Stronger Together: A Change Framework for Community Action. With Tom Mosgaller

In this conversation with Tom Mosgaller, we unpack a flexible Change Framework designed for communities of any size or location. Tom explains why relationships and taking action together are central, and how aligning desire, vision, power, and action can help us all overcome resistance and move toward a brighter future.

Tom Mosgaller is an experienced community builder, teacher, and leader who believes that relationships are the cornerstone of strong, vibrant communities. 

Tom has led, taught, and coached community builders in places both big and small, urban and rural, locally and internationally. He’s also co-author of Pulling Together: A Handbook for Community Change and Bending Granite: 30+ True Stories of Leading Change.

Links and resources from this episode:

• Tom on LinkedIn
• https://www.pulling-together.com/ 
• On the Importance of Being Unprincipled: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41206444
• Reveille For a New Generation https://actapublications.com/reveille-for-a-new-generation/ 

Connect with us!

• Sign up for our monthly newsletter: https://oneop.aweb.page/practicing-connection-newsletter
• Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/ 
• Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org 

Transcript

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ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: [00:00:00] Hi, welcome to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I'm Erin Carlson Rivera.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: And I'm Jessica Beckendorf. Today, we're talking about community change, the power of relationships, and what it looks like to pull together across differences.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Our guest today is Tom Mosgaller. Tom is an experienced community builder, teacher, and leader who believes that relationships are the cornerstone of a strong, vibrant community.

Tom has led, taught, and coached community builders in places both big and small, urban and rural, locally and internationally. He's the co-author of Pulling Together: A Handbook for Community Change and Bending Granite: 30-plus True Stories of Leading Change.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I want to just, on a personal note, share that I first heard Tom speak at a workshop more than a decade ago, and it really stuck with me.

It actually helped to shape how I think about relational approaches to community development. So I'm super [00:01:00] excited that you're here with us, Tom. Thank you for the influence that your work has had on my career. And also, thank you so much for joining us today.

TOM MOSGALLER: Oh, thanks for the opportunity.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, to start us off, I would love to hear a little bit about how did you find this work, or how did it find you?

TOM MOSGALLER: Yeah, I think it really found me when I was probably in grade school. We rode the school bus. I was a farm boy from rural Wisconsin, rode a school bus, you know, an hour or so every day to school. They dropped us off at the Catholic school, then they went up to the public school with the rest of the kids. And the back half of the bus were a group called the Black Jacket Gang.

And these were guys who kind of controlled the back ten seats of the bus. And, you know, we were young kids with big eyes, watching these characters in the [00:02:00] back who played cards and did stuff back there, and they were very intimidating. And eventually, they started harassing us. 

And I was probably, you know, I put up with it. I didn't know what the heck to do till probably sixth, seventh grade. And I finally, I just got fed up with having my lunch taken away from me by them. And sometimes, actually three times, lunch pails thrown out the windows of myself or other kids from the Catholic school. 

I went home and I just finally said to my dad, I said, "Dad, I, what the heck is going on?" And I shared the story and he said, and this was a profound question. "What are you gonna do about it? " And he went back working in the bar. And I'm like, "Holy cow, what am I gonna do about it?"

And so, I started talking to the other kids on the bus, right, who were sitting scrunched in those first six, eight seats on the bus. And we came up with a [00:03:00] strategy, and we went and saw Sister Ursula, the principal at our school. She heard our story, and we shared what had happened, and she went up to the principal of the high school, and they had a conversation, and they came back. They then held a meeting, pulled all the parents in, and had a meeting, and we got to share our stories with all those parents.

And man, it totally changed the way that operated. I learned from that, that if you build relationships, figure out a strategy, and are willing to have the courage to act on that, you can make a difference. So, I don't want to make a big deal out of it, but it set in my mind and set in motion my whole life of working with David against Goliath. It's just been part of who I am. I don't like bullies, and I like people to be able to fight above their weight class.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Wow. You were much more of a reflective kid [00:04:00] than I was. As a natural redhead, kids, for some reason, wanted to pull my hair all the time.. And they were real mean about it, too. I just remember crying to my mom and my mom going to the other moms. I did not reflect on what that meant at all. All I knew is that the hair pulling stopped, and I was happy.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I love that story of you as a kid. It reminds me of a book I read called Frindle, which was great. But that's really off-topic, so I'm gonna circle us back.

