THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602280579
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: BY THE PEOPLE
An occasional series on citizens taking steps to build better
communities.
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 183 lines
This is about a habit some of your neighbors have picked up. They've walked out of their homes, taken off their ties and pitched in elbow-to-elbow to tackle the community's toughest problems: crime, pollution, racial division.
The Virginian-Pilot first visited with them about a year ago, looking at instances where people in South Hampton Roads had come together to work on issues that often had been left to government. Sometimes government couldn't do it. Sometimes people just decided they wanted to do it themselves.
It's a persistent habit, one that many Americans have developed.
Some smart people around the country even study the habit. Harry Boyte, at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs in Minneapolis, wrote that people working together to solve problems ``connects the community, the workplace, and the home to the larger public stage. It generates pride and civic dignity and develops people's full identity as `citizens.' ''
It also could be described as, well, politics. Politics happens when people get together to work out knotty problems. They work hard, they compromise, they argue. Politics has become a dirty word, but it begins with people who want to bring about change.
What Boyte doesn't say, and the people we talked to did, is that this is fun. It's like a barn-raising - awfully hard work, but you don't soon forget it.
THE LAFAYETTE-WINONA CIVIC LEAGUE CAN FEEL THE RESULTS OF ITS EFFORTS IN A LOWER CRIME RATE.
A continuing significant drop in crime in the Lafayette-Winona neighborhood in Norfolk has kept residents there pumped up about their teamwork.
``We're getting so low in our crime stats, it's wonderful,'' said Carl Meredith, president of the civic league and a leader of the crime prevention effort. ``Burglaries plummeted, auto theft's down, there's no comparison.''
Experts are sometimes hesitant to connect citizen block watches to decreases in crime. The problem is so complex that other, less obvious factors may come into play.
But no one here has doubts about the work they do together. They feel it.
This is a close partnership between people and government, where residents provide many more eyes and ears than cities can afford to employ.
People in Lafayette-Winona tag abandoned buildings, spot junked cars, watch for sudden traffic increases that may indicate drug sales.
Every week, a team of residents goes on patrol, in uniforms of blue T-shirts, baseball caps and jackets, with flashlights, whistles, cans of Mace and walkie-talkies. They can't make arrests; mostly they deter by their presence.
The police follow up on what they find, and so do other city agencies.
When you do those kinds of things, and then see fewer cars stolen in your neighborhood, you find a powerful incentive to continue. It makes people here less likely to listen to anyone who says it's impossible.
Harold ``Butch'' Schupska, a first-class petty officer in the Navy, said he sees how television and the media in general prey on fears of crime until it seems monstrous and insoluble. From the street, literally, it doesn't look that way.
``People are afraid of being retaliated against,'' he said, and use that as an excuse not to work on the problem. ``But I don't think that's realistic. They're watching too much television.
``If they'd get out and spend some time with the people who are doing the work, they'd see how things are.''
He is blunt about the hold television has, a view that's shared by some national experts who think television is the No. 1 enemy of civic involvement.
``Trying to get them away from watching TV, it's kind of hard to get them doing anything,'' he said. ``If they're so intent on protecting their property, they need to get out and help the people who are doing it.''
Still, Meredith said the idea is catching on.
``Before they saw the results, it was kind of taken for granted,'' he said. ``But people are keen to the idea of prevention now.''
He maintains people are even moving to Lafayette-Winona from Ghent and other neighborhoods because of its improved reputation.
A BROAD SPECTRUM OF INTERESTS IS GETTING A JUMP ON THE GOVERNMENT IN ITS EFFORTS TO SAVE THE ELIZABETH RIVER.
What started around a kitchen table is finally starting to cook.
The Elizabeth River Project is drafting its proposal to rescue the river that pumps through the heart of Hampton Roads. Five years after the idea first percolated, four years after its founders started asking other people what they thought, they're ready to act.
On June 20, the project will hold a public conference at Nauticus in Norfolk to present a ``watershed action plan'' for the river.
When they do, it will be one place where environmental conservation - a notion that began 30 years ago with ordinary folks but somehow became a branch of government - comes home again.
