Successful communities adapt to changes in their environment. They deal with and adjust to negative trends that are affecting them, and they seize opportunities. In the current economic age, these communities are often the ones that have made themselves attractive to talent.
Sometimes, even flexibility and creativity are not enough to cope with some overwhelming trend or event, and a community declines, but these are the exceptions. Looking back over time, one can often spot the source of decline in a failure to adapt to technological, social or other trends. We see these sources of decline in seaports that fought rather than adapted to containerization, in communities that thought they could simply ignore the HIV/AIDS epidemic and it would go away, and in others that would not grasp that whatever they were doing wasn’t working.
The world around the Virgin Islands is changing in numerous ways, many of which, if not addressed, pose a threat to the future well-being of the territory. In some instances, global warming being the most notable, the problem is well outside the realm of local control. In other cases, however, local action is possible. But these actions are rarely taken.
It is difficult to name a "crisis" in the past 20 years in which the territory's political or business leadership has guided the Virgin Islands to a successful resolution. In most instances, fiscal mismanagement being the most dramatic example, the government has made a bad problem progressively worse. Why is this the case? And is there anything that can be done about it?
Four critical needs
The primary source of the Virgin Islands' accelerating decline is its political and governmental system and the local culture that they have spawned. All one need do is to look at the various candidates' campaign posters to see that, even more than mainland politicians, these individuals have basically lost contact with social reality. The biggest part of that social reality is the need to change and take certain risks. I would suggest that those risks — and the opportunities that go with them — take the form of meeting four critical needs.
These needs are:
– To restructure the jobs program that currently passes for the territory's government.
– To make the Virgin Islands a significantly more attractive place for legitimate business.
– To reduce substantially, largely through criminal prosecution, the corruption that increasingly taints the territory's reputation.
– To address openly the issues of racial prejudice and hostility that divide communities and islands from one another.
The problems that beset the Virgin Islands feed off and reinforce one another. In addition, what is bad for most is good for small groups that care the most and have the most to protect. These are also daunting problems, and no one knows exactly how to resolve them without major disruptions at best and social turmoil at worst. There would, however, seem to be several keys to starting down the road to rebuilding healthy communities on all three islands.
First is to acknowledge the depth and nature of the problems. It is worse than useless to mis-define or downplay these problems. You can't solve it if you don't understand and acknowledge it.
Second, at the "front end," is to identify ways to reduce negative impacts on affected parties, particularly front-line government workers, but also others.
Third is to make the assault on corruption frontal and public.
Finally is the profound need to rebuild and, in some instances, build for the first time, solid links across racial lines on all three islands. This will be a difficult and painful process in many instances, but, as elsewhere in the world, it is clear that fragmentation, mistrust, misunderstanding and broken communication provide fertile soil for a whole series of other ills to grow and flourish. The Virgin Islands is too small for there to be the "other." In successful societies, there is only the "we."
Community leaders from all sectors and all three islands need to come together to build what might be called an agenda for the future. The very fact of people gathering and honestly discussing the real problems can be expected to have a salutary effect on a dispirited and pessimistic community. While Chairman Mao was wrong about most things, he was correct when he stated that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.
Editor's note: Management consultant Frank Schneiger has worked with V.I. agencies since 1975, most recently as consultant to United Way of St. Thomas/St. John. He is one of the founders of the St. Thomas/St. John Youth Multiservice Center.
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