So that sounds like it was a very formative experience when you were a kid. Did you know immediately that you wanted to go into working in community development, or did that kind of come later with time?

TOM MOSGALLER: Yeah, it did. You know, doors open up in our lives, right? Where events happen, or people bump into us, or things like that. And I always say, "If you can do it, go for it." 

Because I just got back - I got drafted right out of college, and I was blessed to have played hockey in [00:05:00] college, and I was captain of the hockey team. And so, when I got into the army, they pulled me out of rank the first day and put fake stripes on me and made me the leader of my company.

So, I was thrust into a leadership role and had to lead 80 guys. And I did that during basic training, advanced training, and then my unit when I was in service. And it taught me a lot about how you work with people, how building relationships are critical to building a culture in your unit, and then being successful with that.

So, when I got back, I wasn't sure what the heck I was gonna do at 23 or whatever I was. And that's true of a lot of us. And somebody just said, "You know, Tom, I see you were thinking about going to Case Western to become a social worker, and you got way too much edge. You had the most penalty minutes at college in hockey. I don't think you want to be a social worker, [00:06:00] or that you should be a social worker. Did you ever heard of the thing called community organizer?" 

And I said, "I didn't. What is that?" And -

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I love the idea, by the way, that social workers are considered edgy.

TOM MOSGALLER: Well, I'm saying organizers can be more edgy, right? I mean -

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Uh-huh.

TOM MOSGALLER: You gotta have that kinda sense of, “This ain't right, and you're gonna do something about it,” just not go from case to case, not being able to have the power to actually change the system, right? I wanted to change systems. 

More important than, “I want to change this,” I wanted to learn how I could help people change systems.

And that was, you know, what I wanted to learn. And I, when I heard about it, and I heard about the work of you could go places and actually learn by practicing, I just glommed onto it and drove from our farm in northern Wisconsin to Chicago, and got involved in a major battle when the [00:07:00] Eisenhower Expressway was being put through the city, and it was going to rip up all these neighborhoods of different ethnic groups. Some planner had just drawn a straight line through downtown. 

And we were able to, by organizing people who oftentimes didn't get along: Polish, Hispanic, Irish, but they had common self-interest around this path that would not destroy their cultural communities. And so if you go through Chicago these days and you see the highway turns and twists a little bit, that is a tribute to people working together.

And I learned so much about power and change through that kind of experience and the importance of compromise. And then moved on from there to other organizing efforts and continued to, you know, hone my skills and develop a lot of what I consider leaders who were a hell of a lot better than I was.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, [00:08:00] I would love to kind of switch a little bit because you were talking about some different experiences you had going from northern Wisconsin down to Chicago to help that effort with the expressway. It does bring to mind this idea of community. And so I really want to ask you about basically, what is community, right?

When you say community, what do you mean in practice?

TOM MOSGALLER: Yeah, so I think we could have a long conversation on that.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Let's do it.

TOM MOSGALLER: So when we talk about community, I mean, it comes from the Latin word communitas. It's a dynamic word. It's like neighborhood. How you would describe what boundaries or scale is a neighborhood may be very different from me.

So we’ve got to work together to calibrate when we say community, right? That's one of the first things we’ve got to do. If we're going to work together, then we've got to think about how we define our community. For example, when I organized in Philadelphia as a brash [00:09:00] 24-year-old, and I was going to organize Philadelphia, I mean, you know, think about that, you know?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: That sounds like a 24-year-old and new in their career. I'm just kidding.

TOM MOSGALLER: Right? So it was the city of Philly. It was Bucks County. It was all the counties around it. And we then kind of defined that geographic area. So it could be a sense of place. It could be a sense of a certain set of values that you have.

Could be around a religious faith or whatever might be a set of values. It could also be about an emotional attachment. So all the Harley riders have an emotional attachment to a certain set of Harley-Davidson bikes, and they are committed to that. So I think it, you’ve really got to figure out for yourself what is that community.

When I worked in Argentina after the disappearance of people, trying to get people back in civic life after 20,000 people [00:10:00] were basically disappeared, how do you define that community. And for me, the people who brought me there were the Quality of Life Foundation, people who had lost family. That was the community.

