4.2.1 Isolationism as a Concept in the Curriculum
Still residing in a poor inner city neighborhood, Mission Year staff member, Bart, is an active member of his community and is vice president of his community organization. As such he is well informed about the city of Atlanta. He connects the relocation of former neighborhood institutions to the poverty in two neighborhoods, South Atlanta and Lakewood Heights,
...there is a leadership vacuum that takes place...and it really spreads, it's not just about leadership, it's about economics, it's about homeownership, it’s about taking ownership of the neighborhood and just the lack of that. For Lakewood, I think the big factor there, the big institution that left was the Ford factory that was in existence in operation for years...jobs just evaporated, so poverty just shot through the roof. So whenever a neighborhood is dependent on one institution, it's not uncommon really, when something like that happens it leaves the door open for a lot of misuse and abuse and neglect. Specifically, I know the story of homeownership in South Atlanta is a big piece of that. When you have professors and workers from the college [the Gammon Theological Seminary, formerly located in South Atlanta] that leave, they turn their previous properties into rental properties and sell them to people for less than they are worth and it just creates a devaluing of the community and like I said a lack of
ownership (initial interview 2012).
While the movement of the factory and the Theological Seminary are lamentable, my first reaction to Bart's comment was that maybe it might not be so bad to have cheaper rental properties available to poor residents who cannot afford to buy. However, once again, these issues are extremely complicated. I gained a better understanding while listening to Shelly discuss the further isolation of poverty in her neighborhood, she said,
Schools in our neighborhoods are going to be shut down [with the school district’s recent announcement of school closures due to demographic shifts], which means all the kids will be bused to different neighborhoods, which means people won't move into our neighborhoods, which means that our property taxes will go down. We won't be
able to raise the value of properties in our neighborhood because there are too many abandoned properties...We need people to move in because we need their resources, we need their property taxes, we need to be able to have our schools open...They are going to take all of that away. So as a community we are going to stand up and say this can't happen.
As residents of the inner city, these staff members can easily relate to the issue of isolationism as it is portrayed by the curriculum. The message participants receive from the literature, which is
foundational in the three R philosophy and thus to the existence of the program, is that the
abandonment of the city by white residents, business, and wealthier black residents has, in point of fact, contributed greatly to the poverty there.
Howard Thurman (1976), in Jesus and the Disinherited, refers to the biblical story of the Good Samaritan as Jesus responding to human need across the barriers of class, race, and condition. He claims that “Every man is potentially every other man's neighbor. Neighborliness is nonspatial; it is qualitative. A man must love his neighbor directly, clearly, permitting no barriers between” (84). Mission Year's curriculum touches on all the various aspects of the three R philosophy. Loving neighbors – responding to their human need, within the literature, means returning from isolation and living together once again (this concept of relocation will be examined more deeply in the next chapter).
One book in the curriculum, Sidewalks in the Kingdom by Eric Jacobsen (2003), is entirely dedicated to combating isolationism through the New Urbanism Movement which encourages city development that promotes walkability and mix use residential types, commercial uses, and community features. Jacobsen (2003) does not simply promote New Urbanism, he begs readers to view the suburbs as a failed experiment and return to the city. The book informs Christians, evidenced in the scriptures by the natural symbiotic relationship between city dwellers in the ancient city of Jerusalem and the rural dwellers of its rural surroundings, that there is no third option. Jacobsen (2003) asserts that,
An urban dweller supports the city by direct participation in its life and its rhythms. And a rural dweller supports the city by enjoying the culture that is produced in the city, by providing food and other resources for the city. What is most problematic with regard
to the city is suburbanization, which can drain the life out of the vital center of the city and doesn't support the city with any rural amenities (43).
He further states that policies of suburbanization, “cannot be our strategy...We can support the city from a truly rural setting, but we cannot retreat to our own private gardens” (45). Mission Year participants gain a better understanding of this concept of suburban draining of the city chapter two of Restoring At-Risk Communities, edited by John Perkins. Participants read that,
The dollar circulates one time in the inner city: from the hands of the residents, into the hands of the store owners who live outside the community. Many of those businesses do not even hire anyone from the community, thereby extracting the financial power from the community with no benefit to the community except providing goods for consumption (Perkins 1995: 42-43).
The curriculum's message to participants about isolationism is that suburbanization creates need and poverty in the city because it extracts financial power from cities. Furthermore, since Christians are called to love their neighbor and care for the poor, then they must be informed that suburban isolation is more than simply being 'out of sight, out of mind,' it actually contributes to poverty and need. According to these texts, Christians must face the reality that deepening the poverty of the needy goes against fundamental Christian principles and teachings.
4.2.2 Participants’ Perception of Isolationism
To a large extent, the participants’ reaction to isolationism is represented by the injustices they have observed in their neighborhoods. Some of the common responses to injustices perceived in the neighborhoods included: large trash piles, vacant/dilapidated houses, the absence of grocery stores, ineffective and overpriced public transportation, poor education system, no sidewalks, unlit streets, people pushed out by development projects, people forced to resort to prostitution and selling drugs, nothing for people to do, and people being identified unjustly from the outside. Participants' middle class neighborhoods likely do not suffer from such phenomena. By moving into high-poverty
things they have taken for granted at home are not afforded to every tax-paying American, and that is not just. In fact, one noticeable difference between her home neighborhood and her Mission Year neighborhood stood out for Lori, she stated that “I was taught my whole life that the police were good. When I lived in that neighborhood I realized the police weren't always good. They can choose to pull someone over just because they are black, you know. I had never been a witness to that before. I got to see the kind of negative treatment of individuals in my neighborhood because of their skin color by police.”
Living in the city opened Joe's eyes to his youth spent in isolation, what might be considered a hyper-suburban isolation. He recalls, “ I grew up in a smaller town and church was a very big thing. My entire life I had gone to church. The school was at the church, everything I did involved that church. And that was the ministry and all that, just that small little collective. And that was something that never quite made sense to me.” The curriculum message that suburbanization creates need and poverty by extracting financial power from cities appears to have impacted all of the Mission Year participants I interviewed, evidenced by the physical conditions they have observed in the
neighborhood.