2003 Compton Mentor Fellows
Joanna Burch Brown (Oberlin)
East London Growth Project
Joanna will develop a London-based community gardening project for refugees and victims of torture, modeled on the Natural Growth Project, which her mentor, Jenny Grut founded and has run for the past ten years. The ELGP will regenerate a portion of abandoned land in Hainhault, an area of East London.
Initially Joanna will be working with families, from Iran, Iraq, Kosovo, Turkey and Lebanon. The families involved will have come through the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. Then she will head to the new site and start working with the families to prepare the land. We may consider building a greenhouse in the autumn with the guidance and assistance of groups associated with the London 21 network. If we do build a greenhouse, we'll be able to plant in the winter, and in the spring we will transfer to the outdoors and plant vegetables in the plots there. The vegetables will either be sold in the local market, or the families may take them home for their own use, either way contributing to urban production of food.
Community gardening projects help people re-channel painful energy; there is something healing in restoring land that has gone to waste through neglect, and in simply working with earth. By tending the land people find a new sense of connection to place, and connection to their own bodies as related to the earth and the life that springs from it. By tending the earth, we can begin to restore ourselves as well; community gardening is, quite literally, grounding in a way that few practices are. The project Jenny proposes helps people to cope with their sorrow, loss, and displacement; it gives people a space of their own to build as they wish; it develops the sense of community and connection to place; and through grounded practice helps people to find how to live less painfully with hard memories.
Elizabeth Ellis (Vassar)
Liz's project is a documentary film in which Dutchess County serves as a microcosm of issues that are crucial to contemporary land use in America.
Long interested in the politics of food, agriculture, community and development, Liz reports having felt isolated in her sprawling community in Massachusetts and longed for the closer connection to food and people that she found at her grandmother's farm in northern Vermont. At Vassar College she has explored, through urban study and a relationship with a local Community Supported
Agriculture (CSA) program, an area in transition.
The suburban sprawl that has swallowed Westchester County and much of New Jersey has only recently crept into Dutchess County, where small farmers struggle to stay afloat amid changing economic conditions. As suburban space continues to expand, many American communities are asking how we can preserve small farms and redesign our suburban communities to embrace a diverse social fabric and development that is compatible with existing populations and environments. Liz believes that the filmmaking process is a powerful vehicle for change in several senses; it stirs up "trouble" in the communities and groups that are filmed by exploring conflict and it inspires interviewees and their peers to think about themselves and their choices with a broader perspective. The finished film takes information and experiences to others beyond the community. A good film inspires a viewer to connect an issue to one's own life. Liz designed her mentor fellowship plan to explore how the filmmaking process and product can inspire dialogue and action about suburban development and food production.
Liz chose Ralph Arlyck to be her mentor because as a filmmaker he shares her interests in neighborhood politics and has a strong connection with the local community. Twenty-five years ago he made a film called Hyde Park, which explores how an ill-planed suburban landscape threatened historical and agricultural land in a Dutchess town. His extensive experience as an independent filmmaker, a documentarist, an interviewer, and a long-time resident of Dutchess County make him the perfect advisor for her multifaceted project.
Kasia Kedzia (Clark)
The Role of Polish Women in a Society in Transition
Kasia will return to her homeland of Poland to explore and formulate an understanding of the transformation of women's identities and how that relates to politics, power and influence in society. A number of key questions form the substance of her participatory research project: How do Polish women conceptualize the world around them and identify with the politics of their country? To what extent and in what ways do they feel a part of the transition their country is going through? How do they experience their femininity or lack thereof, and what are their views on women's rights? How do they interpret messages concerning women's roles depicted in mainstream media? To answer these questions is to put together the puzzle of women's changing roles and tacit conceptions in a country in the midst of transition to democracy and market economy.
Kasia's mentor, Dr. Graff, is a professor at the American Studies Center at Warsaw University in Poland. Her interests include narrative theory, feminist theory, the history of the American Women's Movement, and the modern novel. She currently is working on an anthology of American feminist essays.
John Kimble (Princeton)
John's project will focus on predatory lending practices and trace the effect of these practices on the well-being of specific neighborhoods in Oakland, California.
