Copenhagen - Day 1

Every day in Copenhagen was chock-full of meetings and interactions with interesting and influential Danish leaders. First up: a meetng at the Ministry of Environment with Thomas Becker, Denmark's lead negotiator in climate change of the Subsidiary Body of Implementation under the UN Climate Change Convention.



Mr. Becker provided a great overview of Denmark's efforts to reduce global warming by changing personal habits and industrial energy use, in addition to increasing the country's output of green energy, like wind power. In fact, one of the global leaders in the field is a Danish wind turbine company called Vestas Wind Systems. This article talks about Denmark's plans forn using offshore windpower to reduce global warming and reduce the country's dependence on coal, oil and gas.



Next up was a visit with Michael Ulveman, also a German Marshall Fellow, and the Spokesperson for the Danish Prime Minister, which was a real treat for me since we do similar jobs and both have a background as a reporter. He gave us a great overview of the Danish political system, the challenges their country is facing with immigration and the burden on citizens for supporting their very generous benefit system. He outlined options the administration is evaluating and talked about Denmark's role in the EU and on the world stage.


A theme we would here many times is that "(insert country here) is so small compared to the U.S. but we are taking action to deal with (insert regional or global issue) so that we can create a better future for our country and for the world." I felt bad sometimes because it was so clear that the U.S., in contrast, was not being as proactive, despite its astronomically greater size and political power.



It was stated implicitly in some cases, explicitly in others, that part of the reason there is such animosity towards the current U.S. administration from many Europeans, is that we have all this power and influence but we squander it and don't use it positively or productively to compel others to do what's best for the global community. Instead, we sit navel-gazing and getting worked up about purely selfish interests and ostracize other countries, instead of building coalitions to affect greater change and more positive outcomes for people and countries around the globe. Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging.



Afterwards we toured the Prime Minister's offices, including coercing Chad and Michael to sneak a seat at the PM's desk. That's our group below in the Prime Minister's very cool media briefing room.And we saw just h0w committed the Danes are to reducing greenhouse gases and dependence on foreign oil. Men and women (often with kids in tow) bike all over the place, rain or shine or snow in Copenhagen. Bikes littered the sidewalks in many parts of the city and there are bike lanes all over. Granted, Copenhagen is almost completely flat, which makes this much more feasible than in say... Seattle.

Still, even their leaders are in on the action. Down below is a shot of the Prime Minister's car. Notice the bike on back. He apparently is driven to meetings that are far away, but sometimes bikes to them and back, or gets a ride home. How cool is that?

That afternoon, we talked Danish Integration with a professor and another GMF fellow who is the advisor to the Minister for Social Affairs and the Minister for Gender Equality. That one was chock full of info too. But that's later. You can see why we are beat by the end of each day: it's a lot of back-to-back meetings on very thought-provoking topics, followed by discussions of the same over dinner. It's a real treat though to spend all day on such interesting issues. More later!

Closing out Paris

This trip has been nearly non-stop with activities and meetings. It's been fun, illuminating, enlightening and draining. But I'm meeting such interesting people and learning so much that I fall into bed happily exhausted each night.


Our last night in Paris, I met with Marie-Claude Peyrache, President of European Professional Women's Network-Paris (PWN) and former director of Communication at France Telecom. Their mission is to work women's progress in the business world.

I'm very interested in professional and leadership development for women and communities of color, so I found PWN online before I left and asked to meet Ms. Peyrache or someone from the organization. The group began as a way for professional women in Europe to build the kind of networks that can help them blossom professionally, develop leadership skills, and build confidence in their ability to join and succeed in the executive ranks.

Ms. Peyrache said women in Europe have only started to really move up into the professional ranks in large numbers in the past 10 years. The organization has chapters in most of the major cities in Europe, except in Germany: there is still more pressure on women there to stay home with young children rather than entering the job market outside the home. I would later learn this is very different from Denmark, where 80% of women work! But the Danes also have a very strong benefit system that provides a year of paid maternity leave, similar availability for men, and low-cost, subsidized childcare. The result is a society with strong support for families and work/life balance, plus very low unemployment among native Danes. Hear that U.S. lawmakers?

