Ron Dwyer-Voss

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Compromise?


By Ron Dwyer-Voss, 2014-08-13

Kurds v. ISIS. Hamas v. Israel. Ferguson residents v. police. Obama v. House Republicans. The news seems filled with standoffs. In the absence of success in getting their way, most of these parties have used violence. The extremists, who occupy the edges of most communities but are also the loudest, scream at their leaders not to compromise. Last month I forced myself to watch the partisan news stations FoxNews and MSNBC. In addition to there aversion to facts and accurate information, what seemed to characterize these shows was their derision of compromise. Even the word was uttered with the disdain a Red Sox fan might use when saying the word "Yankees." Like it is OBVIOUSLY bad and undesirable.

But the absence of compromise only leads to a couple of possible outcomes:

1. The stand off continues and the possibility for violence increases.

OR

2. The weaker party (physically, economically, militarily) agrees to the stronger party's demands - which usually appears to the stronger party as victory. But we all know that forced capitulation feels like manipulation, breeds resentment and is only a short term pause in the stand off.

Compromise is the only way to sustainable futures. Compromise is not capitulation. It is agreement to alternatives that can meet the interests of all concerned but not necessarily all of the interests of the concerned.

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This is a repost from Generocity.org - link to story pictures below.

There are 3,773 murals in Philadelphia. But for Sam Laboy, a 22-year-old from Kensington, there may as well be one.

Since early spring, rain or shine, Laboy worked on an expansive mural and community farm project in Brewerytown, the product of a partnership between the City of PhiladelphiasMural Arts ProgramandMarathon Grill.

Formerly vacant, the 15,00-square-foot plot was tamed and beautified by Laboy and other young adults involved in the criminal justice system.

This was my everyday site, I did the majority of the mural, he said proudly. Laboy participated in a hands-on apprenticeship program called the Guild an innovative collaboration between the Youth Violence Reduction Partnership, the Philadelphia Prison System and Mural ArtsRestorative Justice Program.

I made a young and dumb mistake. I got snatched into the streets or whatever, explained Laboy, whose probation officer recommended the program. Under expert supervision, Guild members practice mural preparation and repair, gaining carpentry and landscaping skills along with general job readiness all intended to support a smooth re-entry into the community.

In Brewerytown, members put up scaffolding and painted. They constructed an outdoor kitchen and a vegetable washstand, earning firsthand knowledge about the important role of urban farming. At graduation, everyone was awarded tool kits.

This was a pretty good group, coming from a negative background, Laboy said, referring to his upbringing and recent legal troubles. Hopeful that the experience will help him find employment, he added: If I can get a job somewhere nice, thats whats up.

Restorative Justice
For the past five years, Mural Arts Restorative Justice Program has chipped away at some big problems, playing a small but significant role on issues like crime and delinquency.

As an alternative look at the criminal justice system, Restorative Justice engages inmates, former inmates and juveniles, offering mural making and community service as a platform for healing and transformation.

Restorative Justice is one of the best-kept secrets of Mural Arts, said Program Director Robyn Buseman. People dont normally associate the population we serve as part of the art world, but we provide opportunities for everyone in the community.

The program is active throughout the Philadelphia prison system, at the Youth Study Center, a detention facility, andSt. Gabriels Hall, which provides long-term placement for delinquent boys. Every year, it reaches hundreds of inmates and juveniles and produces a handful of murals.

Because its an alternative, its really come to the forefront due to the number of incarcerated people in this county, said Buseman.

While art is a proven, powerful re-entry tool for people coming out of prison, funding is a formidable obstacle. The Restorative Justice Program relies on a mix of public and private dollars that are often sporadic and difficult to secure.

I dont know of any other program using art and community engagement along with restorative practices, she added. Funding is one of the main struggling blocks. People cant find it.

The Abundant City
The mural at Marathon Farm is a colorful grid of the city, providing a backdrop for verdant rows of vegetables, sunflowers and herbs.

