Infrastructure needs have our attention now! The collapse of the 35W

The dog and I schlepped through a lot of puddles yesterday morning, and I had time to think about the rush of nonprofit activity at the Capitol over the last few weeks. It is heartening to see the accelerated level of strategic engagement and smart grassroots advocacy. Being a part of some of the nonprofit lobby days, and watching nonprofit advocates and supporters in hearings, I’m convinced that we really are building presence and momentum as a sector.

Some highlights of the last 2 weeks:

*On Feb. 27th Wellstone Action sponsored Camp Sheila in Indian Country, a workshop on advocacy for individuals and organizations in the Native American community. People came from across the state, focused on legislation to end violence and sexual assault. Post-workshop all joined the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women and the Minnesota Sexual Assault Coalition for parts of their workshop and a moving and powerful rally in the rotunda on the 28th. The rally combined story, art, and advocacy. We must end the violence.

*March 8th was a high energy day at the Capitol. Minnesota Citizens for the Arts, always strategic in matching constituents with legislators and identifying the importance of arts and artists to local and state economies, had record turnouts. Legislators sing the praises of this annual gather, Arts Action Day, because the local connections are authentic, it is well organized, and there is substantive content conveyed. Good model! Great accomplishment!

* The deaf, hard of hearing, and deafblind community had its lobby day on the 8th, as well. The Commission on Deaf and Hard of Hearing was a key force in organizing this lobby day. It was impressive to see multiple modes of communication - ASL interpreters, deafblind interpreters, closed captioning, helping animals, and audio loops all at work simultatiously. Imagine the planning and care that went into making that day on the hill possible. Again,well prepared materials, constituents matched to legislators, and an emphasis on the power of story in making the case for unmet needs in Minnesota made for a powerful event.

It is about power. Alice Walker said, “Activism is the rent we pay for living in the world.” And nonprofits are providing opportunities for people to share their expertise and experience with decision makers. The quality of the gatherings, with an emphasis on constituents’ voice, solid and well presented information, and well planned logistics is paying off. Committees talk about what they’ve learned at those lobby days. And this year increased numbers are participating.

There are a number of lobby days scheduled for the weeks ahead. Check the list at www.mncn.org and add your voice to the powerful presence of nonprofits at the Capitol.

As I told the Sunshine dog while she rolled in the mushy snow this morning, we’re seven weeks into the legislative session with little movement yet on raising the revenues we need to make essential investments in Minnesota’s future.

This week Dr. Frank Cerra,Senior V.P. for Health Sciences and McKnight Presidential Leadership Chair at the U of M’s Academic Health Center, (and an engaging witness!) addressed the House Government Operations, Reform, Technology and Elections Committee on the need for funding biomedical science research. His case: Minnesota can choose to continue to be a national leader and maintain a competitive advantage in this field, or Minnesota can become “a fly-by state.”

Congressman Jim Oberstar (DFL) from Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, Chair of the House Transportation Committee, told Minnesota legislators that if they don’t raise the gas tax, don’t come up with the revenues needed to meet the match required for federal funding, even he couldn’t help get transportation and transit funding for MN.

It isn’t just nonprofits sounding the call for investments that are essential to our state’s present and future well-being. The varied messengers are quite clear. We can be a fly-by/drive-around state or we can be a national leader. Minnesota has exciting possibilities that we will miss if we don’t act on the reality that taxes allow for investments that are the only way we really grow, hold our competitive economic position, and ensure that people do well in MN.

Nonprofits and other community members need to move quickly to tell legislators that we want the investments that make us strong and help us achieve a good quality of life for everyone. If we need to raise revenues, this is the time to do it. People voted for getting things done, and you get what you pay for!

Sunshine-the-Wonder-Dog and I recovered from the Sunday morning chill by curling up on the sofa with the Sunday paper. And there it was, in the Star Tribune “Opinion Exchange” section, a combo of opinion pieces telling a truth about the real and potential damage to Minnesota’s public structures, Minnesota’s commitment to fairness and oppprtunity, Minnesota’s future economic growth that is resulting from tax cuts. Star Tribune editorial writer Dave Hage, one of the best analysts of fiscal policy in town, and John Foley, an author and CEO of Level, a Minneapolis firm, offer well documented critiques of the failures of a low-tax approach to stimulating the economy.

“The low-tax experiment has been a flop. It’s time to try something new,” asserts Hage’s headline. The tax cuts of the late 90s through 2001, permanent reductions in the state’s revenues of about $1 billion annually, have ended up slowing rather than growing the state’s economy. Hage reports that starting in 2005 the state’s council of economic advisors described Minnesota’s economy as underperforming the nations. This is not Minnesotan!

We should be concerned. We should be more than a little angry. And we should be very strategic about the policies that we advocate this year. If we’re paying less and getting less, and if that is diminishing our excellence in education, job development, wages, health, community services, and more, then we need to pay more, get more, and enjoy the Minnesota we want to be.

