Leadership and Political Change the Wellstone Way

Jeff Blodgett, the founding director of Wellstone Action, a national center for training and leadership development, opened his convocation speech last Friday by recalling his own experience of studying with Paul Wellstone at Carleton College during the early 1980s. He described Wellstone’s admiration for strong individual conviction and the view that one’s work should involve what one really believes in. Blodgett thus described the model of leadership and change embodied by Wellstone, noting that although it was not unique to his philosophy, it certainly made him a distinctive force in leadership development.

In emphasizing the issue of power and more importantly “social power” – being able to accomplish collectively with people holding similar interests – Blodgett referred to the principles of the Wellstone triangle, which embody three core concepts: community organizing, electoral politics, and public policy change. He emphasized that all three of these “realms” must be present in order to have great social power, stating that he associates “every successful social movement to this model”, citing the Civil Rights Movement as an example. The importance of organizing the community lies in strengthening numbers and building bonds; electoral politics involves “deciding who decides” and who is the representative; public policy change presents the fundamental vision that the movement embodied.

Blodgett highlighted the two key players involved in the successful social movement. The first, the leader, is someone “with a following, who moves a gathering from A to B, to gather social power for some end.” He pointed out that we mostly focus on the leaders – usually the party candidates, the spokespeople – and do not know about the other essential component: the organizer. These people “are where the rubber hits the road” – in essence helping to identify, support, and guide leaders. Blodgett said that emerging leaders should master qualities of both these players, arguing that the result would be transformational rather than transactional leadership. He defined the latter as simply “doing deals with a focus on maintaining the status quo as opposed to changing it,” while the former entails an inspiring force that “taps into people, empowers leadership, and takes the spotlight off you as the leader and instead on others, harnessing the energy of your following.” He stated that Obama was a great example of both a leader and an organizer, and attributed his recent drop in political performance to the faltering of his transformational energy; he “chose to lead with politics of compromise rather than advocacy,” in the process neglecting his followers because “he turned the ‘Yes We Can’ into ‘Yes I Can.’”

Blodgett focused on three essential qualities that the Wellstone leadership development model fosters. The first, authenticity, requires candidates to “seem real” to their voters. The second is strategy, the act of actually reconciling these two groups of people to a common ground of experiences and values. Blodgett emphasized how essential this is – that “without strategy, authenticity is just about you” and does not focus on the constituents. These two qualities would be worthless, however, without the third quality, “hard work.” Blodgett stated that this may be the most important, that candidates need to understand the superhuman efforts that leadership demands. In the constant need to empower leadership by harnessing grassroots power, galvanizing the voters, and properly channeling their energy, the successful leader must be willing to work hard.

In conclusion, Blodgett highlighted Paul Wellstone's embodiment of authenticity. He recalled that “for some of his voters, they didn’t necessarily agree with him, but liked that they knew where he stood,” summing up how Wellstone effectively built up and then channeled his social power. By stressing that “authenticity is good politics,” Blodgett returned to his strong admiration for conviction, urging us as Carleton students to use our time here to determine our true beliefs, and then head out into the world and work for them.

Stony The Road We Trod

Dr. R. L’Heureux Lewis opened Carleton’s African American History Month convocation with a common statement – that out of all months of the year, the shortest month is chosen for remembrance of the events in black history. The Assistant Professor of Sociology and Black Studies at City College of New York stressed that “Black History Month is more just about African Americans – it’s about all Africans” and remarked that there exists a tendency to “only concentrate on twenty-eight days of Black history, which is insufficient, and should instead be every day of the year to learn and tackle the issues facing blacks and their history and culture.” Lewis stated that these common interpretations have created an environment that only focuses “on the surface of history” – that only the achievements of Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King are acknowledged, without further recognition of the history of Africans as a people. He argued that “the ‘I Have A Dream’ speech is just a small part of the significance” of Black History Month.

Lewis, whose area of expertise is educational inequality in contemporary America, emphasized that despite visible accomplishments – the largest black middle class, the highest number of black students in college in history, and the election of a black president – there are still gaping holes, such as “the widening gap between blacks and whites, and more blacks falling under correctional control.” Lewis argued that these factors all contribute to “a new reality of Jim Crow laws,” and that this manifests itself as a problem with the public, because “We have a leader who is black – but how many black Senators? Don’t let the representation of one illustrate the conditions of many.” Here he segued into the issue of education and how it is “certainly a tragedy that one’s college chances have to be determined by one’s zip-code.” He lamented the problems of the system at large and how “quality education now in 2011 is not a constitutional right,” leading to the current situation in public schooling where an increasing number of black students are separated into failing institutions. Lewis argued that because of this we are “living in an archaic system: in 2011 our educational institutions – public schools – are more segregated than in a Jim Crow cell.”

