The flyer said: “Back-2-School Jam! – School uniforms, backpacks, and supplies for kids who need them! Entertainment and free food provided! Pre-registration costs $3.” When I arrived at 8:00 a.m. — an hour early — to set up the Act Locally Waco tent, there were already plenty of families waiting. At 9:00 a.m. Pastor Gaylon Foreman from Carver Park Baptist Church blessed us with a word of prayer, and a long line of parents and kids began to wind its way past tables stacked with donated pencils, and glue sticks, and backpacks, and all the other supplies a kid needs to start the school year. 
I’m not good at estimating crowds, but it seemed like we saw about a thousand kids by lunch time. I am talking about every possible variety of kid – girl, boy, Black, White, Brown, tall, short, fat, thin, shy, sassy, happy, grouchy, dirty, clean…each one beautiful. (We took lots of pictures so you can see for yourself if you visit the album on our Facebook page!)
These are not the richest kids. If they were, I imagine they would have been at Target or watching cartoons instead of standing in line in a parking lot on a blessedly “not-as-hot-as-it-could-have-been-in-August” Saturday morning receiving school supplies from nice ladies in bright orange t-shirts. They are not rich financially…but watching them in all their fidget-y, wiggly, sometimes giggly, sometimes whiney, sometimes sleepy, altogether normal “kid-ness”… it nearly made me cry to think how rich they are in potential.
It seemed so simple this morning in the parking lot: We all win if these kids win. We all lose if these kids lose.
Yet somehow it gets much more complicated when we actually have to decide how much of our state’s money we want to spend on education, and which districts are going to get more of that money, and which are going to get less. I’m not so naïve as to think that every problem in our current school system can be solved with more money. Still, the schools with more tend to do better than the schools with less. I think our schools — especially our Waco schools — are “doing a lot with what they’ve got,” and I think more money would help them. 
This morning, as I watched a steady stream of kids walk, or skip, or slouch, or run by …I couldn’t help but think we will all be better off in the long run if these kids live up to their potential. Really good schools make that more likely. I wish that we, as a state, would focus less on the cost of education and more on the return on the investment.
According to the Houston Chronicle, the recently completed session of the 83rd Texas Legislature restored $4 billion of the $5.4 billion it cut from K-12 education in 2011. That’s a start. I hope next time we will replace all the money that has been cut and add more. That’s my hope — and this is, after all, the season of hope — I mean, is there anything in this world more hopeful and full of promise than the beginning of a new school year?
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Many thanks and blessings to Mia Thomas and the folks at Road to Damascus Resource Center and Transition Home for organizing today’s terrific “Back-2-School Bash.”
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This week’s Act Locally Waco blog post is by Ashley Bean Thornton. If you are interested in writing a post for the Act Locally Waco blog, please email [email protected].
By Ashley Bean Thornton
We had a terrific day in the Act Locally Waco tent at the Waco Downtown Farmer’s Market yesterday. The music was especially good. My friend MG was volunteering in the tent with me, and she and I couldn’t help dancing around a little bit in between visiting with friends, eating breakfast burritos, laughing at dogs and babies – and of course spreading the word about ALW.
It was an altogether pleasant way to get the weekend started. In the midst of all the fun, however, there was just one thing that kept bugging me – I got tired of hearing people talk about Austin. Here are the kinds of things I got tired of hearing: “I love this place. I feel like I can come down here and get my two hours of Austin.” Or, “Can you believe this is Waco? I feel like I’m in Austin!” These were enthusiastic comments, meant as compliments, but by the time I heard “Austin, Austin, Austin” about a dozen times, I confess I began to think grumpy thoughts, “Austin, Schmaustin — I am sick of hearing about Austin.”
It’s not that I don’t like Austin. I like Austin. My husband and I spent a weekend in Austin for our anniversary this year. Austin is a fine place. There are lots of things about Austin that I would love to see come to Waco in some form or fashion.
So why did these comments annoy me so? It took me awhile to figure it out, and it turns out it doesn’t have that much to do with Austin. When I hear those kinds of comments I feel like we – the people who live in Waco – are the very ones who have the most limiting image of Waco. The story we tell ourselves about Waco does not include things like a bustling farmer’s market. We believe that other places, like Austin, are “that kind of place;” we don’t quite believe we are “that kind of place.” But we are. We are exactly “that kind of place.”
I am impatient for the story we are telling each other to catch up with our potential. I am impatient for us to believe more of ourselves.
