GOING PLACES: New Orleans - What do you do when you lose everything?

By Heather Smith, Senior Program Officer-Justice, The Field Foundation

I didn’t set out to become an urban planner.  I stumbled across it in college. As the deadline approached to choose a major. I was flipping through the course catalog and realized that almost all the courses I had taken to date added up to an urban studies major.  Aha!  And that’s when another realization set in. I adore analyzing systems. Transit. Parks. Housing. Garbage pickup. But what I encountered in real life urban planning, which the PLACES Fellowship highlighted, was a more insidious set of systems—institutional racism in the form of segregated housing systems.  Planning systems that inevitably place toxic sites near poor communities of color. And a philanthropic system that all too often reinforces the institutional racism we all live under by “other-izing” the folks they are trying to help, not listening to their ideas for change, and funding top down efforts.  All of this results in a system that consistently favors the white male dominated way of doing business.  And for those questioning these systems it creates yawning gaps between how we operate on the surface and what we are really thinking.  This impedes the work we do in philanthropy.

Which brings me to New Orleans. My PLACES Fellowship’s fourth and final site visit in December 2017 brought us to a city soaked in history, culture and food, and so many questions of racial equity.  A place that shouldn’t work but does.  Water above, dry land below.  An implausible mix of culture, celebrations, community and food traditions all brewed together in a fantastic stew.  Hurricane Katrina brought on the collapse of many of those urban systems, thus the story of Katrina now defines this city. In 2005 many residents lost everything. When every system failed-from transportation, to health care to the levies, flood victims were left only with our shared human systems.

Love.

Resilience.

And Justice.

The human resilience left behind was immensely powerful.  And that continues, fourteen years later. Driving through the Lower 9^th Ward where four out of five lots on each block are vacant made me realize how nearly every structure I saw was rebuilt with love and resilience, carving a path to justice.  We heard stories of agony, of displacement, lost relatives, and a tightly woven culture in the Lower 9^th Ward ripped apart by the flood.  Residents talked about losing relatives who died far from home in Houston or losing their communities with five generations of family who all lived within a few blocks of each other.  Yet through the tears I heard the beating heart of love and resilience. It keeps on through the loving welcome that Warrenetta Cheneau-Banks of Lower 9 Resilient brings to every volunteer group that visits even 14 years after the hurricane.  It comes through in the tears she shed as she repeated her Katrina story for us. It lives on in the Backyard Gardeners Network which is doing “guerilla gardening.” They are staking territory in vacant lots and using food to revitalize the neighborhood while preserving its cultural heritage. They are cultivating stories of resilience and love by bringing young and old together over food.  That resilience and love is what shapes the place today and is what endured for me long after my return home.

Listening is intrinsic to urban planning.  This is also true in my current work in philanthropy. The Field Foundation’s new grant making direction has shifted its focus to community empowerment through justice, art and leadership investment. I am leading our justice portfolio which is focused on upstream, root cause issues with a racial equity lens.  The foundation shifted its grantmaking to intentionally fund and listen to people of color in community understanding that narrative and storytelling is a key piece of justice. Justice is so broad it is hard to grapple with sometimes. Yet I’m trying to listen for it and to understand what it means through nearly every conversation I have—particularly those in divested neighborhoods and those voices of color that have been most marginalized.  And I’m learning that sometimes the most powerful thing I can do is put down my phone, set aside my to do list, and listen.

Many of the issues within justice are so urgent and so pressing that it is a challenge to build the space to think and reflect.  Yet often the work of equity is how you do your work.  It is not that the results or end product aren’t important. But there’s a craft to how one approaches the work.  We all want “impact” in philanthropy but that can be elusive.  But what we can do today is ground ourselves in equity. Dig deep.  Find resilience from others and put equity at the center.  Sometimes in the day to day that means going to someone’s office rather than having them travel downtown. For me it also means building space and time on the calendar to listen to what people in community are saying.  Roxanne Franklin of the city of New Orleans talked about Equity New Orleans—the city’s approach to integrating racial equity through all city departments.  As a Chicagoan coming from a patronage-based system I was incredulous and somewhat skeptical about this effort.  However, she said that they couldn’t have gotten to this work without two years of racial healing work.  This reinforced for me that the long road to racial equity is in the listening and building resilience.

So here are my main takeaways from the PLACES Fellowship—and particularly the work of racial equity;

1)    Stakeholder engagement is the work. One grantee was pitching an idea to me in justice during which she outlined the end goals and then talked about how she was engaging new racial and ethnic groups, and I said, “This IS the work.” The process of racial equity, and stakeholder engagement can be a powerful lever for change.  Whether it is making physical space for community, granting dollars for community to have space to heal, or ensuring that there is a round table instead of the head of a table.

2)    Take time to truly listen to the place. Funders often miss the stories that reside deep within the place. And often resilience, love and justice are in the listening. Every place and its soil is full of preconditions containing these racialized unequal structures and we must make it a practice to understand the stories on the road to justice.

