“Good things happen when we’re eye to eye, face to face, and able to absorb the passion many of us have for our neighborhood,” said GNN facilitator and neighborhood volunteer, Gail McKeel.

The room was packed and our talking circle was large including representatives from Hope For The Inner City, Hardy Elementary Community PTA, Boyce Station Neighborhood, CALEB, GreenSpaces, Glass Farm Neighborhood Association, Glass Farm Block Leaders, Building Stable Lives, City Farms Grower Coalition (formerly Grow Hope Farms), East Chattanooga food pantry project, alongside members of the Glass House Collective board of directors and staff, and Glass Farm residents and volunteers.

The Good Neighbor Network was launched to be a sounding board for ideas and a way to keep and build momentum for the work all of these groups are doing individually. Today, as more eyes and energies are focused on Glass Farm and East Chattanooga, beginning the year with a re-group to build consensus on the best ways to stay connected, focused and supportive, was important to neighborhood leaders.

“With the help of all interested parties, we’ll be able to structure our meetings and form committees to set goals, share the facilitation of the meetings this year, distribute the duties, and have more productive meetings,” McKeel said.

We appreciate Miss Gail’s leadership pulling this conversation together. It is clear that the collective is getting wider and deeper and that everyone involved believes in the power of partnerships!

GNN’s next meeting is Monday, March 2 at 6:30pm at the GHC HQ.

LINKS:
GNN Facebook page
City Farms Grower Coalition
Change Makers Workshops at Hardy Elementary
East Chattanooga food pantry

This summer, GHC’s community coordinator and our representative within CALEB, Lynesha Lake, became active on their Economic Mobility Task Force as the committee co-chair. This task force is focused on finding ways to help local Chattanooga officials and community members gain stronger community benefits from developments that are incentivized by the City of Chattanooga.

Thanks to a travel grant from the Bargaining For The Common Good nonprofit (BCG), CALEB members Austin Sauerbrei and Felipe Lara, and Lynesha were able to have their travel and registration expenses covered so that they could attend BCG’s June convening for housing justice held in Chicago, July 29 and 30th.

The conference hostsed 200 representatives from all over the country including Southern California, Iowa, Seattle, New York and Puerto Rico. Organizations included service employees union, teachers unions, building trades, racial justice organizations and a large representation from tenant, neighborhood and housing justice organizations.

“Our time was divided between workshops, and looking at case studies from coalitions who had won collective bargaining agreements related to housing and time for each cohort to process what we were learning and develop action plans for our own work,” Austin said.

Breakout sessions and presentations struck cords on topics such as “The Impacts of Corporate Landlords in Our Communities”, “Going on Offense: Basics of Bargaining for the Common Good”, “What’s Happening in the Housing Movement Locally and Nationally”, and  “Labor-Community Partnerships in Housing.”

Lynesha said she was struck by how common some of East Chattanooga’s challenges are, after meeting and having conversations with other attendees from communities in cities of all kinds struggling at different levels but in similar ways.

Austin, an organizer with the Chattanooga Area Central Labor Council, said the trio from Chattanooga definitely gained valuable insight that will support CALEB’s local labor/community work in Chattanooga. No doubt this will build upon the community organizing training that Lynesha and Austin are participating in as part of our inaugural cohort for SWAY: The People’s Guide To Community Organizing. The team returned home with an outline to share with the rest of the CALEB task force, as well as a proposal for some concrete next step.

“I am better informed of what I can do as an individual, as a member of a team and of an organization. It is good to know that we are not alone in this fight to change. Everyone has to play a part to win,” Lynesha said.

Taking the opportunity to reimagine the work at hand and taking time to recharge commitments to that work is so important. “There is something incredibly uplifting to know that there are SO many other folks all around the country who are trying to figure out the same issues we are. Aside from the concrete knowledge gained, building a sense of solidarity and shared struggle across geography is a crucial part of keeping this work alive locally,” Austin said.

Read the organizer’s summary of events here at this link.

About Bargaining for The Common Good 

About CALEB

Lynesha Lake addresses other participants at the Bargaining For The Common Good summer convening in Chicago.

Glass House Collective’s community relations liaison, Lynesha Lake, will be representing GHC during the monthly meetings at the 2nd Missionary Baptist Church on East 3rd Street in the Glenwood neighborhood.

Like our collective, CALEB believes that by being united we are able to affect change and win wins for all people within our city.

In early June, Lynesha attended CALEB’s Issues Conference when members determined where the organization should place its focus, a process Glass House Collective seeks to embrace and implement in their work in Glass Farm.

“They are really doing the work at CALEB and we appreciate it so much,” Thibaud said.

CALEB’s commitment to support working class families also aligns with Glass House. As an active member of CALEB Thibaud hopes Glass House Collective can continue adding a voice along with others to collectively identify issues of concern, work towards an effective resolution, and amplify the power of residents.

The curriculum for the workshop training, developed by longtime community organizer, Michael Gilliand with CALEB, and Chattanooga spoken word and social justice artist, Erica Roberts, is designed to spark new relationships, develop new leaders and help individuals come to an agreement around collective community goals. The aim is to increase the community’s capacity to create change.

This was the first of 8 workshops happening over the next two months for this group. Their time and training together will culminate in a collaborative demonstration project identified and developed by the artists and residents in the cohort later this Fall. CNE is also partnering on the evaluation process to help document feedback on a weekly basis so the pilot can improve, evolve and potentially expand to other neighborhoods.

Training is only one word to describe what is about to happen with this group and why they spent a rainy Monday night together inside the Glass House Collective office.

Every person in the room was there to get real about living their values, picturing what kind of world they want to live in, being honest about their comfort levels around holding power, and taking a closer look at what it really means to work for the good of all using the tension of diversity as fuel for positive collective action.

“Remember, our goal is to improve ourselves and be better change agents. Sometimes this creates tensions. This can be good. We want to be challenged. It will take some tension to change the way power works and for whom,” Michael Gilliland reminded everyone. The class discussed the importance of understanding what motivates individuals to act on their values. This can be a means to recognize and identify others with similar motivations who might be willing to act collectively toward common goals.

And while this group is definitely diverse, including from cross generations and artistic disciplines, they all resonate around ideas of what community means and why this Sway pilot and the work they’ve signed up for this summer is important and needed now.

“In my community I see hope, but I also see people wanting and struggling for hope. And that’s what I want out of the program,” Deborah Bledsoe told the group. Deborah, a gospel singer, and musical artist, believes everyone has an artist within them and its ok to be unique. “What is the artist in you? What talent can you bring out to the community to give and be hope?” she wondered.

Sway’s lead artist and co-creator, Chattanooga poet, Erica Roberts, believes community means being united together, understanding a common goal and committing to the journey to that goal. “With Sway, I hope to gather a better understanding on how open-hearted I can be and learn how I can become a better instrument for change in my artistic language, beyond poetry,” she said.

GHC’s executive director, Teal Thibaud, let everyone know how much the organization values the artistic process more than any particular outcome or product. Glass House Collective’s work is based in creative placemaking and place keeping ideals. “We believe in the power of creativity and art to transform places and people. We will be your support system for whatever you come up with at the end of this program and make sure you’re supported to see it through,” she said.

Sway is the people’s guide to community organizing, with a name that is defined by an ability to influence decisions and sway things in the direction of community interest. Sway is also a way of moving. We look forward to seeing these emerging leaders move together as one body swaying collectively toward change.

Sway is was made possible by support from CNE, Footprint Foundation, The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga in partnership with CALEB, Velvet Poetry and Glass House Collective.