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Coming together in Fargo - Fargo, North Dakota
Christian Century, July 30, 1997 by Stewart W. Herman
Never since European settlement had so much water overflowed the Red River, a usually non-descript stream that separates North Dakota from Minnesota as it makes its sluggish way north to Canada. A record ten feet of snow deposited by half a dozen major winter storms was capped by a furious storm on April 6 that added another few inches to the rising waters, while snapping thousands of power poles in rural North Dakota. The river first inundated the small city of Breckenridge. Days later it almost topped the dikes in Fargo and Moorehead. It spread over hundreds of square miles, ravaging Grand Forks and East Grand Forks some 80 miles downstream to the north. Then it was diverted around Winnipeg and disappeared into the vast reaches of Lake Winnipeg.
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During these weeks another flood rose, crested and now has all but disappeared: that of local volunteers. For observers who worry about the vibrancy of public life, this was an inspiring event. For six extraordinary weeks during March and April, the residents of Fargo, North Dakota, and Moorhead, Minnesota, gathered by the tens of thousands to fill sandbags by the millions and to lay dikes by the mile.
The flood revealed, in effect, that these two communities possess a considerable amount of social capital for coping with such natural disasters. More mysteriously, it demonstrated how in times of crisis the ordinary reciprocities of social life yield temporarily to an economy of gift-giving which blossoms with awesome but evanescent beauty in its own short season.
Simpler explanations may not suffice. Of course, it is likely that the violent vagaries of the weather, the flatness of the valley and the relative homogeneity of its population made it easy for volunteers to share a sense of threat and to identify with homeowners in harm's way. "It was just the thing to do," shrugged one resident. Rising floodwaters generate a powerful urge to do something, and heaving sandbags onto a dike is a powerfully symbolic action. Sandbagging pits formed earth against formless water, firmness against flow, order against chaos. Yet never before was there such an outpouring of civic-minded labor in these two cities. More than 800 houses were diked in Fargo alone. This work involved more than 10,000 registered individuals, including group efforts by more than 100 churches, companies and associations. Another 10,000 filled sandbags, while uncounted thousands more chipped in without bothering to register. Busloads of high school and university students, church youth and others poured in from towns and cities all over the region.
There is no guarantee that a community will prove so responsive when some of its members are threatened. The startling fact is that the number of volunteers in Fargo and Moorhead far exceeded the number of citizens directly at risk. Many helped family and friends, but the tangents of helping family and friends, but the bonds of kinship, friendship, neighborhood and collegiality. While the full number of volunteers will never be known, some 17,000 showeds up at the local arena in May to be feted and receive official expressions of gratitude. Yet it is unlikely that the 800 fortunate Fargo homeowners will ever know the names of those who showed up when so desperately needed, and surely will never know those who bagged and transported the sand they used.
How can this vast outpouring of anonymous and unrequited labor be explained? For one thing, the thousands of volunteers appear to have drawn from a large and replenishable stock of civic goodwill. The volunteers I observed seemed to be used to working with others. They set about their tasks with a cheerful tolerance of the inevitable delays and mistakes. There was a spirit of cooperation, endurance an resilience in the face of setbacks. It seemed as if these volunteers already had amassed considerable experience in other networks of cooperation -- what Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam calls "social capital." Social capital is the compounding of individual experiences of social cooperation; it is a resource that accumulates through the myriad contacts of individuals with one another through associations and organizations both public and private. For Putnam, it is measured by levels of participation in such voluntary groups.
Two years ago, Putnam drew upon nationwide survey data to argue that the kind of civic engagement that generates social capital has declined precipitously during the past several decades. He cited suggestive statistics about dwindling participation in churches, politics, PTAs, Boy Scouts, civic and fraternal organizations and the like. Most whimsically, he noted that bowling in organized leagues has "plummeted," as individuals have developed at taste for bowling alone.
My own informal soundings of local experts and organizational spokespeople suggest that Fargo and Moorhead appear to be holding their own in generating social capital. Participation in political caucuses and other apparatus of party politics has remained constant for the past 30 years. The percentage of residents who are communing members of churches stands at 65 percent, having dropped at most ten percentage points since 1971. Fraternal organizations such as the Eagles and Elks indeed have declined, but service organizations such as Rotary, Kiwanis and the Lions are robust, with more than 30 chapters in the two cities. More than 20 local Boy Scout troops have no trouble recruiting leaders, and the level of activism within PTAs has held its own over the past decade. City-sponsored sports programs are thriving. Finally, bowling leagues still account for 65-percent of the business of local alleys, and the remaining bowlers are far more likely to bring their friends or family than to bowl alone. When I explained Putnam's thesis to one alley manager, she responded with the kind of earnest if misplaced sympathy that derails rational argument, "I'm really sorry he feels that way." Like the pregnant sheriff in the movie Fargo, these two cities move at their own deliberate pace to sustain their civic life.
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