The room was awkward from the beginning: it was scantly adorned and made a weak attempt at appearing filled. On walls, and on a large and cheap folding table were displays and pamphlets announcing the various projects of Environment California, the project which this PIRG was working for until just before that weekend.

“We switched campaigns on Friday,” I was informed nonchalantly. I had been perhaps a bit too exuberant to list off the various campaigns that Environment California had worked on.

“I have spent the past two days looking into the campaign of Environment California,” I had mentioned.

“So I would like to take a moment to inform you about our new campaign that we are working with called Progressive Futures,” my interviewer said and handed me some brochures of men in hardhats, a child being seen by a doctor, and a woman embracing a soldier who had implicitly just returned from war.

Before I could look at them the woman who was interviewing me began reading, off of her clipboard, for about five minutes. I listened intently. Mission statements, however, have always struck me as vague and perhaps as a result I cannot remember in detail what she said. But I was firm about how it made me feel at the time. And so when she finished and asked, “Does this sound like a campaign you could work for?” my reply was immediate and direct.

“I don’t know. I don’t know enough about the details of what this program is advocating for.” I referred to the essay I had been asked to write upon entering the office. The topic question was what I thought was the most pressing issue facing human society today. She hadn’t bothered to read it before the interview began, only because she began the interview as soon as I had said I finished my application.

I continued with my response. “What I wrote about was that it is not just what we are consuming that is at the core of our current environmental crisis. It is the degree to which we consume, the how of what we are consuming is what I think is at the core of the issue. And so I’m asked can I support this campaign and work for it? My answer is that I like the ideas you are talking about but I wonder what the plan is for implementing them.”

“Well, don’t you think that we should get the idea out there first, have the legislation passed, and worry about the how of things later?”

I was already deep in a hole and refrained from comment on the difficulties California was having with exactly that concept in its Proposition program. I simply reminded her that was not at the core of the issue. I tried to make an analogy.

“It’s like when you are building a house. The plan can be grand and beautiful, but if when you begin to construct it, you do not pay attention to the foundation, one will find that there is no way for the house to come together.”

It had been a few months since I had been employed and so I was getting desperate for a job. Hunting on Craigslist as a Californian is for some a way of life. I found that the non-profit sector listings in the San Francisco Bay Area sounded the most lucrative financially and did not require any long-term contract. It sounded appealing. Furthermore, I justified, this is work that I can feel good about. Raising money for environmental and social justice, even on the grunt level of canvassing, certainly would be more rewarding than pumping gas at an Exxon. And if it was a topic that was dear to my interests I could speak with passion and educate people and be successful at advocating for such causes, so I thought. I could see no reason why these places would not want to hire me as an advocate for their cause.

The dialogue with my interviewer left me fumbling for words, the rest of the interview too inconsequential to commit to long-term memory, and I left feeling somewhat shocked, mouthing words of the ongoing conversation in my head as I took the BART back to my friend’s house. I had come in and had my enthusiasm to display my knowledge about their campaign brushed aside and replaced with a piecemeal mission statement that I was then asked to advocate for with the same passion.

Upon departing from the interview I informed the woman who had interviewed me that I would read up on their new campaign and call back with any questions I might have the following day.

I sat at my friend’s apartment that evening and began reading the pamphlets I had been given. Progressive Future’s subtitle is “Promoting progressive values through grassroots action.” Progressive values? I thought this was an environmental campaign. What did they mean? My jaw dropped as I continued on.

I was appalled to find this simple brochure riddled with divisive, aggressive, and generally problematic rhetoric. One phrase in particular caught my attention:

“ From oil companies to… right wing ideologues…. The guardians of the status quo will not move aside without a fight.”

I Googled the campaigns’ web page and looked at their blog. The title of that day’s blog was “Worst Person In The World” and singled out a Republican politician. It is understood that there are many in this nation who are frustrated after the last administration. But how do we best move forward as a country, as an entire Nation?

One of the main lenses through which we are beginning to study and understand the current environmental crisis is the science of Ecology. Ecology is a science of holism that speaks of complete systems and the integral part that each and every component plays in maintaining its health in dynamic equilibrium. It will be impossible to create a responsible approach to such a system without integrating such a values into our own society; how can we expect to embrace a holistic system when we continue to divide and separate ourselves? Sure, there is corruption, and there are corporate interests, but if we are going to achieve a “Green Economic Recovery” this cannot successfully come to fruition by putting our ideological dukes up in opposition to the groups of people who we share this country with. Ecology knows no borders.

To use a bit of anecdote, I can recount many experiences with the USFS and my studies of Anthropology and Environmental Studies in university, where I found that notions of land stewardship are not by any means isolated to those who are of a socially “liberal” ilk. Many of those who are of a socially conservative leaning are people who make their living off of the land. Ranchers, farmers, and foresters; these people have a deep vested interest in the perpetuation of their lifestyle, one which many have been following for generations. There is corruption and corporate interest involved with such groups, indeed, but again this is not so much a matter of what we are doing but how we are doing it, in this case manifested in the form of scale and the disconnection such large scale projects create for those in the executive seat of such operations. But by publishing such rhetoric we are isolating those groups who represent the conservative constituency who are touching the land everyday. And if this is grassroots citizen advocacy, then it should really be about the citizens and their interests, not about combating “oil companies” and “right wing ideologues.” Green economic recovery, while inherently based in society and so therefore social, should not be entering into the debate of a socially liberal versus conservative society. Only unity will prevail in this circumstance.

The final irony came at my second NGO canvassing interview. I applied to interview at a children’s charity group called 'Children’s International'. I thought that here I might a get a more “pure” experience not tainted by the political gee-gaw of some of the environmental campaigns.

We sat in a room on low chairs: it reminded me of a preschool classroom. The director came out and introduced herself to the interviewees and then began to introduce the job.

“This is the toughest job you’ll have,” she began. Later she continued, “This job is all about bull-$%itting people. Bull$%itting them into thinking that you are providing them with a service that they feel they need. I have found that I love bull$%itting people, and that is why I have done this work for so long.”

I am one with a penchant for directness and so I found myself failing miserably in my interview where I was asked to display my skills in the realm of Cutco style social justice grassroots canvassing.

Whether I put out the energy that I didn’t want it or I wasn’t qualified, needless to say I received no return phone calls the following days. I could not see myself working for such divisive political campaigns. Their structure and marketing strategies ironically and shockingly reminded me of the very processes of corporate culture and political propagandizing that they were, in theory, created to counter-balance. On the tally sheet of checks and balances I see nothing progressive to their vision of the future. In the face of the environment, there is no enemy but us. And that is only because we choose to fight, and separate, rather than find a holistic approach that truly embraces the niche that each American fills in this vibrant and diverse country. As has been noted many times before, that, potentially, is the source of our greatest strength. 

Last update: June 07, 2009
01:08 pm

Published in : Eco Blogs, General Rants

Keywords : non profit, non-profit, ngo, overgrown, vision, lack,

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