Blogger Appreciation: Viable Third

Last week, I had lunch with Airick Leonard West, the spark plug behind Viable Third. Viable Third pushes the limits of what I consider to be a blog - it has a journal, it features amateur's opinions and it allows comments, so it qualifies in my book, but it is really an advocacy site more than a typical blog. If Viable Third were a more traditional effort, its website would simply be another homepage of a nonprofit.

So, what is Viable Third? It is a focus on improving the viability of Kansas City's Third City Council District - the geography bounded by Independence to the north, 45th street to the south, Troost to the west, 435 to the east, and fear on all sides. The opening page of Viable Third features this explanation:

what i stand for:

A viablethird district that will catalyze a peaceful, clean, educated and thriving community.

Economic viability is a catalyst to change the way we think about urban blight and the neighborhoods that wear that label. It is not acceptable to have neighborhoods with conditions so low that people are disinclined to live there, go to school there, open businesses there, and work there. The agreement that such neighborhoods can exist in Kansas City must end. And a new agreement must take its place. I agree to a viablethird.

Audacious and simple, isn't it?

The website features commentary from Airick, Robyne Turner, and others, and it also features a space where visitors are invited to make their own commitments to support the Third District (Alexis - let's see those photos!!).

It is fitting that Viable Third pushes up against the boundaries of the blog format. It's its own thing. It's not a 501c3 organization with a Board and staff. It's not a closed group of activists meeting in some dim basement. It's not one person's project, cautiously controlled by the founder. Trying to describe it in traditional terms prevents you from "getting it". Instead, you have to visit the site, visit the neighborhoods, reflect on it and understand it in your own way.

If that kind of thing makes you nervous, though, I've figured out a way you can kill it out of your own world. First, make Airick a hero. He has some of the attributes - a willingness to get involved in causes and address needs with little apparent concern for his own financial and other needs, a sense of outrage that comes through as intensity rather than anger, a ubiquity in the "hot spots" of Kansas City's social activism, a willingness to help out the least of our brothers with longterm personal involvement, and an energetic charisma. It would be easy to slap a hero label on Airick, which would allow us to dehumanize him and free ourselves of the challenge to internalize his issues and involvement. After you slap that hero label on Airick, you are free to excuse yourself from imitating his efforts to help the Third District. Indeed, you can then even view the effort as quixotic and implausible, and do nothing.

Airick Leonard West is one of the more challenging people I've ever had lunch with. I might even say "inspiring". But I won't say he's a hero - instead, I'll say that he has challenged me to look at my own commitments with a dissatisfied eye.