More On "Begging For Change" News!

EAOP grad Peter Alexander was able to perform his "health care blues" song Begging for Change at a demonstration in our nation's capital several days ago. It was picked up on You Tube (see below) and was noted in an Associated Press news story.

EAOP Alum Writes Song For Union Health Care Campaign

Last week, EAOP graduate Peter Alexander was asked by the SEIU "Change that Works" campaign to write a song about the broken U.S. healthcare system. They had been collecting photos of donation cans found in convenience stores and local markets throughout Maine, where local families were literally begging for change to help defray healthcare costs that they could not afford. His lyrics are based on those images and the song is now up on You Tube.



Yesterday SEIU also held a press conference in Portland and asked Peter to perform the song live. It was covered by Channels 6 and 13, and by Maine Public Broadcasting Network. You can read MPBN's report here. Background on the issue and the Change that Works campaign can be
found at: http://www.seiu.org/2009/06/begging-for-change.php.

Peter writes:

Whether or not you agree that we should have some kind of Public Healthcare option, I hope you'll enjoy the song. And if you're in or near Portland next week, I'm performing at Andy's Pub on Thursday night and at the St. Lawrence Arts Center on Friday. The St. Lawrence is probably the best performance venue in town (Ramblin' Jack Elliott will be performing there on August 20). The event is a benefit and I'll be sharing the bill with Zeili August, a local singer-songwriter. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased online.

Thank you for this great song, Peter, and for all you do for sustainability and justice.

Can Corporate Leadership Theorists Help Activists?

One of my favorite activist writers is Audre Lorde, a very spirited and incisive African American, lesbian-feminist thinker. who in one of her essays makes the claim, "You can't take apart the master's house with the master's tools." Now, I agree with SO MUCH of what Audre has written over the years, but I've grown to disagree with this particular statement. I no longer rule out learning about various kinds of knowledge, skills, and wisdom developed by and for folks at the top of a power pyramid--such as management and leadership theorists focused on the corporate sector of the economy. I now think we need to be careful and selective, and be able to adapt such tools, skills, and knowledge for our own purposes, but I no longer rule out anyone's tools and knowledge because of where they come from.

This came home to me most strongly when I first read books by Daniel Goleman, a psychology professor and management researcher at Rutgers University. At first it bugged me that Goleman almost never uses examples from the nonprofit sector in his writings, let alone examples from the activist wing of the nonprofit sector. Almost all of his examples are taken from large corporations. Still, it is very interesting to me that the corporate sector is paying a lot of attention and providing a lot of the funding for Goleman's research as a way to improve the quality of their own leadership. I'm now thinking that they might be on to something very important that we would overlook at our peril. Reading Goleman over the years, I've really come to appreciate his theories, research, and application suggestions for folks who are in formal management positions--and those who are not. Given the nature of his theories, it is clear that everyone in an organization can act as an influential leader no matter what their position is in an organization.

I also like how he grounds the whole notion of emotional and social intelligence in our biology and in breakthroughs in cognitive science and psychology. This is interesting stuff--fully admitting we are more than just rational thinking machines and really getting that we are social and emotional animals. Anyway, this summer I'm having my students in our online Nonprofit Leadership and Management course start our readings with Goleman's book Primal Leadership. Here is a little taste of what Goleman is up to. How do you think these ideas and insights could improve nonprofit leadership and organizational effectiveness?