"How do I get rid of the fear?"
Alas, this is the wrong question.
The only way to get rid of the fear is to stop doing things that might not work, to stop putting yourself out there, to stop doing work that matters.
No, the right question is, "How do I dance with the fear?"
Fear is not the enemy. Paralysis is the enemy.
Tribal organizing (right and wrong, slow and fast)
Where do community organizers fall off the rails?
Crisis—They communicate to their audience with invented urgency. Everything is an emergency, a crisis that must be dealt with now, or it's all over. This boosts short-term response, of course, but destroys attention and trust. The boy shouted wolf, but the villagers didn't come.
Cash—They fundraise. All the time. Everything that isn't a crisis is a pitch for money, or sometimes it's both. They justify this by pointing out that without money, the other other side will win.
Cliffs—Most pernicious of all is a focus on today, not tomorrow. One campaign manager said to me, "I don't care a bit about what happens to this list a week from now. If we don't win the election, it doesn't matter. Burn em if you need to, we go out of business on election day." What a selfish, antisocial, cynical way to view the world.
Saying 'thank you' in public, three times
Earlier this year, I launched two ongoing classes on Skillshare:
One is on the thinking necessary to invent and launch a new business
and the other is for marketers of all kinds.
I'm grateful to everyone who has posted a kind review, launched a useful new project or shared the course so far...
The thing that happened before this
The most underrated scene in the Wizard of Oz is the hallway leading up to the audience with the great and powerful one.
One of the reasons that Oz is seen as being particularly great and powerful is that it's just so much trouble to get to see him--and that hallway is the perfect metaphor.
I still remember visiting a talent agency in Hollywood a decade ago. The lobby was far bigger than most people's homes, and it was totally empty, a long, long walk from the automatically opened door to the Centurion at the desk.
Contrast this with a doctor's office I recently visited. He was sharing space with a chiropractor, and the office was in the back of a grade B strip mall. Inside the waiting room were dozens of mimeographed signs (I didn't even think you could mimeograph stuff any more) offering weight loss schemes and warnings about what sorts of payment weren't accepted, and how it needed to be proffered immediately.
Here’s a proposal worth considering: the Commission on Elections has suggested the inclusion of voter education in the college curriculum. The move, according to Comelec officials, will not only educate students about the electoral process as they prepare to vote for the first time, but also about the importance of making informed choices.
The Comelec is supporting a bill filed at the House of Representatives, which seeks to make voter education compulsory in schools. The youth may even have suggestions to improve the electoral process and prevent the many problems that bedevil Philippine elections.
It is said that people get the government they deserve. This starts with making informed choices during elections. Filipinos have to stop sending lazy, incompetent and corrupt people to public office.
Informed and vigilant voters can help prevent vote-buying, cheating, violations of campaign fund regulations and the many other practices that undermine elections. People power in a democracy is manifested through the vote. This power must be wielded wisely if Filipinos want democracy to work.
Vigilant voters can compel transparency among candidates in connection with their campaign donors and expenditures. Politicians have resisted all attempts to pass a comprehensive campaign finance law. Any administration that is focused on fighting corruption, however, should give priority to regulating campaign finance. The seeds of corrupt deals are often planted during election campaigns, with donors cashing in their chips when their candidates win. Young voters may have suggestions on how the public can identify campaign donors who want to stay in the shadows.
When the founders of the republic declared independence from Spain, 116 years ago today, the revolutionary army was a ragtag band overwhelmingly outgunned by colonial forces. President Emilio Aguinaldo declared the country to be “under the protection of our powerful and humanitarian nation,” the United States, whose armada was parked in Manila Bay.
The revolutionary forces declared Philippine independence at a time when income distribution in the country was widely unequal, with money and power concentrated on a miniscule class that benefited from ties to the Spanish colonial regime. The vast majority of the population was impoverished and lacked education and basic health care.
The armed uprising launched by working class freedom fighter Andres Bonifacio was for this majority. Independence should have meant the masses’ liberation, even if slowly, from poverty and absence of basic public services.
The promise of that revolution remains unfulfilled. The declaration of independence became a best-efforts pledge as Spain was supplanted by a new colonial power. The United States would only let go of its colony half a century later, after a world war, but the Philippines remained under the American security umbrella.
Today, two decades after shutting down the US bases here, the Philippines is exploring greater defense cooperation with the United States as Asia’s new military and economic power, China, muscles its way around the neighborhood. The Philippines is free from its colonial yoke but remains heavily dependent on the international community for much of its external defense and development needs as well as emergency response during natural disasters.