The Farms attributes include a 20-plot community garden and designated space for educational workshops and cooking demos. Roughly half of the organically grown produce will supply Marathon Grills Center City restaurants. The rest will be sold on weekends at an affordable farm stand and at nearby farmers markets.

But less than two years ago, the lot was an eyesore, blighted and overgrown.

When we took possession of the land, we saw this bare brick wall and we said, that would be an amazing place for a mural, so I called Jane, explained Cary Borish, who spearheaded the project for Marathon.

Jane Golden, the longtime Executive Director at Mural Arts, has a change-making reputation, and her team quickly mobilized. The project was ideal for the Guild program and located in an area familiar to many participants.

Jane thought of the Guild program because it involved more than just a mural. It involved the carpentry and the garden, so it was a perfect fit, said Buseman.

Several months later, on the day of the mural dedication, the bounty of that fit made possible by a series of groundbreaking partnerships was palpable.

The real-life tale of vegetables, court-supervised adults, art and mural making ended in reclaimed land and a plentiful source of food and healing. For long-challenged Brewerytown, it was much more than a small victory.

Its not enough to create art, as great as that is, emphasized Golden, surrounded by a happy mix of supporters, participants and community onlookers. Our job is to mine the social power of art and figure out how to move the needle. When you start doing things in communities, profound things can happen.

http://www.generocity.org/2012/how-mural-arts-restorative-justice-program-is-reclaiming-lives-and-restoring-communities/

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Over the past couple months we have become 245 practitioners of ABCD and related strength based and common senseapproaches. We have come from Chicago and rural California and the islands of the Puget Sound. We have come from England, Wales and Ireland, from Australia and Canada. We have come to the discussion with interest and experience in grass roots practice, health applications, social policy, evaluation and outcomes, education and daily life.

In otherwords, ABCDinAction is a wonderfully diverse group of interesting people. Take a few minutes this week to look at the members page, read about what your colleagues are doing and intersted in, engage in a conversation or post a thought, challenge, question, or celebration.

The experience and wisdom of the members of this site is overwhelming. Engage in it and energize yourself!!

Ron

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Here --> http://www.stjohnsshelter.org/_newsletter3Q10/story1.html <-- is an interesting article from Michele Steeb, Executive Director of St. John's Shelter for Women and Children.

She points outs some interesting things to think about

* The long term impact of "failure" based systems

* The difficult work it is for those interested in empowerment to restore what "failure based" systems created, or left uncreated.

* The possiblities every person holds

Some exerpts:

Plates, St. John's Caf and Catering business, has now been open for over two months. We have served thousands of individuals for both breakfast and lunch, including several company off-site meetings. The reviews on the food, the service, and the mission, have been outstanding.

We've learned that for the majority of the women St. John's serves, how to manage success is a much more difficult challenge than how to manage failure.

I've been asked several times lately what our greatest challenge is at both the Shelter and at Plates. I can say without hesitation, and without even a close second in mind, that our greatest challenge is low expectationsthe low expectations that society has of these women and the low expectations that these women have of themselves.

Our system does little, if anything, to incentivize these women to aspire to more than living off a monthly government check.

In my three years at St. John's, I have literally met over 1,600 mothers and 1,800 children. Of these mothers, I cannot think of a single one who is not capable of becoming a contributing member of our society in some way. Of these children, I have not met one who doesn't deserve that positive example in his or her life.

I encourage you to read the link and view the video of Plates -- to be both inspired and challenged. It will be worth the 3 minutes of reading and 6 minutes of viewing.

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Health, Housing and Community


By Ron Dwyer-Voss, 2010-09-03

Health, Housing and Community

I recently spent most of a week with community development practitioners from the NeighborWorks America network. These are good people who mainly engage in community development through the building and rehabilitating affordable housing, some local economic development and financial education, and some work with community residents.

