Archive

Archive for the ‘Social Work’ Category

Coming to America: The Immigrant-Refugee Mosaic Unfolds in New Ways and in Old Ways In Omaha

July 10, 2011 10 comments

I was born and raised in America, as my parents were before me, yet when I allow myself to think about it, the immigrant experience is well engrained in my DNA. You see, both sets of my grandparents emigrated here from Europe: my father’s family, the Bigas, from Poland; my mother’s family, the Pietramales, from Italy. I always used to kid my folks about their mixed marriage. And so despite my own experience and appearance to the contrary, I am not so very far removed from the newcomer tale, though I was spared all of the struggles of leaving one’s homeland and making it in a new land that my grandparents endured. The following story for The Reader (www.thereader.com) is an attempt to chart the immigrant-refugee landscape in a place like my city, Omaha, and what it looks like to be a newcomer here.

 

 

 

Coming to America: The Immigrant-Refugee Mosaic Unfolds in New Ways and in Old Ways In Omaha

©by Leo Adam Biga

A version of the story is published in The Reader

You don’t need to look far to find the tired, poor and huddled masses following America’s seductive promise as THE immigrant-refugee haven. With Omaha hosting ever more ethnic minority populations from around the globe, the metro increasingly mirrors the culturally diverse world.

Actually observing these newcomers is another matter. That’s because many stay close to their own tight-knit communities. If you want to engage them, you best go where they live, shop, eat or worship. Seen or unseen, they are part of a long, multicultural stream that’s fed Omaha since its 1854 founding. Omaha’s story, like that of America’s, is an ever evolving immigrant flow.

“It’s not a static story, it’s a very complex mosaic we have here and it takes a long time to appreciate some of the nuances of it,” says University of Nebraska at Omaha emeritus history professor Bill Pratt.

Complicating that mosaic are ethnic-religious tensions within and between certain national groups. Then there are segments of American society that express hostility, suspicion or discrimination toward The Other.

Pratt’s UNO emeritus history colleague, Harl Dalstrom, says the immigrant dynamic varies among ethnic communities and the circumstances surrounding them.

“Different groups tend to have different patterns of settlement. Each group from each country are going to have different experiences. You really have to get down to whatever the time period is,” he says. “Many folks who come today are from backgrounds even more alien to the American experience then the immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th century. After all, many new arrivials today are from Africa. They’re not only black, they’re not part of the European language group, and so on.”

Nebraska’s foreign-born population increased 31 percent from 2000 to 2008. From 1990 to to 2000 that segment nearly tripled. Latinos, Asians and Africans account for most of the growth. The new groups are mainly concentrated in Omaha and Lincoln. The Omaha Public Schools now serve thousands of refugee students, including more than 1,100 from Burma, Thailand, Sudan and Somalia.

One measure of a place’s diversity, says Pratt, is its signs. Omaha’s Eurocentric, English-only commerce now has its Asian, Arabic, African, Spanish counterparts.

As low-key as many new immigrants may be, it’s fairly common now to hear their mother tongues and to see their native fashions in public. Events like World Refugee Day and Omaha Heritage Festival celebrate this diversity. Signs and symbols all of Omaha’s maturation into a more cosmopolitan, international city.

South Omaha continues its historical role as the city’s primary immigrant gateway and resettlement district. Its affordable housing, blue collar job sector and robust small business climate make it a conducive place to get started. North Omaha and mid-town accommodate growing pockets of immigrants and refugees.

For most of its history South O hosted Poles, Czechs, Lithuanians and Germans. Just south of downtown, Sicilians and Calabrese formed Little Italy. There were Jewish, Greek, Chinese and other well-defined ethnic communities as well, each replete with small businesses, most often grocery stores and restaurants.

Then, as now, anti-immigrant sentiments peaked during hard times and fell silent during good times. Riots prompted by nativist attitudes erupted in the early 1900s.

Omaha’s a welcoming place, says UNO history professor Maria Arbelaez, but here as elsewhere, barriers exist: “There is still segregation, there is still prejudice, there is still racism, sometimes overt, sometimes well hidden, and people do feel it.”

The south side’s now a largely Latino district whose eateries, food carts and shops are emblazoned with Spanish names. Not that Latinos weren’t there before. They were, just in smaller numbers and almost exclusively tracing their roots to Mexico.

“The Mexicans have always been here,” says Arbelaez.

Historically, she says, ethnic minorities go undercounted, as their racial identities fall outside census categories and they tend to be highly mobile populations. Plus, the undocumented among them have extra motivation to remain under the radar.

 

 

placeholder
Maria Arbelaez

 

 

Despite the Latino migration that’s transformed the area, remnants of South O’s immigrant past persist in such landmark venues as the Bohemian Cafe, Johnny’s Cafe, Sokol South Omaha and St. Stanislaus Catholic Church. Italian vestiges remain in Orsi’s Bakery, St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church and Sons of Italy hall.

Even though many second, third and fourth generation immigrant groups no longer live in defined ethnic neighborhoods, their heritage festivals continue.

Today, the variety of cuisines found in South O extends well beyond Mexican to encompass Guatemalan, Salvadoran and national foods from Central America, South America, Africa and many other parts of the world, too.

Exotic eats are no longer confined to South O or the Old Market, as greater Omaha is home to an ever expanding landscape of ethnic dining spots. Then there are ethnic retail stores and other expressions of cultural identity. Inner city health clinics, social service agencies and public schools serve large immigrant bases.

It’s much the same way the immigrant story played out a century ago.

The story of Early Omaha is inextricably linked to the large European immigrant waves from 1880 through 1920 that helped grow this and nearly every U.S. city and filled the industrial labor pool. The internal migration of African-Americans from the South to the North and their subsequent resettling in places like Omaha also brought an influx of new ethnic-cultural influences and workers.

In the aftermath of World War I and the Great Depression and in the first two decades of the Cold War, America grew isolationist, instituting more restrictive immigration policies, and so the steady flow slowed to a trickle. Exceptions were the millions of braceros recruited from Mexico to work in the agricultural, railroad and meatpacking industries and the many displaced persons or refugees from Europe. Omaha welcomed its share of both groups.

The heavy tides of new arrivals didn’t begin in earnest again until the mid-1960s, spurred by more open immigration policies. These waves, no longer predominantly European, but Asian, Indian, African and Latin-American, continue today. Somalia, the former Burma and Bhutan account for a large number of recent newcomers to Omaha. Each group of asylees fled homelands marred by war and political or religious persecution. A generation earlier, Sudanese escaped similar trauma. As did Soviet Jews before that. In the ‘70s, Vietmanese and Laotian refugees.

The surge in Latino immigrants and refugees the past two decades followed economic crises in Mexico and civil wars in Central and South America.

Then, as now, Omaha’s home to ethnic enclaves of foreign-born new arrivals and first generation offspring. South Omaha, once a separate municipality, earned the nickname Magic City for a dynamic growth spurt fueled by the railroads, the meatpacking plants, the stockyards, plus all the ancillary services that supported these industries. Large numbers of immigrants lived and worked in South O. The jobs lasted through the 1960s. Many contemporary immigrants and refugees work equivalent jobs in meatpacking and construction as well as in painting, lawn care, cleaning and other service sector fields.

Not all newcomers work menial jobs, reminds Arbelaez. Their ranks include professionals, skilled tradespeople, entrepreneurs. Many start micro businesses.

Just as opportunity and freedom drew the first waves of immigrants here, they remain enticing beacons of hope for those coming today.

“The pull of the (U.S.) economy is so strong,” says Arbelaez. “It’s better to get a menial job (here) than in Mexico because the pay is so much greater in the States that it allows you to support yourself and your family in Mexico.”

Whether propelled by family, economic, political or survival reasons, new arrivals expect and find a higher standard of living and greater liberty here. That doesn’t mean they don’t struggle making it. Most do. Language-cultural hurdles hinder them. Many live near the poverty line. Even basic food staples like rice stretch tight budgets. Then there’s the scarcity of jobs new arrivals traditionally fill.

Many of those originating from Third World nations or refugee camps harbor unrealistic expectations for what Sudanese community leader Malakal Goak terms “the heaven” they envision America to be. Invariably, say Goak and local refugee community leaders, reality falls short of these utopian, riches-laden dreams.

While Omaha remains an attractive destination or secondary migration site for its relatively low cost of living, healthy job market, good schools and family-friendly environment, it’s not devoid of challenges.

Kumar Gurung, a Bhutan community leader, says his people have great difficulty overcoming language-cultural barriers and finding employment. He says these struggles cause a disproportionate percentage of Bhutanese-Americans to suffer mental health problems such as depression.

The language-cultural divide is a serious barrier for newcomers, say local refugee and immigrant leaders. Clashing cultural norms of child-rearing practices and spousal relationships cause conflicts and sometimes leads to arrests.

Finding decent affordable housing is also an issue.

Many go months before starting a job, while studying to become proficient enough in English to be interview and work-ready. Those finding employment often work two or more jobs to try and make it. Omaha’s spotty public transportation system poses problems, leaders say, for individuals working overnight shifts in industrial areas where buses don’t run off-hours.

Leaders say some newcomers cannot feed their children, cover rent and pay bills on the temporary state allotment provided refugees.

“They’re really struggling,” says International Center of the Heartland & Refugee Services director Maggie Kalkowski.

Newcomers still requiring aid after six to eight months are referred to agencies like ICH, an arm of Lutheran Family Services.

 

 International Center of the Heartland in the Center Mall

 

 

 

The situation just got tougher for some due to the state ceasing welfare assistance to legal, noncitizen immigrant adults. Parents depend on the aid to help support their family households. Aid to children is not affected by the cut.

“It’s definitely going to affect some refugees here,” says Goak. “If they cannot quality for any government assistance I don’t know how they’re going to survive if they can’t find jobs.”

Goak says some refugees exhaust public aid limits before achieving self-sufficiency. No one, he says, wants new arrivals to become a chronic community burden, but he feels aid should be extended as needed.

Local pantries, Goodwill, Salvation Army, Heart Ministry Center and like agencies pick up the slack for those who fall through the cracks.

In good times or bad, assimilation is hard. It’s that much harder for illiterate individuals.

“Navigating the systems and paperwork process is still very difficult, especially for those refugees who do not read or write in their native languages,” says Southern Sudan Community Association executive director Anne Marie Kudkacz. “Assimilation can be made easier by means of programs and services available to assist refugees along the way.”

Kudlacz says new arrivals here benefit from solid support provided by two main resettlement agencies: SSC and Lutheran Family Services. Catholic Charities’ Lincoln office does resettlement and its Omaha office offers legal and additional services. Ethnic communities themselves also provide educational and other support. “Omaha has not only helpful organizations but strong ethnic groups that provide cultural support and integration,” she says.

Caseworkers, many of them from the communities they serve, assist clients with housing, banking, budgeting, interpreting and various other needs. Kalkowski says these indigenous caseworkers, all multi-lingual, become vital conduits, advisors, mediators and advocates for newcomers. “Because they are the knowledge ones, they are leaders and they’re willing to share it,” she says, “their job doesn’t end. They’re always on call. It’s a great service they do.”

Whatever the issue someone calls him with, says Goak, “it’s a big problem in their life until you solve it.”

“In my community, when you speak English they depend on you,” says Thein Soe, a local Burmese community leader and LFS caseworker.

Hamid Guled, a medical-legal interpreter and LFS caseworker for her native Somali community, says, “It’s fulfilling to me when I get to speak up for somebody who cannot speak up for themselves. I step up on their behalf — I advocate.”

“I think that advocacy is an important part of the work we do,” says Kalkowski.

In the process, she says, local merchants and landlords are educated about these populations’ special needs and clients are taught “how to navigate the American systems of healthcare, housing, legal issues, education, et cetera.”

Refugee service organizations provide English as a Second Language classes, legal assistance, micro business programs and a myriad of other assistance. Most services are free. Some require a nominal fee.

Three of Omaha’s largest and newest refugee groups — from Burma, Bhutan and Somalia — have their own community associations. The same is true of established refugee groups, such as the Sudanese. Using words like “empower” in their mission statements, the groups offer everything from ESL and driving classes to job and life skills training. They also stage activities to help members maintain their native culture.

Cultural cohesiveness is important as groups transition to being American while holding on to familiar, touchstone traditions and ways.

“Whether you come out of rural Alabama or Poland or Sicily or Mexico, you want to hang on to as much as you can that’s meaningful to you,” says historian Bill Pratt. “Not simply the language but a social structure, a social order, and so there’s often a built in cultural conservatism for new arrivals. If you come here from Mexico this is why you’d want to move into a neighborhood where there’s Mexicans. You have an emotional support system there, and then as people move up economically they move away.”

 

 

placeholder
Bill Pratt

 

 

There’s power in numbers. Thus, each organization serves as a communal network, lifeline and link for newcomers. Each provides a voice for it’s community’s needs.

Pratt says, “One of the things I think is sometimes overlooked is that these (associations) are products of these particular communities — they’re not organized by well-meaning folks outside the community, they’re not part of government, they’re part of a civic structure that comes out of that community.”

UNO’s Maria Arbelaez says grassroots community organizations often emerge in response to unmet needs. Their formation is an act of self-determination. She cautions that self-contained ethnic enclaves can isolate immigrants from the mainstream and curtail their progress. She says providers must be vigilant reaching out to immigrants and connecting them to services.

Kudlacz says collaboration among service providers and ethnic communities happens through the Omaha Refugee Task Force and the Refugee Leadership Academy, whose members identify issues and work together on addressing them.

Coming to America as an immigrant is one thing. Arriving as a refugee is another. The assimilation path for both groups is strewn with challenges. But whereas immigrants tend to be more highly educated and with some financial assets, “most refugees arrive with little more than clothing, personal items and legal refugee status documentation,” says Kudlacz. She adds that refugees generally have little education due to the disruption caused by wars or disasters in their homeland or lack of opportunities in camps they get placed from.

Lutheran Family Services’ Maggie Kalkowski admires the resilience of those coming here. She surmises today’s new arrivals face a harder road than their predecessors by virtue of the more complex social-government systems and technologies they navigate. “There’s so much more to learn,” she says. “It’s so much more demanding.” America’s bounty, she adds, is a blessing and a curse for new arrivals, who find  “overwhelming” all the choices and decisions.

One thing that hasn’t changed is new arrivals supporting family members still residing in refugee camps or countries of origin.

Hamdi Guled says, “The families back home expect, ‘OK, you’re in America, you have to send some money to support us — don’t forget about us.’ They don’t want to hear about how hard you have it in America.”