Another facet of Black History Month on which Lewis focused was the “sanitation of our leaders.” He illustrated the common misconception that “King’s dream was the American dream” and that Americans only know him in the context of his famous walk on Washington but nothing regarding his life’s work or views. The same went for Rosa Parks and her triggering of the Montgomery Bus Boycott; “many people think she was tired that day and refused to give up her seat. She was not tired. She was a lifelong activist, but sadly most of us only graze the surface of history. We neglect the deeper nuances.”

In conclusion, Lewis commented on the role of students and educational institutions such as Carleton. He emphasized one crucial element of creating history, that of the “collective struggle,” noting the common mindset that “we come to college, and all we do is focus on our GPA or securing that internship. But really it’s about the bridges we build here.” He mentioned how the Harlem Children’s Zone, a community-based organization serving thousands of children and parents in New York City, was “built in the dorm rooms of Bowdoin College” and that such a vision “came out of a space just like Carleton.” Lewis contended that here remained the challenge, for “unfortunately we mostly do not have a vision in the first place,” and said that the way to break out of this is to deepen the bonds and relationships we have with different people from various backgrounds.“You must take advantage of dialogues and move out of your comfort zone. If you walk out of Carleton with the same group of friends, then Carleton has failed you,” he said. By inviting us to “struggle collectively for Carleton” and create a new college campus, where “students are connected to love and create like they never had before,” Lewis hoped to see a new legacy of commemorating history begin with us.

Socially Responsible Investing

Amy Domini, founder and CEO of Domini Social Investments, opened her convocation speech with a focus on how to invest with social responsibility in our current world, where amidst “the widening gap between the rich and poor” and a “deteriorating environment”, “large corporations continue getting richer and bigger returns.” The mission of Domini's investment management company is to provide investment vehicles to the socially responsible investor, and she emphasized that shareholders in Domini Funds made a difference in the world by engaging companies on issues such as global warming, sweatshop labor, and product safety. She pointed to how America’s architectural landscape illustrated our rapidly shifting ideals; that “first the churches and religious structures were the tallest buildings, then it became the houses of parliament, and now of course the skyline is occupied by buildings like Pan Am, representing just how the big corporations are dominating our livelihoods.” In this new dynamic, certain changes regarding responsible investment need to be implemented, she said.

Domini emphasized the important role of the investor, stating “how we invest today will shape the future.” In light of that, socially responsible investment focuses on people and the planet, in attempts to “improve standards of investing to meet better than average standards of regard” for those two areas. She said the effort seeks to “generate capital for underserviced and economically disadvantaged people”, thus establishing a dynamic that had previously been neglected in light of increasing profits and financial progression. Domini also noted that role of the shareholder and how they take on “the role of owners, meeting with companies on issues of concern.” This leads to a new development of investment, from what was historically considered to be the community – the immediate hometown – and emerged on a larger stage, involving both the national as well as global participants.

Domini drew upon the Sullivan Principles – two corporate codes of conduct developed in the 70’s in South Africa – as a major example of applying economic pressure in protest of the system of apartheid and substandard corporate social responsibility. Particular foreign companies pursued harsh programs of racial segregation and discrimination for their employees, and after evaluations of their practices, they eventually had to implement changes as a response. In light of this, Domini emphasized the evaluative procedure involving the particular companies her management firm handles. One example she gave was the food industry, where they demand certain standards in the practices of individual companies, and rate them such that “lowering sugar is considered positive, whilst advertising to children is negative.” These evaluations are then used to determine how qualified a company is in practicing socially responsible investment. Domini noted the risks inherent specific industries, stating that “we exclude companies selling addictive products, as well as nuclear powers due to concern, in this day and age, of terrorism.” On that note, she admitted that one of the main challenges is with the energy industry, because of rampant “corruption and damage to native communities” that irresponsible companies ultimately instigate.

