Bob Stilger’s Blog

I’ve spent the last few days in Iwate Province, the most rural and most northern of the three provinces devastated last year on March 11th.  I’ve been in to coastal communities — Yamada Town and Otsuchi.  Each had a population of around 20,000 before 3.11.  Both were partially destroyed — fishing industry, agriculture, commerce and housing.  In each two around 2,000 people are living in temporary housing with no permanent housing expected until sometime in early 2014.  Temporary housing, while better than the emergency shelters, is small, cramped, and cold.  Most neighbors are strangers.  Most people don’t want to make community there because they don’t want to be there.  It is not home.

I’ve been in a small dialog in Yamada Town and in a Future Session in Otsuchi.   In Yamada, an energetic entrepreneur in his fifties called together some of his friends for a dialog.  In Otsuchi, an NPO charged with community development work invited people to a Future Session.  The two sessions were very different, and very much the same.  My primary role in both cases was mostly to listen.

How do these communities build a future?  What is important?  What must be attended to?  What must be allowed to fade away?  What became clear to me is how much both of these communities are between stories.  The old story is gone.  The new story is still invisible.

For the most part, people don’t want to go back to the past.  It wasn’t working out so well.  Shrinking and aging population, listless economies, diminished collective will:  living a slow decline.  But the way forward is still invisible.  Until now, people haven’t even had breath to talk about the future.  There have been too many pressing things to attend to — at least getting everyone in temporary housing, getting roads repaired and public transit running again, having at least a few stores and shops and restaurants open again.  That’s done.  People have survived.  But what’s next?  Where do they go.

Coming together, they notice the little and important things — buses still stop at the bus stop outside the destroyed hospital, but they don’t stop at convenience stores where people could wait and be warm; there’s still few safe spaces for children to play; the second floor of a partially destroyed building is where volunteers gather — and the city is talking about tearing it down.  What’s clear, as I listen, is that they need a place where it is possible to have these conversations regularly — a place where they will connect with each other.

There’s a sense of urgency to get something done.  But, they don’t just want to talk.  They want to make things better.  However, as one small group described, the level of consciousness is still low.  Said another way, people are unable to see very much or very far.

The dilemma is that community improvement work that comes out of conversations like these is often anemic.  It lacks power.  Either nothing seems to happen, or what seems to happen isn’t all that impressive.  People get discouraged and move back into isolation.  There’s not much of an understanding that when one works with new people to try new things, at first the results are unimpressive.  People don’t know this is normal.  They’ve never heard the word “prototype.”  They ask, at least to themselves, what the hell do you mean “action-learning?”  They get tired and discouraged.

Part of the problem is that there is no commonly held story for the future.  There aren’t even explicit alternative stories for the future.  Use the word “vision” if you like.  Or use the word “scenario.”  Whatever the word, there is nothing around which possibilities can cohere.  Even when there is clarity of purpose (like do things which will encourage younger people to stay in our rural community), it’s hard to find traction because there is little common clarity about which direction is forward.

So it seems, often, that we need many things, at once.  We need places where people can have meaningful dialog that does lead to effective collaborative action.  We need to work in ways which invite people to see more of the whole system.  We need design thinking.  We need scenario planning.  We need to learn how to use knowledge from the outside.  We need insight and inspiration from the inside.

One of the conversations we’ve been having in Japan is about a role we’re calling “Innovation Facilitator.”  It comes out of this diagram:

An Innovation Facilitator develops a broader view of the whole system.  S/he has a number of tools which help others see further — scenario planning, design thinking, reflection/action processes like Theory “U.” The Innovation Facilitator is able to design and host gracious space where people create both relationship and action.

We’re working to develop a learning program for Innovation Facilitators.  One that would happen with separate but connected cohorts in Tohoku, the Kanto area around Tokyo, and the Kansai area around Kyoto.  These last couple of days I’ve been thinking about how important some version of scenario planning is in this learning.

As always, good to be here.  I missed my family on Thanksgiving — my daughter came home from NY and she and my spouse followed an annual tradition of joining good friends for Thanksgiving.  I sat in a small restaurant/bar having a bowl of curried tofu and rice, responding to the questions of a curious banker in Yamada.  I feel like I am where I am supposed to be, staying present and curious to what wants to be born here.

Blessings.

