NEWS AND VIEWS: Civic mobilization's missing link (04/14/02)

NEWS AND VIEWS

Civic mobilization's missing link

by Ihor Dlaboha

Having been active in Ukrainian American civic affairs since the days when SUSTA and TUSM were powerful national student organizations and UCCA President Prof. Lev Dobriansky assured delegates to the Congress of Ukrainians in America that "we know where we're going," I have witnessed numerous attempts to promote civic activity and community awareness among Ukrainian American demographic subgroups. There were efforts to attract American-born or non-Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainian Americans, to draw our promising but absent youth into community life, and now to appeal to the "Fourth Wave" of immigrants from Ukraine.

Simultaneously, there have been national and regional grassroots conferences on charting our future, dwelling on the reasons for our existence and composing new mission statements. One such endeavor, the Joint Conferences of Ukrainian American Organizations, held in June 1999 in Washington, brought to an end the 20th century's hope of greater civic mobilization.

Now, "Summit 2002," as it is being called, opened the new millennium with a conclave at Soyuzivka, the venue for many fantastic SUSTA gatherings in the 1960s and 1970s, and offered another ray of hope for its attendees.

Despite the efforts of the joint conferences' organizers and their heartfelt pledges that they would repeat that forum periodically, so far we haven't seen hide or hair of them. As for Summit 2002, we'll wait and see what its organizers do in the coming months and years.

In the meantime, the Ukrainian American civic organizations that decades ago outlined their reasons for being will continue to go about their business - the business of building as rich a Ukrainian life in the United States (or Canada, etc.) as they can. All of them have been successfully fulfilling their self-chosen mandate to the benefit of all Ukrainian Americans and Ukrainians everywhere. Just look around at their accomplishments in the last half of the 20th century. Their goals have been diverse and numerous, but all had a common mission that remains singularly relevant: to foster and maintain the Ukrainian American community, to be loyal American citizens and to help our brethren in Ukraine.

From that assertion, all of them have developed three basic categories of activity: building the "hromada" (community) infrastructure; working on legislative issues in Washington, state capitols or city halls; and carrying out necessary projects in Ukraine. Every organization has adopted one or more of these broad tasks, with each one being championed by its own band of advocates. I won't list any organization in particular (in order not to offend those that I might innocently overlook), but all of them share the glory of the same stage lights.

Consequently, I believe that the self-righteous attempts to charm one or another subgroup into activism is overrated. Civic activity is not for everyone.

The U.S. Army developed a very successful marketing campaign to attract enlistees with two strikingly Spartan slogans: "Be All You Can Be" and "An Army of One." The underlying message is that the individual is the driving force behind the common good or collective consciousness. The desire to become active, to devote the time and energy to a cause, to endure frustration has to burn inside us for anyone one of us to select a group or issue and become a participant. However, before we become active, we have to sense an obligation to our fellow Ukrainians. There are enough outlets for everyone's skills and interests, but not everyone needs to be involved - just as not everyone can or should be president or a rocket scientist.

Mass participation or universal involvement will not save the Ukrainian American community. Neither the general American population, nor any other ethnic group enjoys universal activism. However, that does not mean we shouldn't endeavor to include more people in community affairs from all demographic subgroups, including baby boomers, Generation Y, Generation X and the Fourth Wave. Organizations and conferences by themselves are not nearly strong enough to accomplish this daunting task.

Unfortunately, we lack the single most important vehicle that can undertake that job with any hope of success. Not youth, not even unity, can coalesce disparate individuals and groups. Only daily media can accomplish this task.

There is a wonderful scene from the 1982 movie "Gandhi," that illustrates this point. Gandhi, in South Africa, was detailing for his white friend the accomplishments of the Indian community. Its development resembled the evolution of Ukrainian life in America. Gandhi noted that the community had built a church, a school, businesses and a reading room; he went on to say that soon they would have a newspaper and then they would have a community.

We, Ukrainian Americans, who have grown up with the belief that we belong to the elite of North American ethnic groups, today are alone without daily media, be they on a local, regional or national level, be they privately or civically owned. We need inclusive daily media to sustain the community. To be sure, Svoboda came after the establishment of civic organizations, notably the Ukrainian National Association, but today its weekly publishing cycle as well as the frequency and circulations of The Ukrainian Weekly and other newspapers are too small to satisfy the needs of the community and to expand it. They just don't reach enough of the people repeatedly and quickly to make a difference.

In the past, when our community prided itself on having more than one daily newspaper - and Svoboda was the pre-eminent one - there was not one project that wasn't guaranteed success when it was promoted on page one. There was not one civic group that dared to avoid visiting Svoboda's editorial office when it hoped to successfully launch and conclude a worthwhile project.

With their mass distribution, traditional media outlets - newspapers, radio and television - can unite an audience like no other venue or organization. Associations or groups have a narrow-focused appeal and limited delivery, which are normally targeted at their own memberships. Traditional media breathe life into a people and quickly turn them into a society, with a past, a present and a future. With such a network, we could not only communicate better our ideas but we could also inspire our neighbors.

An appeal to join and be active in any organization falls upon deaf ears when the audience is not able to read, hear or see what is happening and empathically partake in the activity. With a viable network of daily media crisscrossing our community all of us would have the opportunity to celebrate our accomplishments, agonize over our failures and ponder our future as a single entity. Without widespread daily media we can't even mourn in timely fashion the death of our friends. Viable daily media demonstrate that there is popular interest in a society's activities and that there is also a thriving financial and commercial community.

Writing over the years about the civic role of journalism in good and bad times, Jan Schaffer, executive director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, Washington, made the following points, which can be related to the role of the media in our hromada:

In addition to being watchdogs or attack dogs, journalists can also be guide dogs. This is a form of journalism that not only gives the people news and information, but also helps them do their jobs as citizens. It doesn't just deliver the everyday, mundane news, but it actually challenges people to get involved, get engaged and take ownership of problems. It doesn't position them as spectators, but as participants.
Civic journalists let ordinary people see themselves in their stories doing ordinary and extraordinary things: rescuing survivors, searching for the missing, overcoming obstacles and grieving their losses. The goal is to produce news that citizens need to be educated about issues and current events, to make civic decisions, to engage in civic dialogue and action, and generally to exercise their responsibilities in a democracy.
Journalists, in times of national crisis, have a special role to play. To be sure, they help to connect citizens by sharing information. As important, they are key transmitters of the shared values and aspirations that give the United States the capacity to sustain a free and open society.

There are some who say that we should take advantage of the latest technology to communicate with one another. Yes, we would be able to communicate, but would we be able to inform, analyze, educate, enlighten and entertain as conveniently and effectively as with a daily newspaper or radio? The Internet is fast and sexy, but it is also a cold and impersonal medium; you can't take it and a cup of coffee to bed, spread it out at your feet and share it with your mate.

Surely we can't turn back the clock to a point in our history before the establishment of Svoboda and start over. But we can convene another forum, this time for media practitioners, to discuss their role in the future of the hromada. Conference organizers occasionally include an agenda topic about the media, but the speakers generally consist of non-professionals. There certainly are enough Ukrainian American media specialists from all demographic subgroups who can talk about our collective future and why we can't build and maintain daily media outlets.

Will we be doomed to oblivion without a strong daily media? No, but we will be relegated to mediocrity without them.

Ihor Dlaboha is a Ukrainian American journalist, a former editor of The Ukrainian Weekly and The National Tribune, former general manager of the Ukrainian Broadcasting Network, a member of the UCCA executive board, and a vice-president of the Association of Ukrainian Journalists of America and Canada.

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