We are the kind of place that attracts and grows new businesses. We are the kind of place that builds a great school system. We are the kind of place that college students want to stay in after they have graduated. We are the kind of place people want to move to with their families. We are the kind of place that great people come from. We are the kind of place where new things are invented. We are the kind of place where people decide what kind of city they want to live in and then make it happen. It’s time we believed these things about ourselves. We are exactly “that kind of place.”
By Ashley Bean Thornton
When I opened up Facebook this afternoon my friend CS had posted a link to a video with the note: “For my friends on BOTH sides of the “pro-choice” “pro-life” debate. This amazing dialogue is one of respect, intelligence and progressive thoughts on the reality of the debate. I highly encourage you to take the time to listen, if you are passionate about this issue.”
Now, I do have passionate opinions about the Pro-choice/Pro-life debate, and to tell you the truth those opinions are pretty well set. They haven’t changed significantly in the last 30 years, and I doubt very seriously they are going to change significantly in the next 30, so why on earth would I want to spend even a moment of my precious Sunday afternoon watching a video about the Pro-life/Pro-choice debate?
The word that grabbed me in my friend’s Facebook note was “respect.” That notion of respect is important to me, because as passionate as I am about “my side” of this argument, I have friends and family on “the other side” who are just as passionate. I would like to find a way that we can have a conversation about this topic – and a range of other controversial topics – that is respectful. Also, to generalize beyond my own circle of loved ones, I believe if communities of people are going to be able to work together productively, solve problems together effectively, and live together peaceably we have got to learn to talk with each other about controversial topics in a respectful way. Even when we disagree passionately; even when we are never, ever, ever going to agree; even when we are not even willing to compromise; even in the face of intractability — we have still got to be respectful with each other. Even when the “other side” is not respectful – I have got to be respectful. I have got to take responsibility for respect. I am not always perfect at that! But, I’ve got to try.
So I watched the video.
I’m glad I did. I am left with a renewed faith in the idea that “respect” is based on understanding the other person as a whole human with doubts and fears and complexity of thought. The way we ask questions of each other, and the way we listen to the answers, can either contribute to that understanding or diminish it. So how do we start? Even one respectful question is a good beginning. Here are some of the questions from the video (paraphrased somewhat) that I want to remember for future respectful conversations:
Questions for the other person:
- In your earliest life, and in the path your life has taken since then, where do you trace the seeds of your ideas around this issue?
- What is at stake in this issue for you?
- What questions do you have for me?
Questions for myself:
- What is it in your own position that gives you trouble?
- What is it in the other position that you are attracted to?
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Interested in the topic of respectful conversations in general? Here are some websites:
- The Civil Conversations Project – http://www.onbeing.org/ccp
- Public Conversations Project – http://www.publicconversations.org/
- Living Room Conversations – http://www.livingroomconversations.org/
- National Issues Forums – http://www.nifi.org/
By Ashley Bean Thornton
I was lucky enough to get a tour of the BRIC (the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative) a few weeks ago. It is inspiring! As an old English major I love the symbolism of the BRIC, representing our hopes for a prosperous future, rising from the ruins of the Old General Tire building, an artifact from our economic past. As an old English major I also feel compelled to say one more thing: I have seen the future, and the future is – math.
With the WISD Advanced Manufacturing Academy, TSTC and the BRIC we have a nice little conveyor belt developing for moving our young people into good paying high tech jobs. The ticket to get on that conveyor belt is a decent ability to do math.
Waco needs to be a math town. I need to be a math cheerleader! This is a new role for me. (Did I mention I was an English major?) I may not be able to do much to help make Waco the math capital of the Southwest, but I can change the way I talk about math to the kids I know.
From now on when I hear a kid say, “I hate math.” Instead of saying, “I know, I hate math too.” I’m going to say, “Math was hard for me too, but it feels good when you finally figure it out; it gets kind of fun if you stick with it.”
When I hear a kid saying, “I’m dumb in math.” Instead of saying, “I know! Math stinks! Let’s eat ice cream.” I’m going to say, “It’s probably not that you are dumb in math; you probably need more practice. Nobody is that good at it at first. You’ll get better the more you practice.”
Yes, I know a kid’s success in math depends more on her teachers and her parents and probably a jillion other things than on my little pep talks. But, it is something I can do, and I’m going to do it. Join me? We’ll think of something more significant to do later, but we can at least do this. As an old English major I believe the words we speak into our young people make a difference. Go math!
By Ashley Bean Thornton
Sometimes people wonder about the things that get included in the Act Locally Waco newsletter. Why do we include things like “Art on Elm” or “Do Well, Be Well with Diabetes” or “First Friday Downtown.” What do these things have to do with reducing poverty?
