The 4-step antidote for America's toxic discourse | CivicCon

When Richard Harwood was asked to come to Newtown, Connecticut, in early 2013 and help residents decide the fate of Sandy Hook Elementary School, the building was still a crime scene.

Just a few weeks prior, a gunman had shot and killed 20 children and six adults, and the building stood as a grim reminder of the tragedy. Some members of the community wanted to tear it down and start anew. Some wanted to preserve the building, to reclaim it as belonging to the children and the community, not the shooter. Others thought it was too soon to make a decision while the pain was still so fresh.

Nonetheless, Harwood agreed to lead a task force of 28 local officials and try to corral the thoughts, emotions, wishes and trauma of a town of 20,000 and agree on a united path forward. After months of meetings – of impassioned pleas from community members and of heartbreaking testimony from teachers who watched their coworkers die and who tucked children in supply closets and restroom stalls to try to keep them safe from gunfire – the task force remained at an impasse.

Then, one task force member said he even though he wasn't getting everything he wanted, he could live with the decision to tear down the old school and rebuild a new one in its place. Then someone else said they'd also be willing to go along. Then another. Then another. And soon, the vote was unanimous.

Recounting the story to a CivicCon audience at the First United Methodist Church of Pensacola on Wednesday night, Harwood said the issue was never really about the school building, so much as whether the Newtown community could "pivot from trauma and despair to healing and hope," and whether or not the community could come together and make a collective decision about how to move forward.

"My point about Newtown is this – even under the most horrific, inexplicable circumstances, we can come together and make decisions if, as Americans, we're willing to give up winning at all costs," Harwood told the audience. "If, as Americans, we're willing to see and hear one another. If, as Americans, we're willing to consider different alternatives that maybe we didn't start with. If, as Americans, we are willing to give a little to get a lot."

Harwood, the president and founder of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, has spent the past 35 years revitalizing communities, transforming the world's largest organizations and reconnecting institutions like newsrooms and schools to society. He recently launched a civic campaign called "Enough. Time to Build," which highlights ways we can work at a community level to stop focusing on things that divide us and come together to realize our shared aspirations, whether it's improving our education systems, helping reduce homelessness or creating places safe place for kids to play after school.

Presenting at CivicCon, he outlined four main concepts he has learned from decades of work in some of America's most troubled communities: turn outward, get in motion, start small to go big, and create a trajectory of hope.

Turning outward and getting in motion

Turning outward is first and foremost a mindset and a posture of using the community, not our conference rooms, as our reference point for creating change, according to The Harwood Institute.

"So many of us in this country have turned inward – toward ourselves, toward our own organizations, toward our own programs, toward our own survival," Harwood said. "But the only way to move forward together is to be facing each other, so that we can see and hear each other and work together."

He said too much public discourse goes down one of two equally ineffectual paths. The first is the public meeting that focuses on "the problem," and invariable turns to finger-pointing instead of finding solutions. The other path is "visioning" meetings that produce nothing but plans that wind up collecting dust on government office shelves.

Harwood suggests instead of focusing on the problem or a utopian vision of the future, that we instead focus on our real, shared aspirations and get in motion to make them a reality.

What does that look like in action? He gave the example of Reading, Pennsylvania, which in 2011 was dubbed the poorest city in America.

A few years ago, Harwood helped Reading residents create a shared agenda on education, despite vitriolic national discourse on critical race theory, book bans, recalls of school board members and firings of school superintendents.

"People said it would be impossible to create a shared agenda of education at the height of these culture wars, but the folks in Reading came together and they created a nine point agenda," Harwood said. "And you know what? There wasn't a single word of culture wars uttered in the conversations we had with that community. They wanted to get to work. They wanted to come together and solve problems. They wanted to ensure that every kid in that community has a real opportunity."

Previously: Enough fear. Enough hate. Enough division. It's time to build. Here's how | CivicCon

Harwood stressed solutions to complex problems like education or homelessness or fair and transparent law enforcement don't come from just sitting around our own conference table and talking; we have to get out of our comfort zones, turn outward toward the wider community and get to work.

"When we get in motion, we realize we can achieve things we never imagined before," he said. "When we get into motion, we find allies we never would have worked with before. When we get motion, we produce results we didn't even expect. So one of the things we have to do is turn outward toward one another. And the other is let's stop talking so much. Let's get in motion to get some stuff done."

Start small to go big and create a trajectory of hope

The Harwood Institute did a study 30-year impact study to try to learn more about its own work and how positive change happens in communities.

"Everything that we learned is that change always started with some small action," Harwood said. "We catalyze some small action, something that is actually doable and achievable, and then when we achieved that it unleashed a chain reaction of actions and ripple effects that grew over time and ultimately began to spread throughout the community.

"So, we began with three teams in Redding, Pennsylvania, and now we have scores and scores of people who are working on this together," Harwood said. "And the work now has jumped to other issues like youth violence prevention, neighborhood economic development, food security, and a whole bunch of other issues because we started small. One of our funders in Reading said, 'You know why this work is growing so fast? Because it's successful, and people like to be associated with success.'"

Still, a common issue across the country is that public discourse is dominated by the most divisive voices, and people don't see many examples of success. They're feeling more mistrustful and hopeless, and often don't see the good things happening in their own backyards.

That's why Harwood said it's important to create a trajectory of hope that highlights the positive and the progress in our communities.

"The change that we're creating, we don't even see. It's invisible to us. It's invisible to the community, it's actually invisible to the people who are creating it," Harwood said. "So, our institute kept bumping up against this, the communities that we were working with are making progress, but no one saw it and no one was gaining a sense of hope from it. ... What people need, what all of us need, is to see ourselves in public life, to hear ourselves, to see that our lived experiences matter, not just us, but other people. To see that we made a real difference, that we actually can come together and some things done."

Harwood, who in his youth worked on 20 different political campaigns, said society and politics have shifted fundamentally, and politicians today win races and gain attention by stoking division and fanning the flames of culture wars.

So, if change won't come from the top down, it must come from the bottom up, he said. Just as it did in the American Revolution, the abolitionist movement, women's suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement and the fight for the rights of the LGBTQ community.

The "Enough. Time to Build" campaign is Harwood's attempt to give communities the tools and knowledge to find their voices, rally around what's important to them and start building.

"The reason why I've launched his campaign is because what I've discovered by listening to people, is that people are yearning for a different message. They're yearning to get back to something we know, which is we can come together and solve problems together. They're yearning to restore a sense of civic confidence. They're yearning for a greater belief in ourselves. That yearning to ensure that every person has a shot at the American Dream."

Next, CivicCon tackles fixing failing schools

CivicCon's next event 6 p.m. April 11 at the REX Theatre in downtown Pensacola will feature Angela Bush as she discusses how to lead a school out of low performance.

Bush, the former principal of Erwin Middle School in Jefferson County, Alabama, and the current area director of Jefferson County Schools, will share how she and her team strategically focused on setting goals, action planning, and monitoring progress to improve student attendance and achievement, ultimately making Erwin Middle one of the top performing schools in the county in the process.

This event is free and open to the public and registration is available by searching "CivicCon" at eventbrite.com.

CivicCon is a partnership with the News Journal to help empower citizens to better their communities through smart planning and civic conversation. More information about CivicCon, as well as stories and videos featuring previous speakers, is available at pnj.com/civiccon.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: CivicCon Pensacola hosts Richard Harwood Enough Time to Build