I always enjoy training at NeighborWorks' institutes because the workshops are filled with people from all over the country, rural and urban, and never less than three ethnic groups. I usually have seasoned veterans of community development and new AmericCorps Vistas in the same class. The diversity makes for a rich experience, regardless of the actual workshop topic.

In this context the issue of community organizing and community building is complex. Some see it as touchy feely. The implication of this phrase is always that people based community work is of lesser value than brick and mortar work. The implication is echoed in the funding world where the difference in funding available for physical construction and for social construction is measured by the number of zeroes in the figures.

Yet, anyone who has been around neighborhood revitalization and community development for more than a few years knows that community ownership, engagement and leadership are the difference for a project

For political support.

For long term sustainability of the project.

For the amount of ownership and care the neighborhood feels toward the project.

For the projects ability to leverage future projects.

For the financial relevance of the project.

The last one is the hardest to swallow for the number crunchers. The reality is that projects done by nonprofit CDCs are often not the most economically efficient model. That is true if one is only looking at the bricks and mortar, financing costs and efficiencies, and overall cost. The value of a CDC generated affordable housing or community economic development project lies in its ability to use physical construction to leverage social construction, transformation and reinvigoration. The keys to bridging the physical construction and the neighborhood revitalization beyond the walls of the project are held by people doing community organizing and engagement. Their work may seem touchy feely, but without them the physical improvements often are stale, without energy to spare, financially inefficient and meaningless beyond their own walls.

By connecting community development projects to the social fabric of a neighborhood or town, community organizers take the latent impact a new project can have on community health and bring it alive. Organizers can take a streetscape improvement and turn it into long term relationships between neighbors that reduce crime. They can take a homeownership and vacant lot program and build social connectedness and an economy of healthy food buy supporting the creation and ownership of community gardens. Community organizers can take a highly leveraged 200 unit low income housing project and turn its community center and computer lab into the center of the communitys positive afterschool options. And they do all this for the same amount of an overpriced market study.

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Community Organizers


By Ron Dwyer-Voss, 2010-02-24
Who, historically or currently, is your favorite community organizer, or one you find most interesting? Why?
(Doesn't have to be someone whose title was "community organizer?"
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The Answer is a Question


By Ron Dwyer-Voss, 2009-12-15
The answer is a question. As we learn that conversations are the form of community and small groups are the units of transformation, it is more and more clear that good questions generate more solutions than good answers. I suppose this is because an answer offered, especially offered passionately, consumes a lot of thought space. The possible responses are quickly limited to reactions to the proposed answer. My approaching community problems, challenges and opportunities with questions, we open up the range of responses and also increase the number of places and ways each member of a community can contribute.Some of my favorite questions from Community by Peter Block are:What promises are you willing to make?What is the promise/commitment I am willing to make that constitutes a risk or major shift for me?What is the promise I am postponing?What is the gift, your gift, that you still hold in exile? Why?What gratitude to you hold that has gone unexpressed? What would happen if you expressed that gratitude?
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Community as given form by conversations....


By Ron Dwyer-Voss, 2009-11-04
Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block is proving to be an interesting and insightful summary of how we humans form community, and where and why we have botched it even while trying to build it. One of the issues Block highlights is context. He points out that the paradigm of context has everything to do with whether or not we are engaged in building or restoring community, or blocking community regardless of our intents" The context that restores community is one of possibility, generosity, and gifts, rather than problem solving, fear and retribution."He goes on to say, "Communities are human systems given form by conversations that build related-ness."What conversations can happen to help schools become communities where a student's success and achievement is not statistically predictable based on their race and income?What forms can conversations take to build related-ness between those traditionally excluded or ignored and the people who make programs and policies that effect them.Is it possible for a person or group of people who have been deeply wronged to engage in a conversation based on possibility and not past grievances and the associated feelings of fear and retribution? If so, what form can these conversations take, if community is given form by conversation?
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