The subprime lending market is the fastest growing sector of the lending industry and is also the least regulated. Subprime lending is an important means by which higher-risk loan applicants can gain access to financial resources that mainstream lenders are unwilling to provide. Unfortunately, the nature of this market and the consumer groups it serves, typically those with few options and often limited familiarity with the legal and financial processes involved, leave it susceptible to abuses that have far-reaching adverse consequences in urban communities. Major financial services corporations are becoming increasingly aware of the profit to be found in this market as demonstrated by the numerous recent acquisitions of scandal-plagued subprime lending institutions by companies like Citigroup and others. The state of California has led the way in addressing this growing problem both through legislation and by suing lending institutions whose practices the state believes to be predatory. California is doing so in a national environment that has recently become quite hostile to predatory lending regulation. Congress is currently pressing forward with legislation that would invalidate state efforts to empower consumers to sue predatory lenders and the investors who fund them.
John's goal is to produce a report that paints a portrait of the ways in which the lending system is affecting Oakland economically and socially and to offer solutions for changing it. The report will include a resource guide for Oakland residents containing information on ways to identify and avoid predatory practices, which financial institutions to seek out and which to be wary of, and what pro bono legal resources are available for dealing with predatory experiences. Furthermore, John will also make recommendations for policy responses for dealing with this sector of the lending market in ways that will benefit the communities it is intended to serve. The guiding vision of this project is to explore ways to heal the ailing urban economies of this country in order to allow urban communities of color to benefit from the resources currently available to predominantly white suburbs.
Jennifer Koch (Berea)
Jen will be working in collaboration with Ron Rivera and Potters For Peace (PFP), a non-profit that works predominantly in Nicaragua to support poor, mostly rural potters. Jen's project was inspired by PFP's work and a simple, kiln technology that they have worked with in the past. She will be in Managua for the year, working to develop this technology, which is a simple system that uses a small motor to blow agricultural by-products such as saw dust and coffee and rice husks into an already pre-heated kiln atmosphere. Due to the heavy deforestation that Nicaragua has experienced, artisans who have historically relied on gathering and purchasing fuel-wood to fire their products have found it increasingly difficult. Jen willconduct a number of workshops with potters, brickmakers and lime producers who are interested in converting their kilns to this system. She will monitor the success of the technology and make impovements as needed. Jen hopes that the outcome of this project will see a thirty percent reduction of the wood needed by artisans for their kiln firings.
Jennifer's mentor will be Ron Rivera, who is a potter and sociologist and the director of PFP's Nicaraguan efforts. He has lived and worked in nearly every country in Latin America and moved to Nicaragua eighteen years ago to support positive political action and change.
Zachary Moser (Oberlin)
Third Ward Community Bike Center
The Third Ward Community Bike Center will be a community-based, non-profit bike organization with two main purposes: to provide facilities that increase the accessibility of bikes and to engage in bicycle advocacy. The Bike Center will be designed to make bikes more accessible to the residents of the Third Ward (one of Houston's poorest neighborhoods), to encourage bike commuters in nearby neighborhoods, and to teach bike repair to local youth. It will begin to relieve some of the most pressing environmental and social problems facing the neighborhood by providing community members with low-cost transportation alternatives. In addition, the Bike Center will work to catalyze larger change in both transportation and development patterns.
The Bike Center will make bikes more accessible to the residents of Third Ward by providing cheap repair facilities, at-cost or free used bike parts, and at-cost or free bicycles. At the Center, Zach will teach classes on emergency bike repair, general bike maintenance, and safe city riding. These classes will be designed to encourage adults to commute by helping them learn to manage potential problems. The Bike Center's proximity to downtown, new urban developments, and the University of Houston make it an excellent location for encouraging a commuter culture. Zach will partner with Project Row Houses, community after school programs, local schools, and other local groups that work with young people to teach youth practical bike repair skills while helping them reconsider their own relationship to technology
Zach's mentor, Rick Lowe, is a Houston based artist/activist. In 1992, Rick founded Project Row Houses, an arts and cultural community located in the historically significant and culturally charged Third Ward of Houston. He continues to run Project Row Houses and to work with communities throughout the country creating public arts projects.