3)    Reflection is vital. When we are stressed out, we go to the status quo. Reflection often gets lost in the busyness.  Yet being intentional about recording lessons learned can teach us how to deepen our listening.   As I reflect on the PLACES Fellowship experience, the word that rises is gratitude:  Gratitude for the grantees who are out in community making a difference every day, gratitude that I can actively wrestle with the big questions of justice and racial equity, and gratitude for the PLACES Fellowship for activating these conversations and building space for racial equity.

An enduring image for me is Lee Circle in New Orleans with the newly toppled Robert E. Lee statue now missing.  Inside the traffic circle surrounded by grass now stands a statue-less pedestal. More than symbolic, the magnitude of the shift in the landscape of that place is palpable. Perhaps there are fissures within this structural racism. This image gives me a greater urgency to work towards racial equity. The PLACES Fellowship has helped me sharpen the tools to dig deeper, and I will carry these lessons with me as I learn to listen even more. These racialized systems can be altered—statues will fall, and worlds can change.  They just need acts of love and resilience leading toward justice. Let’s listen for it.

Catch up on our last Going PLACES blog here.

Heather Smith, PLACES Alumni 2017

Senior Program Officer - Justice

The Field Foundation

Heather reviews and evaluates grant requests from Chicago area not-for-profit organizations. In addition to conducting site visits with applicants and making funding recommendations, Heather also manages the foundation’s internship program. Prior to Field, Heather served as the planning director for the congress for the New Urbanism and coordinated the Metropolis Plan activities for Chicago Metropolis 2020. She also received an American Planning Association fellowship to advance sustainable development and planning in the U. S. Senate. Heather is a member of Chicago Women in Philanthropy and the American Planning Association and serves on the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning Land Use Committee. Heather is also an adjunct faculty member in DePaul University’s Geography Department and holds a master’s degree in urban planning from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in urban studies and Japanese from Macalester College. Heather enjoys biking, sailing, and traveling in her spare time.

by TFN Staff

Going PLACES: Home and Identity in Appalachia

As a PLACES Fellow, the relationship between place and identity has been central to our lessons on realizing equity.  Our recent visit to Charleston, West Virginia – self-proclaimed capital of the Appalachian Mountains – highlighted the complexity, and importance of this relationship. The city is rich with beauty and surrounded by scenery that gives you reason to pause and breathe deeply (something I am especially grateful for, as a New Yorker.) It’s easy to understand the deep pride and identity residents have developed with their city.

For generations, Charleston’s vitality and identity has been directly connected to coal mining. Like many places, the unique economic engine of the region drives more than people’s income – it has informed and shaped their culture. It wasn’t long into our trip before we saw the effects of the well-documented challenges facing the coal economy. Throughout our visit, we heard from city leaders who consistently expressed how integral it’s been to keep Charleston focused on the future and what the city is becoming – not only what it has it been. This requires a willingness to consider and embrace a new identity – one that is built on present realities.

Many cities around the country are navigating a similar experience – attempting to create a new identity for themselves. This, at a time when technological shifts and labor markets disruptions are forcing local communities to redefine what they are known for and what makes them viable places to live, work and play. Our experience in Charleston made clear, that communities who chose to redefine themselves must do so in a manner that includes the present and experienced identities of residents, and an understanding of how the systems and institutions that have been designed to serve them map  those identities.

True to definition, residents in Charleston may claim one of many different identities – representing an intersectionality that their city (like many others) must account for to achieve equity. What does it mean for systems in Charleston to support residents who may identify as Appalachian and gay and/or underemployed and/or managing substance abuse and/or a member of a faith-based community? Given these identities, how do you generate economic development and produce quality jobs in a region that is recovering from over-dependence on a singular industry? The answers to these questions may help Charleston’s leaders identify what comes next for a city with traditional and emergent identities.

The leaders we met in Charleston see a life beyond coal. “We decided to focus on solutions and not just confrontation,” said Matt Wasson from Appalachian Voices (AV). AV is a twenty-year-old advocacy organization that works to engage and uplift citizens across Appalachia on decisions that affect their families and communities. Their work has helped elevate the significance and value of living and working in the Appalachian Mountains. Through partnerships, AV aims to advance policies and programs that create economic opportunity for residents in Appalachia – like investigating the region’s potential for a robust solar industry. Yet others are actively creating brand new industries. Dr. Rusty Kruzelock of the West Virginia Regional Technology Park gave us an up-close look at the Green Mining Model Business Program. The initiative creates jobs and business opportunities for former miners and other related trades, through the creation of a lavender farm. With the global essential oil market projected to reach $11.1B in the next five years – could Charleston be the next lavender capital of America?

These promising solutions mirror the actions of conservation groups and funders who are committed to clean energy in the U.S. Dillon, my Lyft driver at the airport, took time to share his family’s rich history in mining and how it’s defined their traditions and beliefs. This cannot be unique to just Dillon. Despite any solutions created by concerned stakeholders, residents must see themselves as a part of these efforts, if they are to be successful. Will former miners be interested in working in the essential oil or solar industry? Will they want to build the relevant new skills? Political discourse on environmental and energy issues make it hard for communities to navigate rhetoric and fact. So much so, that there is a stubborn belief that coal will make a comeback. Miners who know that coal still exists in their hometown may not be interested in retraining. However, the city’s livelihood is inextricably tied to its identity as a home for coal.