Then there’s the pressure newcomers feel to be Americanized overnight, though the reality of learning English and everything else is a long process.

“That’s a lot easier said than done,” says Pratt. “People ask today, ‘Why don’t they learn English?’ Well, it’s damn hard to learn another language when you’re working and raising kids.”

Arbelaez says immigrants-refugees here generally are “moving along into mainstream society,” but adds that full integration “takes generations.”

The cultural enrichment immigrants bring extends beyond food or language. They have something to teach about communal engagement, too.

“They still have that whole idea of it takes a village to raise a child,” says Kalkowski, “I think the values these new populations bring actually help America move more to the center, back to family, to neighborhood, to community, to working for others, instead of being focused on the greed side or what’s in it for me. It’s really valuable to us from my perspective.”


Related articles
Categories: Family, History, Omaha, Social Justice, Social Work, South Omaha, Writing Tags: , , , , , , ,

Returning To Society: New community collaboration, research and federal funding fight to hold the costs of criminal recidivism down

July 2, 2011 3 comments

Having posted an awful lot of fluff or soft journalism stories lately, I thought it time to present something completely different, as in the following story for The Reader (www.thereader.com) on reentry programs that work with offenders to prepare and guide them for what is hopefully their successful reintegration in society. I don’t tackle many serious or hard subjects like this, but I do enjoy the challenge. As freelancing for newspapers and magazines in Omaha does not pay well, I can never justify devoting the amount of research-reporting time such a story deserves. The compensation doesn’t come close as it is to compensating me for the time I invest, much less for the time I would like to invest.

 

 

 

 

Returning To Society: New community collaboration, research and federal funding fight to hold the costs of criminal recidivism down

©by Leo Adam Biga

A somewhat different version of the story appears in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

As the doors of America‘s overcrowded prisons swing ever wider, sending more ex-offenders back into society, reentry‘s become a major focus nationwide, including Nebraska.

America has 2.2 million individuals incarcerated in prison. That number’s expected to rise with the cost of housing inmates amid already strained resources.

Nationally, thousands enter and leave the corrections system every day. Hundreds of thousands every year. As community corrections, early parole releases and probation sentences send more offenders back into society, there’s new emphasis on preparing them for release and supporting their transition. Nebraska, like the rest of the U.S., is navigating this flood of returnees.

 

 

Ray Kyles, You Are Not Alone

 

 

Not surprisingly, corrections is better at confining folks than “fixing” them, which helps explain why prisons see so many repeat offenders. A 2011 Pew Center on the States study found more than four in ten offenders return to state prison within three years of release. Nebraska does better than the national average, at about three in ten, but there’s concern too many end up back in the system or struggle on the outside, thus becoming a drain or risk.

For veteran reentry worker Teela Mickles, the problem is crystal clear. “Even individuals who’ve been in prison will say, ‘If you don’t get us before we get out, it’s a waste of time.’ This cold turkey stuff won’t work,” says Mickles, who works with inmates and parolees through her nonprofit Compassion in Action.

Two ex-offenders now working with returning citizens confirm reentry is an inside game that must start early on.

“Turning your life is very hard, take it from me,” says Ray Kyles, adding it was “only when I finally took an inventory of myself and seen what I was worth that I started transforming.” That change only came during his third and last stint in prison. “I’ve come to the conclusion that in order for a man or woman to be successful once they come out of prison they must start working within the moment they hit the prison system. It’s a learning process.”

“Transition starts on the inside,” says Garry Kern, who was incarcerated 13 years and is now a caseworker for Goodwill Partnerships. “It’s a mindset. That’s where change comes.”

There’s growing recognition of the importance of pre-release preparation.

“By helping an inmate get a high school diploma or GED, help them address their substance abuse and mental health issues, and by helping them become a better parent or learn a vocation, we are giving them a better chance to return to the community as a successful citizen,” says Nebraska Department of Correctional Services programs administrator Layne Gissler.

Reentry programs are voluntary for prisoners. “If waiting lists occur, generally the inmates who are closest to release are given priority for programming,” he says.

 

 


Teela Mickles, Compassion in Action

 

 

Ideally, pre-release programs lead to changed attitudes and behaviors inside that persist on the outside. That’s the expressed goal of the UNO Transformation Project. Using The Autobiography of Malcolm X and motivational interviewing as talking points, facilitators encourage inmates to take stock and develop personal life plans. The program, largely funded by UNO grad John Morgan, works with inmates on addressing six stability domains:

housing

employment

education

substance abuse

mental health

social networks

“So, your family, your friends, your health, the people you hang out with,” says project manager Nicole Kennedy, who wrote the curriculum. “We picked those six areas because the research tells us for every one one of those areas you can help stabilize somebody in, you see a reduction in recidivism.”

She says project modules ask inmates to be self-reflective.

“We’re recognizing that until somebody has taken the time to sit down and actually think about who they are, what they value and what they want out of life, all that programming is not really being applied in the most productive manner. What we’re trying to do is get them to think a little more deeply about how do all these factors relate to what plan you’re going to have when you return to the community. We’re asking these guys to take a critical look at some personal and sensitive topics.

“I think a lot of prison programming is very narrowly skill based. What we’re trying to do is much more broad based. You can’t really think about your substance abuse in isolation of your employment or your housing or your social networks. All of these factors, while they have their own unique components, will be impacted by the others. So it’s going to be harder for you to stay sober and clean if you don’t have a job and you don’t have a place to live, because the life pressure that brings will eventually build up. Likewise, if you’re not managing your substance abuse it could be really hard to keep a job. If you’re dependent on your family to provide you housing and are couch surfing, that’s going to take its toll on family relationships.”

 

 

Nicole Kennedy, UNO Transformation Project

 

 

Kennedy credits Nebraska corrections officials for supporting a holistic model that serves inmates from the jump. She says there’s wide agreement the more inmates do to address their needs beforehand the more likely they are to make positive choices upon release.

“Corrections gives these guys a lot of tools and resources but this is kind of the mortar that holds those bricks together,” she says. “We’re really trying to get you to take all this information and apply it to yourself and your own unique circumstances.”

The Transformation Project refers its graduates to Ray Kyles and his You Are Not Alone program. Kyles is convinced accountability must first take root behind bars if an offender is to turn his or her life around.

“We need to start working with the choices you make in your life, We need to open your eyes up to what got you there. We need to get you to the point where you understand the trickle down effect of the crimes you may have committed — it’s not only hurting you, it’s hurting your family, it’s hurting the community. Until we understand the people we hurt we’ll still be wallowing in the world of that dumb shit of somebody owes me.”

Similarly, Teela Mickles says her reentry curriculum “is comprehensive and developmental in addressing the real issues in that individual for why drugs became an issue, for why crime became an issue. They have to understand, embrace and begin to work with the reasons why before they get out. That’s where job sustainability comes in, because an individual has to understand that there’s going to be a process of transition.”

Federal mandate and community advocacy are making reentry a priority in today’s more enlightened, research-based corrections field. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry that involves law enforcement professionals, judges, lawyers, corrections officials, probation and parole officers, caseworkers and community-based service providers, both professional and volunteer.

The sheer volume of inmates has increased with get-tough policies in the war on drugs. Nebraska’s projected prison population for 2011 is 4,713, which is near where it’s hovered for several years. From 1995 to 2009 Nebraska’s overall incarceration rate per 100,000 adults increased from 185 to 245.

The cost of prosecuting and detaining individuals, most of whom are nonviolent, has become more of a burden in budget-strapped times. In line with national trends, Nebraska’s overall corrections spending has skyrocketed, from $72 million in 1995 to $181 million in 2010. Nationally, state corrections expenditures are an estimated $50 billion per year. Those costs don’t include what communities spend to house, train, educate, counsel, treat, employ and otherwise transition ex-offenders to law-abiding, productive lives. When a parent goes to prison there are “hidden” costs for welfare, foster care, legal services, family court.

In response to the unsustainability of mass incarceration and high recidivism rates public-private coalitions have pushed for more proactive reentry efforts both behind the wall and outside it.

The 2003 federal Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) and the 2008 Second Chance Act, both made hundreds of millions of dollars in grant monies available to reentry providers. Second Chance also established the National Reentry Resource Center, which offers education, training and technical assistance to providers, large and small.

These measures have brought new players onto the scene of a varied reentry landscape. In Nebraska, providers range in size, approach, scope and service area. Most are human-social service organizations or faith-based groups. The largest is Christian Heritage, a Lincoln, Neb. nonprofit that’s new to reentry yet has secured major Second Chance grants to fund programs that target reconnecting fathers with children and restoring families.

“The passing of the Second Chance Act has made some impact on our reentry efforts,” says Layne Gissler. For example, he says a new parenting program for incarcerated fathers administered by Christian Heritage “has been very beneficial.

“Outside of that,” he says, “our approach to reentry has remained the same. We utilize a multi-faceted approach that includes mental health and substance abuse programming, educational, vocational, parenting, life skills and other programs to address deficits. With the exception of the parenting program in our male facilities, these programs were in our facilities prior to passage of the Second Chance Act.”

The issue’s further come into focus through: a 2008 evaluation of Nebraska’s Serious and Violent Reentry Program by UNO’s School of Criminal Justice; the Douglas County Reentry Task Force, now reformed as the Reentry Initiatives Council; and the monthly Reentry Table Talk series at Metropolitan Community College.

Gissler said both the federal reentry initiative and the UNO study “helped educate, sharpen the focus and provide the necessary foundation for reentry in Nebraska,” adding, “There was a significant increase in the department’s long range commitment to reentry and the subsequent shift in emphasis based on risk.”

Increasingly, corrections works collaboratively with the community. The shared goal is reducing recidivism and improving quality of life outcomes. NDCS had fairly robust programs before, but is doing more with partners like UNO and Christian Heritage now that more dollars are available from Second Chance and other sources.

On the outside, ex-offenders encounter many hurdles piecing a life together in a fast-moving world that doesn’t cater to them. Jim Erwin of Christian Heritage advises inmates, their loved ones, sponsors and caseworkers work months in advance of release to line up leads on things like housing and employment. He and others working in the field say a safety plan and a support network is vital, The more on the margin someone lives, the greater the risk for recidivism. Substance abuse, family disputes or just being around negative influences can derail things.

“Folks can become very discouraged quickly if there’s not preparation,” says Mickles.

A big hurdle ex-offenders in Nebraska face is accessing vital records. There’s no central office to get a social security card, birth certificate, driver’s license, work permit. It presently takes days to obtain IDs from far-flung agencies. Support for a one-stop-shop is a hot topic and focus of the Douglas County Reentry Initiatives Council.

 

 

Douglas County Commissioner and UNO Transformation director Chris Rodgers

 

 

County Commissioner Chris Rodgers, who sits on the Council’s board, says Heartland Workforce Solutions in Omaha offers the framework for a one-stop-shop and the county’s seeking funds to help consolidate services for ex-offenders under the Heartland umbrella.

“There’s a need,” says Rodgers, who oversees the UNO Transformation Project. He says the Council looks at reentry in broad-based terms as well. “Our job is to identify issues and gaps and solve them within the system instead of reinventing the wheel.” If he’s learned anything it’s that successful reentry is up to the individual.

“It’s not magic, it’s hard work,” he says. “We’re not going to give you this yellow brick road outline to get there. What we do is lay you out a path with opportunity, but you have to put the work in.”

Ray Kyles of You Art Not Alone says, “Just like everything else, what you put in is what you get out. You become institutionalized the moment you get locked up by the police because from there on everything is given to you. Once you’re released from prison you still expect people to keep giving you. But what have you given yourself or what are you willing to give back to society? I’m not going to hold your hand, it just doesn’t work that way. I have a list of services gentlemen can go to for assistance. I get a hot jobs list every Monday.”

Christian Heritage’s Jim Erwin says, “remember to empower, not enable” ex-offenders.

To that end, Metro produces a reentry resources book it distributes to correctional facilities and community service providers to give inmates, ex-offenders, caseworkers and sponsors contacts for statewide programs and services.

“If an ex-inmate has a job, place to live and family-community support,” says Gissler, “the odds he or she will return to prison are much lower. A pro-social network is needed upon release and this has been provided in part by civic and faith-based groups. They have teams set up to assist ex-inmates with securing housing and employment.”

Providers who establish bonds behind the walls are better placed to help offenders once they’re on the outside, say reentry veterans. Consistently being there builds trust. “People need to understand the more they make themselves visible and empower the individuals inside in preparation to come out,” says Mickles, “the more effective their reentry programs on the outside will be.” Neither her program nor any others work in isolation. None has the capacity to address every need.

“We cant do it alone,” Mickles says. “That person coming out needs a job, a place to live. They may need drug rehabilitation. They may need legal assistance to get their kids back. Things like that. We have to work with all the entities to assist that individual with all the areas they need to experience a successful reentry.”

As Mickles does Compassion in Action by herself, she acts as a clearinghouse by referring ex-offenders to needed services she doesn’t provide. Kyles works much the same way.

Regardless of size or resources, reentry providers work collaboratively.

“We all need each other, there’s plenty of pain to go around, and we all have our areas of expertise, and the better we work together the better the population will be served,” says Mickles, who’s hopeful about the momentum surrounding reentry. “In doing reentry here for 30 years this is the first time Omaha is really on task as far as working together and helping each other do what we do best.”

Recently, some facilitator associations and forums have emerged to help bring reentry players at the same table for enhanced communication and coordination. The Reentry Alliance of Nebraska is one. The Reentry Initiatives Council is another. Omaha’s Northeast Weed & Seed program held a spring reentry workshop at Metro that included representatives from the Omaha Police Department, Heartland Workforce Solutions and the Douglas County Department of Corrections as well as ex-offenders and their advocates.

 

 

Tommie Wilson, Reentry Table Talk

 

 

Since 2009 Metro liaison Tommie Wilson has organized the Reentry Table Talk the third Wednesday of every month. At the May 18 forum 48 attendees represented some two dozen organizations, including Eastern Nebraska Action Community Partnership (ENCAP). Some state corrections officials were there. Mickles was present. Christian Heritage’s Jim Erwin was the featured speaker.

Erwin says he attends in order “to build relationships” with other providers. Diane Good-Collins, who with her husband Steve operates ReLeasT transition home for women in Nebraska City, says, “The relationships I’ve made in this room have helped people beyond this room. You never know who you’re going to meet and how that’s going to affect someone else.”

