The Bread and Roses labor project is making images of working class laborers visible to the masses (p. 36). If the exhibit is coming to your town, arrange a COF trip to see it. Have some group members take a 'photo essay' of their work lives and present it at a meeting. Compare the images they come up to the Bread and Roses project (check it out online if it's not in your city). Are there any universal work themes that manifest themselves in both white-collar and blue-collar work?

Also, have group members take their own photographs of labor in action in their immediate surroundings -- construction and snow removal workers, factory workers on lunch, the after-hours cleaning crew. Take digital images or scan them and put the photo essays on the Web so the whole group can see them. Invite some of the subjects of the images to your next meeting to talk about the themes they believe these photographs show. Introduce the concept of 'happiness' from Polly Labarre's article. Does the money-for-happiness trade-off seem evident across all economic classes?

The annual Fast 50 (p. 49) gives us a look at which companies and individuals are innovating in sparse times. As a group, identify the 'Fast 10' in your city. Consider looking in the following industries (but expand wherever your group takes you) -- IT, consulting, finance, entertainment, hospitality. Arrange visits with some of these companies; do a combo trip of visiting a business, eating in a 'fast' restaurant and some sort of new entertainment option. If one of the Fast 50 is near your city, invite them to your meeting and get their input on up-and-coming local ventures. If your group did this activity last year, come up with a different 10 or revisit the places from last year and study what they've done to stay fast, or where they may have declined.

Miramax's Weinstein brothers have injected new life (p. 70), and money, into the film industry. What do you think goes into a Miramax hit? Find one or two Miramax films that most people haven't seen and plan a viewing after a meeting (current selections include Gangs of New York, Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American). If you can, compare a blockbuster like 'Gangs' to a smaller production like 'Rabbit-Proof Fence.' Does the studio leave any special mark on its films, even if they appear vastly different? To cap it off, rent The Shipping News, or if enough people have seen it discuss it without renting it. How did a best-selling book with a solid cast become such a flop? Is it evidence of movie moguls like Weinstein not being in touch with American movie-goers? Use Miramax as a launching pad for a discussion on the state of independent films -- should big companies like Miramax have a stake in them or are they best left to smaller production units? See if your city has an independent film festival and if so organize a group outing to one night's events. Compare the quality of what you see to mainstream cinema. There are always a few standouts, but do the mediocre indies entertain us like mediocre Hollywood fare does?

The Apollo Group and the University of Phoenix are trying to inject profit into higher education. (p. 80) Arrange a tour of the local university for your group, not just of the classrooms and dorms, but of the administrative buildings as well. See if the finance VP will join you and question him or her on the university's operations. Look for ways that the college could run more like a business, whether it remains nonprofit or not. Ask them to identify the areas that lose the most money and try to identity the problem and brainstorm solutions with the administrator. Consider the potential conflicts of a nonprofit vs. for-profit college. For example. in Evanston, IL., Northwestern University is constantly under fire for using it's nonprofit status as an excuse for not contributing back to the town's property tax structure. What other tensions might exist under the nonprofit education system, and what new ones might evolve under a for-profit structure?

Daniel Richards contributed this month's Next Steps.

March 2003 Connexus | Flash Points | Next Steps