Mm-hmm. People who lost their family. That was the boundary of a core of that particular organizing effort, right? And it was such a deep passion that made them want to be able to do something that was positive around what they had experienced as families. So that's kind of, you helped me with that, but that's the way I, when I go into a place, I think dynamically about community, relational community -

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

TOM MOSGALLER: Geographic place, and you settle on something, but you don't do it alone. You do it in relationship to other people who you are seeking to be part of some kind of way of thinking. 

So those of us who were against, you know, the Black [00:11:00] Leather Jacket gang on the front of that bus, we're a community eventually.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, and that's actually one question I had. So it's not something you do alone, but it does sound like it's also deeply personal, right? So it's something that you, that you need to feel out for yourself, but also it's something that's felt by a group.

TOM MOSGALLER: Absolutely. Absolutely. I totally agree. It's a living process of defining that community, right?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So you've written about kind of a community change formula. How would you describe that to someone who's hearing about it for the first time?

TOM MOSGALLER: Yeah, so thank you for the question. So, yeah, I call it a framework as opposed to an algorithm or a formula, because it sounds too rigid. And in fact, in like neighborhood or community, it's not rigid. It's dynamic in the sense that it's evolving. People [00:12:00] can enter it anywhere along a process that they're working on something. 

But the key thing about the framework and why we use that as kind of the skeleton for the handbook we created is it gives people handholds for being able to take something that can be extremely abstract, like community building or community change, and gives it some context.

So this last week I've been working with a group, and I just walked through it in two minutes, and that's what I'm going to do right now, just so everybody who gets to listen to this might appreciate it. So when I created this, by the way, you know, it's kind of taking 50 years of doing this stuff and saying, "What are the critical elements that you and I have got to think about if we're trying to create a change around something that we care deeply and have a deep passion about?"

And so if you want to have [00:13:00] community change, there are four factors we think are essential to that. The first is, you have to assess the desire of people, what I call the D for desire. How deep and how broad is the strength of will of people to actually want to do this? 

And that doesn't happen by accident. That means you’ve got to go out and you’ve got to begin to have some conversations with people to assess whether you just have a great idea, or you have a tremendous desire about this. Or there are other people saying, "Oh my God, I didn't know there was anybody else who cared about this," or, you know, "We are people that care about this," and you start building out your base of concern about this particular topic.

An example that just comes to mind in a small town in western Wisconsin, we were getting a lot of requests by the local businesses on how do we get young people in those communities? See, [00:14:00] there's a lot of great opportunities for work in this part of the state. But people who were in high school didn't know all the things that were right there in their community.

So we went out and did a hundred one-on-ones with people in that community around trying to find out how many businesses, how many small not-for-profits could serve to be places where high school students could go and actually apprentice. And we developed an apprentice system for these young people to work in those facilities.

And many of them are staying in that community now, because they appreciate that their community has all kinds of places they could be working, but they had no clue. So by being apprentices and being mentored in those businesses, they stayed in their hometowns. 

So that's the D, the will factor. Times V, which is a vision.

So if, [00:15:00] when I do this, I often talk to people, "You clear on desire? You've got enough will to act on this. Do you have a sense of a vision collectively?" That's going to evolve over time as you get into action. You're going to be evolving that vision. But what is kind of the original vision, the possibilities?

And do you have a strategy of what might be some first things you might do around that?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: So Tom, excuse the interruption quick, because I just want to really point something out here. You said something about, “What is the vision collectively?” So we're not talking about one person who has decided that this is the vision we should go for, and they're just trying to get everyone on board. Although maybe that did happen because everyone's like, "That is a good vision. I do share that.”

 You know, maybe that happens. But we're talking about a collective vision, right?

TOM MOSGALLER: We are. Thanks, Jessica, for catching that, because we are talking about a shared vision. That's part of the building of your capacity to act.

You find people [00:16:00] who have a desire, you make an offer to them to see if they'll come together, and whether you can create alignment around a common, which may not be your original vision or hers or his, but what we can collectively agree on is a vision for the action we want to take.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

TOM MOSGALLER: Okay. Thank you.

And then the third element, and to me, this is the transmission in the automobile that gets the energy to the back wheels or to the wheels, and that is Power. And we do not do a very good job helping people understand power in this society. I just, I think people avoid it. People are intimidated by it.

Again, power is a neutral term. It comes from the Latin word pose. It means the ability to act, to get stuff done. You have to have power. Your power of your own personal efficacy and your own capacity to make change, the confidence and the understanding, plus [00:17:00] that of others in terms of the capacity to work together to create power.