As an ex-felon, Good-Collins is among those who’ve “been there-done that” and now work with ex-offenders. Entrepreneur Rodney Prince is another, though his role is more as advocate and watchdog. His was among the few critical voices heard at the event as he challenged those present “to be coordinated and streamlined,” adding, “We need you to be on the same page.” Activist Eliga Ali and Black Men United president Willie Hamilton expressed concerns about the effects that mass incarceration of black males has on families and communities.

Wilson says some sessions can get rather heated. It’s all in the name of continued dialogue.

“We started out with four people talking about what we needed to do,” says Wilson, who has a grandson in prison, “and now the meetings average 45-50. I gather people here to talk about what’s going on with reentry, to bridge that connection to find out where resources are, to learn who’s doing what, to collaborate. I also bring to the table ex-offenders. If they’re having difficulties finding things they can connect with people and get into programs.”

Programs are one thing, reality is another. Because life happens, how an ex-offender responds to events or situations will ultimately determine his or her fate.

Rodgers cautions change is “not a one size fits all” proposition. “People transform in different stages.”

Mickles agrees, saying, “The term for each individual to experience success is quite different. Also, the definition for success is quite different. It may not be no recidivism. The person may need to reoffend in order to be successful. I’ve learned to redefine certain things.” She says a woman she worked with reoffended several times before going straight, “and she’s now giving back to the community in a major way” as a reentry provider.

Good-Collins, tells a similar story of a chronic reoffender who’s finally turned her life around. After hundreds of lock ups, then being homeless, Good-Collins says the client is now in a stable home environment and working. “She got her first paycheck in over 30 years. She’s doing awesome.”

“With that individual acceptance and lack of preconceived anything,” Mickles says, “individuals tend to find themselves. But society needs to know there is a cost.”

Related articles
Categories: Crime, Education, Mentoring, Omaha, Social Justice, Social Work, UNO (University of Nebraska at Omaha), Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Where Hope Lives, Hope Center for Kids in North Omaha

June 4, 2011 12 comments

My blog features a number of stories that deal with good works by faith-based organizations, and this is another one. Northeast Omaha’s largely African-American community suffers disproportionately in terms of poverty, low educational achievement, underemployment and unemployment, health problems, crime, et cetera. These challenges and disparities by no means characterize the entire community there, but the distress affects many and is persistent across generations in many households. All manner of social services operate in that community trying to address the issues, and the subject of the following story, Hope Center for Kids, is among those.  I filed the story for Metro Magazine (www.spiritofomaha.com) and I came away impressed that the people behind this effort are genuinely knowledgable about the needs there and are committed to doing what they can to reach out to youth in the neighborhoods surrounding the center.

 

 

 

 

Where Hope Lives, Hope Center for Kids in North Omaha

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in Metro Magazine (www.spiritofomaha.com)

 

Northeast Omaha’s largely poor, African-American community is a mosaic where despair coexists with hope. A stretch of North 20th Street is an example. Rows of nice, newly built homes line both sides of the one-way road — from Binney to Grace Streets. Working class families with upwardly mobile aspirations live there.

Yet, vacant lots and homes in disrepair are within view. God-fearing working stiffs may live next door to gang bangers. To be sure, the good citizens far outnumber the thugs but a few bad apples can spoil things for the rest.

Endemic inner city problems of poverty, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, gun violence, unemployment, school dropouts and broken homes put a drag on the district. Church, school and social service institutions do what they can to stabilize an unstable area. Meanwhile, the booming downtown cityscape to the south offers a vista of larger, brighter possibilities.

One anchor addressing the needs is the faith-based nonprofit Hope Center for Kids. Housed in the former Gene Eppley Boys Club at 2209 Binney, the center just celebrated its 10th anniversary. An $800,000 renovation replaced the roof and filled in the pool to create more programming space. Four years ago the organization opened Hope Skate, an attached multi-use roller rink/gymnasium that gives a community short on recreational amenities a fun, safe haven.

In the last year Hope’s received grants from the Kellogg Foundation, the Millard Foundation and Mutual of Omaha to expand its life skills and educational support services. Additional staff and more structured programs have “taken us to a whole new level,” said founder/executive director Rev. Ty Schenzel.

Clearly, the 50,000 square foot, $1.2 million-budgeted center is there for the long haul. Hope serves 400 members, ages 7 to 19. Most come from single parent homes. Eight in 10 qualify for free or reduced price lunch at school. Hope collaborates with such community partners as nearby Conestoga Magnet Center and Jesuit Middle Schools, whose ranks include Hope members. University of Nebraska at Omaha students are engaged in a service learning project to build an employability curriculum. Creighton med students conduct health screenings. Volunteers tutor and mentor. Bible studies and worship services are available.

Some Hope members work paid part-time jobs at the center. Members who keep up their grades earn points they can spend at an on-site store.

Per its name, Hope tries raising expectations amid limited horizons. It all began a decade ago when two Omaha businessmen bought the abandoned boys club and handed it over to Schenzel, a white Fremont, Neb. native and suburbanite called to do urban ministry. He was then-youth pastor at Trinity Interdenominational Church., a major supporter of Hope.

Ty Schenzel

 

 

 

He first came down to The Hood doing outreach for Trinity in the mid-’90s. He and volunteers held vacation bible studies and other activities for children at an infamous apartment complex, Strehlow, nicknamed New Jack City for all its crime. He met gang members. One by the street name of Rock asked what would happen to the kids once the do-gooders left. That convinced Pastor Ty, as Schenzel’s called, to have a permanent presence there. In a sea of hopelessness he and his workers try to stem the tide.

“What we believe is at the root of the shootings, the gang activity, the 15-year-old moms, the generation after generation economic and educational despair is hopelessness,” he said. “If you don’t think anything is going to change and you don’t care about the consequences then you lose all motivation. You have nothing to lose because you’ve lost everything.

“Our vision is we want to bring tangible hope with the belief that when the kids experience hope they’ll be motivated to make right choices. They’ll start to believe.”

Schenzel said what “differentiates Hope is that the at-risk kids that come to us probably wouldn’t fit in other programs. The faith component makes us different. The economic development-jobs creation aspect. The roller rink.”

He said former Hope member Jimmie Ventry is a measure of the challenge kids present. Older brother Robert Ventry went on a drug-filled rampage that ended in him being shot and killed. Jimmie, who’s been in and out of trouble with the law, had a run in with cops and ended up doing jail time. Schenzel said, “One day I asked Jimmie, ‘How do I reach you? What do I do to break through?’ And the spirit of what Jimmie said was, Don’t give up on me. Don’t stop trying.” Hope hasn’t.

Schenzel said results take time. “I tell people we’re running a marathon, not a sprint, which I think is what Jimmie was saying. We’re now in our 10th year and in many ways it feels like we’re still starting.” Hope Youth Development Director Pastor Edward King said kids can only be pointed in the right direction. Where they go is their own decision.

“It’s one thing when they come here and we’re throwing them the love and it’s another thing when they go back to their environment and the drug dealers are telling them not to go to work,” he said. “We’re here telling them: You do have options; you can make honest money without the guilt and having to look over your shoulder; you don’t have to go to prison, you can graduate from school — you can go to college.

“We provide hope but the battle is theirs really. When you don’t believe you can, when everything around you is hopelessness, it takes a strong person to want to make the right choices.”

 

 

 

 

Chris Morris was given up as a lost cause by the public schools system. Hope rallied behind him. It meant long hours of counseling, prodding, praying. The efforts paid off when he graduated high school.

“The Hope Center helped me in a positive way. Just having them around gave me hope,” said Morris.

King said several kids who’ve thought of dropping out or been tagged as failures have gone on to get their diploma with the help of Hope’s intervention.

“It took a lot of hard work for people to stay on them and to push them through,” said King. “We’re so proud of them.”

The kids that make it invariably invite Hope teachers and administrators to attend their graduation. That’s affirmation enough for King. “It’s the thing that keeps me coming back,” he said. “When I hear a guy talk about how coming here keeps him out of trouble or makes him feel safe or that he enjoys hanging out with my family at our house, that lets me know we’re doing the right thing.”

For many kids the first time they see a traditional nuclear family is at a Hope staffer’s home. It’s a revelation. Staff become like Big Brothers-Big Sisters or surrogate parents. They go out of their way to provide support.

“Our staff go to kids’ games, they connect with them on the weekend, they’re involved in the lives of the kids. Pastor King’s house should probably be reclassified a dormitory,” Schenzel said.
King comes from the very hard streets he ministers to now. Like many of these kids he grew up fatherless. He relates to the anger and chaos they feel.

“It breaks my heart to see the killings going on. I couldn’t sit back on the sidelines and not do anything. I feel like it’s my responsibility to be here. I know what it’s like to have resentment for not having a dad around. A lot of the young men don’t have a positive male role model at home to be there for them, to discipline them.”

Hope educators work a lot on discipline with kids. Positive behavior is emphasized –from accepting criticism to following instructions. Hope slogans are printed on banners and posters throughout the center.

 

 

 

 

There, kids can channel their energies in art, education, recreation activities that, at least temporarily, remove them from bad influences. A Kids Cafe serves hot meals. King supervises Hope’s sports programs. “If we can get them involved in our rec leagues, then it’s less time they can be doing the negative things,” he said. “There’s nothing like the discipline of sports to keep a guy in line. We get a chance to teach life skills to the guys. “

Ken and Rachelle Johnson coordinate Hope’s early ed programs. An expression of the couple’s commitment is the home they bought and live in across the street.

“For me personally it’s not a job, it’s a ministry it’s a lifestyle, it’s our life.” Rachelle said. “We love being around the kids in the neighborhood. The kids deal with a lot of abandonment-neglect issues. They all have their own story. We wanted to say, Here, we’re committed, we’re not going anywhere, because it takes a long time to build relationships.”

Relationship building is key for Hope. Staff work with families and schools to try and keep kids on track academically. Programs help kids identify their strengths and dreams. To encourage big dreams teens meeting certain goals go on college tours.

“Increasingly we want to create this culture of connecting our kids to higher education,” Schenzel said.

Optional worship services are offered but all members get exposed to faith lessons through interactions with staff, who model and communicate scripture.

“Here’s our mantra,” Schenzel said: “You can only educate and recreate so long but unless there’s a heart change through a relationship with the Lord it’s putting a Band Aid on wet skin.”

Hope strives to have about 100 kids in the building at any given time. “Much more than that feels a little bit like a daycare. We don’t want to be a daycare. We want to do some transformation,” he said.

Schenzel sees “little buds of tangible hope going on” in what he terms Omaha’s Ninth Ward. He and residents wonder why “there’s seemingly an unholy bubble over north Omaha” preventing it from “getting in on the growth” happening downtown and midtown.” Those frustrations don’t stop him from dreaming.

“We would love to do mini-Hope satellites in the community, maybe in collaboration with churches, as well as Hope Centers in other cities. We envision an internship program for college students who want something to give their hearts to. We could then exponentially impact more kids. We want to create cottage industries that generate jobs and revenue streams. Some day we want to do Hope High School.”

Keep hope alive, Pastor Ty, keep hope alive.

Related articles
Categories: African-American Culture, Education, Family, Mentoring, North Omaha, Omaha, Social Justice, Social Work, Writing, Youth Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The Joy of Giving Sets Omaha’s Child Saving Institute on Solid Ground for the Future

June 4, 2011 4 comments

Omaha is known as an unusually philanthropic community and the following story for Metro Magazine (www.spiritofomaha.com) charts how a venerable childcare institution found support for a badly needed new building from a circle of dedicated divers and why these well-heeled individuals contributed to the project. The result is that the drab, old and cramped institutional-looking structure was remade into a gleaming, new and expansive showcase. What a difference a few million dollars can make.

 

 

The new, redesigned Child Saving Institute

 

 

The Joy of Giving Sets Omaha‘s Child Saving Institute on Solid Ground for the Future

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in Metro Magazine (www.spiritofomaha.com)

The Child Saving Institute has a brand spanking new home for its mission of “responding to the cry of a child.” CSI dedicated the new digs at 4545 Dodge St. in March, turning the next chapter in the organization’s 106-year history. The social service agency addresses the needs of at-risk children, youth and families.

The project was made possible by donors who saw the need for a larger, more dynamic, more kidscentric space that better reflected the organization’s expanded services and more comfortably accommodated staff and clients. A $10.7 million campaign secured funds for a complete makeover of the old building, which was stripped to its steel beams, redesigned and enlarged. An endowment was created.

The goal was soon surpassed and by the time the three-year campaign concluded, $12.2 million was raised.

Upon inheriting the former Safeway offices site in 1982 CSI officials knew it was a poor fit for the child care, emergency shelter and adoption programs then constituting the nonprofit’s services. The mostly windowless building was a drab, dreary bunker, its utilitarian interiors devoid of color, light, whimsy, fun.

The two-story structure was sound but lacked such basic amenities as an elevator. The day care and early childhood education classrooms lacked their own restrooms. Limited space forced staff to share offices. Inadequate conference rooms made it difficult for the board of directors and the guild to meet.

 

 

The drab, old Child Saving Institute

 

 

There were not enough dedicated facilities for counseling/therapeutic sessions. As CSI’s services have broadened to address youth, parenting and family issues, with an emphasis on preventive and early interventive help, more clients come through the doors.

Additionally, the organization’s outdoor playground was cramped and outmoded. Limited parking inconvenienced staff and clients alike.

“We were dissatisfied with the building,” CEO Judy Kay said. “It had at least been 10 years prior even to the decision to build that we knew we needed a different space.” She said CSI once explored new building options but “gave up, because, honestly, we all became so frustrated and we didn’t have the funds to do it.”

Enter philanthropists Dick and Mary Holland. The late Mary Holland was a CSI board member with a passion for the agency and its mission. At his wife’s urging Dick Holland toured the place Mary spoke so glowingly about. Two things happened. His big heart ached when he saw the children craving affection and his bad knees screamed from all the stairs he had to climb.

Holland pestered CSI to install an elevator. One day he and Mary summoned then-CEO Donna Tubach Davis and development director Wanda Gottschalk to a special meeting. “And at that meeting he said, ‘Ladies, it’s time to have an elevator. We’re going to get started on this project,’ and he handed us a very large check. It was for just under $3 million,” Gottschalk recalled.

He wasn’t done giving. After Mary passed CSI remembered her at a board luncheon. Upon accepting a plaque in her memory daughter Amy surprised CSI with a million dollar check from her father.

“I don’t think anybody in the city could hear anything more meaningful to them then to have Dick Holland say I will help you,” said Gottschalk.

