The Insurgency in Seattle

For months now, many of us who care deeply about our city ("Civic Seattle") have been trying to put our finger on the pulse of the new administration.  And so far, we can't seem to find a heartbeat.  There may be several reasons for this but local pundit David Brewster (still an east coast transplant after 40 years) recently told that bastion of business and commerce leaders, the Downtown Rotary, what he thinks is happening...and, for the most part, I have to agree.  David and I have worked together for years and he has always tried his best to be the voice of the alternative view. Today, he is using http://www.crosscut.com/ as his mouthpiece and here is an excerpt from his current take on our fair city...alternative or not, there's a lot of truth in it.  Granted, this is local politics but Seattle is on the national scene now and we're not San Francisco 20 years ago. David is making unbiased sense...for once, at least.

"A year ago, probably many (including me) would have felt that Seattle politics was very stable. Mayor Greg Nickels had put together a traditional political coalition of developers, unions, big business interests, municipal employees, and environmentalists, leaving only neighborhood groups and deep-greens on the outs. Then suddenly, voters gave the two-term mayor a pink slip, as he finished third in the primary to two unknowns.

What happened? Nickels was an inside mayor, liked at city hall and good in deal-making but not well connected with the public. Another factor was Obama’s campaign a year before, which drew many young people into politics and trained them in the new, social-media aspects of highly targeted politics. Many flocked to the Mike McGinn campaign, and then on into his administration, which retains the feeling of a youthful crusade, cheerfully defying their unbelieving elders.

“Authenticity” is a key value for these young voters, who are deeply cynical about conventional politics and super-quick at detecting phoniness. Accordingly, Mayor Mike dresses casually, hangs out with young crowds at the Crocodile, and does seemingly outrageous things like dissing Steve Ballmer or ignoring the protocol for state-of-the city addresses. These things send powerful messages of insurgency and genuineness.

McGinn, more than most politicians around here, grasps that Seattle has changed dramatically in the last 10-15 years, becoming a McGinn kind of town. Seattle had been, during the long Cold War boom that greatly favored the region and its economy, a classic "city of the last move." People moved here in mid-career, psychologically considering Seattle a place to settle down, to join civic organizations, to get involved in local schools. They were the ones who took the legendary fork on the Oregon Trail west — the one leading to farmland, not gold fields. And they built, particularly in the 1970s and 80s, an admirably civic-minded culture, what I call Civic Seattle.

Well, Seattle is now a classic "city of the first move." As they do with New York and San Francisco and LA, restless young people move here right out of college. They want to hang out in a cool city with lots of starter jobs and other young people and nightlife. Psychologically, they are not really intending to stay so much as to get launched. Last-move cities build solid middle class neighborhoods, jobs, and institutions. First-move cities draw an irreverent, disruptive, geeky “creative class.” They are the footloose foot soldiers of an innovation economy.

And that’s produced the major fault line in our region and our politics: the tension between an Innovation Economy and a somewhat dispirited Civic Seattle. Bridging this gap is the challenge and opportunity of the day. That’s my theme in this essay.

Thanks largely to Microsoft, this region massively put its eggs in the new economy and the young workforce it requires. The transformation has been especially dramatic and swift in Seattle. Only a generation ago, we were the most middle-class large city in America. Now we are a city with a disproportionately high number of well-educated, young, detached newcomers. We are San Francisco.

Here are a few figures to demonstrate how extreme a case Seattle has become, how far the pendulum has swung.

 Our average household size is now 2.08, well below the national average of 2.61 and lower even than San Francisco’s (2.24).

 The percentage of families with kids is 19 percent, while the national average is 31and San Francisco’s is 18.

 The percentage of non-family or unmarried households is 55 percent, compared to the national average of 33 percent.

 53 percent of Seattle adults have a college degree, highest in the nation and 20 points above the national average of 33 percent.

 Lastly, 31 percent of the Seattle population has lived in the city for five years or less; only Austin, Texas has a higher number, and it’s 32 percent.

Welcome to the Next Seattle. Smart, unmoored, mobile, young, liberal in politics. (Interestingly, the demographic portrait of towns surrounding Seattle is very close to the national norms.) So, Civic Seattle, picture a speeding bicyclist passing you as you sit in your Lexus SUV at a long red light. And maybe giving you the finger.

Such rapid demographic change has finally caught up with our slow-to-change political order. Suddenly coming to power, this new elite finds the fading regime too fond of cars, too slow in addressing climate change, too cozy with established ways of doing things. As one friend in the McGinn shop enjoys telling me, I’m Microsoft. Mayor Mike’s Apple.

