Political discernment using Quaker testimonies

As a Quaker, I am helped in turbulent times by considering the five Quaker “testimonies.”

The testimonies are: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community and Equality. (You can remember them with the mnemonic “SPICE”)

Recently I’ve weighed the three major presidential candidates against the testimonies and tried to assign grades to them. ABCDF.

I found it difficult because media reporting on the candidates often fails to provide necessary information to make a judgment on these topics.

Then again, much of the news coverage is relevant and helpful.

I also realized that I first needed to revisit the “SPICE”s for myself, particularly with regard to politics and public life.

It was a humbling experience. The “grade” I gave myself was, at best, a “gentleman’s C.”

Here are some of the questions I pondered.

Do I measure “simplicity” guided by my spirituality or do I surrender to cultural/political norms?

Am I at peace with myself? Am I at peace with paying taxes to support American military involvement (which includes atrocities)? Am I at peace with our system of "justice"?

Do I understand the word “integrity” in all its meanings, “strength” being one of them?

What community, or communities, am I part of? What are my responsibilities to them. What are my responsibilities to other communities beyond my own?

Do I truly believe we are equal? If so, how?

Now to the presidential candidates....

How do the testimonies apply to being president of the United States? It's easier to answer for some ("integrity" for instance) than others ("simplicity"?) Or are the testimonies simply important as measurements of personal character? Should we consider the "personal" and "presidential" as one? Are presidents forced to make decisions they would never want to make as individuals? Decisions about life and death, for instance. What does personal/presidential bifurcation say about "integrity"?

In an earlier draft of this little essay, I actually assigned “testimony” grades to the three leading candidates. Now I realize that my assessment is helpful only to me. It is filtered through my unique experiences, values and discernment.

What’s most important to you is yours.

So have at it. Take your time….

Donald Trump

Simplicity?
Peace?
Integrity?
Community?
Equality?

Hillary Clinton

Simplicity?
Peace?
Integrity?
Community?
Equality?

Bernie Sanders

Simplicity?
Peace?
Integrity?
Community?
Equality?

A message for Quaker non-Quakers

I have many friends whom I consider to be Quaker non-Quakers. By that I mean they hold the values of Quakers without knowing it.

There’s part of me that would like to whisper, “Pssst. You are a Quaker non-Quaker.”

There’s another part that tells me to let it be.

First what are the values we share? Quakers call them “testimonies” and they are usually listed as Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community and Equality. They happen to create the acronym “SPICE." Some add Stewardship or Sustainability to the list. Make that “SPICES.”

In these times, each deserves long, deep contemplation and consideration. We need to consider whether we, Quakers and non-Quakers, truly live by these testimonies.

But for me, as a Quaker, there’s more. Quakers add a spiritual dimension to the testimonies. We believe we are “spirit-led” to these values and that the spirit will lead us to incorporate them into our lives.

So while I share the Quaker testimonies with many non-Quaker friends, I also want to explore the spiritual dimension with them as well.

Our secular culture does not invite such exploration. To push into matters of the spirit smacks of unseemly proselytizing. I hear the voice again, “Let it be” (The voice, by the way, sounds suspiciously like John Lennon’s.)

Quaker author Robert Lawrence Smith “speaks my mind” (as Quakers say) when he writes in the introduction to his illuminating and highly accessible book, “A Quaker Book of Wisdom”:

"It is my ever-growing conviction that the compassionate Quaker message badly needs to be heard in today’s complex, materialistic, often unjust, and discriminatory society. Every day brings new public debate over issues Quaker have always addressed: war and peace, social justice, education, health care, poverty, business ethics, public service, the use of world resources. The list goes on....”

Later he says, gently touching on the timeless leadings of the spirit, “To me, Quaker values of simplicity and silent contemplation, truth and conscience, seem more important now than ever before....the basic humanistic Quaker precepts of valuing racial and gender equality, promoting social justice and nonviolence — and, yes sometimes civil disobedience —seem to me to me so modern, so relevant to today’s society, that when I thought about writing this book I was suddenly surprised that no one had written one like it. What particularly struck me is that the Quaker ideals formulated in the Seventeenth Century remain contemporary in every sense, and the basic injunction to ‘let your life speak,’ to live each day in accordance with these beliefs, seems totally untarnished by the passage of time.”