 

 

Mary and Dick Holland

 

 

The CSI campus is named after Mary Holland. Dick didn’t want his name anywhere but conceded to the elevator being dubbed, “Dick’s Lift.” RDG Schutte Wilscam Birge’s redesign more than doubled the square footage, opened up the interior to create bright, spacious work areas, added multiple meeting rooms and provided vibrant colors and active play centers. The large lobby is awash in art and light.

CSI can now serve twice the number of children in its day care.

The Hollands’ generous donations launched the building-endowment campaign. A committee of past board presidents set about raising the remaining funds.

“We were very blessed with their help.” Gottschalk said. “These past board presidents obviously also had invested a lot in CSI and cared very deeply about it.”

She said donors become “total advocates” and ambassadors for CSI. As a result, she said, “we were able to raise the $12.2 million with about 30 people.” None of it may have happened, she said, had Holland not taken the trouble to see for himself why his wife was so moved.

“Mary had become an important participant and she got me interested in it,” he said. “Together we began to do whatever we could for the Child Saving Institute. It just became one of the loves of our life. It was a pleasure to work with them and we got all kinds of things done. We saw opportunities to do more things, bigger things, and in a decent environment.”

“He was truly then invested in child saving and what we do here,” Gottschalk said. “The passion that he has for kids just keeps coming through.”

The Hollands’ enthusiasm won over others.

“We got some of our friends interested in it,” he said.

Such links can pay big dividends.

“I think it’s always about the relationships,” Gottschalk said. “It’s a one-on-one relationship. It can be with any one of us on staff. A lot of times those relationships are through board members.”

CSI was delighted when Holland offered to loosen some well-heeled friends’ purse strings. Gottschalk accompanied him. “He’s very powerful. It’s very hard to say no to Dick,” she said. Sometimes the Hollands worked on their own.

“One of the donors asked to meet with just Dick and Mary,” she said. “They walked out of this gentleman’s house with a million dollar check.”

One friend the Hollands turned onto CSI was the late Tom Keogh. The retired architect volunteered there nurturing babies.

“He rocked, he cuddled, he wiped noses. He’d eat with the kids. He was phenomenal,” said CSI Developmental Child Care Director Kathleen Feller.

“It made Tom’s retirement very meaningful,” his wife Rae said.

When a weak immune system dictated Tom avoid the child care area he helped in other ways — filing, stuffing envelopes and serving on the board of directors.

“He also brought with him his architect’s mind,” said Kay, noting that Keogh shared with staff a book he read that urged connecting children to the outdoors. His enthusiasm set in motion a nature playground.

“Tom was very instrumental in helping develop that,” Kay said. “He worked with a young man he had mentored who helped design it.”

The playground became his sweet challenge.

“He solicited in-kind donations from nurseries, irrigation companies sod companies, stone companies,” Rae said.

 

 

 

 

He didn’t stop there. “Tom went out and raised a lot of money and contributed himself,” Gottschalk said.

Rae said her husband rarely approached others to support his causes but in the case of CSI he did. “It had to be something that he was truly interested in before he would ask anybody else to contribute,” she said.

That same passion got Rae involved, too. Since Tom’s death she’s continued the family’s support.

She said before donating to an organization it’s vital “you get to know what their beliefs are and how they handle things. There’s no replacement for that personal contact.” CSI won the Keoghs over. “We got to know the staff and the operation,” she said. “We were very impressed by how they treated the children. They’re very careful with the care they give. It’s a very warm environment.”

For her, as it was for Tom, giving’s return on investment is priceless: “It’s very simple,” she said, “I think you gain more than you give. The personal joy I receive in giving is important to me.”

Former CSI board member Charles Heider, who contributed to the building-endowment, was long ago sold on the agency. “I saw the mission and how they were carrying out their good work,” he said. “I was impressed by their good management. It’s a very good organization.” When the building campaign got underway he didn’t hesitate.

“I was quick to respond when they asked if I wanted to be involved financially.”

It’s gratifying for him to see CSI realize its building and endowment goals.

“The satisfaction is that they are obviously moving forward. If they weren’t they wouldn’t have the new building,” he said. “The enthusiasm they have with this new facility is very evident. They built a very attractive building.”

Heider said behind the gleaming facade is a track record of substance and service.

“Buildings by themselves don’t satisfy the mission,” he said. “CSI has a marvelous record of assisting young people. My wife and I have enjoyed giving to it.”

The Paul and Oscar Giger Foundation that Janet Acker and her two siblings administer has long supported CSI.

“We’re just a little foundation,” Acker said. “We can’t support everything. We have to pick and choose and do little projects. We fund a lot of programs that affect kids and music. We’ve given pianos away all over Omaha.”

For CSI’s nature playground the foundation donated an outdoor xylophone in memory of Acker’s late aunt, Ruth Musil Giger. The instrument belonged to Giger, who was a piano/organ instructor. “This was a real match with Aunt Ruth’s interests in music,” Acker said.

Previously the foundation supported CSI’s emergency respite center and adoption program. While the foundation’s support can’t compare to the mega gifts of others, Acker said, “You need a lot of little donors to pull off a big project.”

Gottschalk said CSI depends on contributions from “our bread and butter donors” to help fund daily operations. Donors who give a few hundred dollars or even at the $25 or $10 levels are vital, she said, as major funds are often restricted for certain uses. If CSI’s to remain sustainable, she said, a safety net must secure donations of all sizes, from diverse funding streams, year-round.

Everyone has their own reason for giving. What’s the joy of giving for Dick Holland? “Results,” he said. In CSI he sees an organization helping undo the damage some children suffer and an agency needing a new space to further its mission. “We were in a position to put up enough funds to make some of the ideas a reality,” he said. “It’s always great to have ideas but somehow or other somebody has to pay, and pay big, in order to get something done.”

He said he makes his donations public because “I’ve learned I actually influence a few people. I’m sure if somebody hears I’m into a thing big they say, ‘Well, he’s not just playing around.’ I hope it’s true.”


Related articles
Categories: Dick Holland, Education, Family, Omaha, Philanthropy/Charitable, Social Work, Writing, Youth Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Community and Coffee at Omaha’s Perk Avenue Cafe

June 4, 2011 8 comments

It’s fun to do stories that try to place an establishment, in this case a cafe, with a neighborhood, in this case a near downtown urban swath on the edge of of rebirth and oblivion. The Perk Avenue Cafe in Omaha opened as a humanitarian mission and community building experiment for activist owners John and Jennifer Cleveland and it was my pleasure to try and convey that within the context of the couple’s own personal experiences and beliefs as born-again Christians. They minister to the neighborhood through the food and coffee they serve, the cozy gathering spot they create, and the warm welcome they extend to everyone who comes in.  The story appeared in the Omaha City Weekly, a newspaper that is no more.  To be honest, I’m not sure the cafe is still open.

 

 

Community and Coffee at Omaha’s Perk Avenue Cafe

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in the Omaha City Weekly

Perk Avenue Cafe fits the road-less-traveled crowd coursing Park Avenue, an off-the-beaten-track artery linking immigrant south Omaha with transitional midtown with mainstream downtown. From its modest 1107 Park Avenue digs in a mixed use district ranging from stately old homes to shoddy rentals and open air drug-sex deals to revitalization efforts, the cafe’s that rare spot where urban families, adventurers and fringe dwellers all feel welcome. Beyond its free-trade coffee, made-from-scratch pies and home-style breakfast-lunch menu, Perk’s real mission is as a community center — an extension of proprietors John and Jennifer Cleveland’s well-practiced beliefs.

Neighborhood activists residing in the area, the married couple opened Perk Avenue in the fall of 2003. The brick building was home to a vending business before sitting vacant. The property, like other nearby lots, was plagued by addicts and prostitutes. Veterans of missionary work abroad and social service work in Omaha, the couple bought the site and then surveyed neighbors about what should be done with it. When the consensus said it should be made-over into a community gathering spot, the husband and wife team renovated it for that purpose.

By day, Perk Avenue is the prototypical laidback coffeehouse/diner whose counter-hugging patrons warm up over coffee and conversation. The Clevelands, a mellow combo whether dishing out their low-priced food or their well-articulated social advocacy, are a main attraction along with their four chatty children. “Our children are a big part of this,” Jennifer said.

 

 

 

 

Tim Siragusa, an actor and waiter who walks to Perk Avenue for his “pre-yoga double-shot of espresso” said, “I’ve just been charmed by the owners. John and Jennifer brought a nice communal space into this part of town that wasn’t here before. And I think one of the things that keeps neighborhoods vital is a coffee shop. A place where everybody can come in the morning and get their coffee and chat over the paper. And their delightful children have no problem speaking with the customers.” Or joining in with artists who variously perform music and give readings there. For an Omaha Public Library Program, Siragusa read Farenhite 451 at the Perk.

With time, the couple’s vision for Perk Avenue has broadened. For example, on some nights the Clevelands, in concert with Mosaic Community Development, hold Spanish and English classes as “a bridge builder” to bring together the neighborhood’s disparate peoples.

On Friday nights, the joint jumps to live music by folk musicians or grunge bands. Other nights, it becomes a venue for parties and receptions. The commercial kitchen is an incubator for food entrepreneurs like Bob and Mary Brown, who use the premises to sling up half the cafe’s menu in addition to their own catering business dishes. Whether hosting meetings of the Ford Birthsite Neighborhood Association, which John Cleveland has headed, or reaching out to street denizens, the couple use the Perk Avenue as a base for their “holistic approach” in addressing the social, economic, political and spiritual concerns of an area Cleveland said is “on the edge — it could go either way.”

Being change agents is an intensely personal thing for the couple, born-again Christians whose own lives bear witness to the transforming power of faith and love. The product of a broken home, John was “a self-styled Satanist” and “chief sinner” waging a one-man war against God before his conversion in 1986 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Omaha. He describes being taken into the fold as an “adoption,” adding, “It was a family, it was a place of purpose and belonging.”

“I hated God, and that He could somehow reach into my heart and make that kind of life change in me,” said Cleveland, “it made me believe there was nobody on this planet beyond His reach or His help. I felt a real deep conviction and compulsion, and a real called mission, to do something.”

He met Jennifer there. After attending bible college together they made an early 1990s Christ in the City International missionary tour — first, to Costa Rica to learn Spanish, and then to Medellin, Colombia to work. Arriving in drug warlord Pablo Escobar’s last year in power, the couple started their family in the poor, violent land, where John ran a program training Colombian youth to help orphans, drug addicts and AIDS victims. It was a fulfilling but trying experience.

“It was hard on our family. There were bombings and kidnappings. Like a war zone. My second day there, a 10-year old prostitute approached me. She didn’t want my help. Nothing they taught in bible school prepared me for that. It was like hell on earth for some. We were in constant danger. It was terrifying at times,” he said.

John recalled one hairy confrontation with armed guerrillas. “We were coming back from the coast with a team of Colombians. We had a ton of people in the Toyota car I was driving. We pulled into this military checkpoint and we knew something was wrong because there was nobody there. It was a ghost town. So, we kept going and at the crest of the next hill we were stopped by two guerrillas. Apparently they’d come down out of the hills and done an operation and were now retreating. This one came up to my window and started asking questions. What had we seen? Where were we going? Who were we with? Where were we from? His questions started getting more specific to my being an American.”

This was in a time and place, Cleveland said, when if it was assumed “you had any value, they would kidnap you and hold you for ransom. Well, we’re at that point when, all of a sudden, the guy can’t talk. He’s choking on his words. The other guy is freaking out because it’s taking too long. They’re exposed. And the guy who can’t talk finally gets so mad he just waves us off, like, Get out of here. So, we tear off and everybody in the car is like, Oh, my God, it’s a miracle. On the other hand, I’m hyperventilating, going, I just about died — God, what were you thinking?”

Of their time in Colombia, he said, “We were so young. Freshly married. A new family. There were a lot of things we should have done differently, but that’s OK. We made it through and learned a lot from it.” Once back in Omaha, John tried working in the for-profit arena, but was “miserable.” He said, “I love people and I felt we could apply some of the principles of community development we learned in a foreign land to what we do here locally.” He joined the local office of Christ for the City, heading a program for Lutheran Family Services called Strong Urban Neighborhoods. He now works at Turning Point, a youth-centered organization.

The Clevelands were drawn to the area bounded by Park Avenue, the Ford Birthsite and Field Club for “its cultural diversity.” Immigrants from Latin America and Africa settle there for its affordable housing.

 

 

 

 

Plus, John said, “We wanted to use our Spanish. We felt a real affection for the Hispanic community. And we wanted to live in a community we felt we could contribute to, and this neighborhood was perfect. My big emphasis in ministry has always been community development. Getting community ownership, finding community solutions to problems and sustainable solutions locally.” And “breaking down barriers,” like in the language classes offered at Perk Avenue that help diffuse differences. Participants range from immigrants trying to master English to city inspectors and landlords needing to communicate with Spanish-speaking business owners and tenants to teachers from nearby Liberty Elementary School, where three of the couple’s kids attend, looking to breach the divide with newcomer pupils. In the process, he said, “perceptions  change and dialogues start, and I don’t know where else that would happen.”

With so much diversity intersecting the area, Cleveland wants Perk Avenue viewed as a safe haven for everyone, even the late night street walkers he shoos away but also assists when they appear battered or cold or disoriented. “We want a place where people from Field Club can rub shoulders with people from down here and where everybody thinks it’s theirs. We’ve tried to make this a melting pot.”

On a recent morning, customers included a middle-aged contractor, a thirtysomething Hispanic laborer, a senior couple, actor Tim Siragusa and young artist Leslie Iwai, who discussed bible passages with companion Jonathan Starkey. Iwai welcomes what the Clevelands are doing. “I think it’s a light in a dark place. It brings order to a location that’s had a lot of oppression. It’s establishing something here — like grass growing through a crack in the sidewalk. We didn’t need another bar.” Starkey agreed, adding, “It’s good to see a healthy establishment.”

Cleveland said the neighborhood seems to be turning the corner. He’s helped lead efforts to combat dealers, addicts, pimps and hookers. “It’s frustrating, because you want to extend help and you want to see life change, but in the meantime I’ll settle for relocation. There’s a sense of righteous indignation of — you know what? — this has got to stop. There’s enough people in this neighborhood who are to that point that it’s starting to make a difference.” He’s also encouraged by a new development that’s renovating a former illicit drug-sex den into Boston row houses.

The couple hope Perk remains a community resource long after they’re gone. “It’s not ours. It’s not about us. It’s about the destiny of this neighborhood. It’s just a matter of time, I believe, before people start owning it. There’s great potential here,” Jennifer said.