We had a very good meeting and she provided some good tips for growing your membership, providing networking opportunities, and assisting with professional development and mentoring that I'll be taking back to the Seattle Urban League Young Professionals, a professional development and social service organization with which I've been involved for the past couple years.

The highlight of the Paris stay came that evening when I joined GMF fellows Chad from DC and Carrie, a museum administrator from Chicago at the home of Cyril, a former European German Marshall Fellow for dinner.

He and his family lived in the suburbs of Paris, which are much more diverse than the area around our hotel. His wife would later explain that she'd intentionally moved to that area because she felt their former neighborhood had been too homogenous and she really wanted to be aroundm, and have her kids experience life with, a variety of people.

They welcomed us into their home and plied us with delicious appetizers, food and drink for several hours. On a work/school night, no less! Cultural lesson of the day: Europeans generally entertain for several hours. This would be echoed in Copenhagen where our coordinator explained that people usually come for appetizers, drinks and dinner around 7 or 8pm and don't leave until after 11pm but before 12am on weeknights. On weekends, there's no set ending time. I loved it!

At Cyril and Caroline's, we met their sons (who were adorable and smart), and listened to great jazz music while getting acquainted over wine (juice for me, as usual), bread, cheese and olives. We eventually moved over to the dining room where they ramped up the gastronomic pleasure level even more with scallops and oysters in a delicious butter sauce (perfect for sopping up with the bread), followed by roasted lamb and fingerling potatoes. Then there was a cheese course, and we wrapped up with ice cream and sorbet.

As if that weren't enough for a wonderful evening, they were all very interesting individuals and talked very candidly about French life, politics, the issue of immigration and integration of ethnic minorities (Caroline volunteers as a tutor for immigrant women to help them learn French and become more self-sufficient), and work/life challenges and options.


It was simply a wonderful evening and made me long to do more entertaining back home in Seattle. Rather than just waiting for the mega-holiday dinners, I plan to host more small dinner gatherings. With our fast-paced lives in the U.S., it's the only way I'm going to get to enjoy friends on a more regular basis.


Additional take-away from this experience: entertaining is not about volume or intricacy of food or whether everything is Martha Stewart-perfect, it's about spending time, building relationship and sharing time, food and home with someone simply because being in their presence is enjoyable. I'll try to keep that in mind as I return to the busy life back home.

French National Assembly

Tuesday, we visited the French National Assembly, which is its parliamentary body. We'd planned to meet with a member who is a leading figure in the conservative caucus of the assembly, but election duties had called him away. So one of his staffers gave us a tour of the facility, which was very regal and impressive, as legislative buildings are wont to be,
especially French ones that go back hundreds of years.

Inside, they had these great gifts for political junkies: dinnerware to let the world know just what side of the political spectrum you (and your food) are on. Droit is right, gauche is left. They'd work just as well in the U.S., given our red/blue state divide after the last election.



Also inside, this cool bronze sculpture of a painter working by Louis Mitelberg entitled "Daumier creant Ratapoil." I just liked it for some reason.




...and this Versailles-esque dining room being set up for an official function. Get a load of the gilt, chandeliers, and ceiling frescoes. Why do I get the feeling that were this room in the states, it would cause a stir for being too ostentatious for elected officials?

Here's the chamber where the members meet to make decisions. GMF Fellow Michael from Austin, served as a spokesmodel for this shot after showing me how to adjust my flash for the lighting conditions in the room. Camera mechanics, energy policy, knowledge of obscure political facts and research, and cracking the rest of us up with his asides are just some of his many talents.

We also passed through the members' library, which is an almost perfect replica of what heaven looks like in my brain, except that in addition to floor to ceiling books, my version has dogs underfoot and hot chocolate on tap. Guilty confession: I've been drinking almost one hot chocolate a day on the trip(!). They've been exquisite in both Paris and Copenhagen. Good thing we're walking a lot.

