At squareONE learning, Stephen Calhoun cites this thread and posts under “Folk Anthropology†several good points about the civic and energetic engagement practice that informs much of the LO and the Lakewood Visionary Alignment.
Calhoun notes:
“The Visionary Alignment is about marshalling citizen-centric inquisitive resources for the sake of developing community understanding. When I was a part of the project close to its inception in 2005, I suggested that if a community implemented enough informal anthropological capability, its energetics would be transformed and, over time, the deep processes of relationship between and among residents, institutions would also change. A second supposition is: this would also alter the ecology of the city’s socio-cultural and economic and political economies......
Finally Calhoun cites this very thread:
“This long discussion is extremely important and worth close attention. It is possible that Lakewood is among the very few communities in the US with the chutzpah and commitment and devotion to proceed to dialog openly and with a certain genius about some of the most difficult issues post-industrial suburbs are faced with today.â€Â
For more:
http://squareone-learning.com/blog/
By way of recent practice, I want to share an incident, one consistent with the approach we developed early on with Dr. Calhoun, one that seems particularly relevant to issues on this thread.
After the Global Warming Debate, I was sitting outside Madison Branch Library with Jim O’Bryan, Dan Slife and David Lay, when the young lad who been trespassing two weeks ago in an instance of schoolyard folk anthropology, investigative reporting and citizen surveillance, walked past on his way to the library.
I knew his name and called him by name to say hello.
I introduced Dan Slife and mentioned that the LO wanted to do a story on him and his friends who hang in Birdtown. He asked me if "you were there in the park," because he thought I looked different in the LO hoodie and Yankee cap than in my customary library suit and tie.
I said, “Of course, who else could it be.â€Â
I asked him “What can we do to help keep you on the right path.â€Â
I said was worried about him trespassing at night, because a robbery had taken place on Halsted and I didn’t want his to be a suspect.
He said he was a suspect, and that the police had already talked to him.
I said that Lakewood is a good neighborhood and he’s in a good place. I said I wanted to help him to make the most of his life chances in Lakewood.
Jim O’Bryan inquired if he would be interested in delivering the Lakewood Observer in Birdtown for a little bit of spending money.
Jim gave him his card and said to call him if he was interested.
The LO media platform for folk anthropology, neighborhood spirit intervention, story capture and transgression control remains a useful tool for raising the sense of belonging, friendship and, I would hope, community order.
We will see what happens.
I am encouraging Dan Slife and Nadal Eadah to join me in Birdtown this summer as we hang in Birdtown, talk, get to know the kids, document good deeds and stories for the LO and insist on the neighborhood norms that make Lakewood a good place.
Sean, you are welcome as as well.
Civic journalists, folk anthropologists, teachers, librarians....
The more the merrier.
In fact the model of folk anthropology and civic investigative journalism could be applied to a measure of moral pressure to any disorderly street.
We worked with law enforcement to bust Brother Petty. There's no telling what happens when people start talking and listening carefully to one another.
Kenneth Warren
