Grassroots to Global

Broader Impacts of Civic Ecology

Marianne E. Krasny

• Publisher: Comstock Publishing Associates
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781501714979
• eBook ISBN: 9781501714986
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Biological Sciences

Addressing participatory, transdisciplinary approaches to local stewardship of the environment, Grassroots to Global features scholars and stewards exploring the broad impacts of civic engagement with the environment.

Chapters focus on questions that include: How might faith-based institutions in Chicago expand the work of church-community gardens? How do volunteer "nature cleaners" in Tehran attempt to change Iranian social norms? How does an international community in Baltimore engage local people in nature restoration while fostering social equity? How does a child in an impoverished coal mining region become a local and national leader in abandoned mine restoration? And can a loose coalition that transforms blighted areas in Indian cities into pocket parks become a social movement? From the findings of the authors' diverse case studies, editor Marianne Krasny provides a way to help readers understand the greater implications of civic ecology practices through the lens of multiple disciplines.

Contributors:
Aniruddha Abhyankar, Martha Chaves, Louise Chawla, Dennis Chestnut, Nancy Chikaraishi, Zahra Golshani, Lance Gunderson, Keith E. Hedges, Robert E. Hughes, Rebecca Jordan, Karim-Aly Kassam, Laurel Kearns, Marianne E. Krasny, Veronica Kyle, David Maddox, Mila Kellen Marshall, Elizabeth Whiting Pierce, Rosalba Lopez Ramirez, Michael Sarbanes, Philip Silva, Traci Sooter, Erika S. Svendsen, Keith G. Tidball, Arjen E. J. Wals, Rebecca Salminen Witt, Jill Wrigley

Part I

CULTURE BUILDING

Changing Social Norms through Civic Ecology Practices

Chapter 1

COMING HOME TO COMMON GROUND IN STRESSED COMMUNITIES

Intentional Civic Engagement in the Collins Avenue Streamside Community of Southwest Baltimore

Jill Wrigley, Mila Kellen Marshall, and Michael Sarbanes

Jill and Michael

On a crisp fall day in the year 2000, in the Irvington community of southwest Baltimore, children were headed on foot to a nature “treasure hunt” in a historic park cemetery, the only publicly accessible green space within walking distance of their neighborhood. They walked through their landscape, past people on porches, kids and youth on bikes, well-kept houses, houses in states of disrepair, vacant houses, tidy and messy front yards, vacant lots full of junk, and a lot of trash on the ground. Six-year-old Ashley tugged on her adult chaperone’s sleeve and whispered, “Look, Miss Jill. There are treasures all around.” That this little girl was able to see beauty through the disinvested environment around her is a testament to her resilience. The intentionally tended public spaces she and other children saw most regularly were the little altars that popped up on telephone poles or chain-link fences adorned with stuffed animals, photos, and candles in the wake of a shooting death. This child deserved more; she deserved access to beautiful and green spaces dedicated to her pleasure and well-being.

Shortly after this experience, the adult chaperone (Jill) and her husband, Michael, who had moved into Irvington in 1994, joined with other neighbors to reclaim an abandoned and trashed vacant double lot at the top of their street. They structured the planning and design process to center on children and youth. Equipped with design elements generated by their young people, the neighborhood residents and community partners undertook many years of grant writing and physical work. Now this once-nuisance lot is the Irvington Peace Park, which serves as a community gathering space and is enriched with elements created by young people, including mosaic art, food gardens, flowering and fruit trees, and a performance/art-making space. In addition, the chaperones on that initial treasure hunt opened up their yard, which is wooded and ringed by a small stream, as accessible green space for their neighbors. All are welcome. The neighborhood’s children and young people especially take advantage of this open invitation for playing on a tire swing, exploring the natural setting, and socializing with one another in a relaxing setting.

Irvington Peace Park is located at 506 Collins Avenue, Baltimore. The yard is a wooded area around a stream called Maidens Choice Run, which is part of the Gwynns Falls Watershed and is accessed at the end of the street through the property belonging to 523 Collins Avenue.

Mila

Inner-city environmental programs can accomplish their goals and completely miss the mark at the same time. In my time with Jill, I was both fascinated and saddened in unraveling the reality of the relationship between “environmental allies” and community stewards. I was saddened because we both agreed that there was very little intention and connection between those who wanted to help communities and those who needed the help. We would lament over the savior complex of some so-called partners and gripe about the many ways the relationships were superficial.