It’s because poverty is not a problem like a weed that can be pulled out. Poverty is a vacuum. It’s a hole where something good should be, but isn’t. The only way to make the hole smaller is to put the good things in, things like healthy lifestyles, a booming economy, art, beauty, opportunity. To make Waco a great place to live we need to focus on what we want, not just on what we don’t want (poverty).
With that in mind Act Locally Waco uses the following twelve aspirations as a guide. They are a slightly modified version of the aspirations adopted by the Poverty Solutions Steering Committee and presented to the Waco City Council in June of 2012. They express what we want for Waco. Is this what you want too? If so, join us! Get informed. Get involved! Get a great community!
What we want for Waco…
1. To improve the health of our children and to support healthy, safe lives for all. – More children in Waco will be born healthy and more residents of Waco will be healthy throughout their lives. We will all be safe.
2. To prepare our children for success in school and beyond. – More children in Waco will start school ready to succeed, and more children will succeed through high school graduation.
3. To launch our young people into productive lives. – More young people in Waco will successfully make the transition from school to productive work that pays enough to establish a satisfying quality of life, and more will know how to manage resources wisely to sustain that quality of life.
4. To gainfully employ our working-age population. – More Waco residents will find and keep jobs that pay enough to sustain a satisfying quality of life without the need of government assistance, and more will know how to manage their resources wisely to maintain that quality of life.
5. To care for our elderly population. – More of the elderly people in Waco will have the resources they need to live out their lives with security and dignity.
6. To support residents who face special challenges. – More Waco residents who face physical, mental and social challenges will have the resources they need to live their lives with security and dignity.
7. To align our social services effectively. – Social-services and policy will be coordinated to effectively support upward mobility from economic dependence to independence where possible, and to effectively and respectfully serve those for whom independence is not possible.
8. To strengthen our neighborhoods. – More of our neighborhoods and residential areas in Waco will be clean, safe and attractive. Neighbors will work effectively together to accomplish common goals.
9. To make our shared spaces beautiful. – More of our shared public spaces and commercial spaces will be clean, safe, attractive, accessible and accommodating.
10. To energize our economic base. – Our local economy will create more job opportunities with the living wages needed to help employees achieve their goals.
11. To empower our residents. – More residents of Waco will have the cultural, political and leadership skills and sense of responsibility to advocate effectively for themselves, their families and their communities. More people will participate in the collaborative work of making our city a great place to live for every person of every income level.
12. To enjoy life together! – Waco residents and visitors, regardless of socio-economic status, will enjoy opportunities to appreciate natural beauty, to have fun, to enjoy the arts and to grow socially and culturally.
By Ashley Bean Thornton
After attending two Juneteenth celebrations and the terrific mural celebration party at the East Waco Library, I have seen far more Black people in the last month than I have seen in the 24 months before that combined.
Does that last sentence make you cringe a little? It made me cringe a little to write it. Do I sound like I’m bragging about being the cool White person who hangs out with Black people? Am I supposed to say “Black” or should I say “African-American?” Was I intruding? Would the Black people have liked it better if no White People had come? Should I write a post that focuses only on Black/White racial relationships? How will that make people of other races and ethnicities feel?
When it comes to race, I second guess myself coming and going. That’s OK though. If Waco is going to be a great place to live for every person of every level of income, more of us have got to wade into the sometimes fun, sometimes fascinating, often uncomfortable waters of learning more about other races and ethnic groups. I think Maya Angelou’s advice applies here, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” With that in mind here are five things I’ve done in the last few years that I feel like have helped me “know better.” I recommend them to you, my fellow White people.
1. Shop for kids’ books – Go to Barnes & Noble and try to find a baby book or a kids’ book with an other-than-white person on the cover. I did, and it was shocking to me how few choices I had. Once this opened my eyes I started noticing Black/White differences in all kinds of advertising, especially local advertising. Books and advertising influence our thinking, especially if we don’t notice that they are slanted.
2. Read Some of my Best Friends are Black by Tanner Colby and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander – The Colby book is an easy read by a white man who grew up in the South. It’s a very accessible, somewhat irreverent, look at some of our foundational institutions – education, housing, church – and how they have contributed to our current race relations (or lack thereof). The New Jim Crow is a challenging read. I didn’t agree with every word of it, but it broke open my thinking about crime and race. Everyone should read this book.
3. Watch “Race the Power of an Illusion” – This is a 3-Part documentary about race in society, science and history. It’s a little hard to find, but they have it at the Baylor library. (The Waco-McLennan County Libraries have ordered a copy. It should arrive sometime July 2013.) The information on the science of race and the section on housing were the most interesting to me. It shares a historical perspective that I bet most White people don’t know, but should.