And I'm talking about power with versus power over, which is always a big difference for people, because most of us, the minute we say the word ‘power,’ we've experienced power over. Where somebody puts the thumb on us who reports to who in a hierarchical model. 

I'm talking about the power that happens when people work together. And we in community building talk about two forms of primary power. One is organized people, and the second is organized money. When you have both of those, you can affect some change.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I love that framing of power, the organized people in organized money rather than the ways that we normally think about it and talk about it.

There's also sort of the perceived, and we can get more into this later on when we break down, you know, a couple of pitfalls, but there's also that kind of perceived [00:18:00] power that maybe isn't positional, but people perceive a positional power because maybe someone is bringing more money to the table than anyone else. That is super important. 

But sometimes the organized power I've seen in my experience gets a little bit diminished when everyone in the room is looking to the one person that maybe has sort of that, the money power, I guess. You know, I've seen some of those things happen. And so I love the framing of, like, thinking of it as organized power and organized money because it feels a little bit more flat.

Does that make sense?

TOM MOSGALLER: Yeah. And, you know, people who are at the table earn that by delivering. So when we built the organization in Philly way back, it was 270 different networks across the whole city. We had 3,000 people at the founding convention representing 270 organizations. They built that. It was their power. They raised their own money. They [00:19:00] learned how to have the power of raising money and that skill, as well as their ability to choose what they acted on and how to go about the actions they wanted to take. 

And to me, that's when civic life comes alive. That's when civic life comes alive. And it's bottom up. It's when real people can affect change. 

So that's the P. And the P consists of two things. The depth and breadth of your relationships. We always say leadership is, “Leaders are people who have a following and they can deliver.” We're pretty hard on that. We really believe that it's not just charisma or they're a good speaker, but they really have the capacity to lead, because people follow them.

It's the difference between Moses and Aaron in the Bible, right? Moses says that, you know, "I'm not a good speaker. I stutter." But God says to him, "Yeah, but people follow you. Aaron [00:20:00] is your brother and a hell of a good speaker. And he can do a lot of the speaking, but you're the one that's going to lead this." And I think that's a powerful thing for all of us to think about.

Some of the best leaders I have worked with declare themselves not to be leaders. So the R is the pivot foot for all of it, the relationship building, right? And that times the willingness to act. So R plus A, R plus A is the power framing. P equals R plus A, the willingness to act. There are a lot of people who have networks and connections and relationships, but if they're not willing to actually act on that, to do something with those skills, then it's just, it's not going to be, you know, I see the lack of potential for actually getting stuff done.

And then finally, all of that, all of that, the desire, the vision, the power have to be greater than the resistance you're going to anticipate. And [00:21:00] oftentimes, I see people not anticipate the resistance. And then they're surprised by it, and they try to remain innocent about that. And I push them to say, "Okay, let's start anticipating where the pushback's gonna come."

Sometimes in our lives, we are the resistors. The group I'm working with right now, trying to fight a power line that's going to go across the state of Wisconsin, put in 200-foot towers, these transmission lines, and they're just regular people, ordinary people who all of a sudden are being surprised, right? I haven't even worked with them on right and wrong.

We're still trying to figure out who we are and how we're going to organize. How deep is the desire? Get a clear sense of our vision and our capacity to fight above our weight class against utilities that have had 50 years of experience and how to win on these things. So this is a David and [00:22:00] Goliath experience.

And so the point I'm trying to make, sometimes we are resistors, and sometimes we have to deal with resistance. But do not be naïve about the concept of resistance because it will be there no matter what you're going to take on. There you go. That's the framework.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Wow. There's a lot there. It's very rich. I think one of the first places I wanna go to is you talk about people having a lot of misconceptions about power.

And so I'm wondering if you could just flesh out a little bit about what it looks like when power is working well, and what does it look like when there are pitfalls or when it's crunchy?

TOM MOSGALLER: Yeah, yeah. So to me, our becoming knowledgeable about power is so, so critical, because if we're not comfortable with beginning with ourselves, with our own [00:23:00] understanding of our own power, when we begin working with people in communities, one of the first things I ask people to do is draw a stick person of themselves and to write down around that stick person all the things that they are involved in or care about in their lives.

