A few people have begun to file in for Iowa Citizen Action Network’s Eastern Iowa Summit “Our Common Values.” This is the culmination of several workshops held throughout the state.

As more people fill the room, grab a pastry and a cup of coffee, it looks like there’s going to be a good crowd.

For those who need a some background about this conference, click over to the pre-post about this event.

Looking around the room, some of the usual suspects are here. Amy Logsdon, Charlie Wishman and Phillip Cryan are in the room representing ICAN. Sen. Joe Bolkcom is at the far table. James Lee from Progressive Action for the Common Good. There are several other citizens who were here for the Iowans progressive networking meeting last Saturday.

Logsdon, political director for ICAN, is welcoming those in attendance and setting up the round robin where we all introduce ourselves.

The group has split into pairs and is working one-on-one to ask each other questions: “Where are you from? How did that shape you?” From there they are evolving into the statements politicians (from both sides of the aisle) use that we would rather not hear again. The listing, now being shouted from the group which has come back together, includes: “Empty promises. ‘I don’t have an axe to grind.’ Belief in evolution.” There are many more being named, too fast to catch them all.

Why do we not like such statements? Answers: they are B.S., divisive, unrealistic, simplistic, double-talk, etc.

Cryan has taken over the meeting to go through those key areas — in relation to what we just completed — identified throughout all the statewide workshops. From the initial workshop your author attended a few weeks ago, the handout has been upgraded from three key elements to four (no particular order and they are all tied together):

  1. Individualism: make it or break it, you are on your own, it’s all about our choices
  2. Privatize all community services and institutions, put corporate interests first
  3. Race, class and gender superiority, denial of structural oppression while reinforcing it in policy, practice and culture
  4. Limit government’s role, cut spending and taxes, public solutions don’t work

“These beliefs and values put together tell a whole story about how the world is, what’s wrong, and what’s right and how it should be. These themes are currently dominant not because they are what everyone believes, but they are actively promoted and dominate the public conversation in the media and politics.”

While these are the identified elements, says Cryan, they are not fixed. It has not always been that way and, he says, we don’t think it will always be that way.

Over 350 people have taken part in the strategic sessions held around the state, Cryan said. This is the culmination of that work and there will be more work to do within individual groups once this stage is complete.

“This is not issues based,” Cryan said. “This is about the overall values and how each of us, working on our individual issues, can be tied together through those common threads.”

In contrast to the above statements, the groups — including the summit held for western and central Iowa last month — have identified the following as key values:

  • Every person has inherent worth.
  • We are all in this together.
  • We don’t work for the economy. The economy works for us.
  • Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

What would be different in your life if these were the dominate themes? Answers: health, children’s higher education education, more representative government, no senseless wars and fair elections.

From these themes the group needs to form statements.

The group is taking a short break — 10-15 minutes.

Break over!

Logsdon is back in front of the group to talk about how dominant themes work within the news. We are going to look at the raids at the Marshalltown. Many people around the room are talking about the raids, what they heard, what was on the news and on the internet.

It was justified by those who supported that act as people there were “criminals” and guilty of identity theft. The focus was on criminalizing the workers seems to be overall belief the group gathered today — i.e., they are a burden, use/abuse our health care, stealing our jobs, use/abuse our schools.

Not everyone, however, thought it was a good thing. Things said by that side were not to penalize the worker, but to penalize the employer; federal officials didn’t communicate with local officials and law enforcement; and families being torn apart.

Did we use our themes? What could we have said to better incorporate those themes?

For instance, the idea of “penalizing the employer and not the employee,” was framed as “we should not be going after the individuals, but going after the individual corporation.” Is that enough?

Penalizing our employers here is only a piece, explains Logsdon. Dealing only with that doesn’t fix the overall problems our nation has with immigration and it doesn’t fully bring our themes into the public conversation.

The larger group has broken up into smaller groups of three to discuss how we could take the themes outlined above and work those messages into the specific circumstances of the Marshalltown raids.

The discussion around the room is lively and many use hand motions to display their emotions on the issues at the front of their thoughts.

“It isn’t enough,” said one middle-aged man while discussing the outcry of the Marshalltown schools during the crisis.

“When the other side talks,” says a Johnson County woman, “there is no doubting their intent. We don’t need nuance, but we do need a clear message which points to directly to our core values.”

Coming back together, the participants begin to discuss the work done by each of the smaller groups. It appears the groups ended up having many of the same thought processes.

The groups believe we need to broaden the conversation and limit the “us vs. them” theme. Discussions were on the overall community of Marshalltown and of the broader community.

From the beginning of the workshops, explains Cryan, different types of tasks have been completed toward a common goal.

“We have developed the worldview themes,” he said. “Now we have looked at an individual issue and took a look at the message our side puts out there.”

