There seems to have been an interesting speaker in town last week, Vaughn Grisham, director of the McLean Institute for Community Development at Ole Miss. The elite was there, led by Bob Carpenter, Mr. UC Merced. According to the local McClatchy Chain outlet, Grisham thought
Prior to looking into Grisham and McLean, the editorial board only knew about Tupelo for two of its famous sons, Jimmy Rogers, the Singing Brakeman, and Elvis Presley, “T for Texas” and “You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog (jest a-cryin’ all the time).”
George McLean was a great man. We’ve included some very inspiring material below about him and what he did in his lifetime in northeast
Grisham’s advice to the
However, we doubt our leaders will follow his advice because we are led by the One Voice, devoted body and soul to the collective principle of ripping off public funds for private gain. In fact, former Gov. Gray Davis was our Santa Claus, paying off for the help he got, particularly from former Rep. Gary Condit, carrying the Valley in 1998.
Grisham’s message was that the community has to work together to raise itself by its own bootstraps. Unfortunately, the example he used about the origins of the “Tupelo Miracle” was particularly untimely – starting a dairy industry.
George McLean, an independent newspaper publisher, was a man who cared very deeply about his poor little community and represented everything there is in the phrase, “a real Christian.” Our county board of supervisors recently slashed services for all the most needy people in the county and assumed from the state the Williamson Act subsidy for agricultural landowners. That was not “real Christian.”
Perhaps the Tupelo Committee of Merced County’s plan is to parcel split rural
The Valley has had a remarkable history of appropriating large ideas for its greedy little purposes. It appropriated socialism to develop its irrigation systems and recreated feudalism. Most fundamentalist mono-croppers don’t have a clue about the debt their form of agriculture owes to
Badlands Journal editorial board
11-5-09
Sociologist gives advice on turning around Merced
Citizen involvement is key to overcoming challenges...SCOTT JASON
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1153354.html [1]
Sociologist Vaughn Grisham said Wednesday he'd never bother to study
The area already has too much going its way.
"You people have an economic engine (UC Merced) most people would kill for," Grisham said.
Strange and perhaps startling words for a beaten-down community that saw a spectacular rise and fall in the last five years. But in his eyes,
As Merced County still works to reclaim its image, a dozen community members banded together to adopt and apply Grisham's community building philosophy that's based heavily on the transformation of Tupelo, Miss.
Grisham's book, "
In short, the philosophy is about residents growing tired of the status quo, pulling together and finding ways to make a difference.
The Tupelo Committee of Merced County hopes to hold more meetings before coming up with projects to tackle.
"We need to find a way to work cooperatively," said Bob Carpenter, a committee member who was a major player in bringing a
Grisham, a community development expert with a Ph.D. from
The audience included many business owners, average Mercedians and some of the area's top leaders, including UC Merced Chancellor Steve Kang, Merced College President Ben Duran, council members and supervisors.
Grisham, with a slight Southern drawl, wandered the center holding a microphone -- begrudgingly -- because it restricted where he could walk. He's one part inspirational speaker and one part tent revival preacher. Wry, witty and willing to be blunt, his gospel is what average people can accomplish without looking to government grants. "There's no Santa Claus in
One tale he told was about two people who founded a support group for children with palsy and expanded it into a medical program that serves 200,000 people.
He later highlighted a school that expanded its course offerings to adults when it was faced with closure because of low enrollment. Rather than letting the school close, the community rallied and began offering driving classes to people more than 80 years old.
The insurance companies kept customers, the drivers held onto their licenses and the school stayed open, Grisham explained. "That's the simplest lesson," he said. "You've got to have all winners."
A community's transformation must start small with projects that can succeed and build momentum. One idea is working to clean up the city by picking up garbage and painting buildings.