In “If the state were run like a business, we’d insist on results. Cost-cutting won’t produce them,” Foley takes to task the Governor and legislature, underscoring that their commitment to “no new taxes” has led to reduced investments in the future and “…an erosion in our standard of living and ability to compete.”

I moved here in 1970 for 2 years of study in the American Studies Department at the U of M. Weather nonwithstanding, I came to love Minnesota so much that I forgot to leave. So I have strong feelings about the unraveling of much that has made this a fine place to be. Minnesotans need to use their clout as voters, constituents, neighbors, acitivists, to insist on more investments and the fair tax structure that we need to make those investments possible. “Cost cutting,” says Foley, “is not a sustainable business strategy.”

Each of us can insist that our Senator and Representative show some wisdom (and occasionally some courage) and get us back on the right track.

And if our leaders fail to think long term and make those strategic investments, (with a moment of remembrance for the late Molly Ivens,) “Raise Hell!”

Dog walking on this very cold morning, I was warmed by reflections on insightful writings about the role of citizens and organizations in advancing good public policy. The January 2007 issue of the Citizens League’s MN Journal is one of the best “reads” to cross my kitchen table in a long time.

In “Viewpoint: Voice in my Head,” Sean Kershaw, Executive Director of the Citizens League, urges full participation in the practice of politics in the best sense of the word: how we get things done in public life. I think about politics as the role we play in making decisions about how we care for one another, our communities, and the land. And Sean urges us to be, not the audience watching the legislative show, but engaged citizens. His is the best advice of the 2007 session. “The best way to changes politics (and therefore policy) is to find out how to get out of our seats and become part of the production…embrace our roles as actors in this important Minnesota policy process.”

Sean captures what I think is exciting about the work of the session and beyond: it is our opportunity to address short and long term needs with fully informed and engaged participation by the people affected by the decisions.

In the lead article, Arne Carlson and Walter F. Mondale, partners in problelm solving and in modeling how to get over partisan divides, begin a critical examination of how to reform legislative redistricting. With the 2008-2010 elections already being seen as important for the very reason that they will shape redistricting, they make the case for a redesign that promotes competitive elections. A stunning idea! This is sure to launch a sometimes thoughtful and occasionally fiery dialogue…and the Citizens League invites us all into the foundational analysis.

Mark Ritchie sums it all up: “Politics shouldn’t be a spectator sport.”

Read it all at http://citizensleague.org, mull it over, take it to heart, and get moving! Own our politics and policy direction.

Welcome to my first effort at a blog. My time for reflection, poetry, and occasional sparks of new ideas coincide with my morning walks with Sunshine-the-Wonder-Dog, who will appear here, too. SO as we skipped through the snow shower today, I was thinking about the nonprofit sector as a sector, as more than the sum of its parts.

In a discussion with students of nonprofit advocacy and lobbying, I had an “aha” moment, realizing that many staff and board members have a keen sense of their own organization’s issues, goals, messages, and support base. Most, though, don’t have a compelling sense of the nonprofit sector as a whole. My 42 year career with nonprofit and public sector work (I do have close friends in the private sector, too) has reinforced my conviction that it is in our collective best interest to be recognized and understood as a sector—by ourselves and in the public affairs community.

We are not profit making. And we are nongovernmental. We know what we are not. We must define who we are. What we are is an essential component of American life and participatory democracy. Nonprofits – across the range of activity areas from arts to youth intervention programs (anyone have a “z” program?) – provide opportunities for people to connect to one another, to pursue their interests, to contribute to the overall well-being of the community. I suppose that is why the IRS sees us as “purely public charities.” We are key vehicles for people to be activists and leaders in their communities and on their issues.

Together we nonprofits are a powerful component of life in Minnesota. If we contextualize our individual efforts – service, program, and advocacy – in the framework of that larger whole, our collective presence and power will serve us well. This legislative session, as we work for tax and budget policies that promote strategic investments in state priorities, as we play our role in shaping the direction of the Commission to End Poverty, as we respond to the Office of Legislative Auditor’s report on the shortcomings of the state’s grant-making process and help shape a better system, we serve our individual interests by speaking within the context of the sector and the community’s interest.

For our organizations to succeed at their particular mission-driven advocacy, for democracy to flourish because more Minnesotans participate in the policy dialogue, we need to see ourselves and our organizations as something larger and more powerful than our fragmented possibilities. As a sector, we have the talent, the reach, and the clout to shape decisions that touch the lives of the people, institutions, and communities that are our base. We should use that framework of the important work of the sector as we advance our individual and shared goals. Contextualize your efforts as part of what the nonprofit sector contributes to the community, as essential to the “social contract.”

MCN will engage many of you around the focal points of this session that have an impact on all of us: grants, lobbyist reports, funding, election reform, and more. You can count on the context that we foster to strengthen all that we all do.

More from the dog walks…ideas are invited: marcia@mncn.org