Amid a pandemic and economic freefall, the strategy can no longer be benign neglect, denial, division and finger-pointing.
Despite our endless zoom meetings and 24/7 media spin, there is currently no coherent, data-driven plan to ensure 100% of us can access the local services to survive and thrive. Look at almost every website of our leaders and our local governments to see that we have, at best, tinkering around the edges of disparities and social injustice.
While the public face trauma and adversity around every corner, a powerful elite seek to distract us with mindless clutter on our mobiles, all while a collapsing status quo drives kids, families, elders and students — almost everyone without a six figure salary — into dark cold waters.
We’re all told, by those with secured incomes, “fix yourself” …”oh, and sorry about the massive unemployment and lack of access to health care.”
To our young people, our leaders say, “Sorry we adults destroyed your future. That’s gotta hurt. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”
You felt it. The iceberg. As the nation sinks under the weight of a pandemic and manmade economic free fall, who gets into the lifeboats? Who are ensured safety and who aren’t? History teaches us it will be the rich and powerful who get a seat unless we change the rules, question our three-headed hydra overlords and design lifeboats for everyone.
Our problems are man made, predictable and preventable.
We know how we got here and how to move forward with a plan that means we all survive and thrive. Crises will collide, there’s no escaping that, but we can create local systems of care — ten vital services — that let us withstand the challenges until we create local engines of economic development, job creation and training. This nation has unfinished business and its time we got busy building the systems of stability required to endure today’s and tomorrow’s crisis.
Turning anger and fear into action and solutions.
If we want our community healthy, safe and resilient, we must turn our feelings of “caring” and “justice” into actions that change the way all governments work at all levels. We must change what leaders prioritize. We must ensure city and county services serve 100% of their residents. To get there will require a local movement to make things right.
Next Steps: Change agents activate!
Your first step: Exposing the enemies — with a little help from Attack of the Three Headed Hydras (of Apathy, Envy and Fear). From there, our books Anna, Age Eight and 100% Community guide you to data-driven strategies, collaboration, innovation and results. Communities from New Mexico to Kentucky have already started.
We all can be change agents, committed to fixing this deeply fractured nation, community by community. Our future depends on enough caring and courageous people engaging, collaborating and mobilizing to ensure safety and success for all.
Authors and change agents Katherine Ortega Courtney, PhD and Dominic Cappello, have decades of experience working in and for the public and private sectors. They know why systems that should protect all of us instead fail us, and the process of continuous quality improvement to fix them using technology, collaboration and transparency.
“Saving humans and the future.”
Attack of the Three-Headed Hydras is a groundbreaking book unlike any other and published at a time when our nation faces its biggest crisis… Read more
“We’re traumatizing all our children.”
Anna did not live to see her 9th birthday. The broken systems that lead to her tragic death, and put all our children at risk today, are… Read more
“WITH THIS STRATEGY, 100% THRIVE!”
In times of unprecedented instability and change. 100% Community is the only data-driven and tested way forward, ensuring… Read more
“Show ’em you mean business!”
Show the hydras that you know what they are up to with t-shirts, masks, phone cases, bags and more… open 24 hours