Rebuilding Broken Systems

CHAPTER 6Radical Rebuilding with Perseverance Groups

“Equity is an engine, a decision-making engine, an analysis engine that allows you to achieve your mission, to serve, and to create change faster and more efficiently. It is not a buzzword, and it is not a T-shirt, and it is not a random illegal threat. It is a responsibility and a tool to identify who you want to impact. Let’s look at who is most harmed and let’s put them in the center, and then let’s actually build around them. Because we know that if we center those who are most harmed by any sort of policy or need, and we make sure that they are okay, and that we change our policies and systems to accommodate them, the echo effect of so many people who are helped is everyone. Everyone benefits from that.”

—Angelique Power, President and CEO, Skillman Foundation

During his senior year at Boston College, Tip O’Neill ran for a seat on the Cambridge City Council. He lost, but this proved to be his only election defeat in a lifetime of public office. What is noteworthy about his failed bid in 1935 was the insight that became his most enduring quote, “All politics is local.”¹

O’Neill, who later went on to be the powerful Democratic Speaker of the House from 1977 to 1987, believed that politicians succeed when they understand and respond to the ordinary, simple concerns of their constituency. Winning elections is not about running on abstractions, ideologies, or grand visions. Voters generally elect those who promise to address ...