Bob

Dear Friends,

I spent yesterday in the new FutureCenter in Minamisoma, a community 25km south of the reactors in Fukushima that had a population of 70,000 before 3.11.  The FutureCenter is in a former small corner convenience store, started earlier this year by Toda-san who knew the community needed some place to talk about the future.  In early December we’ll do a workshop bringing together 20 community leaders to share vision for what the FutureCenter needs to focus on in 2013.

One of the people in our meeting was Hakozaki-san, he wanted to tell me more about why he thinks a FutureCenter is essential.  Hakozaki-san comes from Itakemura, a village near Minamisoma that used to have a population of 6,000 and was known throughout Japan for its clean air, clean water and fertile soil.  Hakozaki-san’s family has worked the forest for many generations and also had a lumber mill.  Today Itakemura is deserted.  All residents required to leave because of the radiation.  A ghost town.  Hakozaki-san’s forest is toxic and can no longer be harvested, even if he had a lumber mill he could use.  He does not.

Immediately after the shock and emergency of 3.11 passed, Hakozaki-san began to think about what to do.  I want to share a bit of his story.

He knew nothing about radiation.  Yes, there was a nuclear reactor nearby, but it was safe.  No worries.  After 3.11 he moved to Minamisoma while 50,000 were being evacuated.  His clarity was that THIS IS HOME.  It is risky to live here, but it is home and we must deal with radiation. We don’t know the truth of the accident. Don’t know when things can start again. Don’t know what is true. Don’t know if we really have human rights.

Finally many people are coming back here, not just because this is the only place for them to live, but because want to live here. They have come back for many reasons — but mostly because this is home. and we need to start figuring out how to live at home in as safe a way as possible.  Time to learn about decontamination — removing accumulated radiation from ground and walls and roofs and leaves.

Hakozaki-san started talking with others in Minamisoma.  In the beginning, they didn’t know how to talk to each other about something they knew nothing about.  But they had to learn to do both.  Government’s hands were full — but they needed to start working NOW.

From the very beginning, they knew that they were doing work not only for their children, they were doing work for the world.  First experience for a town to reconstruct after radiation. We have to start here. No place elsewhere in the world has been done. This will happen again, somewhere, they knew.  From the very beginning they have kept meticulous records of their work — what they did, how they did it, and what the radiation was before, immediately after, and in the coming weeks and months.  They knew this information would be important to others.

The reality is that children and pregnant women are forced to live under high levels of radiation. We have to provide a model of the decontamination 

So Hakozaki-san founded the Institute for Decontamination five months after 3.11. It was founded to treat fields, houses, nature to remove decontamination, to measure the impact of the decontamination and to document.  They started with decontaminating a school. First, the collected data on radiation from 500 places at the school.  Next they washed the roof and walls and removed the surface soil.  They then measured all 500 places again.

In August, 2011, radiation levels were reduced by the cleaning, but were back up to the starting levels within weeks.  They returned and cleaned again.  By early 2012, the increase in contamination levels several weeks after the cleaning was much, much smaller than in August.  Originally the radiation in the air was moving every quickly, and that was why the re-contamination was high. Now radiation is staying in fixed locations. There doesn’t seem to be more radiation coming from reactors.

We need effective plan to remove contamination. Need to do it safely. Need to measure it afterwards. Then design the plan again for the next site based on experience. And make report to share conclusion with others. Research very important in all areas. Worker safety, effectiveness of contamination, planning, evaluation.

Most of the decontamination work of the current work has been done by volunteers. Many experts come to help, and each have different ideas they try to give us. We have to organize the experts rather than having them direct us.

Hakosaki-san went on to say ideally the government of Japan has enough budget for decontamination. Best to give the money to Minamisoma and companies, but government pays only after the work is done, and local companies don’t have the financial capacity — so work goes to Tokyo companies. Money gets taken out at the top and knowledge stays in Tokyo.  Neither money nor knowledge finds its way to the local level. This is a really embarrassing system of public works in Japan. 



Beyond the contamination, the disaster makes us think about our lives in new ways. Living standard brought down by 3.11, it would take more than 30 years to recover our old living standard. Instead of trying to recover the old, we must find new ways, new society: we have to shift the way we measure happiness. We had many problems before; we don’t want to go back to that past. Even here, in the past, the gap between rich and poor was increasing. Is that what we want?

We need dialog about what kind of society we are going to create and how. How are our children going to become adults in this situation, we must think of new good jobs for young people. This is the way we rebuild community. 