4. Attend a Community Race Relations Coalition (CRRC) meeting – Waco is lucky to have a thriving group of people who care about promoting good conversations about race. I recommend their regular “Dinner and a Movie” meetings as a good way to ease into the conversation. Last Valentine’s Day, for example, they had a full house to watch “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Steve and Kathy Reid, of Truett Seminary and the Family Abuse Center respectively, led an honest, thought-provoking conversation about bi-racial marriage.
5. Attend a Black church…more than once — A few years ago the CRRC organized a “Church Swap.” Black people went to White churches and White people went to Black churches for three months. Attending a Black church for several Sundays gave us time to get past the initial shock-factor of a completely different worship style, to meet a few people, to learn some of the songs and to get to the point where we were actually worshipping instead of just observing. That experience did more to make me comfortable with being “the only white person in the room” than anything else I have ever done. I highly recommend it.
That’s my list of five? What are yours?
By Ashley Bean Thornton
The week after Father’s Day is a terrible time to talk about your Dad’s failures, but I think my dad would agree with me on one of his: he did a terrible job teaching me about cars. To be fair, my mom didn’t do any better. I got my first car the summer after my sophomore year of high school. One weekend during my junior year of COLLEGE I was visiting my dad in Houston when he randomly asked, “When was the last time you got the oil changed on that car?” “Never,” I said. “What’s an oil change?” And so it came to pass that five years into car ownership, and after a quick and LOUD lesson on the purpose and desired frequency of such, I got my first oil change.
That afternoon, driving in the middle of traffic on Loop 610, I noticed the red “check engine” light in my dashboard had flickered on and was now glowing steadily. “Good grief,” I thought. “I just got my oil changed. There must be something wrong with that light.” So, I kept driving…until I started hearing a horrible banging sound coming from under the hood. By the time I negotiated my way through a half dozen lanes of traffic and off of the loop…well… that little car was never the same. Evidently the oil-changers hadn’t put the oil filter on correctly. Evidently that’s important to do.
My mistake in this situation was that I thought there was something wrong with the light when it was far more likely, and more concerning, that there was something wrong with the engine.
To some extent poverty rate is the “check engine” light on a community’s economic engine. Ours in Waco is glowing brightly. It’s tempting to believe that there’s something wrong with the light – that there is something wrong with the people who find themselves in the situation of poverty. On a case-by-case basis it is pretty easy to find evidence that seems to support that theory if you are looking for it.
When you look at the overall percentages, however, it seems more likely, and more concerning, that there is something amiss with our economic engine. Our poverty rate of 30% is more than double the rate for the United States (14%), and 13 percentage points higher than the Texas rate of 17%. Our close neighbor Temple has a rate of around 13%. It doesn’t seem likely that we have double the percentage of people with something wrong with them. Why would we? We need to be careful not to convince ourselves that the problem is the light when it’s really the engine.
By Ashley Bean Thornton
If, like me, you learned most of what you know about the law from watching TV, you may be familiar with the words, “You have the right to speak to an attorney… If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.” It turns out that only applies in criminal cases, not civil. Did you know that? I didn’t. I’ve never had to think about it. Lack of access to competent legal counsel for civil issues is one strand of the tangled web that makes it difficult for people to escape poverty.
Imagine this situation: You are living in a run-down apartment and your faucet has been leaking for two weeks. The sound of the sometimes dripping, sometimes streaming, water is driving you crazy and the waste is costing you money. Your landlord keeps “not getting around to” fixing it. You decide, logically enough, not to pay your rent until he fixes the leak. Bad idea. It turns out the law is not on your side. If you don’t pay your rent, you can be evicted, even if your landlord is negligent about repairs. But, you don’t know that, so out you go.
You don’t have the money to pay the deposits on a new place, so now you and your kids are “couch surfing.” While this is going on, your daily routines are shot to pieces, and you start showing up late to work and not in the best of moods…a few cross words with your boss later and you find yourself being written up, or worse yet, fired from your $8.50 an hour job. All this drama has your kids upset, so school is not going well…on and on it goes. A little timely, competent legal advice might have averted this particular crisis.
All of us are better off when more of us are avoiding these kinds of problems, but what can be done about it?
I had lunch Monday with Kent McKeever from Mission Waco Legal Services and Sheryl Swanton from Lone Star Legal Aid. They opened my eyes to this and many other situations in which people with little or no means get into jams with our system of civil laws. These kinds of situations are the impetus behind the “First Monday” legal clinics being offered by McKeever’s group. The clinics offer people with limited income the opportunity to ask the one or two questions that might make the difference between solving a problem and touching off a downward spiral that can have bad effects for months or years to come. Please help spread the word about these clinics; support them financially; volunteer your time to help if you are able; inform yourself about this issue, and most of all keep your mind and heart open to the folks who find themselves needing this service.
