Diversity – Woman Aloud

The closing of the Mos’Art Theater in Lake Park this past week is a small, personal tragedy for those of us who loved the great selection of independent and foreign films found there for the last five years. We’ve seen Oscar-nominated documentaries, animated films and features, and even got to vote on them. We’ve attended benefits at the Mos’Art like the showing of The Vessel, co-sponsored by the local National Organization for Women and Emergency Medical Assistance. Most recently, the 2015 Oscar-nominee for Foreign Language Film, Wild Tales, drew an appreciative audience. To catch films of this caliber now, means driving at least 20 minutes on a hair-raising stretch of I-95 to the only other cinema of its kind in northern Palm Beach County. But even more than the inconvenience, it saddens me to see this promising venue, on the same block as our other favorite local hangout, The Brewhouse Gallery, go dark. A vibrant community needs more thriving small businesses, not fewer, more foot traffic, not less.

Lake Park has a more diverse population than our home town, and just like the other artsy, colorful, interesting town of Lake Worth, diversity also brings with it more security issues and various defensive strategies. I notice, for example, that Saigon Market where we shop for a terrific array of Asian ingredients, and the Vietnamese pho/hot-pot restaurant its owners opened last year, pull down metal shutters over their display windows and door at night. It’s common practice in fringe neighborhoods in any urban area, and one choice retailers can make to protect themselves. But a fortress does not a community make. More venues like The Brewhouse Gallery and its neighbor, Art on Park, both of which cater to emerging artists, are a better way to go. I say this even while recognizing that today’s artists’ haven is tomorrow’s high-rent district. Hello Miami’s Wynnwood.

We live less than 5 miles from Lake Park, in a family oriented town we landed in more than a decade ago, following one set of grandchildren to the sunshine of South Florida. It has its virtues — low crime rate, good schools, two excellent community centers with pools and other sports facilities, more large shade trees, a Whole Foods Market, the Gardens Mall, and of course, a multiplex theater featuring the usual fare of blockbusters. Developers of Downtown, and the newer Midtown, have tried to infuse a sense of community around the collection of shops and restaurants, with comfortable public seating, periodic art shows and free music on the weekends in the season (that is, not the hotter summer months). Downtown features a carousel and a train for tots that also goes round and round each evening, clanging bell and all. But the design approach doesn’t seem to be moving us in the direction of a real town center as a community gathering place. The farmers market is somewhat better, but without some effort, it’s too easy to be ships that pass in the night. Even the kids don’t seem to be having much fun, except occasionally when they cut loose from their parents and play with other kids. They set a fine example.

I’ve made the point here before that as shoppers, diners or spectators, we’re more likely to stick to our companions. Mingling or chatting with people we don’t know would be an exception rather than the rule, and that’s a seriously bad trend for community life, let alone the kind of resilience the future may demand of us. I don’t think our little corner of Palm Beach County is an isolated example (but I’d be delighted to have that view challenged). If we aren’t comfortable with the people we meet in the commons, how can we become better at talking with each other in community meetings where an issue of mutual interest is being discussed, let alone in a more politically charged gathering? Shouldn’t we all be concerned about the silo lifestyles and bland conformity so many of us have adopted, and adapted to, without understanding what and whom we are sacrificing? I think so, and the indie-minded among you might agree. I’ll leave you with some links worth checking out:

Transition Streets — just launched website

Strong Towns

Walkable WPB

How can we ensure that Transition isn’t primarily a pleasurable movement for predominantly white, educated, post-materialist, middle-class small community people? ~ Simplicity Collective

Among the many things we discussed last night at our monthly Transition meeting, the issue of inclusiveness – racial, ethnic, socio-economic, gender — resonated with me enough to want to investigate further. Thanks to Caroline Chen for having brought it up. Like other attendees interested in Transition, Caroline lives in Lake Worth, which takes some pride in its ethnic diversity, including a large Guatemalan community. How, she wondered, could we reach out to the wider community? I think the underlying question is: how might we build a local movement that reflects the community as it really is, and educate ourselves into a community that brings out the best in us all?

In attempting to find some answers, I was glad to discover that Transition US is responding to the Simplicity Collective’s critique. This fall, the Mid-Atlantic Transition Hub will offer a webinar entitled The Maturation of a Social Movement: A Regional Response to a Critique of the Transition Movement on the Transition US website, to explore diversity, among other issues. November 6, 2014, 2:00 pm ET, Click here to register (I just did.) An important aside: this webinar, like the regularly scheduled Salons are all available at no cost from Transition US via the Maestro Conferencing system, one of the many benefits of belonging to a worldwide movement. My donations (and yours) help keep this high quality education coming.

Funny, you don’t look … Mutts like me tend to be acutely conscious of the racial mix of any size group, or lack thereof. Even in my admittedly limited experience with face-to-face climate activism, I can see why the misconception that the environment is a white person’s issue persists. At last year’s Walk for Our Grandchildren, for example, people of color were noticeably in short supply. And yet since Katrina, no sane person would argue that climate impacts fall equally on us all in this country, let alone on the low-lying and/or island nations most threatened by a rising sea.

Check out the blogosphere, and you’ll see a lot of opinions on this. I’ll sum up like this: people who are struggling to find and keep jobs that satisfy basic needs – predominantly of color, urban, and poor — have other things to worry about beside the environment. I’ll leave that stereotype unchallenged for now.

In this recent article, (first published in Grist) Mother Jones assigns partial blame to high-profile green organizations that are falling far short in achieving equality in their hiring practices. Weirdly enough, what has existed and been tolerated, despite mounting criticism since the 1970s, is an ‘apartheid ecology.’ Furthermore, (the article continues) civil rights activists have had cause to be suspicious of any movement that would draw energy – not to mention funding – from the on-going struggles for social justice. That Green activism has been predominantly white and male is not a new problem, conferring on it an elite status that I believe has held it back. This is clearly one among many issues that the shifting demographics in this country will address and possibly resolve. As Center for Diversity and the Environment notes: In 2043, people of color will be over 50% of the U.S. Population. But everything we hear from climate scientists tells us we can’t wait that long to bring everyone into the fight for our very survival. This is the unique challenge Transition US is girding itself to tackle through educational and outreach.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of this intriguing topic. So join me in my continuing education in the weeks ahead, focusing on youth and the next generations who will literally inherit the earth (school farms, here I come!). So far, the most interesting work in the new, more inclusive environmental activism makes a strong case for the societal and economic necessity of tackling climate change and shrinking resources (energy, water, food) now, rather than later. In addition to CDE just cited, check out the mission statement of Van Jones’ Green for All: Building a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. Those of us seeking to build local Transition Towns could do well to borrow a page from this playbook.

Tag: Diversity

Bye-Bye Indie Movies

Transition and Diversity

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: