Baked Beans Build Community

By Susan Clark, co-author, Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home

As we head into town meeting time here in Vermont, it’s time to say a word about food.

The late Weston Cate, a venerable town moderator and historian from East Montpelier, said it most succinctly: “I am convinced that more progress is made in the presence of food than could possibly be made otherwise.”

We know that the best-attended New England town meetings serve food. We also know that while some of us are organizers or orators, others of us build community with different skills entirely – and cooking provides different members of the community a chance to shine.

But there’s more. Professional mediators and facilitators know that “breaking bread” together is also a critical tool for bringing people’s minds closer.

After two people, or a group of people, have talked too long on an issue, eventually they can’t hear each other anymore. Their brains shut down -- it’s just human nature. But when we stop trying to get through to each other, and connect over something else – even if it’s just “Hey, this is good mac and cheese!” -- the listening channels relax and open up again.

Professional facilitators know that they can use all the flip-charts and power-point tools they have, but the real break-throughs often get made during the breaks.

In some communities and organizations that are trying to streamline their meetings for efficiency, sometimes food breaks and potluck dinners fall by the wayside. We lose this opportunity to slow down and connect at our peril. 

When I was working on a book about Vermont town meetings in 2005 (All Those In Favor: Rediscovering The Secrets of Town Meeting and Community), I heard a lot about food. Here’s a comment I received from Patty Haskins, who was Town Clerk in Pittsfield, which is typical of the stories I heard in many Vermont towns:

“Virginia Colton's baked beans are done in an electric cooker right at the Town Hall, and it is a two-day-long process. When you arrive at Town Meeting on Tuesday morning, the meeting room is filled with the aroma and warmth of those baked beans. The potluck luncheon is a wonderful social time for town residents after a long cold winter. Local politicians, reporters and photographers try to make their appearance at Pittsfield Town Meeting shortly before lunch so that they can also partake in the luncheon.”  

Here’s the recipe. Have a great meeting!

Colton Farm Baked Beans

Serves: 75+

Cooking time: 4-5 hours on slow.

This amount is for Town Meeting Dinner.

10 lbs Soldier Beans (notice the “soldier” on each bean)

Sort over, wash, and soak overnight. Then parboil until skins separate.

Add (in same water):

2 qts Grade B maple syrup

4 Tbsp salt

2 Tbsp dry mustard

Stir carefully, then add:

4 large onions, scored down two ways. Place one onion in each corner of cooker.

Score 1 lb. of lean salt pork or slab bacon to the rind and put into the middle of beans in cooker.

Set control at 250 degrees and cook 4-5 hours or until done. Along the last, remove the cover so beans can brown.

Community Responders

This piece first appeared as a radio commentary on Vermont Public Radio on December 5, 2012

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, writer, educator and commentator Susan Clark is struck by the extent to which many of the best and first responders have been local.

From Brooklyn down to the Jersey Shore, Sandy has left its mark. But now, stories abound of community groups shoveling sand out of living rooms, feeding and housing the homeless, and arranging online help through listserves and crowdfunding. Somehow, communities have married the best of old-fashioned neighborliness to 21st century networking --  resulting in a steady flow of local energy against a sea of devastation.

Federal help is still critical. State and local governments can’t respond alone to disasters of this scale. As comedian Steven Colbert quipped sarcastically, “Who better to respond to what’s going on inside its own borders than the state whose infrastructure has just been swept out to sea?”

But when physical infrastructure is swept away, it reveals another layer of community:  its civic infrastructure. And just as storms have a way of revealing deferred maintenance on bridges and levies, disasters also teach us the cost of neglecting civic participation, neighborly communication, and a strong citizen decision-making process – qualities that FEMA and the Red Cross simply cannot replace.

Given that our world is likely to be threatened by more Katrinas, Irenes, and Sandys, it’s time to appreciate not just our federal government agencies, but our own, local, governance abilities.

Community democratic structures that are inclusive, deliberative, and empowered are a critical way to build trust and social capital. And in turn, those constructive personal relationships reinforce a functioning democracy. It’s an upward, virtuous spiral. That’s why a key recommendation in many U.S. cities’ emergency preparedness plans is that people get to know their neighbors. Social capital saves lives.

Increasingly, communities understand that the best investment against crisis is to strengthen citizen leadership. Reliance on "experts," a leftover from the industrial revolution, is giving way to decentralized, bottom-up strategies that reward innovation and information sharing. Governments and citizens who collaborate, working less like a hierarchy and more like a wiki, create more responsive and resilient communities.

