Hard Times, Hard Choices - Michigan Citizens Deliberate
LANSING, MI - Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - by Eva Smith-Furgason - Last week I was afforded an amazing opportunity. I received a phone call from the Michigan Public Broadcasting inviting me to come to Lansing to participate in a deliberative poll which would be filmed for the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. This event, in which over three hundred Michigan residents came to discuss the state of the state and share their questions, ideas and stories, will be made into a one hour documentary entitled Hard Times, Hard Choices as part of the ongoing By the People PBS series.
I wasn't sure what to expect from all this and was skeptical at first - after all it could have been a scam to sell timeshares - but then I received my informational materials in the mail and decided I wouldn't miss this great chance.
We left Ironwood on Thursday to give ourselves plenty of time to arrive in Lansing by 5:00 PM on Friday. I have never traveled past Marquette, and it was nice to be able to see more of the Upper Peninsula. We spent the night in St. Ignace at the Village Inn, which, according to the Internet, was supposed to be the home of the best homemade pies in the State, a fact we looked forward to all five hours of the drive. (FYI - not all googled Village Inns are the same - the one with the pies is in Green Bay, which completely explained why our desk clerk was baffled when we asked her about the pies!)
The next morning after a strawberry rhubarb pie at "Bentley's Cafe" in St. Ignace (a real down to earth place with a very friendly staff and terrific food) we set out for the second leg of the journey - from the bridge to Lansing. We arrived safely after a quick drive - the speed limit past the bridge is 75 miles per hour and the road is in great shape all the way to Lansing.
The Radisson Hotel is two blocks from the Capitol, right on the river and connected to the Lansing Center by a walkway. Our room on the eleventh floor gave us a great view of the city and made for some interesting gawking at the construction site next door.
The view from the hotel was my first clue of how busy this weekend would be and what a massive undertaking this event was. We had arrived early to give us a chance to relax before the scheduled events, and while I ironed my clothes and looked over the itinerary for the next days I noticed a line of cars stretching two blocks waiting for a chance to pull up to the hotel, unload and park. The scene downstairs at the registration tables wasn't much different - attendees checking in, getting their name tags, group assignments, asking questions and waiting in long lines to sign their release forms. Despite the hustle and bustle, the staff was patient, smiling, helpful and efficient. Turns out the staff was expecting a much smaller crowd - in the past such events usually had a 25 to 30% no show rate - but the people of Michigan are a polite lot - if they tell you they will come - you can count on everyone showing up.
After filling out a pre-poll survey it was time for the reception and dinner. We sat at large round tables according to our group assignments, and this was where I first had the opportunity to meet and speak with the other participants. My table had people from all different parts of the state, and none of us really knew what to expect. The conversation became animated as we shared information about our hometowns, thoughts about the weekend, occupations (the man on my left was a medical marijuana grower from Flint to my right a computer programmer from Grand Haven).
Governor Jennifer Granholm was the keynote speaker. The crowd that greeted her was diverse in every sense of the word. The people chosen for the poll were statistically adjusted to make sure every area of the state, every race, every socioeconomic status, political and religious belief was represented. That could have made for a tough crowd, but the governor did a great job laying out the challenges facing Michigan and connecting with the people. As I am relatively new to the state and further separated by the Yooper/Troll divide, one part of the speech stood out the most for me. Governor Granholm asked the crowd to raise their hand if they worked, are currently working or have a family member who worked for the auto industry. The hands went up - probably close to 85% to 90% of the people in the room had their hands raised. The Governor said that Michigan has seven times the automotive jobs of all the other states combined and in the last year it has lost three quarters of those jobs. This figure was shocking, as I never realized that this was the reality of Michigan, and more so because now for me it wasn't faceless people facing layoffs - but real people at my table, at neighboring tables and in the ballroom - real people struggling to make ends meet or hold on to the jobs they had. The speech that followed outlined the hard choices facing the state and the positive steps the state was taking to retain jobs, retrain workers and bring more jobs to Michigan. The state has a truly comprehensive plan of addressing the job losses and Governor Granholm laid the plan out clearly. I was impressed by her ability to connect to the everyone in the room and by her obvious concern for the people of Michigan.
Over the next two days our sixteen groups met in three seperate group sessions as well as three plenary sessions to discuss the wide ranging but connected topics of poverty, unemployment, education, tax increases and cuts in services. The moderator for each group explained that the purpose of these discussions was not to come to a consensus as a group but to come up with two or three questions to ask a panel of experts at the plenary session.
Kwame Holman, the senior correspondent for the News Hour was the moderator for the plenary sessions. Due to the time constraints not all questions were answered, but all the questions were certainly engaging. It became very obvious, very quickly how diverse the people of Michigan are - and how similar their struggles.
My group of twenty-five from Detroit, Lansing, Grand Haven, Royal Oak, and several other towns consisted of students, stay at home moms, professionals, layed-off workers, small business owners and retirees. There were several first generation immigrants from the Phillipines, China, Albania, Egypt and Pakistan. Each of us brought our unique perspective to the discussions - from student, inner city social worker, retired administrator to single mom. The topic we spent the most time on in our group session was education - and how it tied to all the other areas we were discussing. Michigan currently spends almost $10,000 per student on K-12 education (about the fifteenth highest in the country - yet it figures thirty-nineth in the nation in terms of results.) This brought on a heated discussion of parental involvement, school responsibility, waste in school administrations and teaching methods. It was great to participate in such a passionate discussion with so many people of different backgrounds.
The wide variety of viewpoints made me realize just how difficult a job the legislature of Michigan has - this was one topic and we could have been there for several days discussing different approaches and not getting any closer to solutions. The day was long as it started at 7:30 AM and finished up with dinner at 7:00 PM.
The speaker for the second night was Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan, a spitfire of a woman whose passion for her job and mission was obvious. Her speech was filled with great anecdotes including one about the history of the University of Michigan and a trapper who mailed a set of encyclopedias to the university as a donation three years before the first students began their education there - a set which to this day can be found in the library of the University. She didn't mention that the university has produced seven Nobel Prize winners, one hundred sixteen Olympic medalists and seventeen billionaires. She did mention the Co-Founder of Google, Larry Page, also a graduate of the University of Michigan - in an inspiring story. (She did not mention Dr. Kevorkian or James Earl Jones - but I guess name dropping could have taken hours as University of Michigan has produced some of the best and brightest.)
I stayed in the ballroom long after dinner was done and talked to many people. While some quickly wrapped up their dinner to get back to their rooms, quite a few folks stayed around to meet and talk to others. Small groups all around the room sipped wine and chatted until the staff which had been clearing tables for about an hour gave the stragglers ten minutes to wrap up before they had to close the doors.
Sunday was the last day and we had the last of the plenary sessions after which we took a final survey, a boxed lunch and were free to go.
This was such a full event, I must say I'm still trying to understand the meaning of it. I wonder who got the most benefit - the organizers? The participants? The legislators? Did our questions get us closer to the answers?
One of the people in my group summed it up best when he said that perhaps this was like pebbles thrown into a pond. All 300+ of us will take from this and start discussions in our communities, families, workplaces. We will share the ideas we heard from others and try them in our communities. And the 300 + ripples will make waves.
I know I will take from this a deeper understanding of the complexity of the challenges the State of Michigan faces, and I will work in my community to make things better.
If you have read to the end of this long report - Thank You. I will keep everyone updated on when the program will be airing (sometime in January) and on what station. In the meantime I welcome your questions and comments.