Yet I was fascinated with the spirit of compassion Jill and her husband Michael displayed in their shared story, a story that became the impetus of this very shared chapter. I listened often with tears welling in my eyes at the supreme level of care Jill and Michael took to become a part of a system that needed not just allies, but allies who were willing to initiate, negotiate, and facilitate access that was identified by the community. There were moments I thought how special Jill was and how simple the practice was as well: the practice of intention.

It wasn’t until I learned of Jill’s passing that I understood. I understood Jill had dedicated her life to being of service to those who needed an ally. Much like the ecosystem services that we strive to increase for the benefits of human well-being, Jill taught me that the most important service comes from us: humans being of service to people and nature in an equitable and just way.

The reality of stressed communities is not that people within them are oblivious, or detached from community needs. Rather, the complex, multifaceted, and institutional problems that plague these communities diminish people’s ability to mobilize and sustain efforts to address the multiple challenges they face—including challenges related to education, public health, environmental racism, employment, and housing. All these “stressed” communities have people who care deeply and are organized to express that care: there are neighborhood stewards and stalwarts, businesses, social organizations, schools, and churches that have stood firm and remain active in their work to support their own communities. What is apparent is that they are the local champions; however, their capacity to impart effective change that improves the quality of the environment—both natural and built—is limited because of the framework that they too are confined within. The local champions have both remained faithful to their charge and are impeded by structural limitations and constraints. Intentional and careful support from allies may help indigenous processes of empowerment to address some of these barriers by making accessible additional resources including knowledge, financial assets, and networks.

In this chapter, we describe the case of a white couple, motivated by their Christian faith and having grown up with civic-engagement role models, using greening as a means to engage and improve the well-being of a low-income, largely African American neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland. The case is multifaceted: it draws on Christian and democratic institutions and values; it involves an intentional urban community integrated within the larger neighborhood; and it entails opening up access to public and private property—and to opportunities for civic participation—for children and adults living in the neighborhood. This chapter also incorporates the insights of an African American scholar and environmental justice activist (Mila) into issues of race and civic engagement in communities of color. Although the efforts we describe were temporarily interrupted by the premature passing of the first author of this chapter, Jill Wrigley, her efforts and those of her husband Michael Sarbanes, their friends and church, continue to permeate their neighborhood. This chapter is a tribute to Jill’s continuing legacy.

Civic Activism and Race in U.S. Cities

Baltimore shares a social and environmental history with many postindustrial U.S. cities, such as Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. For African Americans, historic segregation due to legally enforced separate housing undermined the accumulation of wealth and limited access to city parks, grocery stores, and other amenities (Pietila 2010; Coates 2014; Lichter, Parisi, and Taquino 2015). More recently, disinvestment on the part of industry and municipal government has led to abandoned housing and derelict vacant lots, creating eyesores that foster crime and contribute to negative experiences in one’s own neighborhood, negative perceptions of safety and nature, and poor physical, mental, and community health and well-being (Branas et al. 2011; Garvin, Cannuscio, and Branas 2013; Garvin, Branas, et al. 2013; Metro, Dwyer, and Dreschler 1981; Kondo, South, and Branas 2015; Jenerette et al. 2011).

Exclusion from economic, social, and political life helps explain why, after controlling for education and income, African Americans are less likely than whites to participate in civic activities (Foster-Bey 2008). Related to exclusion, volunteering in civic life depends not just on individual characteristics such as income and motivation, but also on simply being asked to volunteer; African Americans are less likely than whites to be asked to volunteer (Musick, Wilson, and Bynum 2000). Further, civic participation often begins during youth, but youth of color experience structural barriers to participation at a young age, including limited opportunities for civic engagement in school and afterschool clubs in low-income and minority neighborhoods, lower rates of college attendance, and fewer adult leaders or role models because of high ratios of children to adults and a significant proportion of adult males serving jail time away from families (Flanagan and Levine 2010). These factors may lead to low “outcome expectations”—that is, the expectation that one’s actions will make a difference gained through participating in or observing such action (Chung and Probert 2011). Youth have outcome expectations both for themselves and for their community; individual outcome expectations are influenced by prior civic engagement, whereas community outcome expectations are influenced by perceptions of community functioning. Youth living in a neighborhood with multiple incivilities, limited civic participation, and lack of trust among residents can be expected to have low levels of civic participation (Chung and Probert 2011).

