Education, Ethnicity, and Equity in Roanoke

I've been doing some research on the demographics of Downtown (highlighted in yellow in the maps below) and how it occupies an intersection of very disparate populations when viewed from the neighborhood level. All in all this paints a very compelling picture of how opportunity disparity is geographically entrenched. 

It may now be autumn

Picked up the key today.

Welcome home.

But You Laugh Inside, Remembering

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”

― Charles Bukowski

Ever since joining the Druids, my approach to the Challenges has been to use the dates as bookends, identify the pieces of my life that are in play during that time frame. In the process, what I'm worried about or excited about, or fearful of always shows up, and those are the real challenges: to navigate my life peacefully and with contentment, mindfulness, and presence in the moment even when there is chaos, conflict. Goodness knows my life certainly knows how to bring it in heapfuls. 

In the past decade, but especially the past five years, there was so much to be overwhelmed by that there were days I had no idea what to do or which way to turn. In these moments I learned to be still and sit with the uncertainty. This is a magnificent tool and it continues to serve me well. 2018 was the darkest year of the lot, and I don't think I will ever be so beset again (or at least I hope not), but if I find myself in even that level of hell again, I know that the answer is to stop, breathe, and be in hell. Last year I survived the hell of 2018 only to find myself in the literal dark and suffering from a head injury that has resulted in a permanent TBI. I found myself physically off-balance and unable to read, a manifestation of spiritual imbalance and illiteracy. I was absolutely incapable of doing anything other than sitting some days, sometimes for days in a row. I learned to be non-productive, a lesson that was brutal -- you would think that it would be easy to simply accomplish nothing, but it almost felled me spiritually. I had to confront my inability to say "no," and to learn how to value myself for myself, irrespective of what I accomplish or produce or do. While I still have days of suffering and periods of imbalance, I have learned to value myself as a spiritual being having a human experience, and a frail one at that. As the days unfold with opportunities, I am learning to choose carefully and mindfully, opting for a few quality endeavors with built-in accommodations for my own care needs. Rest assured, my ability to get excited at each and every opportunity that comes along is not diminished. The lesson has been to learn to act in the belief that the Universe loves me and wants me to be happy -- there is no scarcity of wonderful things ready for me if I am willing to be available for them. This is so hard for me!

Anyone who has been part of this journey has gotten accustomed to the Court-date-per-challenge routine, and this challenge is no different. [For the record, I've been on this treadmill with my daughter's dad for over four years, and I know there's a day that it will end, but -- like being on a treadmill at a fast walk and having the power go out suddenly -- I have a feeling that it will be unsettling and weird and might feel like a bit of a faceplant.] The court date comes at the very end of the challenge this round, and her dad has already started with his annual autumnal tug of war. What is it with him and September? Anyway, I have learned well how not to play this game; my focus remains on healing my relationship with my daughter. All the rest is immaterial line noise.

The challenge starts out with classes beginning, a Writing workshop starting, and the commencement of my new position as an editor. Remember when I said the Universe had a million high-quality opportunities for me? It totally does. And now that I have an armload of them, it’s time to practice some of that balance and boundary setting that I spoke of, too. I can get panicky at new things that matter to me -- what if I’m not good enough??? I have (finally!!) begun to know that I am enough. I am kind and good and worthy of love and compassion. I am pretty good at what I do, too, when I stop shooting myself in the foot with panic. So there’s a weekly rhythm to be found, and if I let it unfold, the Way will open.

The first official week of the challenge I’m moving house, and that’s always a beast. I’m looking forward to it -- expect pictures, since I have no idea where everything is going or how it’s all going to fit. Maybe it won’t fit anywhere and I’ll go through another Druid-esque round of minimizing my earthly possessions. Stay tuned.

Through all the struggles, insults, and injuries, I have found that nothing matters except how we treat ourselves and each other. Thanks for being along the path with me. Having a place to be honest about everything is huge. Successes are all alike, and their universality makes them meaningless, in a way. Our sufferings and struggles are unique to us, though, and unique to a particular time in our lives; they individuate us, and in sharing them, we get to know each other. This is what community is for me. Thanks for being part of mine.

Some dates

September 14 Pack Sabbatical House stuff into Jeep

September 15 drive to Virginia; pick up new key. Unload the Jeep while I Wait around for the Cable Guy.