In conclusion, Domini noted that the importance of socially responsible investment is gradually “entering the psyche of governments and companies,” thus alerting them to the role of financing in building safe societies. She pointed to a new global status quo, where “annual socially responsible investment reports are produced by over four thousand companies worldwide,” and in many countries the government has released legislation mandating this practice, putting pressure on companies to follow suit with this “universal reporting.” In connecting company management with NGO’s and investors, Domini and her firm “seek solutions to create more thoughtful citizens,” reaffirming the notion that “becoming an investor makes you part of the solution.”

Literature and Professional Value Systems

On Friday 21st of January, Larry Buxbaum, Executive Director of the Hennepin County Bar Association, the largest of Minnesota's twenty-one district bar associations, opened his convocation speech by emphasizing the use of literature to teach values and ethics to professionals in a variety of fields. He stated how the idea of using literature and applying it to professionals has been done as a technique to illustrate values and ethical points, and that it engaged a larger portion of the population, because now non-professionals such as non-lawyer administrative assistants working with the professionals, are able to tell them to get off the ethical high-horse because they do not have monopoly of ethics and values. Buxbaum elaborated by emphasizing two types of literature what one reads, such as plays and poetry, and ones own life experience and stating that the latter allows anyone, regardless of their profession, to examine ethical issues.

He exhorted the audience to carefully examine their rich personal experiences and the value they bring to discussions of ethics. He stressed that using literature does not mean that this is literary criticism we dont need to debate what the author intended to say with every word, but instead highlighted the participatory element; that small groups examining professional literature facilitated the merging of personal experiences, which effectively highlighted ethical values. He referred to the Swedish play The Visit and how it illustrated that concepts of power, justice, and public and group behavior are all very much entwined, allowing its readers to see that our society has been guided by group hysteria and responses. Buxbaum asked whether ethics were constants, or whether they changed over time.

He noted that sometimes professionals are mistaken in thinking that they have a certain monopoly on knowledge of ethics and beliefs, and that this was a pre-sumptuous mentality. He reinforced his notion of the importance of the personal experience, and mentioned how this tied in with the crucial nature of context. This included cultural and temporal context, and he evoked scenes from Baldwin's short-story Sonny's Blues which illustrated how much of its dynamic was a function of context and its effects. In addition, he mentioned Miller's The Crucible and its allegorical reference to McCarthyism, further emphasizing the essential role of context. This segued into the assertion that we sometimes assume that our leaders are ethical just because they are our leaders, and how this proved to be largely incorrect. He thus emphasized that since we know our leaders will be setting the tone for those they lead, we should examine the essence between ethical behavior and leadership, and how to combine them.

Buxbaum concluded that not a day goes by where we don't have a new experience, which leads to introspection and forces us to re-evaluate what we mean by ethical behavior. Through closer examination and teachings of important ethic values illustrated in literature, he hoped this would allow us to grow as leaders, students, and citizens of the world.

Visions of the Gamepocalypse

By default, we clapped for him politely as he approached the lectern. But instead of allowing it to die down, Jesse Schell - CEO of Schell Games and author of the award-winning book The Art of Game Design - motioned for the audience to continue in a steady beat. As the rhythm filled the chapel where guest speakers to the college always spoke, he whipped out a harmonica. And blasted away vivaciously, with closed eyes and tapping feet, shoulders bobbing to the music. This young man was an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He knew we were undergrads; after such a fiery introduction, we knew he knew how to keep us engaged. The audience, though large and enthusiastic, wasn't pushing the limits of a full-house. Indeed I knew many classmates and peers who had heard of this talk by a 'game-designer', but were discouraged to attend by assuming that it was far too technical and esoteric for the average liberal arts student. I had heard of his game-design book once before; had not personally read it, but knew that it wasn't some overly-intellectual, inaccessible realm. And neither was his talk.

Schell opened by discussing how the program he taught at Carnegie Mellon University's Electronic Game Center - which features the slogan "The Graduate program for the Left and Right Brain" - thrived by “bringing together different disciplines to teach them how to be on creative teams.” By emphasizing this need to be interdisciplinary, he commented on such a growing trend in the contemporary world of technology; that the development of the iPhone required both engineers and artists, because with a team of “just engineers it would be too technical and not pretty, but without artists it would only be pretty and not technical enough.” Schell then linked with another “growing trend that has gotten a lot of attention recently,” which was that consumers were increasingly demanding authenticity in their products. He referred to the recent book Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want by Gilmore and Pine II and highlighted that now “as a society we’ve become so technical, that we hunger for something real.”