In recent decades, “citizenship” has too often meant just being a consumer of policy, or a spectator of political showmanship. But when we’re treated as collaborative problem solvers, we show the value of local engagement. Vermonters are accustomed to governing themselves with town meetings and empowered school and town boards; and after Irene, Vermonters dove in immediately to take responsibility.  

Sandy is revealing similar stories: at least at the local level, Americans haven’t lost the key skills of leadership. Creative, collaborative decision making, leading to well targeted action – these are the qualities we want in our governments.

Government is not a “they” but a “we.” And the skills we gain by governing ourselves year-in and year-out are powerful tools in a crisis. One of the most creative, low-cost ways to protect against problems — be they meteorological, social, or even political — is to empower community decision-making. We build community best by working together, over time, on common issues—in other words, local, sustained, slow democracy.

You can listen to this commentary here.

Heart, Soul and Courage in Essex

“Villages,” “towns,” “cities” – the boundaries between them are just lines on a map to most of us. In Chittenden County, Vermont., for instance, most shoppers and commuters don’t even notice as they cross from the “Town” of Essex to the “Village” of Essex.

The story is different, however, for those who keep these two distinct but overlapping municipalities running. Leaders have long struggled with how best to coordinate the governing boards, volunteer committees and local services of Essex Town and Essex Village. Old habits die hard, especially if they’re a couple of hundred years old. The two municipalities have long debated whether to merge, separate, or find better ways to collaborate (the most recent, contentious vote was in 2005) -- but no resolution has been found in over 50 years of tension. And ultimately, many argue, the lack of a shared vision may have caused missed opportunities.

Meanwhile, Essex is growing; indeed, as home to about 20,000, Essex Town and Village comprise the second largest community in Vermont. In addition, demographic changes, with a diversity of new Americans finding homes here, add to the complexity. Clearly, it’s time for a new way to talk.

Starting this month, area residents are ready to try exactly that. With help from the Orton Family Foundation, Essex is launching a two-year, citizen-based initiative to celebrate their history, identify common values, and search for a unified vision. They’re calling it “Heart and Soul” planning.

Essex is not alone. It is one of the hundreds if not thousands of communities in the past decade to take on complex issues with new tools that fit under the umbrella of “dialogue and deliberation.” They range from Portsmouth, N.H., where a ten-year stalemate over school redistricting was solved by citizens; to downtown Chicago, where neighborhood deliberations helped alleviate crime; to eight council districts in New York City, where citizens are actually creating the budgets for local parks and open space.

Each of these communities is using a 21st century, breakthrough recipe: neighborhood conversations and community-wide deliberation processes, aided by citizen-powered research and communication. Through the slow and inclusive process of listening, identifying values, weighing trade-offs among a full range of options, and linking their discussions to real action, communities are finding sustainable solutions to problems that many had thought were beyond resolution.

The process is neither liberal nor conservative; in fact, it would be a stretch to call it political at all. Here, we can leave behind polarizing left-right labels so prevalent in national politics, and look at real-world solutions to real-world problems, right here at home. There is no pre-ordained answer; this is an open invitation for neighborly conversation, with all ideas welcome.

It won’t be easy or quick – Essex is launching on real, slow democracy. But, although “Heart and Soul” planning may sound idealistic, the truth is more down-to-earth. Communities are using these strategies because they work.

And there’s an added bonus: researchers have found that when we are involved in people-powered deliberations, both citizenship and communities can be strengthened in unexpected ways.

• People who have participated in deliberations often go on to increase their community engagement – increase voting rates, volunteering, and interest in the news and community issues.

• Deliberation can strengthen our sense of community and respect, helping us look beyond stereotypes and reducing problems of marginalization.

• We all know that in this age of sound bites and position statements, an open mind can be hard to find. But studies show that deliberation can make us more open to new information – allowing new solutions to emerge.

• Long after the issue of the day is resolved, deliberation can have lasting effects, improving people’s ability to collaborate, communicate, and solve future problems.

There’s another bonus: many researchers have noticed a link between citizen involvement and the local economy. A 2011 report by the National Conference on Citizenship reported a correlation between citizen engagement and community resilience against unemployment. Researchers posit that the link may be due to multiple factors, including:

• transferable skills (developing leadership and deliberation skills is valuable in the workplace);

• improved information flow;

• enhanced social networking (we hire people we know);

• increased interpersonal trust (trust is critical to business associations and investing);

• higher performing democracy (active citizens demand and support excellence in governance).