Related articles
Categories: Entrepreneurial, Family, Omaha, Religion, Social Justice, Social Work, Spirituality, Writing Tags: , , , , ,

Standing on Faith, Sadie Bankston Continues One-Woman Vigil for Homicide Victim Families

August 29, 2010 2 comments

Crime scene tape

Image by Ross Catrow via Flickr

For years I read about this Omaha woman who has dedicated her life to help the families of homicide victims since she losing her own son to a senseless act of violence and finding the support network for grieving loved ones to be wanting.  I finally met Sadie Bankston a couple years ago and this is her story.  It originally appeared in The Reader  (www.thereader.com), and I think you will find her as determined and compassionate as I did.  She goes to rather extraordinary lengths to help people, mostly women, who in a very real way become the secondary victims of homicides.  Her clients may have lost a son or a daughter or a mate, and without the help she and thankfully some others now provide, these hurting parents and spouses are in danger of being casualties themselves.  Sadie carries on her work through her own nonprofit, PULSE, and she can always use more donations and resources to help out families trying to cope with the trauma of losing someone dear and often having to relive it through criminal investigations and court proceedings.

Standing on Faith, Sadie Bankston Continues One-Woman Vigil for Homicide Victim Families

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

 

Whenever Omahan Sadie Bankston hears of a new homicide her heart aches. Her son Wendell Grixby was shot and killed in 1989 in the Gene Leahy Mall. He was 19. A

n outpouring of support followed. Then Sadie was on her own. Paralyzed by pain. She sensed others expected her to move on with her life after a certain point. The rest of her adult kids had lives, families, careers of their own. She was single. There wasn’t anyone around to confide in who’d been in her place — another parent who’d suffered the same nightmare of a murdered son or daughter.

Violent crimes in Omaha only escalated. A growing number, gang-related. Others, domestic disputes or random acts turned deadly. Guns the main weapons of choice in the mounting homicide tallies. Sadie felt called to do something for others left adrift in the wake of such loss. She identified with their heartbreak.

Without a degree, she couldn’t provide formal mental health assistance, but she could reach out — mother to mother, heart to heart. Talking, praying, holding hands, preparing care packages, extending a lifeline for people to call day or night. Bearing witness for families at court hearings.

She’s been doing all this and more through the nonprofit organization she started in 1991 — PULSE or People United Lending Support and Encouragement.

Mary E. Lemon’s daughters Saundra and Renota Brown were stabbed to death last Christmas Eve in the basement of an Omaha home. The grieving mother has relied on Sadie to get through many long days and nights.

“Sadie has been a help,” said Lemon. “I call her and talk to her whenever I feel I need to talk to somebody, and that happens quite often. It helps to know that there is someone out there who cares — that you can talk to. And Sadie’s made me feel as if I could talk to her at anytime. She’s a friend worth having, I’ll tell you.”

PULSE began as a support group for mothers who’ve lost a child to homicide. The meetings “phase in and out” now due to funding limitations. Sadie hopes to start the sessions again. She knows how vital these unconditional forums can be.

“You hear their loneliness, their pain, their sleeplessness, their hopelessness. Will I ever stop crying? Those kinds of things. It’s just to come together with other parents who have lost. We have a common denominator there.”

Virgil Cook Jr. and his wife Patricia fell into a depression after their son, Little Virgil. was shot and killed in 1991. They thought they were alone in their grief until Sadie introduced the Native American couple to others suffering like them.

‘We found there are other people like us who’ve been through the same thing. White people, black people, Spanish people. We’re all in the same boat. We’ve become friends,” said Cook.

Sadie’s only guide in the beginning was her own experience. “Just the pain that I knew that I felt,” she said. “I knew other mothers were feeling the same, so I just wanted to help in some way to steer them in the right path as far as help and support.” She knew the most powerful thing she could offer was having walked the same painful journey they’re on. “When you can embrace someone and say, ‘I know how you feel.’ and really know it, it makes a difference,” said Sadie, whose eyes ooze empathy and mirror survival. “I always say, ‘The pain won’t go away, but it will get softer.’”

Lemon said she appreciates dealing with someone who’s walked in her shoes. Their conversations can be about anything or nothing at all. “I talk to Sadie at least once if not twice a week,” she said.

“We talk about my girls, we talk about old days, growing up in the old neighborhood, we talk about a lot of things. Just to kind of relieve my nerves, you know.”

Once Sadie enters a family’s life she sticks. Even years later, despite moves, remarriages, the bond remains.

“They’re not left alone with me around,” she said, “because I’m calling them.”

PULSE volunteer Denise Cousin got acquainted with Sadie while an Omaha police captain. Now retired, Cousin feels Sadie builds rapport by carrying no institutional agenda or baggage. She’s open, she’s real, she’s honest. She’s just Sadie.

‘“I think because she is not representing any type of governmental entity, there’s no concern the family’s going to be jeopardized as far as what they tell her. She does not have that attachment. And I think it is her personality. She is down to earth. She lets the family know she’s there for them. She kind of comes across as the mother figure. She comes across as family, and so she breaks that barrier of a professional I’m-here-to-tell-you-something.”

Cook said he and his wife regard Sadie “as an older sister” even though they have a few years on her. He credits her with getting them out of the deep funk they fell into after Little Virgil was killed.

“We didn’t want to work, we didn’t want to go anywhere, we didn’t want to do anything. Things got real bad. She helped us out of that ugly state. She’s been like an angel to us. Everybody needs a Sadie.”

With her warm, soulful, old-school way, it’s easy picturing Sadie as everyone’s auntie or big mama or sistah. A girlish, impish side shines when she laughs. She’s no pushover though. A steely, sassy righteousness shows through when describing disrespectful “bagging and sagging” young men, silly girls getting pregnant and senseless gun play taking lives and wrecking havoc on families and neighborhoods.

 

 

 

 

This woman of faith ascribes her own healing to her higher power. “My source, and still is my source of comfort and strength,” she said, casting her eyes heavenward. A hardness shows, too, when she bemoans PULSE’s chronic financial straits. PULSE grew beyond being merely a support group to a multi-faceted human services operation providing food, clothes and other support. Ambitious programs, including at-risk workshops, were drawn up.

But as a largely one-woman band, Sadie’s left to scratch for dollars and volunteers wherever she can find them. There’ve been many supporters. Churches, businesses, individuals. Lowes donated materials to renovate the house she resides-offices in. Sadie and fellow victim moms did all the labor. Lamar Advertising does billboards for Stop the Violence messages. Popeye’s Chicken donates dinners for We-Care packages PULSE delivers to families.

An annual Mother’s Day banquet she hosts relies on donated food and facilities. Lately though she’s cut back PULSE services.

All the begging, all the scrounging, all the promised donations that don’t come through, all the unrealized dreams get to be too much at times. “I’m just tired of constantly having to ask.” Then there’s her own well-being. She was 46 at PULSE’s start. She’s 63 now. Like many caregivers the last person she thinks of is herself. She realizes that has to change. “I figure I should be taking care of myself because I’m a senior citizen now. I’m just tired.”

A bad back prevents her from working. She’s on disability. Despite this hand-to-mouth existence the work of PULSE goes on, largely unheralded. Oh, she receives glowing endorsements.

Omaha Police Department Sgt. Patrick Rowland said, “What makes Sadie effective is she’s determined to make a difference even when it’s not the most pleasant of times. She gets out there and she still tries. She truly cares for people. She doesn’t judge them or the circumstances in which their loved ones lost their life. She sees the families as being victims also. She cares about the police, too. She wants them to do a good job. She understands the difficulty in trying to solve these things.”

Sadie’s declined Woman of the Year citations. She’s not looking for awards or pats on the back, but tangible support. The situation’s akin to the way parents feel when a child’s been murdered. Life must go on but until someone notices their pain, it’s hard to want to go forward. Attention must be paid. She said one of the hardest things in the aftermath of her son’s murder was the unpleasant realization the world was oblivious to her sorrow. Instead of validating her trauma, life ground on as usual. It made the void that much more cruel. In her outreach work Sadie’s found nearly everyone experiencing a loss feels a sense of emptiness and abandonment at their suffering being ignored or minimized. It’s as if society tells you, “they’re gone,” so get on with your life, she said.

“When I talk to mothers they explain it the same way. When my son was murdered I was driving somewhere and the street lights were still coming on and I wondered, Why is this going on just like nothing happened? People are still walking and laughing like nothing had happened. It’s a sad feeling, yeah. I wouldn’t say so much lonely. It’s just more, Here, feel my pain — recognize I’m hurting here. Instead of people still eating their ice cream like nothing has affected you, you want everybody to stop and acknowledge what you’re going through.”

She inaugurated the Forget Us Not Memorial Wall shortly after launching PULSE. The commemorative marker ensures victims like her son “will not be forgotten.” Resembling an opened Bible, the tall, custom-made wooden memorial has hinged panels that presently display 150 name plates, most accompanied by a likeness of the victim. The majority of victims are African-American. Two OPD officers slain in the line of duty — Jimmie Wilson Jr. and Jason Pratt — are among those memorialized. A small collection box next to the memorial accepts donations.

Sadie contacts families for permission to affix their loved ones’ names to the wall. The memorial’s had different homes. It’s now displayed at St. Benedict the Moor, 2423 Grant St. The church’s pastor, Rev. Ken Vavrina, champions Sadie’s work. “She has a good heart, she’s compassionate, and she’s been there,” he said. “And she’s worked now over the years with so many families who have a lost a child she really is good at it. She’s developed the expertise of being able to reach out and support these families who have had someone killed. It’s a great idea. I don’t know of any other organization that is doing what she’s doing — certainly not as consistently as she does. We’re honored to have it (the wall) here.”

He and Sadie admit the wall’s not up to date. So many killings. So hard to keep up. “I had no idea it was going to be filled up (so quickly) that we had to have two more extensions put on it. I was just thinking in the here and now,” she said.

In the years following Wendell’s death Omaha homicides exploded. There were 12 in 1990, 35 in 1991 and an average of 31 over the next 17 years, with the count reaching a record 42 last year. 2008 has already seen 40-plus homicides. With more frequency than ever killings happen in waves. This year alone has seen a handful of weeks with multiple fatalities each. “I just don’t know what to say or think about the recent rash of homicide that is plaguing our community,” Sadie said in response to a flurry of gun deaths in early November.

A problem once seen confined to northeast Omaha appears more widespread, including recent incidents in Dundee and south Omaha and, most starkly, the deadly spree at the Westroads Von Maur in 2007. Community responses to the problem are evident. Prayer vigils, anti-violence summits, stop-the-violence campaigns, sermons, editorials, articles, proposed ordinances to stiffen gun laws, public discussions on ways to stem the flow of guns and, ironically, increased gun sales/registrations as people arm themselves to feel safer.

Name after name graces the Forget Us Not wall but in no way is it all-inclusive. “That’s not the half of them. That wall would be filled and more,” Sadie said. PULSE omits the names of those engaged in culpable behavior at the time of their death. That leads to some hard feelings. “There’s a few families upset their loved ones do not go on the wall. There’s so much stuff I have to go through with family members. For instance, a man was coming out a house with a gun and the police shot and killed him. His widow was fussing, ‘Why can’t he be on the wall?’ And I said, ‘Well, he was coming out of the house with a gun — what were they supposed to do?’”

In rare cases, she said, a loved one declines a victim’s name adorning the wall. “The wife of one of the Von Maur victims called and said she didn’t want her husband’s name on the wall, because there’s too much media attention, and I understood. We’re presenting this to her at a later date,” said Sadie, holding up a plaque.

She doesn’t like turning anybody away. “I refer people PULSE cannot help to The Compassionate Friends (a national nonprofit grief assistance group with an Omaha chapter). I don’t let them just drown out there. I don’t say we can’t help you and let it go.” There’s not much she lets go of once she latches onto something.

“I have to say I admire Sadie’s persistence, because she has encountered numerous roadblocks and obstacles. Not getting paid a dime for this. Very little if any type of donation comes her way. This is strictly a heartfelt humanitarian effort that she continues to push on, day after day, year after year. I think most of us would say, ‘That’s it, I’m tired, I’m ready to go on to other things,’” said Denise Cousin. That’s why when Sadie reached a point of no return last summer, Cousin was sympathetic.

A March car accident left Sadie with severe injuries, including two torn rotator cuffs. “I’m in pain now. The accident had a lot to do with it. Then I have nerve damage from having two teeth pulled.” Bad enough. But when Sadie learned the office the Salvation Army let PULSE use starting a year ago would no longer be available, it was more than she could take. She’d talked about closing PULSE before but this was different. “This time I was really at my lowest,” she said. After all, a body can only take so much. It’s why on June 25 she called reporters and friends together to announce PULSE’s end. “I’m tired of the struggle,” she told the gathering. Among those in attendance were some of the parents she’s comforted over the years. They expressed appreciation for all PULSE has done.

 

 

 

 

Cousin let her know it was OK to walk away. “I was in her corner there saying, You have put in a sufficient amount of time. I can understand you being tired.” Vavrina empathized, too. “Sadie got discouraged and I can understand she gets discouraged, because she’s financially strapped all the time. She doesn’t get the support she needs,” he said. “We try to help her as much as we can.” “But then she called me and said she just couldn’t put it down. She still felt compelled to help families,” said Cousin.

Soon enough, the word got out — Sadie was back and recommitted to serving what’s become her life’s mission. What helped change her mind were messages from friends, associates and complete strangers. One, from a woman who identified herself as Eunice, stood out: “I’m calling you Miss Bankston because you were placed in that position for a reason. God put you there, sweetheart. Don’t get weary yet. I get weary at times, too. I know you’re tired. You become tired when you’re trying to do something all by yourself, baby, but you’re not by yourself. God doesn’t want you to get weary. He’ll lift you up. It seems nobody cares but we do care, because that’s our future out there dying daily. We see it. And it’s time for us as women to come together and stop it. Please don’t give up yet, Miss Bankston. I beg you in Jesus’ name.”

Buoyed by such words Sadie’s staying the course, even though she still battles health problems, still pleads for money, still gets frustrated fighting the good fight on little more than goodwill and prayer. But she can’t bear to turn her back on the truth: the killings go on unabated and each time a family’s left to pick up the pieces. “So I must go on. Life goes on. You know I must love what I’m doing or I wouldn’t be doing it for this long,” said Sadie. “I love what I do. You know it’s not for money. Anytime you can reach out and help people it is just so nice. That’s what we’re put here for — to love our brothers and sisters.”