For most, our first instincts about identity are originated at home. The uniqueness of where we live and how we experience the environment around us, can profoundly shape the identity we carry into the world. While we may hold multiple identities – our PLACES experience in Charleston made one thing abundantly clear – regardless of how a person defines themselves – the place they choose to live, should create opportunities for them to live their best life.

About the Author: 

Mekaelia Davis is the Program and Policy Strategist at Prudential Financial and a 2017 TFN PLACES Fellow.

by TFN Staff

Going PLACES: Confronting bias and finding hope in Appalachia

Appalachia is a complex, often misunderstood section of our country’s history. With a legacy of extraction starting with land grants during colonization to salt mining in the 1800s to the timber and coal mining of the 20th century, Appalachia has served as a pawn of social and economic forces that regularly took more than they gave. The people of Appalachia are either commonly vilified as ignorant or victimized as addicts. The myths and dichotomies that characterize the region from afar may be very thing that continues to hold back its progress.

It was the quest for truth that called TFN’s PLACES Fellowship 2017 Cohort to hold its third site visit in Charleston, West Virginia. This is the first time a PLACES cohort has visited the Appalachian region. We came ready to test those myths and were able to experience the full range of work happening to build a strong West Virginia. We sat with social workers helping addicts in Beckley overcome the opioid epidemic, which has been fueled by harmful public policy and the pharmaceutical industry’s practices. We also learned about social justice activism led by Appalachian Voices, Call to Action for Racial Equality, and the STAY Project that are casting a vision for a just, inclusive region especially as the mono-economy of mining contains decline. It was the lavender farm on the reclaimed Four Mile Mountain mine that stole the cohort’s breath as we saw the true innovation and ingenuity of West Virginians. “The talent for our future is right here,” said Kendall Bilbrey of Appalachian Community Fund and that couldn’t have been a truer representation of our experience over those three days.

Now more so than in previous times, Appalachians and West Virginians are ready to reclaim the quality of life found in the mountain ways of their history, but the challenges are steep. Coal mining has been the force fueling the livelihood of many towns for more than hundred years and now has significantly declined in the last decade due to cheaper natural gas. The national mining companies rarely leave a lasting resource for those left to deal with the economic, social, and environmental “hopelessness,” as described to us, that ensues after they are gone. Even as the sentiment of hopelessness is squarely felt by many, West Virginians also spoke of great hope for their families and the strength of their community. They know what’s needed and are ready to act. Local leaders are seeking to bring forward the talents and skills to bear on the problems facing the region.

The South, including Appalachia, received just 10% of the national per capita average of grantmaking according to the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. That brilliant and leaderful talent that Kendall spoke of is often what is misunderstood and overlooked. Myths of waning capacity and little room for progress have plagued the region’s chances of attracting national philanthropic resources. The PLACES cohort of funders were able to tap into the strongest assets of beauty and resiliency. This site visit challenged us to address our own bias and reshape how we define leadership and impact in our work. I left wondering if there are any opportunities I am missing because my own definitions of leadership and impact are getting in the way? What shots weren’t taken because I wasn’t ready to let go of my own bias?

It is clear that funders have a role in bringing back a thriving Appalachia that can once again serve as a gateway to our country’s future. It won’t be easy and the culture of the philanthropic sector may need to change. For me and our work at the Solutions Project, it started with seeing rural issues as core to our strategy and not dismissing their importance because of our misconceptions of white poverty. Second, we have an opportunity to recognize diverse and creative forms of leadership that are unique to the region. Learning about the emerging solar projects, success with community policing, and passing of gender inclusive ordinances was exciting and a clear indication of their ability to win. Lastly, the Appalachian region has the potential to bring together business and community to build a sustainable economy that places a distinct value on human labor. Its painful and extractive history given the region a clarity about what is needed today to justly transition to a new economy.

In the course of three days we experienced a collection of hope and hopelessness, clear visions and complex systems, and really strong, resilient people ready to determine the future of Appalachia. The region still sits in a wake of despair after centuries of extraction, but that doesn’t seem to shake the people – their values, culture, and connection to the mountains. Appalachia needs partnership to address issues facing the region and funders have an opportunity to consider how they can play a role in seeding the future. Let's put the despair and extraction in the past, to look towards a generative and leaderful future in Appalachia.

Catch up on our last Going PLACES blog here.

About the Author:

Tyler Nickerson serves as the Director of Investments and State Strategy at The Solutions Project. Previously, Nickerson served as program manager at the Dyer-Ives Foundation and founded Motu Communications, which supported philanthropic clients in strategic communications, public affairs, program design, and evaluation. You can find him on Twitter at @tylerwnickerson.

by TFN Staff