That is exactly the message I want to share with you, Quaker non-Quakers.

For more, much more, on Quakers, go to www.quaker.org.

Sparking a "commons" revolution

Like you, I'm often asked whether I’ve read such-and-such column or article. And, of course, books are frequently recommended.

But magazines come up less frequently. When one is recommended to me, it is usually “Yes!” and, less frequently, “The Sun."

Both are ad-free, which speaks to their editorial independence and to why they have a progressive following.

I don’t subscribe to “Yes!” but I’m certainly aware of it. When it gets mentioned in conversation, I feel slightly guilty and out of the loop. To make amends I visit its web site and vow to buy a news stand copy.

(Actually, after today's visit, I was inspired to subscribe.)

This morning, just before I set out to do our “Usual Suspects” one-hour-a-month neighborhood clean-up, I visited the “Yes!” site. The first thing to catch my eye was a great list, “51 ways to spark a commons revolution.”

I’ve been trying to spark a “commons revolution” ever since I moved to my neighborhood nearly 25 years ago.

My major spark, among lesser ones, has been to start a community newspaper. The first was with an ink-and-paper publication that was (and is) called “The Southwest Community Connection.”

After I sold it, I started the on-line Hillsdale News.

Curiously, starting a community newspaper wasn’t on the 51 “sparks” list although #33 urged writing letters to the editor and posting on local web sites.

It’s worth noting that your community needs an editor before you can write a “letter to the editor.”

So add #52 to the list. “Start a community newspaper — on line and/or off.”

As I headed out the door for the clean up, I was heartened to know that I was also setting off a couple of other "sparks" in the revolution. Namely:

#12. “Treat commons spaces as if you own them (which, actually, you do). Keep an eye on the place. Tidy things up. Report problems or repair things yourself. Initiate improvement campaigns”

and

#35. "Pick up litter that is not yours."

You can see entire Yes! list of 51 ways to spark a revolution in your community HERE.

It's worth the visit, a first stop on the way to getting to Yes!

It’s the community, Jake

Yesterday I found myself at lunch with a friend who is in charge of "brand management” at a medium-sized, growth-oriented bank that is working hard at distinguishing itself from the rest of the bank pack.

I won’t share names.

Anyway, this bank has a lot of things going for it, including my friend. Let’s call him “Jake” to make him more real. It turns out that Jake, who lives in Hillsdale, is pitching Hillsdale as a site for a new branch.

We ate at the Three Square Grill, which fronts on his Hillsdale banking competition: Key Bank and Bank of America. Our family patronizes both branches, but we hardly have warm fuzzies about them.

Warm fuzzies are parts of Jake’s thinking. A bank, he tells me, should be a community hub, like a corner grocery, like the Third Place (after home and work/school).

Starbucks has gotten a lot of mileage out of the Third Place concept, but I sense the coffee behemoth may have run the “place” into the ground, especially when local community-attuned entrepreneurs can capture the special feeling of a unique “place” so much better.

So I listened to Jake’s pitch about his bank and its brand and where it is all headed — community-wise, as it were.

I’ve probably given as much thought to what it means to be a community and to build a community (this community in particular), as anyone around. So when Jake finished talking, I gave him my non-professional thoughts about banks (and ambitious corporations) and my brow-furrowing thoughts about community.

Community and corporations are diametrically opposed, I said, so for both to be successful in the same place, somebody has to change. Turns out communities are changing (Thanks to hyper-local media, they are discovering themselves, for starters), but not in ways helpful to corporations. So corporations need to ride the community change wave.

More than that, they need to help facilitate that change and make it a stated, well-publicized goal.

What has the Bank of America ever done for Hillsdale? What has Key Bank done for Hillsdale? Precious little besides take and use our money. Both are oriented to individuals (hey, this has been an individualistic society) and not to the immediate community, which is evolving in importance. Think communitarianism.

