What has been on my mind...

The following is actually an excerpt from a short essay I wrote for school, in response to the following quote: “…one of the great errors in most policymaking maps is the false assumption that systems can produce care. Care resides in the domain of the associational community.” It just appeared to me to be the most succinct, fluid and personal words I have been able to describe for the way I see the world. Enjoy.

"Often in hard times, people attempt to identify a scapegoat. It is very tempting, especially knowing macro-practice theory and the inequalities of the social system in this country, to place blame on the system as a whole. We can find faults at the neighborhood, city, county, state and federal level. However, the when we operate on this “assumption that systems can produce care,” we are dehumanizing the people that make up the system. We are forgetting the individual and collective power of community residents, and we do it to our detriment. It may feel satisfying to accuse the system of all our problems, but at the end of the day, the problems still exist. We remain unhappy and disheartened by the social issues we have to face, especially is a field as challenging as social work.

When McKnight uses the term “associational community” he is referring to our human power, as individuals and in collectives. When the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative began, it was proposed from a top-down approach to the problems faced by the community. Outside experts and sponsors came into the community and said, “We see poverty, we can fix it. Just follow our rules.” What they didn’t realize was that their intent to offer support and resources was invaluable, but their desire to create the terms and conditions ignored the needs of the community. They were assuming that they knew what the community needed and took action accordingly. No neighborhood resident, who might have been viewed as a “real” expert on poverty, was consulted.

Accusing the system of failing and then getting angrier when the system attempts to correct itself through its own idea of laws and regulations, does nothing to mobilize our sense of agency. It leaves us feeling powerless. The Dudley Street Initiative reorganized to become successful by using a simple, logical principle that a classmate of mine brings up in discussion regularly: two heads are better than one. In the world of community organizing, the more different the heads are the better. I think by minimizing the macro, we remember that we are all people; individual, different and human. We look at each other less in terms of who represents the system and who represents the people, and we focus on what we can bring to the table. We focus on the issues, not on agendas, ideologies or inequalities. We care for each other, and we see our humanity in one another. And we make change."