Over in the mail room, which was where members of parliament used to come to read and respond (by hand) to constituent letters, they have these great chairs. They were built oversized so that members could read a wide open newspaper without disturbing or encroaching on each other's space. How's that for form following function? I love it! And I want one. Note to Jason.
PS - you'll notice the functional hair I'm sporting. That's what happens when your flat iron falls victim to the quirks of international voltage changes. To do list for the evening: find a store with hair appliances.

Copenhagen preview, Paris politics and educational inequities

I'm in Copenhagen, Denmark now and it's continued to be a whirlwind trip. I'm way behind in posting. Every day is so jam packed with meetings and activities, I can barely stay awake when we return to our rooms each night. Plus, Copenhagen is REALLY expensive and there's no free wireless in the hotel, but it's great awesome otherwise.

I'll be traveling with a smaller group of GMF fellows in each of the next few cities, until we rejoin everyone in Brussels at the end. For now, the Copenhagen crew left to right below is Michael the professor from Texas, BryAnn the Exec. Director of a non-profit for immigrant women in Atlanta, Chad, the think tank guy from DC, me, and Cal, the attorney from North Carolina.

We spend each day together being briefed in meetings, absorbing info, asking questions, cracking each other up as we debrief during walks and cab rides to each venue, deciding where to eat each night if there's no dinner meeting (a surprisingly easy process), and tallying up who owes who how many kroner, euros and dollars for shared taxi rides, meals and host gifts. I don't know if the GMF staff chose potential fellows for having great senses of humor and being easy going, but they certainly succeeded with this bunch.

Here's a shot of my cool Danish room...which overlooks a bay and the opera house across the water. Motel 6 it ain't. This place is great.

One adjustment we had to make upon arrival is that although Denmark is part of the European Union, it's not on the Euro. Their monetary unit is the Kroner and currently it's about $1 USD = 6 Kroner. So the 300 Kroner I took out of the ATM was only about $50. Note to self.

But back to Paris. Here's a speed round summary of some of the activities during our last couple days there, which were wonderful. On Monday, we gathered in the hotel lobby for the continental breakfast included with our room, which was great. Buttery, flaky, mini croissants, muesli, dried apricots, prunes and figs, fresh fruit, yogurt, juices, coffee and hot chocolate. For the remainder of the stay, breakfast became a great way to power up for the day and catch up with folks who'd gone to personal appointments or other activities the night before.

Our first stop that day was a meeting with a reporter from L'Express and a Research Director from the Center for International Studies who talked with us about the French perspective on the European Union. Their general take was that the French political class had slowly allowed their influence
and stature on the world stage to erode as the UK seized leadership in Europe.

As examples, they pointed to the lack of interest in the French socialist approach to global issues, and the increased interest by Europeans and young people in how to adapt to the Anglo-Saxon/UK way of operating a country, with high growth, free markets, and the like, rather than the French way. They also pointed to the brain drain from France to other EU
countries and the U.S. Apparently, recent research indicates there are about 400,000 French people living in London, a number that would make it the 7th largest city if it were in France.These sentiments would be echoed and validated later that day when we met with students at a public high school.

But first, we had a a fantastic lunch and primer on immigration and access to education in France. We learned that education is fully funded by the state and students begin school with a rigorous pre-school program from ages 2.5 to 6 years. The rest of school up through the equivalent of our
high school is similar to ours, except that at age 16 or so, French students' GPA and test scores are used to funnel them onto either a vocational or classical/professional track. Once on that track, it is nearly impossible to change. Essentially, they must decide at 16 what they will be doing for the rest of their life! We would hear the students' worry and angst about this later.

However, it appeared to that they are funneled into a path much sooner, because social class has a lot to do with what schools kids go to, how good the schools are, and thus how well prepared they are for the testing to come later. The school principal there also told us kids who do the classical
track must also do two 8 week internships in their last two years of school, but because of France's class system, it's often hard for students whose parents don't have connections to find internships. Knowing this, they opt for the vocational track.