This plan does not spring from the desks of bureaucrats. The work was done across South Hampton Roads on home computers, in shipyards, in back yards, some of it actually on boats.
It was written by people who want to be able to swim in the Elizabeth River again, to fish from it one day, to walk their children along its banks. They want to take their river back.
``Government can only go so far as the will of the people,'' said Marjorie Mayfield, director of the project and one of its founders. ``If the community doesn't want it, the government can't do it.
``We wanted to build an educated, concerned constituency, unite the diverse interests, sit down at a table with all the parties. We've been looking for the middle ground where things can happen.''
That, she said, is not something government can do well, because everyone expects the worst of government.
The project has recruited a broad spectrum of businessmen, shipbuilders, environmentalists and even government experts working on their own time. With any luck, they'll have a good jump on the consensus necessary to get their recommendations moving with the public, the industry and the state legislature.
``In this day and age, what we see is a lot of more militant environmental groups losing support,'' Mayfield said. ``We're just finding a lot more support with the partnership approach.''
PORTSMOUTH'S ``FACE TO FACE WITH RACE'' PROGRAM IS TENACIOUSLY TRYING TO GET THE CITY'S RACES TALKING TO EACH OTHER.
It's almost unnerving how hard it can be for people to talk about race.
The people of Portsmouth are doing more than any city in Hampton Roads - maybe the state or the nation, for that matter - to confront one of the deepest divisions of our time, and to try to bridge it.
``Face to Face With Race,'' an effort to organize small groups to work through racial tensions, has brought scores, perhaps hundreds, of people face to face.
And yet, it is slow, slower than many would like.
``We had hoped that each person participating in the study circles would start another circle,'' said Zelma G. Rivin, one of the concept's advocates. ``And we've had several very, very good results. It's moving. But it's still not out there in people's consciousness yet.''
This, unsurprisingly, is not something government does well. You can't legislate people into talking to each other.
Rivin, Helen Fooshe, Anne Long and others said they've had good response from a few community centers, businesses and neighborhoods. They've had far less than they expected or hoped for from churches.
Rivin said the concept was developed by churches in Ohio working together, but it has not taken the same course here.
``Churches are really still so segregated, you know,'' Long said. ``We've been urging Methodist churches to pair off with African-American churches, for instance.''
The plan calls for groups to meet once a week for five weeks, under the direction of a facilitator. It's hard work. This is one way that government and civic institutions can help, supporters said, by providing expertise and other help for the conversations.
One strength of citizens working together on a problem is that they can keep dogging it in their spare time until it starts to move. They hope that's what is happening in Portsmouth.
OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY IS HOPING PROFESSIONALS AND LOCAL EXPERTS CAN TEACH CIVIC LEADERSHIP - AND MANY ARE INTERESTED.
Can you teach civic leadership? Can a university accustomed to formal training pass on something that's more often taught by personal example?
Old Dominion University intends to try. This spring the school's Center for Global Business and Executive Education, and the newly affiliated Civic Leadership Institute, will begin a leadership class for citizens.
``It's going very well,'' said J.R. ``Jim'' Bullington, director of the center. ``We're absolutely delighted with the response we've gotten to it.''
Bullington, formerly a career U.S. diplomat, said ODU has brought together professional facilitators and local expertise to start shaping the course. Much of that work, however, will be done by those who take the first one, beginning in mid-March.
He said about 30 people will form the first class. It's full already, but anyone interested can sign up to take the course when it's offered again later this year. The leadership institute's director, B.J. Stancel, can be reached at 683-4712. ILLUSTRATION: VICKI CRONIS color photos/The Virginian-Pilot
Members of Adopt-A-Cop, a community crime prevention program, wait
outside Lafayette-Winona Middle School to attend the Civic League
meeting there Wednesday night. Every week, a team of residents goes
on patrol in uniforms and carrying flashlights, whistles and cans of
Mace. They can't make arrests, but they deter by their presence.
Norfolk police officer Judy O. Hash listens to details of an
upcoming neighborhood sweep while attending a Lafayette-Winona Civic
League meeting Wednesday night. An officer who works in the area
attends every meeting.
by CNB