So it's an opportunity to get grounded in your own power and to look at yourself objectively, define your kind of sense of mission about who you are, and then what are the activities and things that you're investing yourself in, in order to achieve that mission. And to get grounded in your own sense of being healthy yourself and your own power and feeling comfortable with that power.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I think one of the important parts of that particular activity is that it helps you think about power differently, right? So thinking about those things as power.

TOM MOSGALLER: That's right. Thank you, Jessica. It does, because when you put down [00:24:00] the things that you have relationships with, the networks you're associated with, your church, your civic groups, whatever it might be, people in your neighborhood, you know, your hobbies you have with groups that you meet with, your book club or the farm group that I meet with on Wednesday afternoons down at the bar.

I mean, all of those are networks that we don't think about. They're just part of our lives. But they are part of our power, because they represent different groups of organized people that I have connections and relationships with. And then all of a sudden say, "Holy cow, I got all of these different networks and they have networks. And if I want to work on something that I have a passion for, right, then I need to be checking whether or not when I go to the euchre table on Wednesday afternoon down at the bar. I’ve got to ask the guys, you know, what do you think about this?” [00:25:00] Right? And find out what the desire level is to care about something deep enough.

And then will they act? Or will they just sit there and come up with all the solutions they think they can have, but that's as far as it's going to go. So thank you for reminding me of that. Power begins by your own assessment of your willingness and ability to act and your desire to act. And then that broadens out as you start creating that shared sense that comes when you start tapping into networks of people around you.

The organizing I have been part of is very clear and very disciplined about that part of power building, is that it's power with and it's building that capacity. If we say we're going to have 1,200 people at a meeting, we will have 1,250, because we have the discipline of the networks that we [00:26:00] connect with to make it happen.

Too many groups declare themselves powerful, but they can't fill a Volkswagen bug with their number of people.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: What do you see happen most often when it comes to power? What do you see over and over again that you need to, when you're working with groups, you need to kind of help gently correct or change?

TOM MOSGALLER: Well, people tend to be impatient about the building of power. They want it to be instant. They want instant putting that, you know, I care about it, you care about it. So hell, everybody must care about what I care about, right? And then, you know, no one shows up. You don't do the discipline process, the hard work.

I don't consider it hard work. I think it's a great honor that we get to go out and listen to other people and relate to them and build a network of connections with them to find out what the hell's important in their life today, [00:27:00] which oftentimes is way different than what the media is telling you about, right?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.

TOM MOSGALLER: When you get into people's lives in their living room or at their kitchen table and you talk with them, you find out what the hell's going on in people's lives. We got a whole hell of a lot more in common than we do in difference. But that takes the discipline of sitting down and saying, "Who are the five people I'm going to go out and talk to this month and check with them if they care about this?

And what do they care about? What's important to them and their families today? That's a disciplined process of building power over time. And that's why we believe you never stop building relationships.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I always tell people that the thing that I see most often is, it's very similar to what you're describing, that we want to go immediately to the actions and like, “Okay, I'm gonna do this, you do that, you do that. Break. We'll all go do the things and we'll come [00:28:00] back next month and update each other.” 

And we don't spend time even just talking about, how are we going to be together? Like who are we together? And what are we doing? So anyway, I appreciate that. Yeah. The power stuff kind of is mixed in with that.

TOM MOSGALLER: And I think a lot of us have been, I don't know if it's taught or it's culturally subliminal, but if we want to be polite, we're taught to be polite and not to agitate. The word means to stir, to press people to open them up a bit about what the hell's important in their lives and their families. And I think we’ve got to do that because we’ve got to break them loose from this politeness. The politeness is killing us. We’ve got to pull into action.

It doesn't mean we're not respectful. It doesn't mean, you know, we act rudely or we rage. I don't mean that. I mean, we have to have enough courage to stand for what we [00:29:00] believe in. And that goes back to your point, Jessica. That means we’ve got to be clear together about what that is. What is our aim collectively that we can agree on that we want to take into public life?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. I'm actually really curious, so your kind of framework has a couple of different pieces. And I'm really curious about the relationship between shared vision and resistance. And to me, it seems, well, of course, when you face resistance, you then talk about your shared vision. But is that true or do you find that it's not just that? Tell us a little bit more about how, like, resistance interacts with the other pieces.