Lemon wouldn’t have blamed her if she had quit but added, “I’m glad she didn’t. Sadie does a job that a lot of people probably wouldn’t even consider doing. Sadie is a special person, That job is meant for Sadie. She does such a good job.”

Sadie plans going about it smarter now though. For years she resisted advice that she should write grant applications for operating funds. Recently, she devised a budget for a year-long project grant. If she gets the monies PULSE will gain the financial stability it’s never enjoyed before. She needs it to ease her mind.

“I’m not going to overstress myself because if I’m no good for myself I’m no good for anyone else. I just can’t do it anymore. I’m not gong to do it anymore.”

Vavrina’s sure it’s a sound strategic move. “Now that she’s doing it the right way,” he said, “I think she can get funded.” He’s encouraged Sadie has a contingency plan “that would permit PULSE to continue without her.”

Her friends know she’s given so much of herself for so long she may not have much left to give. Crisis intervention takes a toll. What some don’t know is that she’s seen some hard things no one should see. “Well, why shouldn’t I see it? I mean, it happens,” she said. PULSE was part of a University of Nebraska Medical Center pilot program that trained folks like her to respond to homicide events. She was on call trauma nights. When the phone rang with a new assignment it meant going to hospitals at all hours to console loved ones. On at least one occasion, she said, “I had to tell the family their loved one was gone. I did. l mean, its really hard comforting people who’ve just lost a son or daughter. Sad, sad, sad.”

Her work at times meant going to crime scenes, where families lived amid fresh evidence of carnage. Even there, she tended to their needs. “There would be blood on the floor from shootings. There was so much it just glistened from the lights.”

She recalled the case of a young mother from Chicago. The woman’s husband kidnapped their baby and fled to Omaha. She followed, with her other kids in tow. After finding and confronting him here, he slit her throat in front of the kids. Sadie managed getting the kids released from the foster care system. Said Sadie, “Now you know how hard that is to do, don’t you? To get someone out of foster care once they’re in? I got ‘em out. I have a gift for gab when something needs to be done.” The victim’s family contacted Sadie asking her to retrieve items from the murder site. “We went into the apartment. It was all white, except where it was saturated with blood. Blood splattered all over. And we retrieved the kids’ clothes and the toys and I sent them back to Chicago. I still keep in contact with the grandma. The kids are grown now.”

Another time, Sadie observed how difficult it was for a family to be surrounded by the stain of murder in their Omaha Housing Authority unit. “Two young men were killed at home, and the blood — it was hard for the mother, for the family to see, so I contacted OHA and they came out and cleaned up everything.” Sadie had noticed a throw rug the mother avoided walking on. Sadie had trod over the same rug and it wasn’t until she got home, she said, “I realized that must have been where her son was murdered. So I called her back and I apologized, and she said, ‘That’s OK, Sadie.’”

In this conspiracy of broken hearts, Sadie said, “there’s that camaraderie” that makes explanations unnecessary. “They (OHA) had to take the carpet up because it soaked through,” Sadie said. She demonstrates she’s not just there for families once, never to be seen or heard from again. She’s there for the long haul. “If they ask for me to attend the funeral I will, and I do.” Celebrations, too. She’s cooked holiday dinners for families. She’s bought groceries, clothes. She even had a wheelchair ramp built for a family. Around her home are tokens of families’ appreciation for her going the extra mile.

Being a court advocate is another example of Sadie going beyond the call of duty. She understands the strain of seeking justice for a loved one. She attended every proceeding for her son’s assailant. To her other children’s dismay she forgave the young man, who was convicted of manslaughter and is now free. So she attends court with families — to be a pillar of strength, a shoulder to cry on. She knows the last thing a family under extreme emotional distress needs is to see her cry. “Normally I stifle my tears,” she said. She couldn’t once, she said, when it was read into evidence a female shooting victim’s “last words were, ‘It burns.’ I handed tissues to the family and I had to turn my head so they wouldn’t see my tears. It’s hard for me to find someone to go with me because I can’t have them crying.”

Sadie also treads a delicate line as a liaison between families and law enforcement officials investigating unsolved homicides. She’s well aware “snitching” is seriously frowned on by some in the African American community. “A lot of people don’t like the police and I try to be the mediator to keep an open line of communication with the police department,” she said. She said sometimes family members with information about a case tell her what they won’t disclose to police. With a family’s consent, she shares leads. “As a mother how would you feel if someone killed your child and no one came forward?”

OPD’s Sgt. Rowland, who worked with Sadie when he was in homicide, said, “She understands the situation that some of these families are put in, just by the nature of where they live and what their loved one, the homicide victim, was involved in. Sadie does what she can to get them to cooperate with the police. She’s very honest with us. Very blunt.” “She will continue to beat down a door until the information is laid at the footsteps of the police department,” said Cousin.

Sadie’s also known to put herself in harm’s way breaking up scuffles between kids before they escalate into something worse. “I try to intervene. Once, I got flung around and I landed on the hood of the car. But I got back up. I broke up the fight. The cops came. Everybody was OK,” she said. “All I’m trying to do is get ‘em to just think. When I say I lost my son some of them seem to have compassion or pity for me.” Once, a gun was pulled on her. The windows of her home have been shot out. She won’t be intimidated. Would she get involved in the middle of a dispute again? “Probably, and 100 percent if a woman we’re being hit by a man. There would be no doubt.”

She still has dreams for PULSE. She envisions youth life coaching classes. “Make them feel better about themselves, so they’ll make better choices and won’t settle for anything,” she said. “So, that’s a goal. My theory now is if we pay attention to the children maybe there’d be less grief support meetings we have to have.” Cousin suspects Sadie will go right on with PULSE till her dying days.

“As long as we continue to have homicides in this community and as long as there’s breath in her body Sadie will continue to help the families. She’s quite remarkable and definitely unforgettable.” Miss Sadie may not have everything to give she’d like but, she said, “I have my heart and my family. And I have hope. Keep hope alive. I guess I have to stand on faith.”

Related Articles
Categories: African-American Culture, Crime, Family, Omaha, Sadie Bankston, Social Justice, Social Work, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Whatsoever You Do to the Least of My Brothers, that You Do Unto Me: Mike Saklar and the Siena/Francis House Provide Tender Mercies to the Homeless

August 1, 2010 1 comment

Our Father's House Soup Kitchen serving the la...

Image via Wikipedia

Before I did the following story on Mike Saklar, I only knew him from media reports about the Siena/Francis House homeless facility he ran then and continues running today.  Even in sound bites he comes off as a thoughtful, highly competent man deeply committed to his work.  When I finally met him a couple years ago to interview him and spend some time around the shelter and residential treatment program there, I found he was all those things and more.  This is quite an extensive profile of him and his work, and yet this was one of those occasions when I never heard word one back from him or anyone else for that matter at the Siena/Francis House about my story. That lack of feedback is in itself not that unusual per se, but for a story of this length it definitely is. So, if you happen upon this Mr. Saklar or perhaps one of your colleagues or supporters do, shoot me a comment or two, just so I have the satisfaction of knowing that at least somebody there read it.

 

 

Mike Saklar

 

 

Whatsoever You Do to the Least of My Brothers, that You Do Unto Me:                                                                        Mike Saklar and the Siena/Francis House Provide Tender Mercies to the Homeless  

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in the New Horizons

The plight of the homeless tends to make news seasonally, during winter and summer, and then fades away the rest of the year. Out of sight, out of mind. Trouble is, even when the homeless stand in plain view you likely don’t see them. That’s because society makes them invisible, untouchable.

If you take a good look, though, the homeless are easy to spot downtown. They’re fixtures in the Gene Leahy Mall, hanging out, panhandling, lining up for free lunches. They camp out at the W. Dale Clark Library, reading, dozing, drying out, coming down. These discarded, dispossessed figures occupy a limbo, killing time between some indeterminate goal or destination — perhaps a ride, a meal, a roof over their head or their next fix.

They’re an inconvenient reminder the fabric of America is torn, its safety net not catching everyone who suffers a fall.

The homeless often habituate Omaha’s east corridor, where several nonprofits serve the population. The state’s largest homeless shelter, the Siena/Francis House, is situated on the fringes of NoDo or North Downtown. This multiplex at 17th and Nicholas St. is an oasis for the lost and the misbegotten.

Siena/Francis executive director Mike Saklar has never been homeless himself but he’s seen the lives of street people wrecked by neglect and transformed by support. After 28 years in the Omaha City Planning Department, where he began working with area homeless programs, he now focuses on breaking the cycle of homelessness. That’s the mission of Siena/Francis, which he’s directed since 2002.

It wasn’t like the job was a long-held dream. But being there doing this work makes sense given his background and the choices he’s made. Siena/Francis men’s shelter manager James Hayes said he believes Saklar “has been in training for this job since day one. All of his experiences in life up to the day he took this job prepared him in some way or another to be one of the most sincere, compassionate, hard working, help-anyone-in-any-way-he-can individuals I have ever met.”

Saklar confirmed he’s “experienced different things during my life” that have helped him connect with the poor and to value them as human beings. Giving to the less fortunate is a practice his elders modeled. His father was a traveling salesman, his mom a stay-at-home matriarch.

“My extended family’s always been big in helping others,” he said. “My grandfather was director of one of Omaha’s early homeless shelters in the 1930s. My parents and grandparents helped and befriended many people, often opening their homes to them. I open my home to a select few who I know well. I do bring some homeless to dinner on Christmas and Thanksgiving.”

He came into contact with more homeless working at Peony Park, near where he grew up. The amusement park’s owners, the Malecs, used to hire what were called ‘bums” then. They worked the grounds and the gardens.

Though a teen at the time, Saklar did a man’s job at the amusement park, sometimes working alongside the transients.

“I put in 10-12 hour days. It was a lot of hard work. I did everything from operating rides to putting out a couple thousand pounds of charcoal in these great big pits, preparing barbecue sauce from scratch in these giant vats, to cutting up chickens, washing them, cooking them, making potato salad for 2,500 people, to working as a bus boy for the bartenders at night. I’d bring up the ice and the beer from the basement, pop the popcorn, clean up afterwards. I did all that.

“It was really a life experience…meeting lots of people.”

Doing manual labor, being around diverse people set the tone for his adult life. “I love different cultures and I know a lot of people from a lot of different cultures,” he said. A person he got “particularly close to” at Peony Park was a homeless man who worked there. Saklar said, “When I was about 13-years-old I had my first homeless friend, Joel Craig. I liked him. We got to be talking friends. We talked a lot. I don’t remember how he got to be homeless.”

 

 

Peony Park

 

 

Saklar lost touch with Craig. Years passed before they were reunited. By then it was the ‘70s and Saklar was an Omaha Community Development trainee with the City. His job — relocating east Omaha residents to make way for progress. Eppley Airfield expansion meant displacing hundreds of families. In the process of notifying  homeowners he came upon Craig living in a tiny but tidy bungalow that had to go.

“He had somehow put his life together a little bit, still at a very low level, but he’d married and he and his wife lived together in this house,” Saklar recalled. “I thought it was so cool to run into him again later and to be able to help them get another house. I helped them move.”

Living conditions in east Omaha then, he said, were akin to Appalachia with its crushing poverty, only minus the coal dust and hills. The small shotgun houses were substandard. Being exposed to such hardships opened Saklar’s eyes.

“This was two minutes from downtown and they didn’t have sewers. Some of them still had outhouses, dirt floors. I was in houses where there were five kids sleeping on a dirt floor in the basement. With the jet liners rumbling over your head every 15 or 20 minutes you couldn’t talk or hear. It would just vibrate like heck. Some homes were heated just by wood space heaters. Residents chopped the lumber.

“It was really a backwards community, and it was very very poor. I was amazed. It would have been the most blighted, poorest census tract in Douglas County by far, maybe one of the poorest in the state per capita.”

Despite the disruption to people’s lives and the rupture to communities that went with razing people’s homes to make way for public works projects, Saklar believes dislocated residents came out ahead in the long run.

“It was a great experience because you’re not just kicking people off this land — you’re working with them and helping them to better themselves, and with all the federal laws you’re providing relocation assistance in order to help them buy a decent home,” he said.

Before he ever got into city planning Saklar embarked on a path that made him empathetic to people living on the margins. After graduating Westside High School in the late ‘60s he enrolled at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He paid his own way and when his funds ran dry he dropped out. No sooner did he leave school then Uncle Sam drafted him into the U.S. Army. The Vietnam War was escalating. Seeing action was a real possibility.

He ended up in airborne training and made the cut as a paratrooper in the famed 82nd Airborne division. In ‘69 he shipped overseas to Korea, via Japan. He couldn’t wait for his chance at combat duty in ‘Nam. As fate had it, he never got the call.

“I was very disappointed. If you go through airborne training and then to the 82nd Airborne you’re ready to go anywhere and to do whatever you have to do.”

Instead, he tested into an operations intelligence specialist post with the 7th infantry division’s command in Seoul. He rated top secret clearance. The work was interesting but what most fascinated him was the Korean culture. “I liked to walk around and peruse through the markets, see the action, right.”

Everything the naive 21-year-old saw made an impression. He came across situations that would inform his later work with Omaha’s homeless. South Korea was still reeling from the war that ended 16 years before and, thus, unchecked diseases, shortages of basic goods and other hardships were rampant.

“When I was overseas I ran into leper camps, really terrible situations, lots of homeless people, and I think maybe that helped create something inside me, right.”

The resiliency and ingenuity of the Korean people struck Saklar. After meeting his wife there and visiting several times over the years he remains impressed today.

“I admire the work ethic of the Korean culture. It doesn’t seem to matter if a person’s job is street sweeper, teacher, businessman or doctor, they will do their very best and do it in a very professional way. I don’t know how to explain this. Koreans are very respectful of others, and if you walk around, say, in Seoul, the capital city, you will be hard-pressed to find trash blowing around. It is a very clean city. Korea offers a lot to admire. The culture goes back some 5,500 years. I love Korean history, architecture, anthropology, geography, sociology, et cetera.”

He said Koreans well-deserve their reputation for being driven to achieve, especially in the classroom. “They are way too smart.”

During his overseas tour Saklar met a bright Korean national attached to his unit, Han Chil Song, who let the curious American know his sister, Chong, worked in a Seoul tailor shop. “She measured me up for a number of suits,” said Saklar. “For some reason, I kept going back to purchase some very nice and very inexpensive suits.” Love bloomed. The pair married. Her brother died tragically.

