NWSCDC

Really interesting article in the Sunday, April 10^th New York Times Week in Review section entitled  "Obama, Searching For a Vision: : Above the fray, the president struggles to define liberalism in an era of debt”.

Like other Civil Rights era organizations, community development corporations, like ours, are direct off shoots of the liberal/progressive movement that believed that building citizen based organizations could solve various social problems using federal funds and leverage.

The first CDC was launched in 1965. Northwest Side CDC was launched in 1983. We believed then and now, that neither the public sector nor the private sector alone had the political will or the financial incentive to fix the problems of inadequate housing or improving economic development of poor urban communities. Like ours.

So imagine the first community organizer president is struggling to define what to do in the 21^st century within a set of values he presumably shares with us yet facing far different constraints. We face the same economic problems as the president, but without the need to compromise with anyone to get stuff done. We either get funded or we don’t.

In an era of downsizing, diminished expectations, debt and dwindling government resources, on which we depend, no wonder many in the non-profit community are being challenged right out of business.

Conservatives have driven the narrative of American life for the better part of 30 years. Since Ronald Reagan, no one can raise taxes with paying the price at the polls. Government resources go down, programs, services and employment go away, and a city like Milwaukee is faced with what to do with a government in Madison, openly hostile, and the rest of the state that despises most of the people who live here. Any direction you look, there is not much blue sky to see. I simply don’t believe that cutting regulations and declaring ‘Wisconsin is open for business’ will grow this economy. I just don’t.

So we have had to define ourselves, our methods and strategies. It is clearly a time for what is known as “adaptive leadership”. Adaptive leadership is a really different way of thinking. It is far-reaching rather than technical. Funding the same old stuff year after year is technical and there is no more money for it, anyway.

We are clearly branches from the liberal tree that was planted in 1965. We are faced with a storm of backlash for what we do what we stand for, our values and finally, lack of funding. Back in the day, there was enough funding for everyone. The Tea Party types are not competing for our programs. They want them ended.

Our friends warn we have to do more with less. This is utter nonsense. We only do less with less. We need to be smarter. That doesn’t cost much.