There’s the story of Judge Joe Donald’s leadership.  And there’s the story of teamwork.  And the one about forging ahead without knowing all the answers.  And the best one — the one that I love — there’s the story about how having faith in people and giving them a chance to get straight pays off in concrete ways. 

Judge Donald is so right — putting addicts in prison for the incredibly long sentences that have become so popular these past few years just pumps up the Corrections budget, cracks up families, and makes nothing better.

This Drug Treatment Court?  It makes things better by giving people the tools, the structure, and the helping hand.  I don’t think going through Drug Treatment is particularly easy.  There is a huge amount of accountability, treatment compliance, and other expectations built into the program.  When a person graduates from the Drug Treatment Court, he/she has accomplished something of great significance.

This article has had me beaming all day — love it when government looks sharp and does right.  I’m also secretly (well, maybe not so secretly now that it’s on my blog) proud to have played a wee role in the Drug Treatment Court’s financial security by working on the federal grant that supports its current operation.  What a great idea, what smart people, what teamwork, what a professional pleasure to have been involved – if only in a small way.

So go buy the May issue of Milwaukee Magazine when it’s available in stores (I tried to post a link but no luck for now).  Maybe you can use your copy to wave in the face of the folks you meet who think that government can’t do anything right. 

Good Sailing, Brighter Futures

It’s unusual for a consultant to have a ten-year relationship with a project.  I started with Brighter Futures as the evaluation coordinator in 2000 when it was just Ramon Wagner’s wild dream to create a prevention movement in Milwaukee that would take up where the CAP Network left off.  His vision was a system of community-based organizations that had the sustainable capacity to offer immediate, relevant, and meaningful services to children, youth and families. I was fortunate to work on Brighter Futures until I decided in February to end my involvement with the project.

Chaordic was the word of the day. Chaordic: combining elements of chaos and order.  And Brighter Futures was just that when it started and, to a large extent, remains that way today.  To effectively reach youth and families, programs need to be agile, smart, unrestrained by convention, and willing to try the ridiculous.  To stay in business, programs need to have capacity to keep funding, track outcomes, and plan for the future.

In my work on Brighter Futures, I tried to find that balance by structuring an outcome system that recognized the local service delivery context and acknowledged the right of funders to have proof of performance and results.  I’m proud of the evaluation work that was done on Brighter Futures and deeply appreciative of the opportunity afforded me by Community Advocates to work on a sustained basis with Joe Volk, Racquel Bell, Ken Germanson, and Aricka Evans.  I learned from the many Brighter Futures agencies — like The Parenting Network, Alma Center, Milwaukee Christian Center, and others — what it takes to b e a sustainable, high engagement program.  Nine times out of ten – wait, make that ten out of ten – it’s all about leadership and relationships.

So why leave?  Brighter Futures had become too comfortable for me.  Too safe and predictable.  A good body of work but the years’ products were beginning to look alike and blend together.  So I traded Brighter Futures for something unsafe and unpredictable.  I’m beginning a new evaluation of a statewide process improvement initiative being implemented in county Aging and Disability Resource Centers by the State of Wisconsin and NIATx/UW-Madison.  Part of this evaluation is visiting all over the state – Fond du Lac, Eau Claire, Marshfield – so I’m looking at a lot of miles and probably way too many drive-throughs. 

At this stage of my career, I don’t want to be on automatic pilot.  No coasting for me.  Far better to head off to a new city and wonder what’s happening there.  How will I understand the process?  Who should I talk to?  What should I ask?  Will I be able to make sense out of a complicated change process?  Can I help improve things for people?

Being in business is fundamentally about taking risks.  That’s a skill that gets rusty fast if you don’t force yourself to use it. 

So, my best to Brighter Futures and the wonderful people involved in that program.  And hello, Fond du Lac.

Makin’ Thunderbirds

 Oh crap.  I don’t know what depresses me more – the fact that Detroit lost 25% of its population in the past ten years or that Bob Seger is contemplating retirement.  I heard the news about Detroit while I was vacationing in Phoenix, a town where dozens of clay-colored tri-levels take shape while you’re waiting at a red light.  And it made me sad because I consider Detroit a home town.  I never lived IN Detroit, I lived outside Detroit, in a nearby suburb (Southfield) that is now home to probably a 100,000 of the folks who skipped town in the past ten years.  See here for the Free Press’ take on this situation. http://www.freep.com/article/20110322/NEWS06/110322054/With-Detroit-s-sharp-population-loss-can-keep-2-U-S-House-seats-

Detroit for me was Motown on the radio all day/night, Al Kaline at Briggs Stadium, the gorgeous Fisher Theatre, cruising Woodward Avenue, and the senior prom at the Pontchartrain Hotel.  It was wicked good politics, a fantastic paper (the Detroit Free Press that I suscribed to for years after I moved to Milwaukee), and, oh yeah, it was Bob Seger.