In fact, 60% of kids from poorer neighborhoods go the vocational track, likely because of these systemic roadblocks. But when asked about how this puts poor and immigrant kids at an automatic disadvantage, the response was that although some reforms were being considered, they told us, "It works pretty well and this is the way it's been set up." Basically the classic: this is how we've always done it, a phrase which irks me to no end, no matter the context, because it's a cop out for not trying to change things or look for ways to do them better. Yet we would repeatedly hear discontent with the status quo: very frustrating.

We take turns presenting gifts from our home state or city to our hosts. This is me presenting our speaker with a gift pack depicting beautiful pictures of the Pacific Northwest and a cool, hand carved bookmark from the Seattle Public Library.

That afternoon, we met with high school students to learn about their lives and interests. These students had been chosen to meet with us because they had very good English skills and were clearly tops among the student body. They were very smart, mature, and very knowledgable about some things in the U.S. But they also had some misconceptions, which was no
surprise since they said they'd perfected their near-flawless language skills by watching American TV and movies.

As students in their last year of school, they expressed concerns about having to choose their life's path in the next few months. Yet overall, they felt the French education system was much better than those in the U.S. because they saw it as a meritocracy, where smart kids could go to college for free, while it cost way too much to go to college in the U.S.

"Your parents shouldn't have to pay for an education," one girl said. While we agreed their system was better in that respect, and in its apparent rigorousness, we also pointed out that there are lots of ways to fund an education here and that our system provided the flexibility they craved to decide their life's path later, or change it altogether. "It's possible to succeed in our system without connections and without a degree at all," I pointed out. "A test at 16 or 18 does not set your life's course."

I also begged to differ with the meritocracy suggestion. Although public schools are free, just as in America (and even private schools are subsidized by the government) they are not all created equal. Getting into the good ones in Paris depends on where you live (also similar to the U.S.). But Paris is naturally segregated, with white and more affluent families in the center, and poorer and immigrant families typically farther out in the suburbs, where, not so coincidentally, the schools are not as strong.

So I pointed out, it was not just good grades and test scores that brought them together in that class, it was the social class of their parents, who presumably, could afford to live closer in. Smart kids who were not fortunate enough to born into the right family or neighborhood were out of luck. They didn't really respond and really, it was a rhetorical remark, because I could tell by looking around the room and the courtyard filled with students that it was a pretty homogenous place.

This topic obviously hits home for me because I feel fortunate to have had a teacher who looked beyond my skin color and saw my academic potential, and who recommended me to a school that nurtured, celebrated and developed that potential; A school that has made part of its mission finding today's talented kids, regardless of their background or family status and providing them the same opportunity to excel in a rigorous, academic program.

So it bothers me to hear French educators and students acting as if they operate in an egalitarian meritocracy when there are no doubt many, many kids out there who could be attending these more rigorous schools and using them as stepping stone to a better future, just as better connected students do, if not for their family name, religion, income level, and address.

But the discussion was not as much of a downer as that last paragraph might indicate. I shared the discussion with two other fellows, so we also
discussed the regional differences in education and other attitudes in the U.S. since I'm from Washington State, Jeff is from North Carolina, and Hussein is from Minnesota. It was an informative discussion all the way around and we enjoyed the students immensely. They were very forthcoming and amazed us with their near-flawless English, which they apologized for(!). Uh, it's WAY better than our French, we told them.

Some fellows headed off to personal appointments, but since I had none, I trekked back to the hotel by wandering through several neighborhoods and shopping districts in search of fountain pen and stationary stores before hoping the Metro for my temporary home. With all the walking to and from our meetings, I was beat! So I opted out of the small group dinner and settled for a simple teriyaki dinner from Tokyorama down the block before turning in. I love this city, but it wears you out!

French politics: countdown to the election

Sunday night, we had our first briefing on the political structure in France. French voters will head to the polls in May to elect a new president, replacing Jacques Chirac, who has been the country's leader for 12 years, and in politics in France for 40 years.

