A Greener Eph: Group Centered Leaders (draft)

Group centered leaders facilitate social movements. In some ways they are merely receptors of all the external demands that a group of people makes, but even by receiving that energy they are doing a rare thing. By being open to ideas, to whims, to insights and to diversity, a group centered leader creates a group and gives the group a focal point which can then be pushed.

I came across a conception of leadership very different from the one we usually think of, but it really struck me. The book is written by a sociologist, Kai Erikson, about the coal mining catastrophe in Buffalo Creek in 1972. A critical piece of understanding why this catastrophe was not avoided meant delving into the community as it existed before the slurry dam broke.

The community was described as very tight knit, with family and neighborly ties running deeper than anything most of us know in our transient and wired lives. How then, did the community not rally behind the men who knew something was wrong? There was intense pressure from social norms not to 'rise above the rest', not to name oneself as somehow different from one's neighbors, not to have audacity. It seems odd that 'individuality' is one of the most common traits ascribed to people from Buffalo Creek, but the author points out that things commonly seen as individualistic. A father as being unquestioned head of his family does not necessarily mean he is acting on his own whim so much as answering an outer demand of a role to fill. With social norms like these, leadership can only mean answering to outer demands in a reluctant manner.

The Erikson quotes George Santayana:

Perhaps in the flight of birds...the leader was not really a bold spirit trusting to his own initiative and hypnotizing the flock to follow him in his deliberate gyrations. Perhaps the leader was the blindest, the most dependent of the swarm, pecked in to taking wing before the others and then pressed and chased and driven by a thousand hissing cries and fierce glances whipping him on. Perhaps those majestic sweeps of his, and those sudden drops and turns which seemed so joyously capricious, were really helpless effects, desperate escapes, in an induced somnambulism and universal persecution. Well, this sort of servitude was envied by all the world; at least it was a crowned slavery, and not intolerable. Why not gladly be the creature of universal will, and taste in oneself the quintessence of a general life. After all, there might be nothing to choose between seeming to command and seeming to obey...

Is it possible that campus leaders are merely obeying the pecking and hissing cries of those around them? Is it possible that instead of deciding as an individual to build an activist group, and pour their hearts into that group, they are merely answering and offering ourselves up to the whim's of the crowd?

Every time a fellow student tells me about an idea for a project, I get excited. Sure, they're not all good projects, let alone great ones, but they are not asking me about a specific project, they are asking for confirmation of a role in their community which is rarely offered. The role of their passion. When a person goes from feeling like their contribution is unwelcome, to feeling like they can make things better, then they join the real community. It is our job to make sure they have a community to join.

Saul Alinsky tells the organizer to give people a sense of their own power, create concrete and meaningful changes in people's lives,and change the balance of power. College students are seeking a sense of their own power everywhere, but in so many cases we do not know what that kind of power actually means. Youth are positioned to seek a change in the balance of power, even when we don't know what we mean by power, and because we are seeking to break into the world of adults who have power.

While the above two points deserve a lot more attention, I think the second point is most worth expanding. College students live some of the most comfortable lives possible. We have every want near at hand, from food to friends, to fun. We have a purpose to our days (class and maybe sports), and we have the optimism of being at the beginning of life and largely untested. What sort of meaningful and tangible improvement in our fellow students' lives can we possibly hope to achieve? We can offer them a confirmation. School creates a world where your work, your studying, your skills and sometimes even your ideas are important. Student leaders can create a world where your passion and vision is important. That is a meaningful change in students lives, and we can only create this community with group centered leaders.

References:
1. George Santayana, The Last Puritan (NY Scribner's, 1936), pp. 128-129
2. Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
3. Clayborne Carson, In Struggle
4. Kai Erikson, Everything in its path

Note: This essay is the first of a six part series I am writing this semester for an independent study. The study will focus on applying organizing theory and experience to the day-to-day challenges of building the youth climate movement a Williams College, in Berkshire County and the state of Massachusetts.