What the Heck is Positive Deviance?

A Habit of Hope - Issue 10

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

Like you, I suspect, I’m finding every day newly overwhelming in the breakage of our norms and the breaches of our institutions. I’m no longer going to hold back from acknowledging that the United States is undergoing a coup d’etat. Six mostly-too-young-to-drink hackers rolling in and accessing the most sensitive US Government computer systems at the behest of their billionaire overlord sounds like the plot of a Die Hard sequel, one that might be a little too over the top to be greenlit. And yet, that is exactly what has happened. I really can’t believe it.

Where’s John McClane when you need him?

I was gearing up to oppose the appointments and Executive Actions of the second Trump administration. That was daunting enough. I did not anticipate a different, un-elected, private individual so easily taking over the functions of our government. The chaos we face — it’s so surreal, my brain can barely process it.

And yet, I must process it — we all must.

And, we must also remember three things:

• Every dictatorship falls

• Every system has vulnerabilities

• We don’t have to face any of this alone

I had a humbling thought this week. Is this the scariest thing that Americans have faced? For me, I can say yes, it probably is. But that’s a pretty narrow lens. Am I at more personal peril than the Native Americans stripped of their land and forced on a death march along the Trail of Tears? Am I more vulnerable than the brave people fleeing bloodhounds along the Underground Railroad?

Certainly not.

I would be wise to remember that I can learn from the heroic Americans who have faced existential threats before. How did they get through it? How did they keep their hope, their focus, their resilience? How did their communities persist?

I’ll be exploring those questions and highlighting figures of resistance in our American history. But I’m going to start locally, with a program in my own neck of the woods that asked the same questions: What makes resilience? What generates hope?

Commander Tim Hagel, former Chief of Police of Thousand Oaks, created an innovative gang intervention program called Safe Passage Youth Foundation. You can listen to a wonderful wide-ranging conversation I had with Tim here (it’s the one called “let’s be brave and keep kids out of gangs”), where we talked about all kinds of things, including his love of music, particularly Matt the Electrician!

The short version is this: Tim was involved in gang intervention at the Thousand Oaks Sheriff’s office years ago, before being promoted to Chief of Police of Fillmore. Ten years later he came back to be the Chief in TO, and he saw that the statistics for gang violence were the same as they’d been ten years ago. They’d poured millions of dollars into the problem and were not making a dent.

“We had to admit that the gangs,” he told me, “have a better business model than we do.” Gangs provide material support, a sense of belonging, the potential of a good income. In order to keep kids out of gangs, the community had to do a better job than the gangs did of filling the same needs. Or as Tim put it: “We have to cut off their supply chain of new members.”

But how to do that? A chance conversation with a local business person about the concept of “positive deviance” inspired him to take a whole new approach: send officers into the communities of people most affected by gang violence and listen to the people who are thriving in spite of it. What, exactly, were they doing that was working?

What they found, by talking to grandmothers and pastors and youth leaders in some of the neighborhoods and apartment complexes with the highest crime rates, was consistent: caring adults, high expectations and the support to meet those expectations, and a love of science and the arts. Despite being under the same pressures of poverty and racism as everyone else, kids whose families provided these kinds of support were able to resist recruitment to gangs, even if they had family members or friends who were members.

So the Sheriff’s Office tried to do the same. They set up afterschool tutoring centers with snacks. They arranged camping trips and music programs and field trips to local businesses and hospitals so kids could learn more about potential careers. They worked with the Boys & Girls Club and the Parks Department and local businesses and the YMCA to develop a comprehensive program they called STEAMO (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Medicine and Outdoors) in a program that offers kids “safe passage” through the years they are most vulnerable to recruitment by gangs. And it’s been fantastically successful.

I could explain it more, but you really ought to hear Tim describe it. He may be the most enthusiastic human being I’ve ever met.

Aside from being inspiring, how does this pertain to us, at this fraught moment? Because whether we voted for Trump, abstained from voting, or voted for Harris, it doesn’t matter now. We have to make common cause with each other against threats that affect all of us.

Safe Passage is a wonderful example of that. Tim was able to get buy-in for Safe Passage from all kinds of different groups with all kinds of different values who might not agree on much but did agree on one priority: stopping gang violence. For families, the pitch was “here are some great things for the kids to do after school so they can’t get into trouble.” For some groups, his pitch was “it will offer support to youth of color at risk.” For other groups it was “it will make the streets safer.” And for others it was “it’s cheaper to intervene early than it is to arrest, try, and incarcerate a teenager.”

This is how we need to be thinking right now, I feel. What are the activities, where are the connections that foster strength and resilience and hope? We have power when we work together. There are tens of millions of us.

So this week our Person of the Week is Tim Hagel!

Oh, and one more thing, specifically directed to the person who is committing a coup upon the United States (profanity alert, below):

Yippee-ki-ay, you South African, apartheid-loving, emerald mine heir motherfucker. This is America. We don’t go down without a fight.

Music

It’s gotta be Matt the Electrician.

Your Personal Habit of Hope

I think I’ve figured out how I want to do a zoom get together and will announce it shortly, once I have my ducks in a row. In the meantime, don’t forget I have this draft of a little planner I’m developing that explains my concept of A Habit of Hope. You can use it as the basis for a daily or weekly journal practice, if that’s helpful to you.

Thank you so much for subscribing, and please feel free to pass this on. And if you’re interested in my work as a performer and songwriter, come visit my website!

xo Rain