 

 

 

 

Saklar learned the harrowing story of how Chong’s family escaped North Korea after the Communists came to power and implemented a purge that targeted figures like Chong’s banker father. Chong was not yet born. The family made it to Seoul, South Korea, where they survived the war.

“I think it was rough going,” said Saklar. “I mean, that whole country was devastated and destroyed. I was just there, and the mountains surrounding Seoul  still don’t have any trees on them yet. They’re just bare. The trees were blasted out or people cut them down to survive. It’s unbelievable.”

Saklar became a father shortly before his Army release. In the States his small family settled in Omaha, where his Greek-American clan embraced his Korean wife and Amerasian son. “I think it was pretty exciting for all of them, especially since we had a child.” His Korean wife and biracial kids — he and Chong have three grown children — have been subject to some prejudice, he said, but mostly welcomed.

Back home, Saklar returned to school on the G.I. Bill but with a family to support he needed a job. He tried driving a taxi, working construction — “whatever I could do just to make ends meet,” he said. He began his own roofing business. “I was struggling. I went to Nebraska Job Service and I saw an opening for this new city department (Omaha Community Development), and I was the last person they hired, at the lowest ranking of all the staff.”

Acquisition/relocation work transitioned to developing affordable housing in largely African-American northeast Omaha neighborhoods. All of it was an education.

“There’s lots of things I was exposed to — a myriad of housing programs. I was active working to get housing built for first-time home buyers all the way down to the homeless shelters. I just learned on the way.”

His professional interest in the homeless began in the mid-’80s, when laws emptied mental health institutions, dumping countless people into the streets without a system to assist them or the communities they inhabited. He became Omaha’s point person for developing plans and capturing funds to deal with homelessness. He assembled the land the Siena/Francis, the Open Door Mission and the Campus of Hope occupy today. He secured a building and funds for the Stephen Center.

“Omaha City Planning became a leader in the nation,” he said. “I developed almost every homeless strategic plan since the very first one starting in 1987. And so I just got really interested in it. I got really good at bringing in money. I brought in like tens of millions of dollars worth of (community block) grants. In about 1995 some homeless agencies came and asked me to take the leadership in trying to create community partnerships with all the programs. Up until then it was all turf wars — fighting over the money and philosophical differences on strategy. It was terrible.”

 

 

 

 

The resulting Metro Area Continuum of Care for the Homeless, a collaborative network of 100 homeless providers that coordinates and maximizes resources to prevent and eliminate homelessness, has been recognized nationally.

“It was all just creative juices flowing, without any knowledge of really how to do it. Just learn as you go and do it with openness and honesty,” Saklar said of the process that launched MACCH in ‘96. “It just evolved, as everything does. I got to meet the directors of probably a hundred programs or more, becoming their friend and colleague and guiding them — they sought my advice and I sought theirs. We were just finding ways to do this. Programs flourished. Collaborative efforts formed.

“It’s become so good we’ve became a model for other communities. I find myself in Washington, D.C. or Charlotte (N.C.) at seminars showing them our strategy — this is how we did it. I get calls from all over the country for advice.”

Overcoming old turf battles in Omaha, he said, “involved bringing all the agencies and programs together. We tried to create some values within this system, to get the agencies to recognize they’re all just a piece of the puzzle and they have to respect each other’s philosophies on how to deal with homeless people. I could use the money as the carrot or as the stick of no funding if you don’t hop on board and get on this program. I did that quite effectively I believe. I made people that wouldn’t even talk to each other become partners, and jointly funded them.”

While the homeless problem in big cities overwhelmed those communities, Omaha’s situation was more manageable. Still, many service gaps existed. Saklar’s seen much improvement. “Omaha’s made huge strides,” he said. “Omaha’s been very, very good in dealing with the homeless.” He’s one reason why. The plaques on his office wall honoring his service attest to it. In 2001 MACCH was singled out among hundreds of programs nationwide by Innovations in American Government. “It said Omaha was doing the right thing and on its way,” he said of the award.

Omaha city planner James Thele, a colleague of Saklar’s, said “what makes Mike effective is he’s a very caring person. He’s also a very practical person. He understands budgets and money. He understands that things take time. He’s also adept at building concensus to move forward with new projects.” Thele said Saklar “has the ability to create a vision of how to address homelessness from a continuum standpoint based on the needs of the individual.”

Saklar was drawn to the work of Siena/Francis before ever working there. The shelter was begun by two nuns in ‘75. It was on Cuming Street then. From the start he liked that it accepted whomever came to its doors. No discrimination. Saklar’s own life is all about embracing diversity and making multiculturalism a way of life.

“The thing about Siena/Francis House was it had unconditional acceptance,” said Saklar. “It’s the only program that’s not a religion, that’s not a church itself or that doesn’t have restrictions. The other shelters at that time wouldn’t let you in if you had even alcohol on your breath. And so for the active addict, the active alcoholic, the Siena/Francis House was the only place they could stay.”

“So there’s this huge unattended need,” he said of active users unmet at other agencies. “When I was a city official,” he said, “there’d be huge arguments almost always against Siena/Francis House — that they were just enabling this lifestyle.”

The way Saklar and Siena/Francis staff see it, however, an addict can’t get sober until basic human needs for food, clothing, shelter and security are met. Then the process of recovery can begin. Siena/Francis operates the state’s largest residential chemical addiction program in its Miracles Recovery Treatment Center. He said his agency serves the vast majority of this area’s chronic homeless.

Everything about Siena/Francis appealed to him and so when the opportunity to head it up came he accepted. “This place is a hidden jewel and I knew that when I was at city hall,” he said. “I loved city hall, l loved my colleagues, what I was doing. I was at age 55 and I could retire but I thought, I would love to do something else, I could have another career. This job opened up and I took it.”

 

 

Mike Saklar, center, at conference on the homeless

 

 

Administrative duties aside, Saklar goes out of his way to engage homeless “guests.” Some wind up staffers like James Hayes.

“I’ve found that not only does he handle the very important decisions and planning that goes into keeping the Siena Francis House above water but also he is always concerned with each individual homeless person he comes in contact with,” said Hayes. “And, believe me, there are many of our guests he knows personally and has helped in a number of ways.”

Women’s shelter guest manager Patricia Cunningham was once a resident there. “Mike was and is a very big part of my recovery,” she said. “He showed me how honesty and integrity could and did change my life.” Saklar leads a large weekly AA meeting on campus, where he’s warmly greeted by staff and guests. “I like being a mentor,” said Saklar. “That’s one of the best things I have going here. I’m able to mentor people who are very dysfunctional, have lots of issues and problems, and maybe offer some advice. Every day I talk to people.”

Spend any time with Saklar making the rounds and you’ll witness this. Usually he greets guests with, “How we doing?” One March morning he came across a client in the treatment program and stopped to speak with him.

“Are you doing good?” asked Saklar. “Yeah, I just got back from Metro,” the man reported. “You going to college?” Saklar inquired. “Yeah,” the man said, “I just have to follow those same (12) steps here…” “Right, exactly, good,” Saklar said. “OK, well, just keep moving forward — you’re just doing a remarkable job here. I’m glad to have you as a friend.” “I’m glad to be your friend,” the man replied.

Later, Saklar told a visitor, “I’m so glad to see this guy succeeding in the program. You wouldn’t even have recognized him a few months ago — he was a hardcore street person.” It’s miracles like these and the sobriety anniversaries and treatment center graduations celebrated there that keep Saklar motivated. “It just shows that treament, especially in this facility, works. It works very well and we can all accomplish the goals if we just put our minds to it,” he said.

That same March day Saklar got a report from Miracles program director Bill Keck that three ex-homeless addicts are still making it on the outside.

“They live in the Gold Manor Apartments up by Immanuel Hospital — they were all hardcore street people and they all graduated (from treatment) about the same time and they’re all doing well. All employed. Haven’t abused or used drugs or alcohol for a number of years,” said Saklar, “and I’m talking about some long-term addicts that if you saw them on the street and you saw them today you wouldn’t even think they’re the same person. Those are the good things.

“My greatest pleasure is when I run into a formerly homeless person who is housed, employed, reunited with family and, basically, doing very well. Or them sending me pictures of their children that were born here, showing me they’re doing OK. I’ve had a lot of parents hug me and tell me I saved their son’s life. This whole issue of homelessness — it is often a matter of life or death.”

Positive feedback is vital in an arena that has more casualties than victories.

“Otherwise, you do get totally burned out. You still do to some degree,” he said. “The discouraging times come when homeless guests with whom I am working give up or leave, or something or someone interferes with progress. This happens a lot. Maybe someone who was dealing with an addiction was doing real well and then a brother comes and messes up his life. Things like that.

“The heartbreaking situations come in many forms. Obviously, a lot of homeless people whom I befriended have died — in the neighborhood of 100 in the seven years I’ve been at Siena/Francis House. I watched a lot of them waste away due to their alcoholism or cancer or other illness. We always hold memorial services for the homeless who die. I didn’t know when I took this job I would be doing that.”

Saklar is someone the homeless go to when they lose a loved one.

“Not too long ago I had to write a eulogy for a father whose two young sons and ex-wife had been murdered. He didn’t know what to say and came to me for help. I knew the children and mother had been homeless at times. I sat in the back of the funeral home and watched. He did a very good job under trying circumstances.”

Then there are the unsettling reminders of how homelessness can touch people who look just like us. Call these there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I moments.

 

 

 

 

“I had two recent experiences that were very depressing to me,” said Saklar. “First, my 16-month-old granddaughter was visiting. I spent a Sunday bouncing her on my lap, looking into her big blue eyes. Then, when I arrived at work the next day I immediately ran into a 16-month-old girl whose mother had just checked into the Siena House. She had big, beautiful, blue eyes. She was unkempt, her clothes dirty and torn. I held her and tried to be happy but it tore me up inside.

“The same thing happened with my other granddaughter, who’s 11. We baby-sit every Wednesday. One Thursday morning I arrived at work to be introduced to an 11-year-old homeless girl and her mother. That bothered the heck out of me.”

Stereotypes abound about the homeless. We’re taught to avert our eyes from THEM or to avoid THEM because they’re unclean, dangerous, crazy derelicts. The truth is, something’s happened to bring them to this point. Every single one has a story of how they got there. Saklar said the chronic homeless account for most of Omaha’s down-and-outs. Others are pushed into desperate straits by a job loss, an illness, an addiction, an abusive relationship, before getting back on their feet.

“Most homeless do have an addiction or a mental illness, or both. Most have criminal histories. Most are not job-ready or housing-ready,” said Saklar. “Most have had disasterous lives since childhood. Too many are illiterate. Never got beyond fifth grade. It’s very unbelievable the number of people who never learned to read and write. Beyond that, they are all very unique individuals.”

Pass through downtown and you’ll glimpse some of these vagabonds and nomads. Some lug their possessions in bags, others in grocery carts. Weather allowing, men mill about the Siena/Francis compound. Most stay inside, protected from the elements, under the supervision of professionals who care. Were it not for safe environments like this the homeless would resort to dumpster diving, begging, stealing, loitering on corners, in alleys, in stairwells, in parks, living in shanties. Street life is no life at all. It’s a survival-of-the-fittest grind.

The current economic crisis with its high unemployment is spiking pantry and homeless shelter usage. Human service directors like Saklar worry the slump will impact the donations they depend on.

“Our budget this year is going to be $1.8 million but that’s counting a lot of grants for things, like a $200,000 (matching) grant from Kiewit for the new day services program. When I first came here the previous year’s budget was $600,000. I’d never run a business in my life. This is a business — you’ve got cash flow, you’ve got bills, you’ve got salaries, you’ve got employment laws just like every place you work.”

What he found when he arrived, he said, were “a lot of cash flow problems. I’m here a little over a year and I borrowed $60,000 to keep the doors open. We had a little line of credit and I used it.” He acknowledges that first year or two “was a challenge personally trying to learn all this and figure out what I got myself into.”

With time, it’s all worked out. “We turned all that around nicely as far as the fundraising,” he said. Siena holds an annual walk/run that raises money for the agency’s programs. And where before Siena rarely sent out solicitation letters asking for help it sends out several a year now. “I changed that. I had to — we would never have survived. There’s a lot of competition out there.”

Even though the agency’s financially stable today he said it never fails that “by October we’re always in the red.” He said, “Last year we were like $300,000 in the hole but amazingly in this business 50 percent of all our donations come in that fourth quarter. Every year it happens. You have to have faith.”

 

 

 

 

“In 2008, he said, “probably 83 to 85 percent of all our funding support just came from people in the community responding to our fundraising letters, probably six percent came from government” and the rest from foundations, corporations, etc.

Siena/Francis does much with little. Last year it provided 126,000 nights of shelter and 330,000 meals. “We probably average 350 (guests) a night,” said Saklar. “In addition to the mental health and addictions treatment one of the major efforts we have is the employment training program. We’ve got about 105 men and women in employment training. They help us run the programs and operate the facilities. We only have 26 salaried employees — everybody else is in employment training. It enables us to operate 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week.”

Saklar said the needs are great and more services required. He pulled out blueprints to reveal the expanded campus and services he has in mind. “This is going to be the centerpiece,” he said, indicating a rendering of a bright, airy building. “This is a human resource center or empowerment center — everybody has a different name for it — but it’s going to be a multipurpose facility with a healthcare center, strictly for the homeless, a dental clinic, respite care. It will provide every service a homeless person would need right out of this facility.”

This master collaborator envisions a one-stop campus where every appropriate service provider will have a presence. “One agency can’t do everything. I want Salvation Army involved, Heartland Family Services, all the mental health programs, Douglas County, Social Security, everybody. They can just do it right here.” Currently, homeless often must shuttle to off-site provider offices around town.

His vision doesn’t end there. “We’re going to build permanant supportive housing units,” he said, giving qualifying homeless a place to call their own. What would it mean to a homeless individual to have his/her own home? “When I walk over to our men’s shelter at night I see people sandwiched on the mats we spread out all over the floor. These people lying around, their self-esteem is so low — they think this is all they deserve. Then I think of the pride of knowing you have your own little apartment. What a huge lift up it’d be for these people.”

The plans also include “an employment-based center, where guests will do day labor. Perhaps an on-site manufacturer will put homeless people to work.

The price tag for the proposed 21-acre social service campus: $36 million. That includes an estimated $10 million in on-site improvements already completed.

He feels urgency to get it done but is pragmatic enough to be patient. “It needs to happen today,” he said. “This has been on the books for a long time. I think this is going to become a very worthwhile campus. It’s all part of the big picture.” Realistically, he thinks the campus could be completed in four years. He’s looking at funding avenues to realize the dream.

