Undercurrents. Steve Davis

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СКАЧАТЬ workers and refugees, and my own blithe detachment from the causes of, or solutions to, this crisis, had all been challenged. The boy with whom I'd played soccer was not so different from me. In fact, we were just a few years apart in age, both strong‐willed and athletic, and I had once considered becoming a doctor too. He clearly considered himself my equal in a very unequal world. And now the Hmong man would be denied a chance to rebuild his life in the United States, simply by dint of a gear‐shift question posed by a self‐important lawyer. These thoughts swirled in my mind, upending my ideas around “us or them” and “survivors or victims,” as it became increasingly clear that the differences between us came down to little more than chance. There was nothing exceptional about me as an American, nothing more than privilege conferred by the luck of circumstance.

      Now I wondered about the aid workers. I'd been impressed by their relentless dedication and generosity, even when their task involved making difficult decisions about individual futures. Yet I couldn't ignore the nagging sense that easing people's day‐to‐day suffering, while a necessary Band‐Aid, did not really address their underlying problems. Nor did it provide a sustainable solution. It wouldn't change the political conditions that forced families to flee their countries, nor the economic duress they suffered, nor the government systems that tossed them around like faceless cargo. As we left the camp, I kept asking myself, was there anything a person like me could do to change this?

      Back in the States, I would work extensively on refugee‐related programs and interview hundreds of applicants for resettlement, learning on the job to recognize the many forces at work in these stiff conversations. Sure, sometimes people lie or shade the truth, but often their memories are tangled by anxiety. Our bureaucratic questionnaires rarely got at the rich complexity of their lives or made room to note the heart‐rending sacrifices they'd made and the difficulty of their journeys. Yet even back in that Thai camp, I grasped the basic unfairness. And I sensed a few other things too: our world is filled with outrageous injustices, I was going to commit time and talent to addressing a few of them, and every step of the way would be fraught with difficult decisions.

Forty years later, it's clear that the seeds of my approach to activism took root in that camp. My work has almost always been behind the scenes. I've never been one to storm the castle gates. Except for marching in a few demonstrations in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, I haven't spent much time shouting in the streets. And unlike other, more celebrated activists, I have not designed a game‐changing social innovation, discovered a breakthrough scientific formula, started a powerful social movement, or given away hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet, by partnering with many like‐minded colleagues around the globe, I've still been lucky to contribute to the improvement of millions of lives through a roll‐up‐your‐sleeves‐and‐get‐things‐done form of social activism: practical activism.

      There is no simple definition for practical activism. It's an approach to the work of making our world fairer, focused on long‐term systemic change. Unlike building homes for the needy or handing out food or medicine on the front lines of a humanitarian crisis, practical activism is often invisible, indirect, and unsexy—aimed at shifting public policies, negotiating partnerships, and innovating to improve government systems. Much of the work is geared toward building networks that develop and introduce new approaches or services, and, more recently, new technologies. But all of these endeavors stem from the same motivation: addressing inequities that cause too much pain and hardship for too many people.

This book is about the powerful forces that will drive practical activism forward over the coming decades. It is offered as a hopeful assessment of the challenges and opportunities that confront us, and the ability of social activists to do even more toward improving our planet and the lives of its people. It isn't a diatribe about all the things that are wrong. Nor does it offer a specific prescription for radical change. I haven't chronicled the biographies of inspiring activists at work—though there are many in these pages. Rather, this book focuses on five large themes powering activism today. I have written it in hopes that those who want to help others might find a vein of inspiration to mine for practical, meaningful solutions to the problems that confront us all.

      Though I approach this work as a disciplined, often technical and nuanced, undertaking, every bit of it—from meetings with government officials, to conference calls with funders, to conversations with health providers in the field—is still rooted in sheer outrage. It's about our collective outrage and, really, anger at the enormous inequity and unfairness in this world. It's about how we try to channel that outrage into quieter efforts to find solutions by connecting the dots between governments and people, organizations and communities. And it's about scaling those solutions to get real stuff done, for real people.

      Consequently, a central tenet of practical activism is building bridges, usually behind the scenes. It sometimes requires forging alliances between unlikely bedfellows—setting aside preconceptions and refusing to be dissuaded by political differences—in order to reach a common goal. My practical activism has launched me into advocating for foreign aid with staunch “America First” politicians. It has put me in front of Wall Street investors to explain why access to education, healthcare, and a higher standard of living in rural Africa are in their interest. It has led to quiet work on HIV prevention in countries where gay relationships are illegal. For the truly practical activist, opportunities to build bridges surface again and again.

All of us, whatever we do, are working within the context of powerful forces that shape our outcomes, though we may not always be aware of them. So, too, in activism. There are dynamics—economic, political, and cultural—operating beneath the surface of our daily lives that have enormous influence in dictating the world's agenda. This book explores five of those undercurrents and the ways that activists—from the aspiring to the seasoned—can channel them to build a more just and productive planet.

      The word undercurrents refers to deep and mighty tides invisible to a person navigating on the surface of an ocean. Undercurrents do not always flow in the same direction as the waves on top of the water; indeed, sometimes these underwater channels can pull us backward. But often, they surge forward, propelling the way water drifts, or landscapes form, or social change moves. For the purposes of this book, I am talking about undercurrents that are creating energy and positive momentum to push us forward; macrotrends that will shape the work of activists through this decade and beyond. While these forces have rhythms that are sometimes inconsistent—or possess the potential for negative consequences—each of the undercurrents discussed in this book represents a macrotrend that I believe is vigorous, intractable, and generally positive for our collective pursuit of improving the world we live in.

      The five undercurrents are:

      1 Pyramid to diamond: Global economies are moving away from the old model of a pyramid, with mainly low‐income people and countries at the bottom and a few wealthy ones at the top, toward a fat diamond with vastly more people joining the middle class and living better, realizing powerful new possibilities to link entrepreneurialism with improved well‐being.

      2 Communities are the customers: Communities are increasingly becoming customers with agency and voice, rather than passive recipients of aid and social change, increasingly playing more of a role in shaping their own futures with community‐ and human‐centered activism.

      3 Leveling the playing field: Improving equity—whether based around gender, ethnicity, or sexuality—is radically reshaping the field of social activism.

      4 Digital disruption: Data and digital tools will continue to bring valuable new capabilities to our world, revolutionizing everything from health care to education to conservation—even as they present daunting new challenges for activists to navigate.

      5 The surprisingly sexy middle: Adapting and scaling innovations for widespread impact, the complex middleware that has often been ignored as one of the less glamorous aspects of social change is becoming more important and, surprisingly, more sexy.

      Understanding СКАЧАТЬ