The Bronx has long been seen as a symbol of America’s failings.  For many people here, ‘making it’ means escaping the crime and poverty of their borough.  But some have refused to flee. This episode shines a light on the hold-outs and the dreamers, people who’ve committed their lives to keeping chaos at bay in the Bronx.

What did you think of Still Rising from the Ashes? Start the discussion by using the comment section below to let us know what you think.

 

Everyone knows how important education is for the economic prospects of a community or region. But who would have thought that low education attainment levels would lead to a scarcity of supermarkets?

Eden, a town of about 16,000 in Rockingham County, North Carolina, found this out the hard way in 2005, when one of the community’s few groceries closed and the locals got up a petition asking a supermarket chain to open a new store. They already had a site picked out and gathered around 2000 signatures. But the supermarket chain took a pass on Eden. The reason: the percentage of residents with college degrees—about 10.8 percent—was considered too low.

Every year, a couple of statewide education groups sponsor a College Application Week. About 113 colleges and universities participate and 25 of them actually waive their application fees for the week to encourage more kids to apply. In 2006, a total of zero kids from Eden applied for college during College Application Week.

In the old days, all it took was a high school education to make a decent living working in the local textile mills, but in the 1990s, the U.S. textile industry tanked, and many workers lost their jobs and faced grim prospects for competing in the new economy.

Eden has made impressive strides and is recovering from the textile collapse. Citizens came up with a new motto: “Eden: the Land of Two Rivers,” drawing on its geography at the confluence of the Dan and the Smith rivers, and began to focus on protecting and promoting the local waterways. River outfitters now offer canoe and kayak tours. Tourism has increased along with motel occupancy rates.

In 2008, eight Eden citizens launched a grassroots movement to promote higher education, modeling their program on a similar one in nearby Patrick County, Virginia. Visiting the program in Virginia, they found out about the College Advising Corps, a program that hires recent college graduates to work with high school students from low income families to help them become first generation college students.

The activists merged with an existing community group to form the Eden Education Foundation, and later, broadening their focus, the Rockingham County Education Foundation. Working with the University of North Carolina, the group brought in two new college counselors to split their time between four county high schools advising kids who had never seen themselves as potential college grads.

It may seem like a small or obvious thing, beefing up the high school counseling program, but it’s not. These days overworked high school counselors spend an average of less than 20 percent of their time advising kids about college, according to one survey, but their help is essential, especially for first generation learners.

At the All-America City Awards in Kansas last June, Eden brought several kids from the local high schools who described how a counselor, named Mr. Woodard, had helped them through the daunting process of applying for college and scholarship money, rallying them, encouraging them, and bugging college admissions offices on their behalf. These were kids whose parents had never gone to college and had no idea what to do. One compared the process of applying to college to being in a foreign country.

I mentioned already that no kids from Eden had applied for college during College Application Week in 2006. A year later it was 22. By 2009, the number increased to 583. In 2010, seniors from the four schools earned more than $17 million in scholarships, an increase of about 44 percent from the year before. Small steps, perhaps, on the road to getting more kids in college.

Eden was one of ten AAC winners in 2010. You can watch their presentation to the AAC jury
here.

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Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

Marshall just stared at me, mouth agape, his pieced chin nearly touching his chest. “What do you mean you’ve never seen The Devil’s Rejects? What is WRONG with you?”

I’d received a similar response from my friend Hillary, who practically had a seizure when I said that I have not yet seen Firefly. My mother audibly gasped when I confessed that I have never seen Sex and the City 2. The favorite genres and directors may differ from person to person, but the fact remains the same: Oregon is a state of movie buffs.

It makes sense upon reflection, since film has been a key part of Oregon culture for decades. The 1978 cult movie National Lampoon’s Animal House was filmed at various sites at the University of Oregon. This same school recently created an entire Cinema Studies department (my friend Marshall was awarded the department’s first Bachelor’s Degree).

Most people grow up watching filmed-in-Oregon movies like The Goonies, but the inhabitants of the state seem to be particularly obsessed with them. After all, there’s something inherently cool about watching a film that takes place where you live. Especially if it’s not a stereotypically “American” location like Los Angeles or New York City.

One theatre that embraces this unique source of regional pride is the Bijou Art Cinemas in Eugene. This quirky theatre (equipped with two projection screens, only one at the standard theatre size) plays independent films that one usually doesn’t see at a typical movie theatre. It also plays a lot of foreign works— I have fond memories of seeing Paris 36 and Lorna’s Silence within Screening Room #2. After a film ends, patrons sometimes throw a penny in the small inner courtyard’s fountain before going their separate ways.

The theatre itself was constructed from the inside of a church, which also served as a funeral home at one point. Local brands of popcorn flavoring (you sprinkle it inside the bag, then shake) are sold alongside the chocolate bars at the front register. Forbidden Fruit, Eugene’s Rocky Horror Picture Show performance troupe, performs in the larger screening room at least once a month. The Bijou shares the building with other local businesses, such as the Chiropractic Healing Center. This community-focused attitude serves as an example of how the local movie theatre Factors into Oregonian regional identity.

But the movie culture in Oregon doesn’t end with the theatre itself— films continue to be made within the state to this day. 531 productions, The filmmaking company based in Eugene, 531 Productions, has won many awards for its entirely Oregon-based body of films. Henry Weintraub, a producer, editor, and writer for 531, remarks that he enjoys making films in Oregon due to the variety of “natural sets” available. Indeed, a filmmaker has access to high deserts, ocean beaches, dense forests, small towns, and urban settings all within the same state.