Our work is to overcome the disaster and realize a new way to be happy. Emergency phase is over, now we need to bring people together to build a new, good society. We have to become a dreaming town so our children can have hope for the future. It will take at least 30 years.

It is difficult to change our way of valuing happiness will take a long time. Some people will leave, others will be attracted here. We will make our future together.

For me, Hakosaki-san is another ordinary hero.  Or, he’s what we are starting to call an “Innovation Facilitator.”  He does not have a position of power.  He does not have a budget.  He does not have a staff.  AND, he’s sure not applying to anyone.  He’s talking with his neighbors and figuring out how to use their own resources to do the work needed now.  And he’ll keep listening and talking with his neighbors to make a new, good society.

Before 3.11 I rarely heard people in Japan talking about happiness.  I did not hear people asking questions about what is good society.  But that is what is in the air now.  FutureCenters are one way of creating a safe space for those conversations about the future.  So good to be helping here with this work.

This past weekend I was one of 350 people at the Fukushima Kaigi in Fukushima City.  I was amazed.  It was a weekend long Community Congress, people from Fukushima as well as other parts of Japan who came together to honestly discuss the current situation and figure out what to do next.  I don’t think I have ever witnessed a group with more clarity of purpose:  This is where we live.  The past is gone.  The present in untenable.  The future we have is the one WE create together.

I want to share some of what was said and describe the overall atmosphere.  I think important lessons are present.

We ALL know about the radiation!  I get irritated with some of the coverage I see of Fukushima. It often feels like there is an undertone of “what’s wrong with you people, don’t you know it’s dangerous to live there?”  Believe me, they all know.  One initiative — Safecast — is the most extensive opensource data gathering and presenting project in the world.  Go look at the maps at http://blog.safecast.org/maps.  The data is so reliable that it is used to cross-check government reports.  There are public monitoring stations everywhere.  The monitors are watched.  But here’s the thing, no one really knows the significance of the readings.  Even with more than 60 years of epidemiological studies of radiation from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagaski, we still know very little about the impact of radiation.  Of course, it is bad, but when it is bad and what mitigates its impact?

It is all about the children.  And the children know it too.  Young women High School students in Minamisoma, a community 25 miles away from the reactors, made DVD’s so that their voices would be heard.  A year ago they said we were living ordinary lives before 3.11, but now we don’t know what is safe.  Government says we can plant crops now, but I worry about it.  We doubt the safety of the vegetables. I don’t know what we should trust and what we shouldn’t. We can’t get away because this is the place we live and we have many good memories.  But we can’t get the truth.  This year the voices had more anger:  our freedom has been stolen.  We cannot drink water or breathe the air.  If we get pregnant in the future, what if our babies have diseases.  We want to have babies, but maybe it is not something we can realize.  This mess is not our responsibility, but we have to be responsible for our children if they have diseases or problems.  But they we think, being healthy depends on what we think health is.  We are in good health right now physically, but not mentally.  We have no idea about our future health.  Our law covers basic rights like the right to live in health — will we be healthy?

The adults, of course, talk about the children as well.  One woman says we must help those who want to to evacuate, even if their parents want them to stay.  Another talks about how we must help children stay in touch with nature — a year in their lives is so long compared to a year in our lives now.  Later, after the Kaigi, I’m shown a video of an effort to organize ways to take children to places where it is safe for them to play outside (see  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbclb7H56P4&feature=em-share_video_user).  People talk about what is best — and children remind adults that children need to be a direct part of those conversations.

How do we live in a healthy way? People talked about learning how to live in healthy ways, beyond the radiation.  We need to spend more time in nature.  We need to find ways to have less stressful lives.  Acupuncture helps to improve the flows in the body.  By all means, we need to be raising and eating organic foods; the chemicals used on foods are probably more dangerous to us than most of the radiation.  Above all, we need to reconnect to each other.  We can’t face this alone.  We need each other.  People know to stay away from places that are really “hot.”  They know to continuously check because a place that was okay yesterday might be hot today.  They know to watch and pay attention to the data.  They know they need to take responsibility for living in the most healthy ways they possibly can.