Schell pointed to the recent explosion of “social games”, commenting on how video games were “reaching out to reality” with systems of virtual achievements for players to obtain and measure progress. He then highlighted a similar pattern in reality; that “game structures” in the form of accumulating points and progress were rapidly appearing in the real world – from credit cards to Starbucks. In arguing that it has become “increasingly difficult to disentangle reality with games”, Schell wondered about the point in time when these two were inseparable. He painted the picture of a scenario that admittedly was not entirely hypothetical: waking up to video game advertisements of big companies; pervasive product placement on toothbrushes and cereal boxes in the form of games; an intricate world where everyone had personalized accounts that stored points and accumulated high-scores from games, which fed back to the consumer by offering rewards and discounts and more promotions. Constant internet - and by association, Facebook - connection was the status quo. More importantly, everything one did - high-scores, new records, increased average point score - appeared on everyone else's live feed. In essence, a lifestyle so ingrained with technology and social networks that everything would be monitored and saved – a livelihood Schell argued could be taken as “either a disgusting nightmare”, or could “encourage us to become better human people”. The former is obvious; constant intrusion of privacy and rights (although today one could ask exactly how much the public is concerned with this, considering Mr. Zuckerberg is the 2010 TIME person of the year...), a Orwellian evocation of surveillance and paranoia. For the latter, Schell purports that there is wiggle-room for the individual - in light of everyone knowing what book he/she reads, what movies he/she watches, what he/she just ate - to improve their lives. In the age of heightened self-consciousness, one would care even more how they appear before the world - especially online. So one might choose McCarthy over Meyer - on the Kindle of course - to impress the circle of literary friends; might choose to watch Bergman instead of Bay (because one can only take so many sophisticated explosions and wailing Decepticons) to satisfy the celluloid junkie buddies.

There is something inherently irresistible about video games. Schell explained this mass appeal; how “they give us clear feedback” alongside “a sense of progress”; how they provide “mental and physical exercise” with “something to satisfy our curiosity”, and of course the possibility of success and the sense of freedom. He then referred to the concept known as the Singularity, describing it as the extent one can accurately predict future trends and events. But with technology becoming more and more pervasive, this window of time is rapidly closing, and that soon “we will reach the Singularity when one will not even be able to predict what will occur within five seconds from now.” Schell discussed how this would inevitably lead many to become "future-blind”, but because the world was changing so quickly, and one could conjecture and fail and then conjecture again, there would also be room to actually practice this art of prediction.

Regarding the ‘Gamepocalypse’ – the scenario mentioned earlier where everything one did was monitored and uploaded to the Internet – Schell described this road as “long a twisted, with many things along the way.” He discussed these at length, such as the role of “microtransactions” and the unprecedented success of Apple’s app store and its one billion downloads, which he argued would change the way big game companies and their conventional, console-based products, would operate in the future. With regards to big names like Playstation and XBOX and the Wii, Schell discussed the sudden emergence of social game networks such as Zynga and Playfish, which he argues present a huge threat to the conventional idea of the game console. With online socializing taking the nation by such a storm, people are much more willing to forgo visual depth and plot of console games - not to mention the cost of paying $30-50 for one - and instead join a Farmville or Mafia Wars fiasco with multiple friends on Facebook for free. And Schell recognized the strain this attitude put onto the big game companies; many were unwilling to be the first to set up to the plate and invest in this new area. But some have already gone there: EA Games (Electronic Arts) laid off 1500 employees to buy Playfish Games for $400 million. Microtransactions are becoming a much more prominent factor in the modern game design industry.

As mentioned earlier, Schell claimed that the road towards the Gamepocalypse was long and complicated. He wasn't going to predict when it would come about. But he was taking note of new factors and aspects springing up along the way. With increased customization, sharing capabilities, geo-tracking and more, games were being rapidly integrated into our daily lives. But regardless of whether it leads to a waking nightmare or a prompt for comprehensive re-evaluation of our lives, Schell believed it “all has to do with people creating things.” Creation using new technologies to achieve particular ends, and having those ends determine what times of people we really were. Artists who create for the sake of the aesthetic? Humanitarians who create to improve the lives of others? Profiteers who create to deepen their pockets? As we become propelled into the twenty-first century and beyond, Schell placed increased emphasis upon that very motivation to create, because when we finally reach the Gamepocalypse, the very stuff of that reality depends on what we want and are willing to do with that new world. And no, it won't be based on how many friends you have on Facebook.