TOM MOSGALLER: Yeah. So you're raising a good point. One of the things, and again, I can share a story from this week, but in the book, we share a very simple thing that we do. It's embarrassingly simple because, you know, that's just the way we try and design everything we do, so that people can use it on a daily basis.

We create a [00:30:00] bullseye diagram, a map of relationship building that you need to do in order to have power to act on the things you care about. And at the heart of that bullseye is your core team, the people that you trust the most, who are in the core of your group that you care about working on. So I'm working on helping young farmers get access to land today when land has become so costly that young people cannot access the ability to farm.

We have a core team of people, about eight of us that are at the core of that. And so if I was doing a relational map, I'd be writing the names of the eight people that are in our core. And then there's a second ring, and that second ring are the people we want to begin initially doing the conversations with that we think will be really important to broaden out our base of associations and strengthen the breadth of our community [00:31:00] around this mission of accessing land.

And then there's a third ring, which would probably be people that we would like to have, not have to have, but like to have, which is a third ring that we would be building of all the associations that we wanna tap into. 

And then finally, to your point, are a ring of what I would call the resistors, or the people who we have to build relationships with, because it's important we not ignore them because it's not going away. Better to face into it, find out why they feel the way they do about what we do. So we do one-on-ones with them, just like we do with the second, third, and fourth rings. 

Making sense at all? You've got to face into them because in their resistance, there is possibility for compromise on our vision, because they may have some reason why they [00:32:00] feel the way they do that we need to think about if we're going to fundamentally make a difference around the topic we care about.

So I think you quench with the resistors in the best sense of that. And sometimes because you did that, you are at least neutralizing them. At the best, they may come toward you, and at the worst, you know who they are.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. So, something you were talking about is compromise. And I think sometimes that word is used as almost like a negative bad thing.

Like, “Oh, they're a compromiser. They don't stand for their values.” 

How do you see compromise playing into this idea of community action and community change? And what would you say to people who think that compromise is kind of inherently not living up to your values?

TOM MOSGALLER: Excellent question. I think we're living in a time right [00:33:00] now where we're continually being pushed, particularly by electoral politics, into a polarized environment in which you have to join a tribe or a clan, right?

And it's getting harder and harder to find the middle ground and to find tables. It's about us building enough power to get to the table so we can get into a dialogue to compromise. And all too often, we're not appreciating the table. We become brittle, we become polarized, and we lose the capacity. And when I go into towns to talk with people, or to more importantly, listen to people, I find that, God, in the last 10 days in about six meetings, we never talked electoral politics.

And I know some of them are rabid blue and others are rabid red. But around the issue of cleaning up the creek or making [00:34:00] sure we got good daycare facilities in town, or making sure we refurbish our library or have the capacity to take on this power line, no one talks party. Everybody talks about self-interest.

Self-interest, not selfish interest, self-interest, meaning I know who I am. I know what's important for me around this issue. And I have heard you, and we're going to find common ground to act on this together. That is a lost art that only can begin from the bottom if we're going to refurbish democracy as it was originally intended.

It's always about compromise. And what we're going through now is not unique. We've gone through it. The history of democracy allows us the right to do that. We are blessed to have that chance. Authoritarian people in authoritarian countries [00:35:00] don't have the chance to do that compromising.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: You know, addressing community issues, whether it's a big community issue or a small community issue, really does require us to work together no matter how we feel about other things out in the world.

We still need to work together with the other people in the community to address these community issues. And I think this is a good point to kind of, in our last few minutes, talk about what's a small first step for someone. And I feel like I know the answer to this, but I'll ask it anyway. What's a small first step for -

TOM MOSGALLER: Jessica, what do you think the first step would be?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, I think it's like going and connecting with someone who either feels the same as you or different, or both, right? Going and connecting with people and learning. Are there others who, you know, feel the same way you do when someone doesn't feel the same way as you about that issue? What are they feeling?

What is the reason behind [00:36:00] that? And really learn to kind of develop some understanding and empathy for each other and continue the conversation. 

So that's kind of what I feel like the answer is close to the answer would've been, but do you agree that a first small step for someone who wants to help their community but feels unsure where to begin, that that's maybe it?

TOM MOSGALLER: Erin, what do you think?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Oh, um, I actually think the first thing I would do is talk to myself, which sounds maybe silly, but like, what do I value? What do I care about? What's my vision? What do I want to see? Yeah. 