But even more than the land itself, Weintraub says, a better reason for filming in Oregon is its people. “People seem to be very cooperative in Oregon.” He goes on to talk about how he has filmed in Portland and Eugene (his current project also includes Salem, the state’s capital) and his positive experiences in each city. “People in Oregon are so friendly, [and] just seem a lot calmer.”

Last year, I attended the premiere of 531 Production’s latest horror, The Darkest Corner of Paradise. Even more memorable than the film itself was the crowd of people that surrounded the cast after the screening ended. Hordes of locals came up to the star, Patrick O’Driscoll, just to shake his hand. That, to me, was the perfect picture of film’s role in Oregon culture. All these people had all just watched a film in a theatre. And we all felt the need to thank its creators for the experience.

 

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the area, Mississippi Gulf Coast residents were forced to come together to deal with the aftermath. Then, just as they were starting to get back on their feet, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster dumped millions of barrels of oil into the water just off their shores. Cumulatively, these events have made environmentalists out of a whole lot of Gulf Coast residents who may not have considered themselves as such… We tell an hour of stories about the fight for the natural world Gulf Coast bringing residents together, both with one another and with unlikely partners—and how, in some instances, that fight is turning out to be exactly what a community needed to survive.

We would love to hear what you think about our newest episode, Defending the Gulf. Simply comment below to get the conversation started.

 

Low and Slow – The Low Riders of Española

Despite modern stereotypes, low riders are a celebrated family tradition in Española, New Mexico. The town was even nicknamed “The low rider capital of the world” decades ago. This video is a companion to the State of the Re:Union episode, Española – The Land Remembers, and explores the incredible culture of these amazing vehicles and their owners.

Discover why this pastime is as much about community as it is about cars, check out the full episode for more information on the surprising history of low riders and share your thoughts by posting your comment below.

Though the national news media is now focused on the straw poll in Iowa and the impending GOP nomination, a great debate continues throughout our country. No matter where I go there are people who want to talk about who should be “allowed to live in America” and who shouldn’t. Late one summer night, after a particularly long stint on the road, I hopped in a cab, pining for my family. No sooner did the cab pull away from the curb, than the conversation with my Pakistani cab driver began. His voice is nowhere to be heard in the raucous immigration debate, but it should be.

I remember working with the Orange County Register back in 1994 when they were covering Prop 187, also known as “Save our State,” which called for the screening of all individuals and families before receiving health care, education and other social services, in order to keep out illegal immigrants. Ultimately, that law was struck down by the courts. But, at the time, one of the things the Register editors told me was that they had regretted their coverage of Prop 187 – which they said merely mirrored the cartoonish debate between opposing sides, and failed to illuminate the underlying issues.

I always admired the Register folks for their forthrightness and dogged honesty; and their coverage of other tough issues over the ensuing years proved to reach their aspirations. But in today’s debate we could all take a lesson from the Register. Where are the voices of people who do not fall squarely at either pole of this debate, who are wrestling with the competing values and issues involved, and who are in search of a solution that reflects the best of America?

I found one of these voices as my cab pulled away from the curb. At first, my cab driver and I “talked” about the best route to get to my house. We disagreed some, but finally reached some accommodation. It’s possible.

Then, our conversation turned to his children. I don’t remember exactly why or how that happened; no matter, the story that unfolded was moving and engaging and reflected something rich and enduring about the American experience. My cab driver has five kids. One is now a lawyer who attended Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and has clerked for two judges; he let me know that he has counseled her to pursue a legal profession in which she can “do right.” He has another daughter, also a VCU grad, who just received her MBA. His son, a twin, is going off to VCU in September. And yet another daughter is a graduate of VCU as well. Four out of his five kids will be VCU grads. As we talked, I leaned over the front seat, and said to him, “You know, your children are living out the American Dream.” He smiled, and with the inflection of a proud father, said, “That’s right.”

I then asked him what he thought about the immigration debate. He said that people should keep coming to America, but that they must also follow whatever rules are set up. We talked for a good amount of time about this. He recounted that he came to this country 19 years ago, following the path of relatives already here. This country had offered him everything, he said (including a double shift that day). At one point, I asked him if he planned to return to Pakistan. He told me how he wanted to go back to care for his ailing mother. But, then he said, “But this is my country.” Slowly, he looked at me and asked, “Is it alright that I say ‘my country?’ For that’s how I feel.” Our eyes met, and I said, “That’s great you feel that way. That’s how it should be.” And he said softly, “Yes, that is how it should be.”

The immigration debate is a complicated one. There aren’t any easy answers. And my intention in recounting this story is not to suggest there are. Nor is it to promote one policy position over another. Instead, what concerns me today is that the debate ought to reflect the best of us – not the worst. It ought to be about what kind of country we want to be, and, yes, the rules such a vision requires. In that process, we must not fall prey to demonizing others or pushing one another into a corner. Indeed, let us demonstrate respect for all the people among us, like my Pakistani cab driver, who came to us as immigrants, who are contributing greatly to our country and bless our nation now and hopefully for the rest of our history.

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A dynamic public speaker, Rich Harwood is a frequent keynote for foundations and national organizations. He is an expert contributor on national and syndicated media outlets including MSNBC, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN’s Inside Politics, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Special Report with Brit Hume, C-SPAN, and many others. He is also the author of Hope Unraveled: The people\’92s retreat and our way back (2005), Make Hope Real: How we can accelerate change for the public good (2008) and numerous studies, articles and essays chronicling vital issues of our time. His most recent written work, Why We\’92re Here: The Powerful Impact of Public Broadcasters When They Turn Outward, is being published and distributed in Spring 2011. You can follow him on twitter @RichHarwood and facebook.com/richharwood.

You can read Rich’s posts every Tuesday on State of the Re:Union’s website.