Grisham closed the evening by quoting anthropologist Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
Department of Agriculture Cooperative Extension
Breakthrough Solutions
Harnessing the Forces of Change
Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things – An Interview with Dr. Vaughn Grisham – June 2005
http://www.vworks.org/harnessing_change/ordinary_people.htm
If you have never heard of Dr. Vaughn Grisham, Director of the McLean Institute for Community Development at Ole Miss, you have really missed out. He is the author of four books on community development, an astute observer of the impact of global trends on communities, and best of all, a terrific story teller. Lately, his work has centered on identifying examples of ordinary communities and leaders who are doing extraordinary things. These are really breakthroughs – stories of community leaders who have created breakthrough solutions that will move their communities forward. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Grisham, asking him how communities can be successful in the global, knowledge-based economy.
Question #1: Dr. Grisham, in your work in identifying the key factors in successful community development in
Mark, it begins with something that is very simple - it has to begin with someone who has fire in their belly, who has the passion that this is going to get done. It starts right there. But if it remains with an individual - the lone ranger - then it dies. It is these people who are not so much in love with themselves, but are in love with the idea that we are going to get these things done. And they move forward. So it always begins with that individual who has that sense of passion. I normally know after I have been to a community and meet these people whether they are going to be successful.
It is interesting to me that often times it is not necessarily the best idea that carries the day. It is that person who has that passion and persistence to move forward. We start there, but then they begin to work with other people. There are individuals who link with others. And they will say to me "You know, I was thinking about the same thing."
One of the things I am intrigued with is this concept of vision. It is a concept I have studied very carefully. The leadership books talk about a leader as someone who has a sense of vision. I find that often it is a very vague idea, but the idea is that we are going to get things done; we are going to make some improvements. That’s where it starts, and then they begin to link together with other individuals.
Question #2: As you know, the word "strategy" in Greek means "the art of the general," because generals need to be able to understand the big picture as a basis for action. How important is it for community leaders to be able to think and act strategically – to see how their community fits into the big picture of the global economy and how their community fits into it?
What I find in most communities is that various individuals bring different strengths. There has got to be someone who understands the big picture. That is that individual’s role. They have got to be able to understand it, and to articulate it in a way that individuals see where their own interest lies, and to make that connection. So someone has got to fill that role. And invariably I find that is true. That someone has that role - of seeing the big picture, understanding these things - and some of these individuals have the good sense to know that they are good at the big picture, but they really stink at details. If they get their hands in the details, they will mess them up.
Question #3: Could you give an example of a community or community leader that understood their community’s role in the global economy?
The best that I have ever known is a man by the name of George McLean in
Question #4: So when you talk about the big picture, are you talking about understanding the currents and major forces at work in the world and how they impact that local community?
Yes. They have got to know that - that these things come down to the community. In my research, I have studied agriculture. And of course agriculture in the
Question #5: As one way to explain the major forces and trends impacting our rural communities, we have been talking about what we call "The Four Horsemen of the 21st Century Economy":
• relentless innovation,
• pervasive globalization,
• global connectivity, and
• the triumph of knowledge and technology over human toil
a) Have you seen examples of where innovation has been a tremendous asset to rural communities?
Rural communities were created by the steam engine - by the trains. One of the things I often do with students in the first semester is to say "Here’s a map of
b) Can you give examples of innovations that have been destructive to rural communities?
Yes. The coming of the tractor. And the coming of chemicals and pesticides, which eliminated the need for large numbers of workers. In terms of their impact, some of these, there is no Question, began to erode the workforce. We can drive through the Delta and see one abandoned place after another. The innovation came, they couldn’t make the adjustment, and they went out of existence.
c) The second of the four horsemen is pervasive globalization, which we can define as the movement of goods, services, jobs, information, technology, capital, and culture across national boundaries. Can you think of where globalization has been helpful to rural communities?
Here again, you have got to have that individual who sees those opportunities, who sees how this can work. There is a fellow over in
d) What about examples of where globalization has had a negative effect on rural communities?
Clearly I think one of the things that is happening with globalization is losing jobs because they are going to
e) This is a real shock to communities that depend on industrial development, wouldn’t you say?
