Community Building Institute

Last summer (read: when I got to have fun living in the woods), we were asked to read an environmental justice story and to identify where components of the community building cycle existed within the story (read: following the steps of stifling bureaucracy in the abstract form). I found this task difficult. The CBC was so abstract, and each step of the cycle was so shallowly defined. What's more I couldn't necessarily relate to the story other than to feel reasonably sympathetic for the environment and a village that some mining company from Canada was about to destroy.

So you can imagine my delight when I learned that that one hour assignment had morphed into a three day VISTA workshop, entirely designed around discussion and application of methods and steps as defined in the community building cycle. Woof.

Each session at the Community Building Institute represented a step in the CBC. I found increasingly that the concepts were growing more concrete, and more importantly, that I actually had a purpose which I CARED about that would make this process meaningful to me. I really did take home a lot of good lessons.

CBI closed thursday however I stayed on until friday to attend a sub-committee meeting at the capitol to promote funding for a state pro-bono coordinator. It was interesting to sit there listening to so many competing organizations fight for funding. I was especially frustrated by the pro-se supporters otherwise known as the self-help law clinic advocates. Amy describes self-help law as a "necessary evil" but I see it simply as evil. The more money we allocate to self help programs, the less money we can allocate to pro bono programs. It's like funding the student to do research rather than funding the professor.

I found it incredibly valuable to stay on the extra day. It is enormously interesting to me to compare Michigan's public policies and institutions with Montana's. At first I thought Montana was crazy to not have a full time legislature but now I see that this allows them to be more efficient and to more smartly allocate money and resources (including paying legislators a quarter of what michigan's legislators accrue). Montanans think that their economy is strugglying but due to conservative spending and laws established which do not let the state's budget sink below a certain amount of money, the have surpluses, something that we in Michigan couldn't possibly understand. I think it has a lot to do with a legislature that prioritizes spending.

Amy's best friend, Denise Junea, is the state's newly elected Superintendent of Public Instruction. I got to stay overnight at her house. She was so down to earth and had (of course) a lot of great insights into the state of various education systems (she specializes in Native American Education). Staying with Denise and Amy was fun and it was good to get to know Amy better.

All and all I had a worthwhile experience in Helena. But I'm glad to be home :)