Essex is launching on this project to move beyond long-standing, troublesome issues. But with the help of the heart, soul and courage of village and town residents, the community’s efforts will pay dividends. Essex will not only create a clearer vision, but a stronger, more sustainable community.

This piece first appeared as an op-ed in the Essex (Vt.) Reporter on October, 4, 2012.

Women as Town Moderators

​​(This commentary first appeared on Vermont Public Radio on March 6, 2012.) 

Susan Clark, town moderator of Middlesex, attended a training for moderators recently. She couldn’t help notice a change in the people Vermonters are electing to lead their town meetings.

Vermonters have traditionally elected men to run their town meetings. I’ve often joked that the best thing about the town moderator’s training is that there’s never a line in the ladies’ room.

But increasingly, women are being elected to town offices, and this year it finally happened. We heard a presentation on some particularly gnarly aspects of Robert’s Rules, we took a break, and there it was! Three women ahead of me in line to powder our noses.

As I chatted with my fellow female moderators, we pondered the new trend. First, kudos to the women’s movement. In my mother’s day, women weren’t even allowed to have their own checking accounts. Now we’re facilitating multi-million dollar budget decisions.

It also might indicate that we’re making decisions differently. As the field of dialogue and deliberation has become established in recent years, scholars are proving what most Vermont towns have known for centuries: moderators need more than rules and a loud voice. And some of the skills needed are those that women are especially good at.

Linguistical studies have shown that for most women, verbal communication is primarily about relationships. A good moderator listens carefully, to help people formulate their thoughts into a motion and get their work done. And a moderator is a good “storyteller”—to describe the decision-making and what voting “aye” or “nay” means in each case. Robert’s Rules haven’t changed much, but the way we apply them is nuanced, and a woman’s touch doesn’t hurt.

A few years ago, I was in Glarus, Switzerland, at their open-air, canton-wide meeting. Switzerland is the only other place besides New England that holds town meetings. As the sun glinted off the snow-covered peaks towering around the town square, I felt a thrill of excitement when the assembly elected its first female moderator in its 700-year-history—a huge symbolic step for women.

But later, I was chatting with a Swiss bureaucrat who burst my bubble. The reason the Swiss were electing women moderators, he told me, is because power is becoming more centralized. The work at the town and canton level is less important. Essentially, in his view, local issues were becoming so trivial that they were women’s work.

Ouch.

Sexism aside, my bureaucratic friend is correct. The historical trend has been toward centralized power. But I think this historical trend might be just that — historical.

Ecological and economic realities are making it clear that more citizen involvement – not less – will be needed to find solutions. More and more, communities are creating energy committees, public-private initiatives, and other creative local solutions to a growing global mess. The pendulum is swinging back. As the movement toward local food, local energy, and local economies grows in strength, we will need a healthy, well-trained civic infrastructure to respond.

Vermont’s town meeting tradition has trained us well. And our town moderators, male and female, will be prepared — noses metaphorically powdered, and ready for action.

You can listen to this commentary  here.

Emergent Social Change

This commentary first appeared on Vermont Public Radio on October 20, 2011. 

As thousands of protesters occupy Wall Street and public spaces across the country, Americans are discussing how to fix our economy. Commentator Susan Clark is fascinated not just by the issues, but also the process that “Occupy Wall Street” is bringing into the public eye.

The “Occupy Wall Street” protesters have been roundly criticized for not being able to say what they want. But really? Come on. Everyone knows what they want. They’re not occupying the shoe store. They’re occupying Wall Street. Due to corporate greed, and flawed government regulation, 1% of Americans now have a wildly disproportional percentage of the wealth – and the protesters are calling themselves the other 99%. 

It's obvious what they want. What’s not obvious, at least not yet, is how they think they—or, statistically, we—should get it.

Traditional organizers worry that “Occupy Wall Street” is doing it upside down—first you define your demands, then you protest. But that might be because they aren’t part of the wiki generation.

Technology today transfers information at speeds, and in interconnected ways, unimaginable a few years ago. The new tools—Wikis! Blogs! Tweets!—aren’t only ubiquitous and effective. They’re also changing the way we think.

For today’s wiki-style organizers, every connection is an end in itself. The Millennial Generation, in particular, values simply fostering connections and watching where they go—confident that great new ideas will emerge.