In short, Mayor McGinn is no fluke. And his politics,as well as McGinn himself, are likely here to stay. These politics are impatient, oppositional, anti-suburban, deep green. They have only the slightest ties to unions, to big vested interests like the University of Washington or Microsoftor city hall and its rule-bound workers. Just as previous insurgencies used the Pike Place Market and the Commons and the R.H. Thomson Expressway as wedge issues in assuming power and as organizational tools to rally the young troops, so this rising counter-elite uses the deep-bore waterfront tunnel as a big fat symbol of auto-worshipping old-think.

Our version of evolution is more like punctuated equilibrium, where we jump to a new plateau rather suddenly.

A critical question is whether the McGinn insurgency will have staying power, or whether it will provoke a return to the political consensus Seattle has enjoyed since 1970. I’m pretty fond of that old order, having chronicled it and cheered it on for decades. Develop the arts, make a major research university, build a lively downtown, create fine urban neighborhoods to hold the middle class, cherish diversity, rescue old buildings like Town Hall, and keep plugging away at reforming our schools and building transit.

It’s a good record, but viewed by this Next Seattle, it’s not good enough, not contemporary enough. Where’s the extensive rail transit? Where’s the global leadership to a post-carbon economy? Where are the switched-on schools? Where’s the living arts scene, as opposed to a museumized culture? Why, above all, such complacency?

The key issue around which this new politics turns is climate change, and what we can do about it locally and in our daily lives. To its credit, this new political order doesn't want to keep biding its time, accepting tiny gains. Consider, for instance, the longtime goal of Civic Seattle to stop sprawl and build up a high-interaction, culturally rich downtown. The record is not very good. The Downtown Seattle Association recently reported that Seattle has lost 30,000 jobs in the past decade, 21,000 of them from the core city. We are very late in building rail transit, maybe too late. Or look at this measure, the percentage of all jobs in a region more than 10 miles outside of the central business district. Of the 45 largest American cities, Seattle (56 percent outside 10 miles) comes in 10th worst. "

By David Brewster

Trial by fire

Crisis Communications has been part of my professional life for as long as I can remember. On my first corporate job, I walked into a work stoppage (strike to those of us not in a union) that almost crippled an iconic Midwestern manufacturing company. It ended mercifully just before they had to close the doors. NBC’s Jane Pauley was one of the local reporters (before she joined NBC) that I had to speak with every day for months. She was new to the news game and had never covered a strike before. Good thing I knew her from college. For both of us, it was a trial by fire… but that’s the only way to learn this business. It’s strenuous and stressful and even scary sometimes. Like many jobs, you have to have the right temperament to be good at it. Since then, I’ve counseled numerous corporations and their executives, sports stars, politicians, non-profit organizations, two Presidents and the Dalai Lama. I’ve now taught crisis communications at the University of Washington for 20 years. The all-day crisis communication workshop is consistently the highest rated single class session in the year-long curriculum. It’s the day when the students feel the pressure and the stress. They come prepared for anything and, thanks to my role-playing friends, they are never completely ready for the communications challenges they are faced with…because that’s the reality of crisis communications…trial by fire.




I have just finished writing an email to a New York Times reporter named Peter S. Goodman. His article in last Sunday’s Times is better than any textbook I have ever seen on this subject. He’s got great material to work with from BP, Toyota and Goldman Sachs. But he gets under the skin of the public face of those companies. And through the eyes of the internal communications chiefs and several experienced outside professionals, he paints a very vivid picture, good and bad, of the impact of this profession on business today. Much of the interpretation and advice in this article are things I have told clients and even some of you who read these blogs. But it never hits home until it happens to you or until a reporter gets to the heart of it and nails it. Kudos to Peter Goodman for masterfully presenting our business in a way that can be understood by many for what it is…artful communication…and remember there’s good art and there’s bad art. If you have the time, read this and read all of it.  It's what I do.  Enjoy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/business/22crisis.html?scp=1&sq=crisis%20communications&st=Search

Sure, you remember the World Cup...South Africa and those crazy horns

That swarm of bees buzzing on our television in June and July is quiet now. Unless you pull out your own personal “vuvuzela” and give it a toot (I do every once in a while), World Cup Fever is subsiding. South Africa’s big coming-out party was the second event in a year full of world-class extravaganzas for us. It began with the Vancouver Olympics and now we move on to the World Expo in Shanghai, which has already reached a full head of steam.