September 16 counseling with Vivian; communication counseling with Vivian’s dad

September 17 drive to North Carolina; clean sabbatical house, pick up Little Dog Tiu, pack the jeep of Very Last Things

September 18 Walkthrough of Sabbatical House; drive to Virginia

September 19 move stuff from storage.

September 21 Paper Due: Marriage, A History, Coontz

October 6 Paper Due: Becoming Dad, Pitts

October 16 Court

Every Week

Monday: The Republic

Tuesday: Demography of Families Response

Wednesday: Visit with Vivian

Thursday: Demography of Families article; 8 pm Writers Workshop

Friday: Enter posts for the coming week for the APA Blog; Republic response paper; 3:30 pm Philosophy accountability zoom

Saturday: Visit with Vivian; APA Posts

Sunday: Workshop pages

Tub & Tea

Museum Day

Has there ever been a more beautiful girl in the Land?
No, there has not.

Change Agents and the City

While reading the articles for this week, I was struck by how the Apartheid City structure reflects Roanoke’s geographic and zoning de facto barriers that have been used for voluntary and involuntary racism and spatial clustering. Roanoke’s development continues to take into account and cater to the Creative Class and the Young Urban Professional -- while these are not exclusively Caucasian or any race or even nationality in particular, the Carilion Cadence is the beat of this city’s heart more often than not. To date, that has involved development for the attraction of well-educated medical and creative staff, many of them young, able bodied, and childless, more interested in running the greenway near the pub and shopping a farmer’s market near the loft building than addressing needs of native residents’ lack of access to transportation, food, or equal educational offerings.

To be physically separated is demoralizing; it is a public stamp of approval of different social realities for different folks, of non-belonging and of exclusion. The conditions of exclusion were deemed so offensive and antithetic to the ideals of the United States that they were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1954 when the Brown vs. the Board of Education case resulted in the ruling that “separate but equal is not equal.” Certainly such stratification and the systemic neglect and violence that go with it seem in direct conflict with the United Nations’ call for “A dignified and secure existence in cities.”

Anderson writes that “Simply living in such an environment places young people at special risk of falling victim to aggressive behavior.” When we look at the decisions made by Roanoke and so many others cities all over the country, the efforts to revitalize urban spaces seems fraught with tension, especially as urban planners work with politicians and existing businesses to ensure the best economic reality while achieving an orderly and aesthetically pleasing design. the problem seems to lie in the idea that the revitalization is appealing and accessible to everyone equally.

Right now gay is hip, so we are happy to have a Gay Pride parade and Pride in the Park festival. Cities are scrambling to follow Roanoke’s example of celebrated inclusion: we happily have festivals for any culture -- Greek, Lebanese and Local Colors are just a few that come to mind. It’s estimated that Roanoke’s population is growing by one thousand residents a year, many of these newcomers attracted by the open and active image that Roanoke has.

But much of the separateness is still ignored by Roanoke, and we are developing two very different Roanokes indeed, one a poster for inclusion and happiness for mostly-young, moneyed, and able-bodied residents in the south and another for those who support the former -- the disenfranchised, mostly (but far from exclusively) African-American who live in the north.

Folkways bump into and often trump mores all the time, but it’s never more apparent than during interactions at the physical and societal edges of public space, where the spaces are inadequate to hold all our various realities simultaneously, and the differences in our individual expectations for behaviors and consequences becomes manifest. When north meets south in Roanoke, the expectations of behavior, language, dress and redress are evident and ultimately no one feels familiar or comfortable. Oppositional cultures seem at times merely one more part of a social system that is deeply stratified -- unified by twitter feeds and facebook groups and how we consume the stream of information from our social networks. The narratives of these networks can be, and often is, dramatically different at any given time. While Twitter might be flooded with the antics on the senate floor or the big reveal in a netflix show, the same timeline of facebook might be wholly taken up with sports plays or the social issue of welfare and the minimum wage.

As Roanoke reclaims and reinvents space -- from previous industrial sites such as along Salem Avenue to undeveloped sites such as Brandon swamp -- to create gathering, activity and residential space, folkways and our internal programming are ruling our interactions more than ever. I am hopeful that Roanoke will slow down development long enough to start listening to matters of justice as well as matters of paint colors and housing needs and development opportunities. It’s time that we look to other, at times informal ways in which urban problems of inequality and injustice are being dealt with effectively. Not to do so is to actively invite these issues to be addressed informally in ways that have proven not only ineffective, but downright toxic for those they serve.