There are three leading contenders (and at least three lesser known ones who pollsters believe have little chance of actually impacting the race). The forerunners are Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkosy, 52, Socialist Segolene Royal, 53 and Francois Bayrou, 55. Royal has drawn the most media attention because she's believed to be the first woman with a real shot at being elected president of France. Obvious comparisons are also being drawn to Hillary Clinton in the U.S. race.

In doing research for this trip, it was easy to see that media coverage of France's elections have intensified in just the past few months, with the election just a couple months away. We Americans (and the candidates)have to endure (and fund) nearly 18 months of media ads and campaigning. That's largely due to France's "tight limits on campaign spending and a ban on political advertising on commercial hoardings in the three months preceding an election." (Reuters: Advertising big guns out for French poll.)

We had the pleasure of learning more about the elections during a fabulous dinner with:

• Stephane Rozes, Director of Opinion Polls and Institutional Studies for CSA, an independent administrative authority that was created to guarantee broadcasting freedom in France, which is somewhat like our FCC, and


• Harold Hyman, a journalist with BFM-TV, a new information outlet using TV, cable, satellite and internet. That's me and Harold below.

They gave us a great overview of the upcoming election and the candidates, however when it came time for questions, one of the GMF fellows remarked that it all seemed to be more about the personal histories, personalities, and positive or negative relations between the candidates and/or Chirac than about issues of importance to the average voter. Yes, I know this sounds similar to the U.S., but it seemed magnified. Where they stood on the issues was not mentioned until we asked.

Our hosts explained that in France's party-run system, issues are set by the parties, not so much the candidates, so issues are not discussed much during the campaign.

I asked about the role of women and minorities in politics since Segolene Royal's ascendency was being so trumpeted. Are there others in the pipeline behind her? The answer is no, again, due to the party structure, which our hosts said makes it very tough for them to rise through the ranks from the local level to national prominence, and even then, it is a very long process, like decades.

I found that discouraging, and was reminded that it was only in mid-2006 (!) that France's national TV channel hired Harry Roselmack, its first black anchor and what an uproar that caused. And that came a year after Chirac urged the media to hire more ethnic minority journalists, and even that tepid boost only came in reaction to riots by Arab youths.

Another GMF fellow asked about the integration of religious and ethnic minorities in France and how that was being handled by the presidential candidates. The ensuing discussion veered off into the headscarf issue that had been hotly debated in France recently: whether to allow the growing number of Muslim girls in school wear traditional headscarfs. A panel was convened to discuss the issue and came up with 25 rules governing religious symbols in schools.

Coming from the Pacific Northwest, one of the least churched areas of the country on a per capita basis, I admitted that I found this amazing because none of the issues being mentioned as the root of the hubbub were at all related to the actual education the kids receive. It was all about perceptions by others and the messages it might send.

When I was in school, I played basketball with a girl whose religion did not allow her to wear pants, and certainly not our uniform shorts. Rather than convene a panel and go the French route, school administrators simply let other schools in the league know that she would be playing in a uniform top with a floor-length skirt for religious reasons. No one really batted an eye and life went on.

Our hosted reminded me that it was a much bigger impact in France, with hundreds of girls taking to wearing the scarves. Also, the panel approach came out of centuries of distrust of mixing church and state/religion and education because the church in France had supported the monarchy and its oppression of the masses before the masses revolted.

"So our feeling is we do not want religion in schools, we do not want religious symbols in schools," said Stephane. "Our view is 'keep the priests off our kids'."

"That statement has a whole different connotation in the U.S.," I said, "But I understand your point."

Our well-fed, better-informed, little group at the end of the night.

The whole evening was filled with questions and discussions like this, comparing and contrasting the French and U.S. approach. Coming in to this trip, I was an avowed lover of all things French, except for the whole absolute monarchy bits mentioned in my previous post. Now, I'm starting to get a more rounded and complete view of the country's complexities, and even its negative aspects, which was inevitable given my overly-rosy view coming in. That's not a bad thing. I see the shift as a result of a more informed view. And being more informed is almost always good.