Although various forms of exclusion and lower levels of human capital, including income, education, homeownership, and health, may explain differences in civic participation, other forms of capital, both social and cultural, complicate the picture. For example, African Americans attend church more frequently, and church activity builds the social capital that leads to volunteering. African Americans are also more likely than whites to volunteer for church-related activities, which provide training and a “gateway” to other voluntarism (Musick, Wilson, and Bynum 2000; Sundeen, Garcia, and Raskoff 2008). In fact, although whites participate at higher rates in voluntarism related to youth, education, and the environment, African Americans are more active in community action, workrelated, and political groups (Sundeen 1992) and have high rates of faith-related voluntarism (Sundeen, Garcia, and Raskoff 2008; Musick, Wilson, and Bynum 2000).

For whites wanting to engage in civic ecology practices, understanding the complex nature of the African American experience in cities, including historical, economic, and cultural barriers to civic participation, as well as cultural traditions and assets related to voluntarism, requires intentionality and a deep commitment. It means more powerful white players finding ways to support efforts that emerge in communities of color without taking credit and dictating practices (Reynolds and Cohen 2016). It may mean living in low-income communities of color, while at the same time taking measures to avert the gentrification that often accompanies better-off citizens moving into such communities (Pearsall 2013).

Collins Avenue Streamside Community

We turn next to the case of the Collins Avenue Streamside Community in the Irvington neighborhood of Baltimore. Because this entails a white couple’s lifelong commitment to living in and encouraging healing and civic engagement in a predominantly low-income African American community, it brings to the surface issues of race related to civic ecology.

Irvington Neighborhood as Manifestation of “Uncommon” (Hyper-segregated) Ground: The Social and Ecological Context of the Streamside Community

Located in the southwest corner of Baltimore, the Irvington neighborhood has multiple assets: long-term residents who know one another and have friendly relationships, diverse housing stock, many trees, a number of stable local institutions, and access to bus lines. It also faces myriad challenges reflecting a history of residential segregation resulting in 88 percent of residents and 93 percent of public school students being African American. Unemployment, addiction, low incomes, and low education levels are widespread. Much of the housing has been neglected or abandoned, and rental units are often cramped (Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance 2014). Irvington also has been officially designated as a “food desert” by the Baltimore Food Policy Initiative and its partners (Buczynski, Freishtat, and Buzogany 2015). While the neighborhood contains multiple fast-food and junk-food outlets, it has limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables. A third of households have no car, thus limiting their ability to access healthier foods.

The neighborhood has a wealth of open space that presents opportunities for civic ecology practices. Irvington is bounded to the south by Maidens Choice Run, a small stream that also runs through a large wooded area owned by Jill and Michael, and by two cemeteries, including the four-hundred-acre Loudon Park Cemetery founded in 1857 as part of the American park cemetery movement (Sachs 2013). At the southern edge of the neighborhood, in the midst of the extraordinary urban green area formed by the stream valley and cemetery woods, is the 500 block of Collins Avenue. This street slopes gently downhill from the subsidized apartment complex at the top of the block, passes the Peace Park, and comes to a dead end at the green space owned by Jill and Michael.

Animating Spirit and Overarching Aims of the Streamside Community

The Collins Avenue Streamside Community is an intentional community whose members are motivated by their desire to enter fully into a life that addresses the challenge put forward by Dr. Howard Thurman in his 1965 treatise The Luminous Darkness. Concerned about building the healthy American society in the wake of the end of legal segregation, Thurman wrote,

The issue then is twofold. The walls that divide must be demolished. They must be cast down, destroyed, uprooted…. These barriers must be seen for what they are, a disease of our society, the enemy of human decency and humane respect…. Their destruction is such a monumental undertaking and is calling for such huge costs in human lives, resources of money, time, and energy, that an ever-widening weariness is apt to sweep over the land in the wake of the crumbling of the walls. And this is the danger. When the walls are down, it is then that the real work of building the healthy American society begins. (Thurman 1965, 91, emphasis added)

According to Michael, the tragedy of the Thurman quote is that ways of building the “healthy American society” are...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I CULTURE BUILDING: CHANGING SOCIAL NORMS THROUGH CIVIC ECOLOGY PRACTICES
• Part II KNOWLEDGE BUILDING: LEARNING IN CIVIC ECOLOGY PRACTICE
• Part III MOVEMENT BUILDING: CIVIC ECOLOGY AS STRATEGIC ACTION FIELD
• Afterword: Toward a Collaborative Engagement
• Notes on Contributors
• Index