More than anything, the readings show that availability and quality of services makes a huge difference in residents’ quality of life and peace of mind, the very qualities that Anderson highlights as lacking in the streets, forcing street residents to develop, adopt and enforce a behavioral code to address the feeling o of “alienation from mainstream society and its institutions.” This combines with a “profound” lack of faith to create a pervasive context of hopelessness, the lesser of “two contrasting conceptual categories” whose pressures and consequences extend far beyond geographic borders and economic boundaries. In this reality, one can count solely on oneself and one’s own resources of spirit and attitude, and “physical prowess takes on great significance.” In his analysis, Anderson finds “hopelessness and alienation . . . fuels the violence” that so many cities experience.

In a curious twist of events, surveillance has proven a powerful ally in effecting social change in the last decade. The United States culturally rejects state-sponsored surveillance out of hand, decrying an inalienable right to privacy (while demanding that apple, amazon, facebook, and every other tech giant in the land hand over all data and the codes to hack the system). But self-surveillance has become the lifeblood of the twenty-first century equality and social justice movements, and the state has implemented surveillance measures more out of self preservation than of attempts to effect social control. To be caught on camera -- body cam or cell phone -- is to validated and to be accountable. Through this nationwide citizen-level campaign of Observe & Record, we as a culture of the governors and the governed believe we are finally real, that we have a voice, and that we matter. Surveillance is proving to be the real equalizer, whatever Sam Colt might have led us to believe.

The crime and violence is but a symptom, a harsh reality that residents all over the globe know in their bones and are trying to address. When Mexico attempted to let the residents achieve their own solutions, the reality was that power-grabbing and status building led to the same development stratifications and fragmentations as when the politicians were in charge. Having lost sight of their good-natured beginnings, “community organizations in Mexico City serve largely as Low-income real-estate developers.” Money, politics and a system seem to come together to create their own self-sustaining streams of existence, and seem to be far from David Harvey’s vision that we can “change ourselves by changing the city.”

Ultimately, if we are more interested in self-serving aims -- the bolstering of our own social status or the increase in our personal profits -- we are not going to be able to realize the change we want to see. We must genuinely start acting as though everyone is equal and has the same right to the best social services, from libraries to restaurants to sidewalks and schools. Perhaps the message is to change ourselves to change our cities.

Unequal Planning?

This week I was driving down the newly renovated 10th street and noticed that while it is certainly going to be smoother and the sidewalks are a nice addition, it's sad that this section of Roanoke will not be afforded with tree-lined streets or lampposts -- the curb area beside the sidewalk simply isn't large enough to accommodate that.

The city is making some serious value statements here, and I'm not really a fan of what they are saying with my tax dollars.

Transportation and its consequences

I was out and about and noticed that the various eras of transportation are strikingly evident in Roanoke, and the consequences of the placement of the transportation mechanics is evident as well. In the picture below, we see a train running along the tracks, with a highway with individual cars and trucks running visually above it (the highway is not, in fact vertically above the train but is off in the distance). Looking visually higher again, we see the houses that are isolated from the center of the town, the spot from which the picture was taken.

Consequences of inclusion and exclusion are often overlooked when decisions about how to best lay track or road are considered, and, even when the social aspects of the transportation decision are considered, frequently the poor find themselves voiceless.

Then there are the juxtapositions of the old and new Roanoke. Here we have the new roundabout that serves the new Carilion Clinic at Riverside -- complete with Carilion-sponsored trolley-- up next to the old train tracks that run parallel to the river. Off to the side of the image, we see the super-modern lofts being constructed, with traditional homes in the distance.

~ o h m ~

I'm really looking forward to picking up yoga in the park again. With all the scheduling changes, it got dropped, but it's long overdue to add it back in, and Friday morning hasn't been the same since I stopped going. I know that it was because Vivian wasn't with me, but I'm looking forward to including her in the Monday evening offering. She has missed it and Bonny has missed having her in class.

I know I wouldn't be able to fit in the health and wellness pieces of my routine if I didn't have such great support from my partner. It really is all about balance.

Radio Free Roanoke Benefit

We went to the benefit for Radio Free Roanoke and had a smashing time. The bands were excellent, the people were fantastic, the ideas were big. A huge shout out goes to Corbin for hosting the event and to Alexis for coordinating it all - they really made it happen! I'm looking forward to working with them both in the future for benefits for other Roanoke gems.

I also got to catch up with Polly from Ploughshares - she and I have been running into each other for over twenty years. It was good to catch up. A good time was had by all.