Yes, it is. Right now, for many of them, they can’t see another way out. They can’t see it, because we had agriculture, then we had our manufacturing, and it is going away. I try to track a large number of manufacturing companies. Many of them had a lifetime of about 20 years. The 1970s were the peak years for small towns all over the
I talked this evening about this town of
One of my favorite examples is in western
I know of a little town called Chimney Rock, population 97, and they understand that they are not going to get any factories, and that they are going to have to turn to other things.
f) The third horseman is global connectivity - connecting to the world through the Internet, or broadband connectivity. Can you think of examples of communities that have benefited from global connectivity or have had negative experiences with it?
Yes, I mentioned this place
g) Which do you see as the greatest barrier - is it the lack of broadband infrastructure, or is it that people don’t understand how broadband can transform their businesses and organizations?
It’s both. We are trying to do some work in some African-American churches now, in which some of the African-American businessmen have a sense "Maybe I can get in on the ground floor of this. But I need both the infrastructure and the skills." And so in some of the churches we are teaching the adults how to use the Internet in fairly innovative ways and looking for different opportunities to market their goods and to work through these things.
h) The last horseman is the triumph of knowledge and technology over human toil. Have you seen where knowledge and technology have been used to positive benefit in rural communities?
Oh absolutely. Absolutely. We talked earlier about how large numbers of people lost their jobs when tractors and cotton pickers came in. But the quality of their life went up. The town itself began to shrink. But these people were displaced from these jobs and in some cases, they got better jobs. Now I don’t want to be Pollyanna about this, because the actual truth is that the majority of these people went to the cities. This was when welfare came in, and I interviewed many of these people, and found that large numbers of them never held a job on a permanent basis again.
So there is no Question that this displacement was at a cost. One of the things I really fear is that these innovative transitions are going to come at a cost to African Americans and other minorities - Latinos and the like. One of the things I am looking to do is to try to get our people involved in the use of technology from the beginning. I work in an African-American school in
i) Does it take a different mindset to understand this era and to take advantage of these opportunities?
Absolutely. It is a humbling and frightening experience for an adult with better-than- average intelligence like myself to come up against some of these electronic devices and find myself woefully ignorant. It is a scary thought. So I know how scary it must be to an individual who doesn’t have these kinds of backgrounds.
Question #6: You have talked about working together. Could you comment on the importance of collaboration and examples you have seen of collaboration within a community and across communities?
We began our conversation by asking about some of the keys to successful community development. The number one key - no Question about it - is that you must have that individual with a passion. And then that individual has to have the kinds of skills to link to other people to form partnerships in the community and out. What I find in these communities is that these individuals learn to work together. In a typical community, you have the county government going in one direction, the city is going in another direction, the school is going in another direction, and the chamber is going in another direction. It happens on a regular basis.
What you want to go for is what Peter Senge talks about with alignment, where you can begin to get people moving, not in lockstep, but in a common direction, where they all see their at-stakeness, and where they can move forward. Tomorrow, I am going to show them from the corporate world examples of where some corporations have been able to gain this sense of alignment, and how the same principles will work in a community.
In the recent movie "The Aviator," there is a scene in which Howard Hughes is going for the world speed record in a plane. And he looks at the engineers, and they have all these studs sticking out, and he says "We’ve got to eliminate the drag." That’s a lot of what happens in these communities. To get rid of a lot of that drag, you have to learn to work together so there’s a meshing and there’s a moving forward. But that’s a real skill, and there are individuals who are good at that, and who can do that. Unless you can do that, you are lost.
What I see is these people in a community come together: they look first at their own assets, what is it we have that we can use, and how can we access these. Then they look to external assets - what is it we don’t have. Maybe they need the university, or some technical assistance. Rarely do I find the technical assistance they need in these small towns. They are just not there. You have to look outside yourself and find external resources, and bring them in as part of the alignment. You are creating these partnerships between yourself and these agencies, these technical kinds of skills. And then you are able to move forward.
I find that they move forward on a specific project. That is, "We are going to reduce the dropout of students in this school. That’s our project." "We are going to clean up downtown. That’s our project." Very specific, very focused, with a timetable. "By June we will have done this, and who is going to do this?"
Question #7: I remember you talking about how ordinary people can do extraordinary things, which I find very compelling. Could you elaborate on that?