I remember making the pitch to Hillsdale’s banks for ads for The Southwest Community Connection when I started it back in 1994. I suggested that by placing an ad in the community newspaper, the bank would send the message that it was part of the community — that it supported an institution (The Connection) that was important to community building.

I got three responses.

One, “corporate” (and often an ad agency in east of the Mississippi) makes those decisions.

Two, it’s too much trouble dealing with small-circulation, individual publications.

Three, we buy in mass media in mass markets. It’s not just easier that way; we get more eyes for the advertising dollar.

Message: Forget community; it’s all about reaching the individual, autonomous customer, disconnected from his or her surroundings.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

But back to Jake, the brand manager. I suggested that communities have their own brands. Don’t replace theirs with yours — meld them.

Explore what it means to “be a part of the community.” The bank that is most embedded in a community will be the bank that gets the community’s business. (A good example is Edward Jones Investments, which puts community-involved agents in small communities — exactly like Hillsdale and Multnomah Village.)

The most important location for a business is not physical but emotional. Identify with, appeal to and support the community’s “heart” — its schools, its creativity, its farmers market, its neighborhood association, its open spaces, plazas and parks and its efforts to make them all better.

If a community embraces a bank as “its bank,” it doesn’t matter if there is enough parking (think internet banking) or whether the place faces on the main drag. I urged Jake to rethink some of the constraining traditional parameters for where to site a storefront bank. The question isn’t so much where in the community a bank is as what in the community a bank is.

Deeds count far more than appearances.

Names: Community comes first. The sign on the bank shouldn’t be Key Bank or U.S. Bank. It should be, in BIG letters “HILLSDALE, Key Bank” or “HILLSDALE, Umpqua.” Note the clever insertion of a comma, as in “Portland, Oregon.” The implied message is that Umpqua is a state … a state of mind, but the community comes first.

On this point, “The Bank of America” has a problem. “Hillsdale, Bank of America” screams contradiction. We want, in essence, is a Bank of Hillsdale.

Growth. Corporations live or die on growth; but growth can also kill. I told Jake that each bank branch opened shouldn’t be seen as enlarging the corporation, but as helping another community, and doing it from the inside out.

And that’s my final point: New branches shouldn’t be imposed on communities. They shouldn't arrive as strangers or new-comers. The siting process shouldn’t be a question of them (the community) and us (the bank). If Hillsdale is a prospective branch site, long before the doors open, the bank needs to involve the community and explore ways to address its needs as part of the siting decision. Community buy-in and emotional “ownership" means the community is part of the planning.

When our conversation ended, Jake picked up the tab. “It’s on the bank,” he said.

I hope the bank got its money's worth.

Volunteers as Friends

Most of our relationships are relatively easy to define.

Student/teacher, teacher/student, neighbor/neighbor, professional/client, clerk/customer, activist/activist, congregant/congregant, mother/father/daughter/son, sibling/sibling etc.

Usually institutions define relationships for us, whether those institutions are neighborhoods, families, schools. congregations or businesses.

(By the way, something I like about Quakers is that our formal name is “The Religious Society of Friends,” which may help friendships form faster than otherwise would be the case.)

Recently I’ve been thinking about all the people I know through formal relationships and about just how much I have shared with them. I’ve also thought of the fun and satisfaction associated with these relationships.

But just when and how do, or should, these relationships evolve into friendships?

Sometimes relationships require that we consciously NOT be friends. A conflict of interest might arise. As a journalist I have met many people who, under other circumstances, might well become friends. But the nature of my work wouldn’t allow that to happen.

As a teacher, I couldn’t become a friend to my students although I was friendly and, in fact, tried to help them in ways that no friend ever could.

To be sure, with the passage of time, and changes in roles, several former students and even news sources have become friends (or potential friends), although frequently it is hard to pinpoint exactly when the transformation becomes possible. Graduation, career change or retirement aren’t always natural watersheds in relationships.