The web of challenges in which people with little income are often entangled is complicated and frustrating – legal jams are just one possible strand. If I were caught in such a web, I’m certainly not sure I would be able to extricate myself without a little help – could you?
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Mission Waco First Monday Legal Clinics – First Monday of each month. 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm, Mission Waco Meyer Center, 1226 Washington Ave., Waco, TX 76701 – Appointments are not required but are strongly recommended. For more information call 254-296-9866, ext. 214 or email [email protected]. The website is www.missionwacolegalservices.org.
“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” – G.K. Chesterton
By Ashley Bean Thornton
In last week’s blog I introduced you to a fascinating company, Cascade Engineering in Grand Rapids, Michigan. According to a 2003 article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Cascade’s CEO, Fred Keller, “…doesn’t think that the role of business is to focus only on economic success, especially at society’s expense, and then just ‘give back’ charity to the community. He believes in ‘doing something good and then making it good business,’ looking for win-win outcomes for Cascade and society together.” One of Cascade’s most obvious ways of walking the talk regarding Keller’s philosophy is their highly successful “welfare-to-career” (W2C) program which boasted a 97% employee retention rate in 2012. High retention rates are good news for both the employees and the company, but the news wasn’t always so good at Cascade.
The company’s first foray into welfare-to-work back in 1991 was an abysmal failure. They recruited ten welfare recipients. Within two weeks all ten had quit or been fired. Even more embarrassing, they discovered the van they had provided to help these employees get to work was being used to make liquor runs! Cascade’s next effort in 1995 was no more promising. They worked out a program with Burger King where prospective employees could work at Burger King for six months to learn basic job skills before transferring to higher-paid work at Cascade. Not one single participant made it through the program.
That’s a frustrating start! How many of us would’ve given up? Instead, Cascade used these “stumbles” as learning opportunities. They kept trying and learning and improving until they developed the winning program they are using today. Along the way they gained insights that benefit not only their W2C employees, but all of their employees, and their company as a whole. (Read more about it in the article.)
We should study exemplary programs like the one at Cascade and learn all we can from them, but even if we copy these programs down to the last jot and tittle, chances are they won’t work for us on the first try. The most important lesson we can learn from Cascade is to keep trying, trying, trying until we figure out what DOES work. In our efforts to reduce poverty in Waco I imagine we will need to make space for some false starts and “do-overs,” but that is far better than never trying. Anything worth doing is worth doing badly…at first.
By Ashley Bean Thornton
By the third day of Bridges out of Poverty training last week, my brain was pretty much full to capacity and overflowing, so I almost missed one of the best parts of the whole training: The story of Cascade Engineering.
Cascade Engineering , headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, specializes in large scale plastic injection molding which is used to create all kinds of things from car parts to trash cans to furniture. In fiscal year 2012 they did over $338 million in sales, up from around $285 million in 2011.
Why were we talking about plastics in our Bridges out of Poverty training? If you take a look at the Cascade “2012 Triple Bottom Line Report,” the connection becomes clear. The report includes not just financials, but also metrics on their social and environmental accomplishments. For example, on the last page of the report, in the same annual scorecard where they report their sales, they also report a metric called “Welfare to Career Retention Rate” – 97% for 2012, by the way. This metric is evidence that Cascade has developed a successful strategy for recruiting individuals from poverty and retaining them as valuable, productive employees. In so doing, they have moved the concept of “social benefit” from the realm of charitable donations into the realm of business strategy.
Here’s a quote from the letter the CEO, Fred Keller, wrote to introduce the 2012 Triple Bottom Line Report. Read and be inspired! :
“Sometimes I am politely asked if our Triple Bottom Line focus on People and Planet takes away from Profits. With the release of this year’s Triple Bottom Line Report … we have a great opportunity to address the common misconception that these three priorities are necessarily at odds with each other. In truth, they can be. But if you do it right, the opposite is true. Commitment to People and Planet can accelerate Profits because teams committed to such worthy endeavors tend to work harder and with greater innovation than if they were merely going through the motions of the job. Also, commitment to People and Planet introduces business value that almost always results in greater long-term rewards.”
The story of Cascade engineering helps us to evolve the conversation about poverty into a conversation about potential – for the people involved and also for the businesses that employ them. We can learn from that!
It wasn’t easy though…more on the journey in a blog to follow.