What really gets my attention is where I have situations in which individuals without any extraordinary resources are able to achieve these things that are just a "wow factor." They just knock your socks off. I sometimes tell the story of this African-American school in
Here’s where they set up a very interesting partnership. The principal set up a network. He went to the very best private schools in
The Colquitt,
They used this money to buy every vacant building in
Question #8: Do you relate this notion of ordinary people doing extraordinary things to the notion of breakthroughs and of breakthrough solutions?
I do. In many of the cases, they are breakthroughs without necessarily technological breakthroughs. A lot of places I study don’t have those kinds of technological skills, but they are breakthroughs nevertheless. When I tell these stories, there is no Question that they are breakthroughs, because you can see the lights going on. Well, we can’t do stories, but we can do this or we can do that.
In my own home community, we have told stories through William Faulkner and others, but we have some assets that will make us a good retirement community, and we are beginning to do this. So there is no Question in my mind that these are breakthroughs.
Question #9: Is there hope for every community?
I wish I could say yes, but the answer is no. I wish I could say there is hope for every community, but there isn’t. When first I began my research, one of the articles I read was about communities that had become extinct. There were many communities in the 19th century that became extinct. There were many communities that have become extinct in the 20th century. Not all the communities will make it. It is in a very real sense, an elementary adaptation; it is the rule of nature. If you can’t adapt to the new environment, you will die. You are not going to change the environment. The environment is a given. You have to adapt to the global environment. You can’t go back. That’s the only ball game in town. Those that adapt will survive and go on. Those that don’t adapt will lose and die.
Question #10: But any one community could do this, could they not?
Yes. The most encouraging for me are those communities of 97 people - in Chimney Rock,
What you are doing now, Mark, in gathering this information, has to be done. I mentioned earlier George McLean. Every Wednesday morning George McLean would have breakfast, and he would have a stack of newspapers and magazines on his left side, with his coffee and piece of toast. He would pick these up and go through it, and looking for ideas, and put it down. And everybody who worked for him would do the same. When you came to work that day, he wanted to know if you found an idea that would help this newspaper run a little better. And if you found an idea that would help this community do a little better, he would ask them to talk about it. In fact, there’s absolutely nothing original in
You have to continually learn. One of the things will stop your innovation is if you don’t open up your community to the resources in your place - your people. You just have to listen to your people. One of the basic premises I say is that any organization that doesn’t listen to its people, to its constituency, will die. Listening to them is a way of building trust.
Question #11: Finally, you know the
This is necessary. It is absolutely necessary. The work - I draw a parallel to the work of Peter Senge at MIT at the Sloan School of Management. What Peter Senge has done in his creating learning organizations is to bring together the best ideas from all kinds of corporations and share them and exchange them. And that’s what you are doing. You are bringing these things to these communities. Now ultimately they have to shape it in their own image. And there is a lot of creativity there. It always has to happen. In fact, Senge points out to these corporate leaders - "You can learn a lot from GE, you can learn a lot from Motorola, but ultimately you have to take all of these parts and make it work with your corporate culture. And the same is true with the kinds of things you are doing. They have got to have these things. They have to have these raw materials. They don’t have the time to read and study on their own. It’s just not possible. So this is an invaluable source - this is just terrific for these places.
Thank you for all the work you do here in
Dr. Grisham, thank you so very much for taking time from your busy schedule to visit with us. It has been most enlightening, and I know your insights will be of interest to everyone who can see this interview.
October 2004
Sojourners Magazine
The
How faith and a newspaper transformed a
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0410&article=041022
Increasingly, Americans are becoming aware that a few large corporations control what most of us see, hear, and read. For example, 22 companies own 39 percent of the 1,457 daily newspapers in
But when we talk about the dangers of media consolidation, we tend to speak in abstractions. When a few corporations own all the media outlets, we might say, the country will lose its diversity of voices. The marketplace of ideas will be monopolized. Avenues for dissent will be closed.
All true. But when I think about what is lost with the demise of locally owned media, I also think of a particular media institution in my corner of the world. It embodies what locally owned and locally rooted media could be and the possibilities that disappear in a world conquered by CNN, Fox News, and USA Today.
