Orientation, Full day 2

I want to start by saying something. I do not intend to make this blog political. Inevitably, though, there will be some things that will be handled politically or are typically politically polarizing issues. Also, it is an election year. That will also make politics especially hard to avoid. I've heard that this is a pretty politically active neighborhood and that everyone has an opinion. I've already seen a little bit of that. That being said, I don't intend to write this blog to tell you outright who you should vote for. I don't even necessarily intend to influence your vote, although I do hope to provide new perspectives that you may not have considered before. So I do hope you take the things I will experience seriously, for they are serious issues to many people in our country.

So, on to today:

Today we had two pretty separate but equally intriguing experiences. (We had a third that wasn't quite as interesting - maybe because we were all a little tired and full of knowledge so it's harder to impress us now.) We started today talking to Liz Blume, who used to work as a city planner for Dayton and then Cincinnati. She was very instrumental in the plan for the revitalization of Over-the-Rhine. In regards to the revitalization efforts, she said the greatest accomplishment of that plan was getting the people who advocated for the poor to cooperate with those who wanted to revitalize the neighborhood. The main point I took away from this is that, although keeping in mind the need for affordable housing is very important, the need for a good community that provides a good tax base for the city and social services is also very important. It's about finding a balance between the two. Liz said that basically both sides could stop the other side from doing anything though the city council; meanwhile, the drug dealers just did what they wanted. That's the thought that eventually motivated the cooperation. It was never that people didn't want a mixed-income community with mixed-income housing; it was just that they were afraid that mixed-income would too soon become upper-income and displace the people already living in the community. There are many empty housing units that they can use to revitalize the area without displacing anyone. Vacant housing units do nobody any good. It's an interesting project that has to be pursued with caution, taking both sides into consideration. Last year, we talked a little bit about this with the assistant to the deputy mayor of Cincinnati on one of our ConneXions social justice excursions, but it was interesting to do it in the context of a walking tour and actually seeing the areas that have been gentrified and the areas that have been made into affordable housing.

Just a little background information: Price Hill is yet another neighborhood of Cincinnati. Lower Price Hill is historically a neighborhood of Appalachian people, although recently more Hispanics and African-Americans have moved into the area. It is, like OTR, generally known as a poorer area of the city.

The third person we met with today, Jenn Walters, is quite probably the most important of the three. She is the executive director of the Lower Price Hill Community School. It's right across the street from the Oyler school, which is K-12. LPHCS offers GED classes and transitional college classes taught by professors from local colleges. They work with the students to move to the main college campuses and continue through graduation to help their students to succeed. They have a day care center to take care of the children when the parents are in classes. Unfortunately, though, they can only operate during the day, which limits the ability to work around the work schedules of their students. Many students work third shift and take the bus directly to the school, that's how bad they want their GEDs or to learn English. Jenn works really hard to make herself a part of the community and to help fill all the needs in the community. She went to law school after working for LPHCS with AmeriCorps and became an attorney, but felt much more fulfilled working with LPHCS. So she returned. Part of that is that she and some of the attorneys she worked with can now offer a free legal clinic once a week. This is also a great service to the community. Jenn says that she loves coming to work; that she doesn't think of it as a job that she has to do but something she is privileged to be a part of. Furthermore, she is helping to really fill a need in a community. Traditional schooling doesn't work for everyone (although they do everything they can at LPHCS to work with Oyler to get school-age students back into regular high school), and many people work really hard to complete educational degrees. I think it's amazing how much work these students put into a GED or learning English. Yet it's so much easier for society to dismiss those without high school diplomas or college degrees as people who just dropped out. We don't recognize their circumstances or the work they are putting into their education now. LPHCS has an average of a three-month term in which the people are able to complete their GED work. That's supposedly better than the average GED program. Part of that may be that LPHCS knows that people have circumstances to work around. The bus may be running late or they may have to work or take their kids to school or day-care. Rather than turn away a student for the day if he or she arrives late, LPHCS lets him or her come in to continue work. While all GED programs are good things, I think LPHCS has a great approach with flexibility. These people work hard and have extenuating circumstances. I think they deserve a little bit of flexibility.

I know there are at least three people in our group (including me) who thought of LPHCS as a great place to do our service work. We're still considering, but this is definitely a place that has a great appeal.

That's a lot of stuff, and I'm sure I didn't summarize it very well. I hope, though, that you understand a part of what I was trying to say. Thanks for keeping up with this. I promise I won't have as much information in future blogs; orientation is simply stuffing our head with more knowledge. Later on, it will be more experience-based.