My good fortune of working on the world stage for many years now has drawn us together with exceptional colleagues and wonderful friends everywhere. And it is those relationships that have guided us into these high profile international happenings. South Africa is perfect case in point.

Twenty years ago, I made my first trip to South Africa. I remember when changing planes in Johannesburg, you had to go through an x-ray machine. Next to the machine, on a steel table, was a grey plastic box like the one’s we’re all used to now for our shoes, laptops, coats and all. The stenciled sign on the box read “Deposit all weapons here”. And the box was perpetually full. Hand guns, knives, machetes, cartridge clips, even steel-tipped darts. Virtually every local that walked through was carrying a weapon of some sort. Unbelievable, I thought at the time! They were handed back to the owner at the other end of the flight…but they were on board with us.

Fortunately, that doesn’t happen anymore. Well past the turn of the century, I made yearly trips to South Africa. I was there just before, during and right after Nelson Mandela was elected president. A few years later, I made the trip to Pretoria. We pulled up, just like Matt Damon in the movie “Invictus” did, to have our audience with the president and his national head of sport at the Capitol. I can still smell the purple-flowered Jacaranda trees in full bloom as we walked in. We were the first international sporting event to be hosted by South Africa after the election. It was an exciting time.

The lasting friendships I’ve made there over the past two decades are very special to me. They have taught me so much about their country and life in a society that we outsiders are still struggling to understand. They’ve exposed me to the beauty of their land, the warm graciousness and hospitality of the people, as well as the sadness, violence and poverty that continue to plague them in many places.

My friends are also very well connected…and so, just as I did in Beijing with the Olympics, when South Africa got the nod, I sent an email telling them that I wanted to share the experience anyway I could. You might guess that they pulled me into all the action from every angle…right down to “tweeting” minute to minute from the stands during several of the matches. As you can see, I’ve even made a personal contribution to their economy by owning every possible piece of World Cup merchandise that was offered at the stadiums.

My insider’s view began with the building of the stadiums, the airports and the transport systems. The locals were skeptical themselves that they could pull it off but the infrastructure came together to make it happen. My good friend in the health care business had three hospitals in her region chosen as FIFA hospitals. During the 18 months prior to the World Cup, disaster plans were developed for all based on the New York City model, post-911. These related directly to the crisis work that we're being asked to do on a regular basis.

I got an intimate look at sponsorships including VISA’s prime involvement. Their link with Castrol put VISA in a position to use ticket promotions at the retail level, which resulted in increases from 40% to 300% in various markets. They were also able to get good outdoor trade exchanges from many shopping centers. However, it was interesting to see that banks, consumer goods and even some other gasoline retailers were able to put ticket promotions together without paying any sponsorship fees by having their customers spend with a VISA credit or debit card. Without the option of offering tickets, MasterCard and American Express were really never able to compete.

From opening day to the final match it was “absolutely electrifying…the people, the flags and the vuvuzelas were just impossible to beat,” according to one of my local compadres, “Such a special time in our lives”. Even the personal tragedy in Nelson Mandela’s family could not diminish the enthusiasm of the natives of his country when the cameras rolled for the month-long event. It was an education for the rest of the world. When I met him last in Seattle a few years ago, President Mandela was receiving an honorary degree. I was representing one of our local community colleges and he said to me, “You know that education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” That statement could not be more true than for the power and influence of South Africa’s World Cup.

The championship drew a global audience 7 times larger than the Super Bowl. Futbol (soccer to us in America)is an amazingly democratic game. It can be played anywhere and the pitch (the field) is always level…literally and figuratively. It is a game that helps raise the standards for education and encourages youth to work together. This World Cup did all that and more. It helped free a country from a false impression.

So much was right about South Africa’s World Cup. The people there worked together to make it a huge success. One of today’s greatest players, Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o is quoted as saying “Success is much more than a question of quality…it’s a question of heart.” That’s true of the game and of the South African people.

To Susan, Howard, Ian, Rob, Grant and Margaret, my deepest heartfelt thanks for sharing this World Cup experience with me… for all you’ve taught me over the years…for all you’ve helped me see…for the compassion, friendship and understanding you’ve shown. You have my undying gratitude and love…for you and your magnificent country. YOUR World Cup was a vision of the future for all of us. Ngiyabonga!

Dan Mc

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
Nelson Mandela