For 70 years, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (formerly the Tupelo Daily Journal) has been a voice of faith and reason and an engine for social progress in what was once one of the most underdeveloped and undereducated regions of America. The Journal—led by its publisher-owner, the late George McLean—was the lead-
ing force behind decades of economic and community development that transformed
Along the way
If the Daily Journal were starting today, it might never happen.
I first saw the Daily Journal in the summer of 1997, when my family was preparing to move from
I prepared myself for the worst. Who else but a bunch of fundamentalists would put a religious slogan on the front of a daily newspaper? The only time I’d seen anything remotely similar was decades earlier in
What I found instead was a thoroughly professional small city paper that, when it betrayed a bias, seemed firmly in favor of public education, racial reconciliation, and a bottom-up vision of economic development. The ethos of the paper, like that of the community it served, was Protestant and Christian, but (disregarding the archaic reference to "mankind") it was more Tony Campolo than Jerry Falwell.
This was a pleasant surprise. But it also presented me with a puzzle. How did such an anomalous institution come about? And even more baffling, how did it survive in today’s cutthroat, merger-driven media environment?
I’d just had my first brush with what many people around the country call "The Tupelo Miracle." In the months to come, I learned the whole remarkable story behind this remarkable daily newspaper and, to declare all interests, became an occasional contributor to its Sunday op-ed page.
In 1934, George McLean was, like much of the country, out of work. He had most recently been a sociology instructor at what was then
The Tupelo Journal was for sale. So, as
One of
That was a very convenient principle for northeast
In 1948 McLean led in the establishment of
Due to the influence of McLean and the Journal, and unlike the rest of the state,
Peaceful integration of the schools and continuing white support for public education was just one part of
Current Journal associate editor Danny McKenzie recalls, "I worked at the Journal from 1974 until 1979, when I moved to
In 1973, McLean unveiled the final phase of his community development strategy when he turned over the Journal and its allied enterprises to a nonprofit foundation, called Christian Research Education Action Technical Enterprises, abbreviated as CREATE. For 31 years now, CREATE has been the sole stockholder in the Daily Journal and used its dividends throughout northeast Mississippi to serve the purposes McLean set for it: 1) The "development of the very young," especially in the first five years of life; 2) job training; and 3) "the conscious, planned development of competent, unselfish leaders."
The foundation also ensured the Journal’s local ownership.
Danny McKenzie, who put in several years at the Gannett-owned paper in
According to Journal editor Lloyd Gray, "Especially in today’s chain-dominated atmosphere, [the Journal] stands out as seeing profitability as a means to carrying out its mission rather than the sum of its existence. Our profit margin expectations, while healthy, are far below the norm for chain newspapers." Today the Daily Journal has a circulation of about 36,000. The population of
How Does the "service of God and mankind" figure in the operation of a daily newspaper? Lloyd Gray, whose grandfather, father, and brother have all been Episcopal bishops of
Those Sunday editorials are in fact one of the Journal’s most distinctive features. They might include reflections from Richard Foster or Henri Nouwen; hardly what you’d expect in the Baptist-ruled Bible Belt. A recent one on election-year religion consisted mostly of quotes from Jim Wallis’ The Soul of Politics. Gray says the editorials "affirm the religiosity of our readership while offering, sometimes subtly and sometimes not, a different sort of theology than that of the dominant religious culture. I know of no chain-based newspaper that would believe ‘faith-based’ editorials to be appropriate. I may be wrong, but I believe this practice is virtually unique among secular daily newspapers."
In 1970, on the 100th anniversary of the paper he bought,
Among other things, the existence of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal proves that, in the right hands, the teachings of Jesus can be a business model. It also proves that a local media outlet can change the way people see themselves and their community and inspire them to act in new ways. That’s a possibility that is being extinguished with every media merger.
As Joe Rutherford put it when asked what makes the Journal different from chain-owned newspapers, "We actually give a damn about place and people."
Danny Duncan Collum, a Sojourners contributing editor, teaches writing at
Links:
[1] http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1153354.html