Communities: Organically Growing

No, this post is actually not focusing on food, at least not in a central way.  I'm not really focusing on gardening, either.  I'm talking about "organic" in the sense of bottom-up instead of top-down processes.  I've briefly mentioned Kent Community Time Banks here once before, but this post is dedicated to KCTB. 

After World War II, the US experienced a surge of suburbanization and urban sprawl.  The "norm" went from small, walkable, urban communities with many row-houses and apartments to spread out, driving-distance, subdivisions with large lots within a few decades.  Public transit went from a necessity to a tax burden, cars moved from street-side to attached garages, walking went from the sidewalk to the treadmill and shopping moved from the corner store to the enclosed mall.  Cleveland, my paternal family's homeland, now covers twice as much land as it did fifty years ago, with roughly the same number of people.  That's a doubling of per-capita land usage. 

Later in the seventies, white flight reinforced distrust of neighbors and a disdain for urban "ghettos"; multiple family housing units were associated with poverty, the welfare state, and morally abject behavior.  These are, of course, broad generalizations, and there were exceptions, but they illustrate how society can change in a short amount of time.

Currently, there is a recognition that maybe our current model of living is not the best practice.  People are isolated from their community, neighbors don't know one another, families are widely dispersed and interaction takes place over a wire instead of a kaffee klatsch or hedge.  Not that this nostalgic scene was perfect either, as Stephanie Coontz's "The Way We Never Were" documents quite nicely.  Along with this recognition that progress isn't always the best thing is a movement of recreating communities in a new form.  The internet may be often blamed for its part in the destruction of geographically based communities, but it is now being repurposed as a tool in the community garden of these new communities. 

In a time when individuals and families may be transient to a community, and may not know who and what resources are available in a city, Time Banks provide a way to connect with others, with money not being an issue.  It serves as an equalizer, valuing the time of a doctor and a high school drop the same.  If you can walk a dog or provide a listening ear, you can be a part of the community, and obtain needed services like medical advice, tutoring or electrical work.  Everyone has something to offer.  The computer software and website provide a way to connect with someone offering a service you need and needing a service you can provide, but more importantly, they provide a way to start relationships, they provide a way to reintegrate marginalized citizens into the larger community, they provide a decentralized currency that is backed by something more substantial then bytes of data- a currency backed by other humans.

Frustration

Ken and I walked down to have some Chinese tonight because it has been a long couple of days and I needed a break.  I know, bad mama.  We've had some uncharacteristic-for-Ohio-warm-weather, and by uncharacteristic, I mean nearly 60 today.  Gorgeous.  I had gotten up early, finished stuff for my class and sent it off to students, had a celebratory breakfast coffee, delivered supplies to the classroom for another teacher, volunteered four hours at our local NPR station WKSU 89.7, had an eye appointment and did some grocery shopping.  All with boy in tow (well, except volunteering, but he'll be with me Thursday when I go in again).  At home, we cleaned up the yard some.  Melted snow had uncovered bits and pieces of trash in the yard, as well as the usual spring sticks and pine-cones, so we were off to collect those and put them in their proper place.  Under the guise of practicing for the upcoming egg-hunt.  I love my easily bribed child.

What does any of this do with frustration, you ask?  Wasn't Ken behaved like a model child?  Actually, for once, he was.  No complaints there.  I know- shock.

My frustration is with the lack of general respect.  I'm not sure if it's just a by-product of the winter's neglect now being exposed, or heightened sensitivity to it because of the stray human upstairs who lacks respect in spades, or just the spring winds.  We moved to the area in which we currently reside in part out of a feeling that you can not change something from the outside.  If you want to help people, you do it by becoming part of their community, full time, not just on organized work days or before going home for the night.  You help by getting in there and living among those you want to help.  And Dwight and I both have a streak of social justice, so we moved to the "poor" side of town in hopes of learning and helping while living a frugal life. 

And learn I have indeed.  I can't speak for Dwight because he does in fact have his own mind.  Again- shock, right?  I've learned that if people aren't shown respect in their society, they learn that they don't deserve respect.  If someone has no self-respect, respect for anyone or anything else- including the environment- is a lost hope.  That person then shows others no respect, and they in turn learn that they don't deserve respect, and a vicious cycle ensues.  This cycle is broken not by teaching each and every person that they do in fact have worth, but by teaching society as a whole that all people have worth.  We do it by rebuilding community from the inside out, a little at a time, slowly, and eventually life looks very different. 

So Ken and I started by demonstrating the respect for our community on our walk- we picked up some trash.  Really, quite a bit.  Not all, but a lot.  And we talked to our neighbors after our long winter's nap.  A couple of them even joined in the task.  We did something.  I know it's not a lot, but it's something that I hope to continue doing now that the weather is warming.  Even little mundane tasks like this can make a huge difference.  Hopefully, it's for the better.

As an aside, I'd like to point you to Time Banks.  We might be getting one in Kent, and it looks like another great way to help rebuild communities from the inside.  In fact, I think I may just go ahead and do it.