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Date: 5/16/2023
NORTHAMPTON — A new Western Massachusetts organization is looking to flip the traditional “top-down” think tank model on its head.
After years of research and preparation, the Western Massachusetts Policy Center officially launched at the end of April as a new model of a grassroots, anti-racist think tank that focuses on practical training, education and the direct resourcing of those historically or routinely excluded from power or influence.
“In traditional think tanks, strategic priorities, policy positions, things of that nature are set from the top-down,” said Lauren Rollins, the founding president and CEO of WMPC. “Those things are driven generally by donor interests or special interest groups who donate to think tanks or to corporations who donate to think tanks … what’s missing from those priorities are the actual needs of everyday people on the ground experiencing the harms of broken systems. “
The new think tank is a culmination of Rollin’s work throughout her professional career. She started in academia as a teacher of research writing, Shakespeare social justice. Through her own experiences and through the experiences of her students, Rollins said she noticed firsthand some of the inequities that plague our society.
When she moved to public policy, Rollins said the problems became even more apparent.
“The old guard of research and public policy was really holding very tightly to the power structures that they need to let go of in order for the next generation of policy people to be able to get the reputations, experience, and expertise that they really need in order to be able to respond to problems of the future,” Rollins said.
Knowledge and understanding of these antiquated structures, where think tank leaders are generally siloed from widespread issues, galvanized Rollins in 2017 to start thinking about how to resource less traditional policy scholars and how those scholars can move up the ranks faster and break those traditional barriers.
“I became really quickly disillusioned with the reluctance and outright refusal to engage more directly at a think tank with real people and what they actually think about what you’re proposing,” Rollins said, of the traditional think tanks.
Instead, the WMPC works from the “ground up” and sets priorities relating to intractable issues that Western Massachusetts deals with daily, like affordable housing, economic infrastructure and regional development, as well as how to get rid of vacant storefronts and fill desolate mill buildings. And unlike the traditional think tanks, the WMPC will work with the people who actually deal with these obstacles.
“Those sorts of things will always be issues in Western Mass. until we solve them,” Rollins said.
To tackle these issues, Rollins said the WMPC is dedicating its resources to professional development and practical training for more non-traditional policy professionals, including those that do not necessarily need an undergraduate degree in a particular study.
The hope is for the WMPC to eventually have fellows with lived-in experiences of the broken systems set specific priorities for the think tank to embark on.
“Our think tank is the only one I’m aware of in the country … that is open to the public,” Rollins said. “People write us directly, and I respond when I can, and they can respond to issues they are facing.”
Rollins said that the WMPC will eventually have its own brick-and-mortar location in downtown Northampton where fellows and other relevant experts can meet with people to help them solve a particular issue they are facing.
“Everyone we’ve talked to is very excited that we will be able to help provide this professional development capacity but also bridge that gap and create scholars who go into the policy ecosystem who are able to boil things down better because they are coming directly from the communities that they have to go back and communicate with,” Rollins said.
Unlike other think tanks, Rollins said the WMPC’s leadership reflects a much more egalitarian structure, where the goal is not to create some hierarchy that neglects the community on the ground level.
Currently, the organization is actively acquiring seed funding to provide support for incoming fellows, but the organization has not added any fellows yet. “As soon as we get the money in the door that requires to give them the resources they need, that will signal when we’ll open up our first cohort of fellows,” Rollins said.
The plan right now, according to Rollins, is to start with a small cohort of six fellows: two of those will come directly from communities that experience negative systems and want to use that experience to change policy; another two of those fellows will be policy analysts with a more academic background; while the final two fellows will also people directly from communities who are interested in running for office eventually.
“What this does is it basically creates positions that are all of the parts of the policy ecosystem,” Rollins said. “And then that way, they not only learn how to approach the problems from those particular perspectives, but ideally they’ll be able to switch and occupy each other’s positions by the end.”
Rollins, who used to work at a federal think tank in Washington, D.C., said she chose Western Massachusetts as the ideal location for this think tank for a couple of reasons. For one, she has lived in the area for the past decade and is very familiar with the issues that plague the region.
But beyond that, Rollins also noted how Western Massachusetts is geographically remote from the state capital while also carrying a much-reduced population and tax base.
“What that means, is we have a much harder time coalescing to get resources on the western part of the state than we do on the eastern part,” Rollins said. “And that’s even more difficult because our four counties are so diverse in their own economic bases, in their populations and their demographics.”
With this in mind, the WMPC hopes to become that beacon of light where people from different problems can learn about each other’s problems and find resources that will help solve these issues.
“Western Massachusetts desperately needs a policy function, it needs a think tank function,” Rollins said. “All of the same kind of privileges that a traditional policy fellow has enjoyed, I want to be able to give to our fellows so they can really focus on building their careers.”
While the organization is still in its early stages, Rollins said they are already working on specific issues in the community including looking at ways to reform the criminal justice system to accommodate child victims of sexual assault and abuse since many children who go through this system to find help are often retraumatized. She said they also hope to work on transportation and vacant storefront issues soon as well.
“I hope that this think tank becomes a model that will not only start other think tanks like it across the country, but that the old tanks will also see this model…and they can start to implement anti-racist initiatives that are actually impactful and demonstrable,” Rollins said.
Readers can learn more about the WMPC by visiting their website: https://wmpolicy.org/.