But, with the above constraints in mind, I can think of a few signs that mark the change to friendship. One is a willingness to mutually share confidences in trust. Another is a willingness to offer or ask a favor with no expectation or thought of reciprocation. Yet another is inviting someone to share an experience that has nothing to do previous roles. When is a lunch no longer a business lunch but simply a lunch with a friend?

Many of these musing about friendships result from my working as a volunteer with many other volunteers.

Our involvement begins with our being co-workers. “We volunteer together,” we might explain.

But after years of “volunteering together” I am inclined simply to say, “We are friends. We volunteer together.”

Perhaps volunteerism is a variant of friends’ willingness, even eagerness, to give and help each other.

We may not confide in each other or even see each other socially, but somehow our giving, if not to each other, but together to others, forges a friendship.

I think that those of us who volunteer together would do well, with time, to acknowledge ourselves first and foremost as friends — joyful and grateful to give together to others.

Outlining Community

Often the topics I choose are like magnets pulling related thoughts to them. Such magnetic topics can become quickly overwhelmed (and overwhelming) and collapse under the weight of others, which may turn out to be equally magnetic.

A discussion about transportation leads to one about energy, which leads to one about population density, which leads to one about the politics of planning. And so it goes.

Focus becomes both a necessity and a constraint.

So over the last day I have decided to allow myself to explore a major magnetic theme of these posts — community in the 21st Century — in outline form, just to see what it attracts.

The outline follows. It is long but each item and subtopic is brief. I hope you will feel free to comment and add sections or combine topics and subtopics. No, this isn't a Wiki, but I'll take all suggestions under consideration and edit the outline accordingly.

I have no idea what might become of the outline. It could provide the structure for a book. Certainly each topic suggests a chapter. Or the outline could simply delineate future posts or be a focus of discussion.

Whatever comes of it, I look forward to your comments.

Here goes:

A Community for the 21st Century

Introduction
Community in these times
Challenges and Opportunities

Test Case: Hillsdale

Environment
Population density
Air
Water
Plants and animals
(Energy and transportation) Parentheses indicate a link to another section
Food
Shelter
Global impacts

Size
Distinctions: Cities, towns, townships, villages, town centers, communities, neighborhoods
What we know about numbers — effectiveness, cooperation and communication

Geography
Topography — Hills and Dales
On being part of something bigger

People
Social capital (volunteerism)
Individualism and community
Involvement
The uses of time
Friends
Family

Place
The Commons
Names of places
Legacy
A center
Meeting places
Parks

Governance and Self-Governance
Devolution
Consensus “Beyond majority rule”
Taxing
Keeping it small “Thoreau”

Energy
Weaning from fossil fuels
Alternatives
Independence

Economy
Entrepreneurship
Localism
Sustainability
Cooperatives
Public financing
• Taxes
• Fees
• Foundations
Volunteerism (social capital)

Communication
"Communication defines Community"
• There is no community without communication
• The quality of the communication defines the quality of the community
Forms of community media
• Internet
–Listservs, electronic newsletters and web pages
• "Old Media”
– Newspapers
– Low-power community radio
Problems with mass (non-community, anti-community) media
Centrifugal—sucking time and energy away from community
“It’s all about you” advertising and programing
• Narcisism
Fear and hate mongering
Isolation and anxiety
Impotence
• Problem-oriented, not solution-oriented
Information, knowledge and wisdom

Aesthetics
Scale
Streetscapes
Utility Undergrounding
Pattern Language
Signage
Water features
Public art
Making places people want to be

Education and Awareness
Community Learning Centers
Intergenerational
Student-teachers/teacher-students
Year round
Life-long
Action oriented
Community centered
History

Health
Community Health Centers
Prevention
The many dimensions of public health

Culture, Entertainment, Sports
Libraries — public and private
“Bowling Together”
The arts
• Dance
• Music
• Art exhibitions
Competitive and non-competitive sports
Work as play

Transportation
Low impact
Diverse
The role of trust eg. ride sharing
Bicycles
Walking
Trails and Sidewalks

Safety and preparedness
NETs — Neighborhood Emergency Teams
Fire bureau
• Volunteerism
Community policing

Underlying values
Simplicity
Happiness
Tolerance, diversity with regular communication (see education)
Unity
Stewardship
Peace

Hillsdale: a test case

The Future: On planning and implementation

Bibliography (A “starter” list)
Akenfeld by Ronald Blythe
A Pattern Language
Deep Economy by Bill McKibben
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The Spirit of Community by Daniel Kemmis
Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam
Habits of the Heart

Community abates global warming

INK, the information-packed little newsletter Powell's Books publishes each month, has a commendable essay by Bill McKibben in the April issue.

