Change Agents and Sustainable Communities

By Camille Giglio

VALUES CLARIFICATION WORKSHOP

Designed by: Vicki Breitbart

Jini Tanenhaus

Planned Parenthood of New York City

http://www.modelpractices.org/mpp/resources/curriculum/options/values.pdf

Here is a good example of a 'how to" manual for facilitated change and transformation of attitudes to a predetermined objective. Note how the process is designed to have participants go beyond what they believe is wrong, and overcome personal conscience for the larger "good". How easy it is for those who don't understand the process to contribute to their own brainwashing in the hands of trained facilitators who lead groups through seemingly innocuous exercises to overcome aversion to what participants might find difficult to accept if presented straightforwardly.

Note the behavioral reinforcement of the transformation (moving from place to place, standing and sitting, etc, etc. representing your viewpoint at specific points in the exercise.) Active participation in altering your transformation which makes it "yours" with witnesses, and therefore more difficult to shed should you have doubts after the fact.

This kind of PROCESS is common in schools, and organizations of all kinds. Another example of change agents at work appeared in the Reader’s Forum section of the Saturday, 6/20/09, edition of the Contra Costa Times. Never let it be said that the newspapers don’t tell you anything. The only problem is that one needs a PC language-to-plain-english-translation dictionary to understand the messages being conveyed. In this edition 4 out of the five commentaries carried deceptive politically correct language designed to encourage acceptance or at the very least passivity to planned community projects.

Bob Lanter, the Director of the County Workforce Development Board [unelected] had an article entitled: A good case for workforce training. In the article he states that: “they are not a placement agency or headhunter organization. It is a partnership [he doesn’t say with whom but it is businesses and schools] providing career pathways. Most importantly, it takes time to look into the future and forecast regional workforce needs. It [the partnership] provides avenues to train and supply those workers.”

That, as I mentioned in the last report on Workforce Development, is businesses contracting with the schools to train future workers for the sustainable community. Interesting that the feminists and progressives don’t want the Armed Forces recruiting in the high schools, but it’s okay for busi nesses to use the schools for that purpose.

What is being promoted here is the issuance of Certificates of Mastery for those who complete the pc training, guaranteeing them first place in the employment lines [but maybe second in line to the Obama amnesty approved illegal aliens.

An example of school/business partnerships was reported in the Contra Costa Times on Monday, June 22, 2009, pge A3, ‘Hands-on’ camp helps students plot out futures. This article reports on a week long engineering, construction, and manufacturing camp held at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill. Teams of high school students were challenged to create cardboard bridges they hoped would hold more than 50 pounds. This provided the teams the opportunity to learn “work-ready skills” including leadership, teamwork, problem-solving and communication according to the newspaper reporter. One student proclaimed enthusiastically, after the camp was over that “I wanted to find out my options after high school or college. I could go work for a labor union.”

The teens, from Contra Costa and Solano counties were taken on tours of a BART transit village, a union training center, USS-POSCO, manufacturing plant in Pitsburg and Peterson Power System in San Leandro.

This 5th annual camp was sponsored by Chevron, in partnership with the Contra Costa County Office of Education, Contra Costa Economic Partnership, Diablo Valley College, and Contra Costa Community College District, with state funding. A school-to-career coordinator said: “It’s kind of professional development....for the kids. I hear so often from the students ‘I wish we could learn like this all year long.’ ”

The Lanter article dovetails with another entitled: “Focusing on giving is good business.”

The author, Toby Brink, is connected to the Times editorial board and is the President and CEO of the Trio-Valley Business Council.

This article is all about businesses partnering with non-profits to encourage employees to volunteer their talents to the non-profits to provide training and counseling services to the residents of the community. Businesses will also be encouraged by government entities to financially support these community groups.

Just think about your son or daughter taking on a high school volunteer activity at your local Planned Parenthood or ACORN agency. Or, if Marijuana is made legal, the local marijuana distribution center? Whatever keeps a neighborhood sustainable.

This article promotes the understanding that in a global sustainable economy everybody works for the good of the neighborhood/community whether it’s seniors, the disabled, voluntary or necessary, no one will be allowed to be idle. You may be given an incentive of some sort to sweeten the pot making the offering of your time, treasure and talent more palatable. Sort of the old motto: Make ‘em an offer they can‘t refuse. Shame them into it if necessary.

This puts a whole new face on the widely acclaimed statement of President John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Nancy Parent, long time community organizing volunteer and current Mayor of Pittsburg, gushes about Pittsburg’s Master Plan to “green” the city. She proclaims that “greening” will reduce pollution, turn Pittsburg into a ‘walkable’ town, put people on bicycles for the good of their health, develop transit village homes clustered around the BART stations, thereby creating healthier life styles and happier commu nity residents.

She writes as though only Pittsburg, in all the world, has come up with this idea. Anybody believing that can just come to Walnut Creek and see the new-age ghettoes being created around the local BART stations. The idea of transit villages and walkable communities is to get people out of their cars, provide all their predetermined necessities so they won’t want to leave their neighborhood. Just picture a spandex bound senior citizen balancing her groceries or Neiman Marcus clothing bag on the handlebars of her 10 speed bike.