He noted that many time our side seems to be working from the top of the iceberg without having the big foundation of the iceberg under it. Once again the group is moving into three groups, each with a different issue: global warming, health care and farm policy. Participants are being asked to join the group about which he or she knows the least.

The farm policy and health care groups are leaving the main room. Global warming, being led by James Lee of PACG, is staying in this room.

Some of the current dominant themes — themes that disagree with the progressive point of view — being discussed by the global warming group are:

  • Climate change is a part of the natural cycle.
  • The best way to contribute to changing the problem is by making responsible choices as a consumer.
  • Limiting activities that contribute to global warming limits the economic growth and opportunity, here and in other countries.
  • Corporations will be driven to develop solutions by market demand and by their own interest in responsible practices.
  • The ingenuity of markets will solve the problem.
  • Global cooperation is unrealistic because countries naturally compete with each other and protect their own interests.
  • It’s not our fault.

The items for health care are:

  • A for-profit health care system insures the greatest quality of care.
  • Health care is a consumer good and your relationship to the health care system is as an individual consumer
  • Consumers are best served in a competitive market where they can choose what is best for them.
  • Health is primarily a personal responsibility
  • Health care is for treating illnesses
  • Government’s role in health care should be limited to supporting only the ‘truly needy’
  • The health care system does not discriminate and cannot make up for ignorance, irresponsibility and poor choices by some groups of people.

And those for farm policy are:

  • Bigger is better. Consolidation of land and farming creates economies of scale, leading to cheaper food and greater choice for consumers.
  • Food is a consumer good and your only relationship to the food system is as an individual consumer.
  • Government’s role should be to protect the interests of agriculture corporations and large-scale commodity-crop farmers as well as providing minimal protections of food safety.
  • Government’s role in agriculture should not include addressing or considering environmental and social costs.
  • Sentimental desires to protect family farms get in the way of natural progress and growth of our economy

Participants are breaking for lunch. We are expected to continue with how the progressive values outlined earlier can fit into each of these categories in about 30 minutes.

We’re back from lunch and ready to review the progress made by the three smaller groups.

Global warming

  • People over profits
  • Value our children’s future as much as we value our current lifestyle
  • Everyone is affected by global warming
  • The most responsible parties are often doing the least to affect global warming
  • We all have a shared sacrifice for the common good.
  • The economy is not working for us, we are destroying the environment
  • Corporations should be accountable to the people who suffer from global warming
  • Government should take the lead in organizing our society to fight global warming
  • Government should support science and not ideology

Health care

  • A basic human right
  • All have equal rights to quality health care
  • We have the resources we need to provide for all
  • We don’t have to earn the right to healthcare

Farm policy

  • Food safety is a concern and responsibility of all
  • We need to reestablish family farms
  • Food contributes directly to health

The group belief it that it is difficult to move beyond the current frames which exist for issues for many reasons. Reasons include those frames being what we know; what’s accepted; and we want to respond instead of coming up with our own frames based on our own values.

“It is challenging,” Logsdon said. “When you try to craft a response on the fly without having done the hard work first, you are going to miss opportunities. But, if this was easy to do, we would have done it already.”

Challenging is something on which the entire group has come to an agreement.

“We’ve been talking about all these things in our group,” one female participant offered. “I think many of us feel there is something lacking something and a lot of people here have pointed to emotion. And I know we are building to that and I know this is a process, but I want to skip ahead. I want to leave here today with a message and pound the streets with it.”

Cryan, pointing to an outline hung on the wall, said he understood.

“I believe almost everyone in this room is feeling the same way,” he said. “We want to get on with it. We want to change the world. By by the exercise earlier on the Marshalltown raids, we know that when we rush into something without the values behind it, we don’t make our message heard or heard effectively.”

For the next 30 minutes, the three groups will form once again and consider a direct message in reference to their single issue — farm policy, global warming and health care.

The groups were asked to prepare a brief statement as a candidate. In all of the statements, the groups highlighted “people first” as compared to what is viewed by the participants as a “corporate first” system.

“In our real lives and in our particular groups, we develop these same types of messages,” Cryan said. “We need to do all the work in between in order to get to the point where we can develop messages at our rallies, in our newsletters, for our emails while using our themes.”

Although this particular event is nearly at an end, Logsdon says this is hardly the end of the work which needs to be done. ICAN staff will be working with groups throughout the state to help incorporate frames and messages, building on the progressive themes the workshops have outlined throughout the process thus far.

Anyone who knows of a group which would benefit from this type of training should contact ICAN. In addition, there will be meetings in the fall to help emphasize these themes throughout the upcoming caucus period.

“We are committed to this process,” said Logsdon. “The work will continue well after the caucus because changing a world view is a long-term process.”