McKibben suggests that the bottom line on fighting global warming is forging strong communities.

In other words, in the face of this global crisis, we are doing a lot of the right things here in Hillsdale—and in Portland.

We need locally-owned community businesses, farmers markets, strong community schools, excellent mass transit and community plazas, paths and parks to keep people close to home. We need to support those institutions and not sell out to large multi-national corporations.

(By the way, Wednesday's parks naming rights debate before the City Council may touch on this very issue.)

Mass media and mega-corporations pull our attentions and resources away from where we live. Worse, they promote rampant commercialism and consumerism that isolate us and are destroying the planet.

"The endless parade of screens," McKibben writes, "keep us occupied by ourselves. As a result, Americans have far fewer close friends than they did a generation ago. We spend far less time with friends and neighbors and relatives."

We are also far less creative and resourceful.

Another result is that, by world standards, Americans, for all their relative wealth, are not particularly happy. Many are stressed.

But as we build our communities, we are rediscovering the joy experienced by those who live more modestly.

Those of us who have traveled abroad and visited farmers markets know they provide staples not only for their customers but for civic life. We have felt the joy of congregation swirling around the busy market kiosks and booths. Here in the Hillsdale Farmers Market, and in others around the city, we experience the same joy.

I have often joked with some truth that Hillsdale does far more civic business on Sundays in the market than it does at sparsely attended neighborhood meetings with long agendas.

Here's another thought about community and global warming. Often communities grow stronger in crisis. The Rieke School parents will tell you that their community is much stronger today because the school district threatened to shut down the school. Many of us in Southwest Portland got involved in our neighborhoods when city planners threatened to impose rough-shod rezoning here.

I'll venture to guess that global warming, for all its troubling consequences, will create challenges that will draw us together and ultimately make us stronger. The crisis will force us to weigh and choose what is truly important: our own selfish, dispiriting needs or those of the planet and its future.

Confessions of a TV-B-Goner

Jean Rystrom, who has been active in the TV-Turnoff Effort, writes movingly about her experiences and feelings as a TV-B-Gone owner:

I own a TV-B-Gone. Actually, I have owned two - I gave the first one away to someone who really wanted it and "needed" it right away. I carry it with me in my backpack, always. It's very cool and I love it. It fills me with unholy glee.

That said, I never use it.

Oh, I'm tempted, and not just by public TVs. I'd like to walk around my neighborhood at night, using it to turn off other people's TVs at home! But I don't, because I think what we need most is open discussion. So when I go to the Red Cross to donate blood and the stupid TV is on while I'm waiting for the interview, instead of secretly turning it off, I tell somebody who works there that I don't like having the TV going. And if enough other people say the same thing, then maybe they'll get rid of it.

I had an experience a year ago in a San Diego hotel breakfast room/lobby where the humongous TV was always on with the insipid unending morning "news" show, and it's the only noise. During a brief period in which I was the only one there, I went up and turned the TV off. When the next group of people came in (and the TV was off), they started talking to each other! I met a figure skater from Vancouver, and another family with kids with whom I exchanged some food ideas. It was a perfect short story version of how TV inhibits community. If I'd really had courage, I'd have gone up and turned the TV off while other people were present.

So, having the discussion is one way to run a revolution. Maybe just having the TVs mysteriously turned off is an equally useful way of running the same revolution. Maybe that's worth some discussion too. Maybe someone will convince me that I should use mine.

Civic energy crackles in Hillsdale

For a community that has no formal government, no independent status, no regular funding and no assured support from the city, Hillsdale has a civic agenda that is worthy of any incorporated, self-governing community.

