Strategic Doing

INTRODUCTION

Long before Flint, Michigan faced a water crisis, residents in the most distressed neighborhoods of that city confronted another challenge: teenage homicides. In 2010, a record 66 people were killed in Flint, a city of just more than 100,000 – mostly young African American men (for comparison, the national homicide rate is 4.9 per 100,000). Tendaji Ganges, Bob Brown, and Kenyetta Dotson came together with their Flint neighbors to pursue a traditional approach to addressing the problem: they applied for a federal grant. When their grant proposal was turned down, they decided to explore other options. Using the skills outlined in this book, they began building new networks to reclaim their neighborhoods. These leaders, joined by a handful of others, began focusing on the assets they had within their own networks to come up with new solutions to the challenges of youth violence. When the water crisis hit Flint a few years later, this new network of civic leaders committed to Strategic Doing¹ did not focus on protests (although as individuals, each of them participated in events and made their voices heard). Instead, they organized food trucks to bring fresh fruits and vegetables into their neighborhoods. Why? Because fresh fruits and vegetables mitigate the impact of lead poisoning. They did not wait around for others, and, most importantly, they were not paralyzed by a lack of funding. As one of the leaders later put it, “Strategic Doing broke our grant addiction. ...