Gauging leadership through the lens of sustainability

I’ve been mulling over the concept of leadership as my fight for education in Seattle migrates to the streets. I’ve helped with campus teach-ins to end corrupt policies of government in collusion with corporations failing to pay for the cost of doing business and raking in profits at the expense of schools, libraries, mental health clinics, daycares, and anything else the poor, lower and middle classes hold dear. Occupy Seattle has moved from Westlake Center to Seattle Central Community College. I’ve also been teaching community college students facing class closures, more students per classroom, fewer offerings, higher tuition and little support. It’s dismal, especially for those who think anything tied to the green economy and environmental sciences is on the chopping block. I’ve joined the Occupy Writers group supporting the Occupy Movement in words, actions and solidarity. Things are really screwed up when Robert Haas, 70, former U.S. poet laureate, and his wife, are beaten by police at a peaceful event at UC- Berkeley. Leadership is almost non-existent within the economic elite, political class, executive ranks, and the lobby sector bidding the ultra-rich’s and multinational capitalists’ desire to hoard all capital. For many countries, a leader who is finding his/her voice in the climate change/food security/peak oil/renewable energy/city redesign “thing” called sustainability, might be considered a godsend. But these are trying times, and the challenges we face have been given short shrift now that state governments are going after programs most of us past 45 years old worked to make fabrics of social contracts. We’ve been polluting the globe with more greenhouse gasses than we predicted for 2010-2011. Oceanic dead zones are increasing, ice is melting, more terrestrial and avian species are tumbling out of existence, and anti-intellectuals like Glenn Beck are spewing misinformation and I-told-you-sos about a solar panel company going belly up or how there’s room for coal to be King for one more century. We’re in a time where “throw the bums out of office” goes beyond political office. I see rage and cultured radicalism finally putting a foot down and beginning to dismantle the corporate hold on community. Will it come to that? Is that a hedge fund impresario flying out of that window? What do politicians do, now that the Occupy movement is spreading its wings to all societal sectors? The 1 percenters are being outed. Recently in Seattle, the Washington Council on International Trade and its paid-for Washington Congressional delegation gathered with major corporations to lay out plans for trade policies that benefit only the very top of the 1 percent. The panelists – including CEOs of corporations pushing trade policies that benefit Fortune 500 corporations who further degrade labor laws – were not greeted with deference. The final panel, including U.S. Reps. McDermott, Smith, Larsen and Reichert, got their microphones yanked away by Fair Trade activists criticizing them for voting for ‘Free Trade’ agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea. The 99% have the 1 percent’s and their allies’ number. What’s at stake if these groups give up the struggle? Loss of jobs and environmental degradation. This is a global fight, and it’s not an easy win for us in the sustainability and social justice movements. It’s a leviathan battle many see as a counter to unchecked capitalism, neoliberalism and a destructive economic model. In countries like Burkina Faso, Columbia, Guatemala, Democratic Republic of Congo, France, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand and Uganda, land-grabbing threatens small scale, family-based farming, nature, the environment and food sovereignty. This is serious stuff, because the process degrades communities, eviscerates local economies, and ultimately unravels the social and cultural fabric. Battles are taking place in Seattle against financial institutions and corporations that help governments beat, jail and kill farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk, workers, dalits and indigenous peoples. I digress. Sort of. This is actually an opening to a multi-part tale of two cities, a narrative of one hand doing the bidding of the environmental movement and the other helping twirl the baton for recalcitrant lobby of chambers of commerce and small or large businesses that expect green lights to do business anywhere, anyway, anytime. I’ve been around politicians in Spokane for a decade – but I consider the circles I’ve entered and my critiques as a writer, activist, educator and planning student as an amping up of my creed. I’ve seen some come and go – John Powers, Richard Rush, Bonnie Mager and, now, Mary Verner. All possess certain qualities not found in the Republican camp, distinct characteristics I learned to study years ago – in Texas as a reporter, writer, educator, deep in the politics of La Frontera: the 2,000-mile borderline between the U.S. and Mexico. I was a student at the University of Arizona working for newspapers, when I got entranced by figures like Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona and Clinton’s Interior Secretary; Raul Grijalva, a former Tucson school board member, county supervisor and now Congressman; Henry Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio and Clinton’s HUD Secretary. And other interesting figures, from Mexican governors from Chihuahua to Quintana Roo; to judges in Texas counties drier than a horned toad’s tail, and college board presidents in Cochise County missing from action for months at a time, to sheriffs looking for gun runners and drug dealers, to zoning commissioners allowing planned developments in hydrological-challenged haunts. If Spokanites feel the county commissioners’ vote for the Waste to Energy incineration plant — against the people’s will – was big time, try the Palo Verde nuclear plant being shoved down people’s throats after countless meetings and protests to stop it. So this old hand at Southwest politics will wind the narrative back to Spokane, threaded to the narrative of outgoing mayor Mary Verner while incorporating some of her green initiatives and insights into her successes and failures. We’ll look at Verner’s role in pushing along big issues like climate change to simple things like shutting off the City Hall lights for Earth Hour. I got under her skin much of the past decade – not so much as an irritant but someone truly interested in seeing Spokane take things up a few notches in the sustainability arena. As an added benefit, DTE readers can get a sneak preview of a Planning Magazine article I wrote discussing greenwashing in U.S. cities. More importantly, though, is how Verner sees a city like Spokane in the overall context of sustainability. Our conversations ranged widely over the years, from deeper philosophical discussion about the value of education to posit Spokane as a hub for incubating educational transformation, to little things like low-flow toilets and watering restrictions (maybe not so little, according to Spokane voters).