It was all on display last night when 15 of us met as the Hillsdale Alliance, a quarterly check-in on what our Hillsdale organizations are up to.

We represented the neighborhood association, the business community, school administrations and PTAs, high school student groups, the library, the farmers market and others.

The list of activities was staggeringly ambitious.

Students at Wilson are organizing a diversity cultural night for April 21st.

St. Andrews Church, other congregations and Neighborhood House are planning a huge food drive called Southwest Hope.

The neighborhood association is holding planning charrettes to create a civic plaza with solar paneled roofing. And efforts are moving ahead for a new community garden in Stephens Creek Park.

Wilson High School is using volunteers and students to develop a campus master plan.

The Farmers Market will hold a fund-raising Winter Feast on Feb. 18.

Neighborhood House has convened quarterly meetings with Southwest religious leaders.

Efforts are underway to bring a summer concert to the amphi-theatre bowl behind Rieke Elementary School.

Volunteer emergency responders are being trained as Neighborhood Emergency Teams (NETS) to assist if a disaster, such as an earthquake or terrorist attack, strikes.

The Rieke school community continues to bolster enrollment, all in an effort to ward off closure by the school district. School advocates report that their main selling point is the strength of the Hillsdale neighborhood.

Students at Robert Gray are rehearsing for their production of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." Meanwhile, plans for the school's annual multi-cultural fair (Feb 27th) move forward.

The Hillsdale Alliance itself is working on establishing a Hillsdale Community Foundation that will help pay for future projects. The Alliance also is working on setting up its own news web site.

Volunteer work crews will start clearing out ivy in Himes Park this month.

And lobby groups are inviting City Commissioners on tours here in hopes that the City will help with much of the above...and stop planting utility poles in our sidewalks (yes, it's happening again!)

Not be forgotten, if you have a half hour to spare, leaders have organized a candle-light protest of the escalation of American involvement in Iraq...tonight, 6 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the corner of Sunset and Capitol Highway.

Where in this famously vibrant city is more happening than in Hillsdale?

Umpqua Bank eyes Hillsdale for "store"

Portland-based Umpqua Bank is said to be giving serious consideration to opening a branch in Hillsdale.

Well, not exactly a branch, because Umpqua prefers to call its branches "stores."

Hillsdale's Umpqua "store" could end up where the abandoned Estby gas station is according to my source. The gas station is slated for demolition in the new year.

If Umpqua does open a branch in Hillsdale, it would join Key Bank and The Bank of America in the town center.

Umpqua's "store" concept is meant to differentiate its branches and give them a more "community feel."

An Umpqua outlet in Hillsdale would be the bank's fifth in Portland.

WE told them so!

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Friday recounted an "honor roll" of celebrity politicians who opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start. The title of the column was "They told you so."

Frankly, they didn't tell a lot of us anything we didn't already fervently believe.

We were doing our own "telling."

So let's praise our own honor roll, which is too long to recite here. Thousands marched and chanted peacefully through the streets of downtown Portland to protest the invasion, both before and after the tragedy.

Here in Hillsdale, as early as the fall of 2002, a group of us marched every Sunday from Hillsdale and back. Our most senior walker was in her 80s. Several children joined our walks.

The "Peace Walkers," as we called ourselves, were heartened by dozens of motorists who honked encouragement. The children took particular pleasure in counting the honkers. "That's 76!" "We're up to 93!"

Of course we endured a handful of pro-war drivers, some of whom actually stopped in the middle of Capitol Highway to rant at us. I sometimes wonder what they are thinking now.

After the invasion, we laid plans for the 2004 elections and started "Hillsdale Votes!" to register and turn out voters here. We did so regardless of political affiliation, although the large majority were Democrats.

The surge in registrations from 2004 carried over into 2006. Obviously many who registered to vote for Bush in 2004 used their power this year to vote against the war and for a new Congress controlled by the Democrats.

The photo shows some of the placards we carried on those walks. They are a reminder of just how much work needs to be done.