“Emergence” is the term used by systems thinkers to describe the phenomenon when many local collaborations produce global patterns. The people occupying Wall Street—and more recently, about 50 cities and 80 college campuses on 3 continents—are all part of the same, emerging wave.

The same way that schools of fish or flocks of birds move in sync, these emerging meta-level patterns are naturally self-organized and not under any central control. There’s a reason that they’re hard to define: When people work together, our efforts aren’t simply the total of your work plus mine, but also the vibrant synergy created by the interaction. Aristotle said it first: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Researchers at Stanford call it “working wikily”: an emergent, bottom-up style of collaboration and decision-making named after wiki web sites (such as Wikipedia) where anyone can contribute or edit information.

The Wall Street protesters aren’t just picketing—although that’s a good old tool to grab a place at the table. The diverse participants are convening in consensus groups to determine their long-term goals. Consensus is time-consuming. They may not succeed before winter forces them to disperse. But keep an eye on where their energy takes them from here. It’s a look into our future.

Increasingly businesses, non-profits, and, slowly but surely, governments are switching to more decentralized, self-organized strategies that reward innovation and information sharing. This is where the new solutions will come from. Those who continue trying to hold all the power at the “command-and-control” center will be left behind.

In other words: get used to it. Maybe not the sign-waving and yelling, but the slow, unabashedly public process of saying “we have something in common. Let’s work together to find out how to move forward.” This is what a decentralized, network-based culture looks like. Or, in the words of the protesters: “This is what democracy looks like.”

You can listen to this radio commentary  here.

Under Political Siege

​This commentary first appeared on Vermont Public Radio on October 27, 2010. 

In the lead up to Election Day, political battles are raging ever hotter. Commentator Susan Clark suggests ways that voters can avoid a bunker mentality.

Every day, we’re bombarded with political ads. Even the so-called facts are overwhelming – candidates refer to so many contradictory studies, I feel like I’m under siege.

I like to think I’ll battle it out and choose candidates who best reflect my views. But according to new research in cultural cognition, I might not even bother. If I’m a typical American, I’ll find simpler ways to pick a winner.

Before voters even consider a candidate’s platform, we’ve received dozens of coded messages. We each have our own cultural orientation interpreting candidates’ signals. We hear a candidate’s views on one hot-button issue – or notice whether a candidate pronounces words as we do, or even what his wife wears – and we might allow these to stand in for learning his views on the deeper economic, environmental or social issues we thought we cared most about.

This “cognitive cuing” has happened since time immemorial. But surely we can override such tribal urges. Can’t we?

In 2006, brain researchers at Emory University wired up some voters to find out. A group of self-described Republicans were subjected to unflattering information about Republican candidates. According to their MRIs, the Republicans’ brains under-processed information that contradicted their bias – in fact, the pre-frontal cortex, responsible for conscious reasoning, hardly even fired. Then, when shown information boosting their candidates, the emotional center of their brains lit up -- essentially rewarding themselves for ignoring input that contradicted their beliefs.

And liberals, bad news -- the same, pathetic results were true for Democrats’ brains.

Most of us won’t question a candidate’s so-called facts – even if they’re increasingly unbelievable – as long as his or her hairstyle and glasses look trustworthy to our demographic.

That’s why some political professionals reduce issues to polarizing extremes. We’re easier to manipulate when our brains are shut down.

But happily, people of good will can also use this research. Because it turns out that the great majority of Americans don’t live at polarized extremes. Most of us want the same things from our political system – security and economic health. We’re busy, thank you very much, but we agree on a lot more than we disagree on.

Organizers who want real, citizen-based decisions are learning to frame issues very carefully. High-quality deliberation elicits perspectives from right, left, and center. So: in a conversation about, say, energy, we’ll talk about “climate change”; but we’ll also talk about “energy security.”

Then, we’ll skip the grandstanding, and engage in face-to-face deliberation. Where respectful, open-minded dialogue occurs, research shows that humans can overcome cultural biases. We’ve all seen it happen – a new neighbor, a fresh-faced exchange student, or a conversation at town meeting changes our mind or expands our world.

We’ve can’t live in this no-man’s-land of stereotypes and sound bites. We’ve reached a sort of Cold War of political organizing – both sides have escalated equally, and it’s a war no one will win. I’m ready to tear down the wall -- and start talking.

You can listen to this radio commentary here.