This is the Smart Growth/Sustainable and global community total concept. Every town acts as if this is their own idea, but if you look around you begin to see that every city and clothing store is beginning to look just like every other city. That’s regional development and regional government. One article even mentions a locally grown regional advocate, Sunne McPeak, former county Supervisor, as a potential Gubernatorial Candidate.

And, the final article by Dennis Donaghu who is board president of the Pleasant Hill Recreation & Park District, is promoting yet another local bond issue. This bond will solve all the board’s problems by funding the city’s responsibility to all the senior residents, the youth and the community in general for providing all the needed services the residents require, especially after school and weekends. Imagine, everybody assigned a personal counselor/lifestyle assistant.

Only Toni Harvey, resident of Martinez, states it correctly. “We just can’t be all things to everyone,” she says in her commentary. “ Sometimes they have to stand up and rely on only themselves.” Good for you, Toni.

The Sustainable Community so heavily promoted by the Clintons and Gores and now Obama means that every community has a certain limited number of members and they will be responsible for keeping the community sustainable as defined20by a centralized government planning agency. No room for useless eaters.

Before all this can efficiently be implemented, the people must be provided with the mindset to accept it all, therefore the need for legislation to provide the authorization and appropriations for the state to prepare the climate of acceptance.

The talking heads of the media are beginning to talk about an increasingly centralized government, but one can hardly understand just what that means until one begins t o study the legislative process. There are Master Plans in place and being legislated for Families and children, future employment, education, health care - known as Universal, single payer care, community development, affordable housing, transit village development and on and on.

Here is a little sample of the current plethora of bills in the federal and state legislature.

(HR= House of Representatives. S=US Senate and AB and SB=state legislation.)

HR 2667, Jim McDermott, (D-Wash) Home Visitation for Families with Young Children.

Amends part B of title lV of the Social Security Act to establish home visitations by government agents to judge the quality and propriety of parental activities in the rearing of their young children prior to entering pre-school.

Since when did Social Security mandate parental watchdogs?

HR 20, Bobby Rush, (D-IL), Postpartum Depression and Psychosis, Requires hospitals to evaluate the mental and emotional health status of, especially, new mothers prior to releasing the baby from the hospital with follow-up visitations to the home. Language is very generalized and vague.

HR 2205, Danny Davis, (D-IL) Early Childhood Home Visitation Programs.

Authorizes government agency visitations to homes with young children to evaluate mental, emotional and socialization development of children in order to ascertain and increase school readiness.

USS. 206, Barbara Boxer, (D-Ca) Expansion of Education System. Mandates the states to find ways to expand the education system to include at least 1 year of early education preceding kindergarten.

These four bills now have the state directly involved with every child from birth to=2 0school age. Upon reaching the First grade we have other bills to look after the students.

HR 1710, Mark Souder, R-In) Public School Mental Health Services. This expands the Elementary and Secondary School Act to add Professional Family Therapists to the list of mental health therapists already approved which list includes psychologists and psychiatrists for in-school counseling services.

You may be aware of a bill in Sacramento that will authorize students to contract for=2 0their own psychologist counseling without parental consent, SB 543 by Mark Leno. However, Congressman Ron Paul has HR 2218 prohibiting federal funds for any universal or mandatory mental health screening or “The Parental Consent Act of 2009”. This appears to be in response to suicide prevention counseling in schools. Recently two students from Gunn High School in the San Francisco area died at the same train crossing site within a couple of weeks of each other leading some to question certain school counseling practices.

AB 354, Juan Arambula, (D-Fresno) Health: Immunizations. Based on the same idea of immunizing all females age 11 and older for HVP (a form of sexually transmitted infections) that other California legislators have tried to get passed in the last two terms. This time it is more subtle. It authorizes the inclusion of the American Academy of Family Physicians (a lobby group providing support for every bill that Planned Parenthood supports or co-sponsors). It also provides a new interpretation of communicable diseases which have always been defined as airborn diseases. This definition is vaccine preventable diseases which pharmaceutical companies, pushing gardasil for STDs, use to promote their product by advocating immunizations for adolescents. It’s the new version of the Marie Antoinette saying: “let them eat cake.”

AB 422, Norma Torres, (D-Ontario), State Youth and Family Master Plan.

Require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to develop the State Youth and Family Master Plan to achieve specified goals that include setting the general guiding principles the state should follow when development policies affecting the states youth and families and identifying all state governm ental entities responsible for delivering services to youth and families and bridging the communication gaps between those entities.

SB 520, Fran Pavley (D-Santa Monica) High School Curriculum, Community Service.

Offers one credit towards required number of credits for graduation from high school for each 12 hours of community service provided by a pupil. Requires each district to establish and maintain a list of suitable community service organizations from which a pupil will choose to complete the hours.

Ms Pavley lists in her bio profile the receipt of the California League of Conservation Voters Global Warming leadership Award, and, an MA in environmental planning.

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