Manufacturing Consensus aka Neighborhood Associations

The City of Santa Rosa along with the Neighborhood Alliance, and the Leadership Institute of Ecology and Economy (Tanya Narath is the executive director and also the chair of the city's Community Advisory Board) is putting on a "Neighborhood Summit".  They're very excited about it.  For some reason they've decided that they want to 'empower' the neighborhoods and create more neighborhood associations.  
From our experience with the Junior College Neighborhood Association (JCNA) this doesn't seem to be a good thing.  The JCNA is run like a closed club and has a definite agenda:  high density urban development, transit oriented development, pro-redevelopment, pro-bike to the point that they would endanger all street-users in order to push their ideology, and a zealotry that allows no dissent.  Jenny Bard, the defacto president, is employed as a spokesperson/advocate by the Lung Association, which advocates for these same positions on its website.  Ms. Bard has control over the only two JCNA bulletin boards in the area and refuses to allow anything that conflicts with these views to be posted in them, although they were paid for with community funds. 


Back to the 'Summit'.  This two day event will be include an evening lecture by Jim Diers, who was in charge of creating neighborhood associations in Seattle.  Mr. Diers now works for Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD).   That is new-speak for figuring out ways to use the skills of residents in an area for free, apparently, and touting it as a new method of managing communities with those who are completely non-governmental and not accountable to the voters. Changing the community without accountability and directing the change without looking like it's being done.

I looked up ABCD on wikipedia to see what it was.
Since wikipedia noted that the article sounded like a press release I made a few changes to it.
***


Asset-based community development: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section reads like a news release, or is otherwise written in an overly promotional tone. Please help by either rewrite this article from a neutral point of view or by moving to Wikinews. When appropriate, blatant advertising may be marked for speedy deletion with {{db-spam}}.

 (May 2010)Asset-based community development (ABCD) is a methodology that seeks to uncover and utilize the strengths within communities as a means for sustainable development. The basic tenet is that a capacities-focused approach is more likely to empower the community and therefore mobilize citizens to create positive and meaningful change from within. Instead of focusing on a community's needs, deficiencies and problems, the ABCD approach helps them become stronger and more self-reliant by discovering, mapping and mobilizing all their local assets. Few people realize how many assets any community has, for example:

• Skills of its citizens, from youth to people with disabilities, from thriving professionals to starving artists
• Dedication of its citizens associations — churches, culture groups, clubs, neighborhood associations
• Resources of its formal institutions — businesses, schools, libraries, community colleges, hospitals, parks, social service agencies

By the late 1990s, communities around the country were mapping and using these resources in imaginative ways, bringing them out of the closet and into creative synergy with each other, with dramatic results. Asset-based community development has provided leaders and institutions in all sectors with an approach that is relatively cheap, effective and empowering, that avoids paternalism and dependence — an approach that can be supported by all parts of the political spectrum and initiated at any level of civic life.

The first step in the process of community development is to assess the resources of a community through a capacity inventory [1] or through another process of talking to the residents to determine what types of skills and experience are available to a community organization. The next step is to consult with the community and find out what improvements the residents would like to make. The final, and most challenging step, is to determine how the residents' skills can be leveraged into achieving those goals.[1]

Using this model, the communities who hire ABCD speakers to influence their citizens are looking for an opportunity to create artificial community consensus. By creating farmed neighborhood associations they sideline actual community participants who often do not agree with the city policies. These artificial groups use the Delphi technique to block participation by real community members who raise points that are avoided by city-sponsored neighborhood groups. Under the guise of creating 'sustainable communities' neighborhood associations will be developed that are run by hand-picked city insiders who will rubberstamp city programs like redeveloping neighborhoods and redesigning streets. This visioning is supposedly community based but is not. They shut down any dissenting voices and marginalize, ridicule, attack, silence, and ignore those who do not agree.

'Mapping community assets' is a way of controlling and managing a group of people and directing them to use their skills in a pre-determined way to 'benefit' the community.  Who decides what benefits the community?  The hand-picked 'leaders'.  By mapping a community are these groups determining who has something to offer the collective and who does not?  What happens to those who do not contribute to the collective?  How are they 'leveraged' into contributing?

The Asset-Based Community Development Institute[2] is located at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Its founders, John Kretzmann and John L. McKnight, are the major proponents of this community development philosophy.