And then I would go have a conversation with someone and say, "Hey, here's what I'm seeing around me. Here's what I would love to see. What do you think about that? What would you love to see?" And then keep doing that.

TOM MOSGALLER: So thank you, both of you, for your willingness to share that. And Erin, I appreciate that you raised the issue of compromise, because I'm just finishing an article that is the first article given to us when [00:37:00] we start training as community organizers.

And it's called The Art of Being Unprincipled. And it's not that you should not have a set of things that are your principles, but they should be on an elastic tether so that you have the will, the ability not to be brittle, but to change as you go out and do those conversations. Because you become more rounded.

It's like getting older and getting wiser. If you listen, you will all of a sudden, “I never thought about it that way.” You know? So you don't get locked into a position and then freeze. And that's what's happening too much now. And so we bang up against each other rather than having the capacity to share different views, find common ground, actually have dialogues in order to make a difference.

That's what democracy allows us to [00:38:00] do. And I feel so pleased that we have that opportunity to do that.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

TOM MOSGALLER: So if I were doing it, in the book, we put six universals essential to relationship building. And one of them is you build relationships before you need them.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm. 

TOM MOSGALLER: To me, that is so hard for people. They wait till there's a crisis, a housing crisis, right? In their neighborhood or something.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: A natural disaster.

TOM MOSGALLER: Right. A disaster. And then you're trying to scramble. And I'm always thinking about, how do you build a fitness program in your community over time that gives you the capacity to be able to act when you need to act on something and not scramble every time out of crisis, right?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.

TOM MOSGALLER: In order to make a difference. In DeForest, just north of here, I've had nothing to do with it, but I've watched it. [00:39:00] fluoride in the water. Big issue. I mean, there was a back and forth, you know?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

TOM MOSGALLER: They pulled fluoride out of the water. And then people organized and somehow came to some compromise and they got fluoride back in the water.

It took three years maybe. I mean, watching it from a distance. I don't know who was involved, but I give them, you know, effort for figuring that out. But then along comes the AI center that's going to be built there in their community. They had a fitness program that they could get together and move more quickly.

That's why we build fire departments rather than everybody trying to grab a bucket when there's a fire in the hood, you know? You’ve got to do it before you need it. And that's the hardest thing for most of us, to have the discipline to build networks before you need them. So there you go.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Hey, I've been preaching that for [00:40:00] over a decade.

Yes. I completely agree.

TOM MOSGALLER: Well, it definitely ain't easy, right? I mean, our day jobs, all of the things going on in our life, to build in time every month to go out and do one or two conversations with strangers or with neighbors isn't easy.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I think we're so wired that it has to be around a particular task or project to, like, have to do something or have to have something productive out of it that I think that's part of what gets in the way of us just being like, "Hey, who are we together?"

TOM MOSGALLER: Yeah. I mean, what you're basically saying is, "What would I talk to them about?"

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

TOM MOSGALLER: Right? Yeah. And, and in fact, all you’ve got to do is say, "How's it going?"

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

TOM MOSGALLER: “How's it going? What's happening? What's important to you, to your family?" And man, it just opens up. I just think about this all the time. How many times in your life has somebody taken a half hour and just sat down with you and listened? And just said, "Tell me [00:41:00] more about that. How did that happen? What happened when that happened? How'd you get that resolved?" 

I mean, to demonstrate that kind of curiosity about someone else in a meaningful way is a real discipline in the best sense of discipline.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Well, thank you so much. I feel like this was such an invigorating conversation, and I am leaving with a lot of things to think about.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I have so many more questions I want to ask, but -

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Maybe we can have Tom back for those.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: That'd be great. Well, Tom, thank you so much for the work that you do, and thank you so much for joining us. Really, really enjoyed this conversation. 

Tom Mosgaller is a community builder, teacher, leader, and Vietnam-era veteran who supports communities in pulling together through the power of relationships.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That's it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us. If this conversation got you thinking about how communities can pull together, we hope you'll share it with a colleague, partner, or neighbor who's doing that work too. You can find more [00:42:00] resources from today's episode in our show notes.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: We'd like to thank our announcer, Kaylin Gobel-Mathis, Maggie Lucas, and Joyce Vaughn for their help with marketing, and Nathan Grimm, who composed and performed all the music you hear on the podcast.

We hope you'll listen again soon. Until then, keep practicing.

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.