And 3 Examples of Visionary Thinkers
There is as common consensus that President Obama is a visionary man amongst his supporters. His supporters also hold firm to his grassroots connection and the belief that his campaign has been a grassroots movement. Yet visionary thinking did not seem to spring forth in the recent debate against Mitt Romney. Don’t get me wrong, I am going to vote and donate big to Obama. But I am not going to depend on him for putting forth a vision. That’s got to come from the movement, not the white house. Let me explain why with three examples: Nelson Mandela, Harriet Tubman, and Fannie Lou Hammer.
There are many lessons to be learned through observing and studying the experiences of authentic grassroots movements. I have been studying successful movements over the last 100 years and developed a list of lessons learned. I call these lessons or principals “hypotheses” because we know they represent only some of the lessons and we want you to test them out against your experience and knowledge.
Hypothesis #1 states: Movement success starts with visionary shifts in thinking and behavior.
All successful social movements are driven by bold visions that expose the roots of the problem and are sufficiently ahead of their time that they are unfathomable to the mainstream of society. Over time, these visions that seemed unthinkably bold become mainstream. Successful movements model the future that they envision, and act on this “future” before their time has come. This modeling prefigures and embodies the desired society.
In the recent presidential debate, there was little visionary difference in the 2 candidates health care… there were details. In Medicare you could feel a vision, with Obama clearly saying the government plan is much more efficient and cost effective and Romney pushing for privatizing vouchers. A vision of universal care vs a vision of corporate superiority. Presidents are rarely visionary. Movement leaders are much more. When you think of Mandela, he did much more as an activist, even in jail than he did as a president. We can’t wait around for the president we have to put out our thoughts.
Two of Visionary Thinking and the Effects
Transformative educators and activists see and embrace new possibilities for our collective future. They take old ideas and breathe fresh life into them. Pioneers, like Harriet Tubman, freeing the slaves in the 1800’s, modeled living the future before that future had arrived. She and her colleagues held the belief that African Americans were equal to European “white” Americans. While today, that belief is mainstream, at that time it was a radical belief. (“Radical” means relating to the most important features of something, it means far reaching and favoring major changes but most importantly it means “root” or going to the root of a problem.) Otto Scharmer calls this ability to sense the future and usher it in, “presencing.” Tubman and her peers along the freedom trail did more than just believe that Blacks were equal, they role modeled it by freeing slaves and offering them safe harbor. Breaking the law and risking their lives, they attracted attention to the potential of their beliefs. Simultaneously, transformative actions like Tubman’s debunked the myth propagated by slave owners) that slaves are “happy” in a “benevolent” slave system. Transformative movements debunk false visions and beliefs. Transformative movements usher in the future by creating alternatives to the way we live and allow us to see new possibilities for our collective futures. At their best, Transformative Movements unify our society around humane values.
In another example, Fannie Lou Hamer and the movement that helped create the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party modeled and piloted a future voting system in the 1960s. While Blacks could not register legally, they created their own system of voting and in that system garnered more votes than the white segregationists did in their system. They did not wait for top-down change, but brought the future into existence on their own. Fannie Lou Hammer and her associates in the Freedom Party piloted the future by bottom-up self-governing and self-organizing. My colleague Jorge Diaz says, “The working class has to create their own institutions before we can hope that we and our ideas can take power. There must be structures created and run by working class people to support the interests of the working class.” Transformative solutions come from grassroots visionary levels of thought rather than those that created the problem. To take root they need to be piloted in some way.
We all need to work hard against the right wing corporate champion Mitt Romney. Obama is by far a better choice. But after November 8, focus your energy on building visionary movements, not inside politics if you want to see real hope and change.