Here’s the news about Bob Seger thinking about hanging up the microphone.  http://www.freep.com/article/20110323/ENT04/103240430/1036/ENT01/Will-Bob-Seger-retire-after-tour-He-contemplates-going-out-top?odyssey=nav%7Chead

So what to make of all of this?  Well, after the initial “oh dear,” I started to think that maybe people moving out of Detroit was a good thing.  That instead of showing how bad Detroit is, the migration to the suburbs or other places could just as easily signal increasing wealth.  So I looked it up and, indeed, the out-migration is primarily comprised of middle-income African Americans.  This isn’t the old white flight business – largely because Detroit is now virtually an all-Black city.  This is different.  It’s people with means deciding that they want a newer house, a bigger lawn, a better school system.

Harold Rose, possibly the most brilliant and enigmatic professor ever to grace the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, gave me this perspective.  We debated neighborhood redevelopment, me, taking the view that investment in housing rehab was a huge benefit to the African American population.  Dr. Rose saying to me, “What makes you think Black people don’t want new homes with modern things?  Why do we have to live in the old homes?”

So people are leaving Detroit because they can.  They have more money, more self-determination, more choice.  Is this bad?  Yes.  Partly.  Because Detroit is in dire straits with state and federal aid and there’s the potential loss of a Congressional seat.  So yes, it’s a bad thing.  But the flip side might be progress. 

If we take a longer view, not 10 years or even 20 but maybe 30 or 40, it’s very likely that Detroit will be resettled and redefined.  It will be a different city.  It won’t ever be Motor City again.  It has a new identity but it’s a ways off.  We get depressed and hysterical when we measure change in years and not decades.  We haven’t seen the last of Detroit – believe me.  It’s a place like no other – with a beat and a grit you’re not going to find anywhere else.  It could be empty and still be alive.

So I’ve kind of come to terms with Detroit’s population decline.  Bob Seger retiring?  I’m not so sure.

Click here for what made Bob Seger a Michigan boy. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob+seger/makin+thunderbirds_20021995.html

Here’s a Slice of Something

I couldn’t wait to tell the boss that the meat in the sandwiches delivered to the neighborhood center was purple, that it had the sheen on it that ripe lunchmeat can have, that glisten that tells you, “hmmmm, time to toss.”  Fresh from her volunteer gig as a summer day camp counselor, my 15-year old daughter ran through the litany of complaints at dinner the night before.  “The SDC bag lunch was awful – the peach was like a rock and the meat in the sandwich was purple.”

I was all over it like white on rice.  Next morning, first thing, into the Exec’s office (which at the time was next door to mine), I couldn’t wait to unload this little tidbit.  “My daughter says the meat at the neighborhood center is inedible.”  It’s fun, kind of satisfying, to sit around and yak about what someone else did wrong.    Yeah.  I had a field day with the purple meat.

Until.

Later that same day, the head of the food program came into my office.  I remember this like it happened five minutes ago. I can see him walking in, with his trademark limp and his blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up.  He held a clipboard like he was about to check me off.  He didn’t seem mad.  He seemed puzzled, looked quizzical.  Right away, the crumminess of what I had done washed over me. 

Mr. Food Manager stood in front of my desk and just said, “Why didn’t you talk to me if you had a problem?  That’s what we do here.  We take it to the source.”

Which is not so easy – taking it to the source.  A lot easier to take it around the source or above the source.  Taking it to the source means a person has to screw up his or her courage and say, “Ah, excuse me, but I think that yesterday’s meat might have been purple.”  That’s not so easy especially when you yourself did not actually see the meat and you are taking the word of 15-year old finicky eater. 

All of this la-dee-dah goes by way of saying – if someone has an issue with a person, they need to take it up with that person.  Not his co-worker or boss or mama.  Now, this isn’t always a successful and warm strategy.  If I had told Mr. Food Manager directly that his meat was purple, he still would’ve been really mad and demanded to see the specific purple slice of which I was speaking.  But I’d be on a lot higher moral ground than I was, which was basically a sinkhole of professionalism. 

Possibly the most ungrammatical essay ever written.  But you get my point.