So many conflicts.  One mother says I decided to move back here with my family, even though my parents tried to stop me from coming.  I told them, this is my home as well.  A man says I live in Saitama (neighboring province) and we have hot spots as well.  I have two daughters and sometimes my wife and I fight about how to cope with the radiation.  Some people who were evacuated to other parts of Japan want to come back.  Some people who stayed want to find a way to get out.  People who have no job now and receive only a stipend from the government are resented by those who are working.  Those who are making good money working in hazardous cleanup situations are resented by those not making much money.  Everyone has layers and layers of grief.

Really, there is no escape.  One woman spoke of having been evacuated with her children to Hokkaido, the northern island.  I live with other evacuees.  At first I didn’t have the courage to talk to anybody.  But I started to speak out.  People there are isolated.  They confine themselves to a small shelter and have no information.  It is very lonely.  We have to connect back with you.  Another man speaks and says I lived here in Fukushima for the first 20 years of my life and I’ve lived elsewhere for 40 years.  I’m amazed at the stories I am hearing today.  There is amazing courage in Fukushima.  High School students, farmers, housewives, businessmen — you are all working with clarity to build a new future.

We must change.  A farmer says we have to open our minds and hearts and become aware of what we are feeling.  We have to open up and accept other people.  We must change our ideas.  I’ve come to realize that we need to tell our children that college probably isn’t all that important for them — we have to learn how to live in and open up to nature and we have to learn how to relate differently to our natural world.  Colleges don’t teach important things like this.  An older woman spoke of how people are polite and patient in Fukushima.  We don’t know how to raise our voice to government.  What is the core problem — we don’t know.  We all ignored Minamata Disease because it was someone else’s problem.  This is OUR problem.  We must raise our voices to government; this is a revolutionary thing for me to say.  We are living now without escaping from anything.  My daughter moved back home from Sendai; she says she may not be able to marry because she lives in this area, but we need to come together.

Let’s focus more on what we can control.  People here know they can’t control the radiation, but they believe they can learn to live with it.  One example was another farmer who says the government says it will spot check crops for radiation.  That’s not enough.  We must check all crops for radiation and have very high standards.  We must not sell crops with any radiation.  If we have high standards, people in other parts of Japan will begin to trust our food again.  They will remember that they used to think rice from Fukushima was the most delicious in all Japan.  People from other parts of Japan spoke of wanting to buy food from Fukushima, but not being able to find it in stores.  Another woman spoke of seeing food from Fukushima in stores, but being afraid to buy it because she doesn’t know it is safe.

The comments go on and on… It is beyond what I can do right now to give a complete summary.  But I hope this gives you a flavor.  These are ordinary people, coming together to build a new society.  They know that many of their neighbors are not present.  Some are still too overcome by grief to make even a single step.  Many are just plain overwhelmed.  Some are looking for ways to leave.  But these people are the ones who will make a new life.  The atmosphere was serious and somber.  Yes, there were smiles and sometimes laughter.  Yes, there were chocked voices and tears, often hidden.  Mostly, there was respect and deep listening.  Mostly there was humility and a sense of engagement in a common enterprise.  From a group dynamics point of view, the meeting room was terrible — a university lecture hall with a stage at the bottom and rows and rows of fixed seats, with video cameras and cables making things even tighter. But because people’s desire to be together was so great, these inconveniences were overlooked.

Comparing to Chernobyl.  Chernobyl itself, mostly hidden from public view has changed.  Check out these stories:  http://www.more.com/chernobyl-women-nuclear-holly-morris
and a film in process: http://thebabushkasofchernobyl.com/.  In terms of community organizing, one of the big changes is the internet.  E-mails and Facebook made it possible to organize the Fukushima Kaigi.  More than 100,000 people watched the interactions of the Kaigi on Ustream, a streaming video which carried all activities during the weekend.  The internet is used to connect people and to find information and knowledge.  It makes it possible to accelerate connection and change.

Finally, they work for all of us. The night after the Fukushima Kaigi, my dreams were filled with words and people and images.  A startling realization came to me.  As much as I wish that all over the world we would end our nuclear madness right now, I know we will not.  With an increasing pace of occurrence of climate disasters, I suspect we will have another major nuclear accident in the near term.  I hate saying that and I do not wish for it.  But I suspect it is true.  That means that what people are learning here in Japan — how they’re organizing, how they’re grieving, how they are moving ahead — all of those are important lessons for all of us.

We’re talking now about how some of the Future Center work I am doing in Japan can be merged with the Fukushima Kaigi so it becomes a more effective organizing space for collaborative action.  This is an amazing community of people and I want to do all I can to support them.