One nagging worry is potential opposition to a homeless campus in trendy NoDo, especially once the ballpark’s built. NoDo’s once hard streets are undergoing urban renewal, as warehouses, junk yards, manufacturing plants, bars and flop houses give way to gentrified new digs by Creighton University, the City and commercial developers. Fancy brick and mortar facades don’t change the fact homelessness exists. It’s a reality not going away anytime soon. Turning a blind eye won’t solve it. Moving shelters elsewhere only isolates the homeless from helping agencies.

Saklar’s advocated to keep services downtown, where, historically, the homeless congregate. “Somebody might want to come and take this place out. I know it could happen, and so I’m doing everything I can to solidify this agency-this campus,” he said. He’s weighed in on the NoDo development plan and he’s active in the Jefferson Square Business Association, assuring stakeholders a homeless campus can be a good neighbor. The more entrenched his homeless oasis, he figures, “the more impractical, more expensive” it is to remove.

“But you always have that danger,” he said. “So I’ve taken steps to ensure this is the appropriate place. One of those steps is working with Mayor (Mike) Fahey. He sees value in what we’re trying to do here. He’s been supportive from day one.”

City hall and Saklar work well together. He has strong allies there. It’s how the new day shelter Siena/Francis runs got built. Lameduck Fahey sings Saklar’s praises. “Mike has served Omaha’s homeless population with great distinction,” he said. “Under Mike’s leadership, the Siena/Francis House and the City of Omaha have developed an outstanding partnership through the establishment of a permanent homeless day shelter. Mike has gone the extra mile to help those in need.”

Is Saklar concerned what stance the next mayor may take? “No, because I think I’ve got relationships with everybody that’s running,” he said. “I think we’ll be fine.” He noted that the designs call for “a beautiful campus with green boundaries, landscaping, elevations that isolate it without having to erect fences.”

Once hired, Saklar gave himself 10 years on the job. Seven years in, he’s intent on  reaching certain goals before he’s ready to call it quits. It may be three years, it may be more, “nothing’s set in stone.”

“Siena/Francis House needs to concentrate on getting better. We’ll get everything in place and then this agency needs to prove it can effectively deal with homelessness. I want to complete the vision I have,” he said. “I want everything operating at full capacity, doing what it’s supposed to be doing.” Then, and only then, he said, might he feel comfortable to “slowly maybe slip away…”

Related Articles
Categories: AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), Health/Wellness, Omaha, Social Justice, Social Work, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , ,

A Force of Nature Named Evie: Still a Maverick Social Justice Advocate at 100

June 16, 2010 Leave a comment

Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother," a...

Image via Wikipedia

Spend even a little while with Evie Zysman, as I did, and she will leave an impression on you with her intelligence and passion and commitment.  I wrote this story for the New Horizons, a publication of the Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging. We profile dynamic seniors in its pages, and if there’s ever been anyone to overturn outmoded ideas of older individuals being out of touch or all used up, Evie is the one. She is more vital than most people half or a third her age.  I believe you will be as struck by her and her story as I was, and as I continue to be.

A Force of Nature Named Evie: Still a Maverick Social Justice Advocate at 100

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in the New Horizons

When 100-year-old maverick social activist, children’s advocate and force of nature Evelyn “Evie” Adler Zysman recalls her early years as a social worker back East, she remembers, “as if it were yesterday,” coming upon a foster care nightmare.

It was the 1930s, and the former Evie Adler was pursuing her graduate degree from Columbia University’s New York School of Social Work. As part of her training, Zysman, a Jew, handled Jewish family cases.

“I went to a very nice little home in Queens,” she said from her art-filled Dundee neighborhood residence. “A woman came to the door with a 6-year-old boy. She said, ‘Would you like to see his room?’ and I said, ‘I’d love to.’ We go in, and it’s a nice little room with no bed. Then the woman excuses herself for a minute, and the kid says to me, ‘Would you like to see where I sleep?’ I said, ‘Sure, honey.’ He took me to the head of the basement stairs. There was no light. We walked down in the dark and over in a corner was an old cot. He said, ‘This is where I sleep.’ Then he held out his hand and says, ‘A bee could sting me, and I wouldn’t cry.’

“I knew right then no child should be born into a living hell. We got him out of that house very fast and got her off the list of foster mothers. That was one of the experiences that said to me: Kids are important, their lives are important, they need our help.”

Evie Zysman

Imbued with an undying zeal to make a difference in people’s lives, especially children’s lives, Evie threw herself into her work. Even now, at an age when most of her contemporaries are dead or retired, she remains committed to doing good works and supporting good causes.

Consistent with her belief that children need protection, she spent much of her first 50 years as a licensed social worker, making the rounds among welfare, foster care and single-parent families. True to her conviction that all laborers deserve a decent wage and safe work spaces, she fought for workers’ rights as an organized union leader. Acting on her belief in early childhood education, she helped start a project that opened day care centers in low income areas long before Head Start got off the ground; and she co-founded, with her late husband, Jack Zysman, Playtime Equipment Co., which sold quality early childhood education supplies.

Evie developed her keen social consciousness during one of the greatest eras of need in this country — the Great Depression. The youngest of eight children born to Jacob and Lizzie Adler, she grew up in a caring family that encouraged her to heed her own mind and go her own way but to always have an open heart.

“Mama raised seven daughters as different as night and day and as close as you could possibly get,” she said. “Mama said to us, ‘Each of you is pretty good, but together you are much better. Remember girls: Shoulder to shoulder.’ That was our slogan. And then, to each one of us she would say, ‘Don’t look to your sister — be yourself.’ It was taken for granted each one of us would be ourselves and do something. We loved each other and accepted the fact each one of us had our own lives to live. That was great.”

Even though her European immigrant parents had limited formal education, they encouraged their offspring to appreciate the finer things, including music and reading.

“Papa was a scholar in the Talmud and the Torah. People would come and consult him. My mother couldn’t read or write English but she had a profound respect for education. She would put us girls on the streetcar to go to the library. How can you live without books? Our home was filled with music, too. My sister Bessie played the piano and played it very well. My sister Marie played the violin, something she did professionally at the Loyal Hotel. My sister Mamie sang. We would always be having these concerts in our house and my father would run around opening the windows so the neighbors could also enjoy.”

Then there was the example set by her parents. Jacob brought home crates filled with produce from the wholesale fruit and vegetable stand he ran in the Old Market and often shared the bounty with neighbors. One wintry day Lizzie was about to fetch Evie’s older siblings from school, lest they be lost in a mounting snowstorm, when, according to Evie, the family’s black maid intervened, saying, “You’re not going — you’re staying right here. I’ll bring the children.’ Mama said, ‘You can go, but my coat around you,’ and draped her coat over her. You see, we cared about things. We grew up in a home in which it was taken for granted you had a responsibility for the world around you. There was no question about it.”

Along with the avowed obligation she felt to make the world a better place, came a profound sense of citizenship. She proudly recalls the first time she was old enough to exercise her voting right.

“I will always remember walking into that booth and writing on the ballot and feeling like I am making a difference. If only kids today could have that feeling when it comes to voting,” said Evie, a lifelong Democrat who was an ardent supporter of FDR and his New Deal. When it comes to politics, she’s more than a bystander — she actively campaigns for candidates. She’ll be happy with either Obama or Clinton in the White House.

When it came time to choose a career path, young Evie simply assumed it would be in an arena helping people.

“I was supposed to, somehow,” is how she sums it up all these years later. “I believed, and I still believe, that to take responsibility as a citizen, you must give. You must be active.”

For her, it was inconceivable one would not be socially or politically active in an era filled with defining human events — from millions losing their savings and jobs in the wake of the stock market crash to World War I veterans marching in the streets for relief to unions agitating for workers’ rights to a resurgence of Ku Klux Klan terror to America’s growing isolationism to the stirrings of Fascism at home and abroad. All of this, she said, “got me interested in politics and in keeping my eyes open to what was going on around me. It was a very telling time.”

Unless you were there, it’s difficult to grasp just how devastating the Depression was to countless people’s pocketbooks and psyches.

“It’s so hard for you younger generations to understand” she told a young visitor to her house. “You have never lived in a time of need in this country.” Unfortunately, she added, the disparity “between rich and poor” in America only seems to widen as the years go by.

With her feisty I-want-to-change-the-world spirit, Evie, an Omaha Central High School graduate, would not be deterred from furthering her formal education and, despite meager finances, became the first member of her family to attend college. Because her family could not afford to send her there, she found other means of support via scholarships from the League of Women Voters and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where the Phi Betta Kappa earned her bachelor’s degree.

“I knew that for me to go to college, I had to find a way to go. I had to find work, I had to find scholarships. Nothing came easy economically.”

To help pay her own way, she held a job in the stocking department at Gold’s Department store in downtown Lincoln. An incident she overhead there brought into sharp relief for her the classism that divides America. “

One day, a woman with a little poodle under her arm came over to a water fountain in the back of the store and let her dog drink from it. Well, the floorwalker came running over and said, ‘Madam, that fountain is for people,’ and the woman said, ‘I’m so sorry, I thought it was for the employees.’ That’s an absolutely true story and it tells you where my politics come from and why I care about the world around me and I want to do something about it.”

Her undergraduate studies focused on economics. “I was concerned I should understand how to make a living,” she said. “That was important.” Her understanding of hard times was not just of the at-arms-length, ivory-tower variety. She got a taste of what it was like to struggle when, while still an undergrad, she was befriended by the Lincoln YWCA’s then-director who arranged for Evie to participate in internships that offered a glimpse into how “the other half lived.” Evie worked in blue collar jobs marked by hot, dark, close work spaces.

“She thought it was important for me to have these kind of experiences and so she got me to go do these projects. One, when I was a sophomore, took me in the summer to Chicago, where I worked as a folder in a laundry and lived in a working girls’ rooming house. There was no air conditioning in that factory. And then, between my junior and senior years, I went to New York City, where I worked in a garment factory. I was supposed to be the ‘do-it’ girl — get somebody coffee if they wanted it or give them thread if they needed it, and so forth.

“The workers in our factory were making some rich woman a beautiful dress. They asked me to get a certain thread. And being already socially conscious, I thought, ‘I’ll fix her,’ and I gave them the wrong thread,” a laughing Evie recalled, still delighted at the thought of tweaking the nose of that unknown social maven.

Upon graduating with honors from UNL she set her sights on a master’s degree. First, however, she confronted misogyny and bigotry in the figure of the economics department chairman.

“He said to me, ‘Well, Evelyn, you’re entitled to a graduate fellowship at Berkeley but, you know, you’re a woman and you are a Jew, so what would you possibly do with your graduate degree when you complete it?’ Well, today, you’d sue him if he ever dared say that.”

Instead of letting discrimination stop her, the indomitable Evie carried-on and searched for a fellowship from another source. She found it, too, from the Jewish School of Social Work in New York.

“It was a lot of money, so I took it,” she said. “I had my ethic courses with the Jewish School and my technical courses with Columbia,” where she completed her master’s in 1932.

As her thesis subject she chose the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, one of whose New York factories she worked in. There was a strike on at the time and she interviewed scores of unemployed union members who told her just how difficult it was feeding a family on the dole and how agonizing it was waking-up each morning only to wonder — How are we going to get by? and When am I ever going to work again?

As a social worker she saw many disturbing things — from bad working conditions to child endangerment cases to families struggling to survive on scarce resources. She witnessed enough misery, she said, “that I became free choice long before there was such a phrase.”

Her passion for the job was great but as she became “deeply involved” in the United Social Service Employees Union, she put her first career aside to assume the presidency of the New York chapter.

“I could do even more for people, like getting them decent wages, than I could in social work.” Among the union’s accomplishments during her tenure as president, she said, was helping “guarantee social workers were qualified and paid fairly. You had to pay enough in order to get qualified people. We felt if you, as social workers, were going to make decisions impacting people’s lives, you better be qualified to do it.”

Feeling she’d done all she could as union head, she returned to the social work field. While working for a Jewish Federation agency in New York, she was given the task of interviewing Jewish refugees who had escaped growing Nazi persecution in Germany and neighboring countries. Her job was to place new arrivals with the appropriate state social service departments that could best meet their needs. Her conversations with emigres revealed a sense of relief for having escaped but an even greater worry for their loved ones back home.

“They expressed deep, deep concern and deep, deep sadness and fear about what was going on over there,” she said, “and anxiety about what would happen to their family members that remained over there. They worried too about themselves — about how they would make it here in this country.”

A desire to help others was not the only passion stoked in Evie during those ”wonderful” New York years. She met her future husband there while still a grad student. Dashing Jack Zysman, an athletic New York native, had recently completed his master’s in American history from New York University. One day, Evie went to some office to retrieve data she needed on the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, when she met Jack, who was doing research in the very same office. Sharing similar interests and backgrounds, the two struck up a dialogue and before long they were chums.

The only hitch was that Evie was engaged to “a nice Jewish boy in Omaha.” During a break from her studies, she returned home to sort things out. One day, she was playing tennis at Miller Park when she looked across the green and there stood Jack. “He drove from New York to tell me I was definitely coming back and that I was not to marry anybody but him.” Swept off her feet, she broke off her engagement and promised Jack she would be his.

After their marriage, the couple worked and resided in New York, where she pursued union and social work activities and he taught and coached at a high school. Their only child, John, today a political science professor at Cal-Berkeley, was born in New York. Evie has two grandchildren by John and his wife.

Along the way, Evie became a New Yorker at heart. “I loved that city,” she said. Her small family “lived all over the place,” including the Village, Chelsea and Harlem. As painful as it was to leave, the Zysmans decided Omaha was better suited for raising John and, so, the family moved here shortly after World War II.

Soon the couple began Playtime Equipment, their early childhood education supply company. The genesis for Playtime grew out of Evie’s own curiosity and concern about the educational value of play materials she found at the day care John attended. When the day care’s staff asked her to “help us know what to do,” she rolled up her sleeves and went to work.

She called on experts in New York, including children’s authors, day care managers and educators. When she sought a play equipment manufacturer’s advice, she got a surprise when the rep said, “Why don’t you start a company and supply kids with the right stuff?” It was not what she planned, but she and Jack ran with the idea, forming and operating Playtime right from their home. The company distributed everything from books, games and puzzles to blocks and tinker toys to arts and crafts to playground apparatus to teaching aids. The Zysmans’ main customers were schools and day cares, but parents also sought them out.

“I helped raise half the kids in Omaha,” Evie said.

The Zysman residence became a magnet for state and public education officials, who came to rely on Evie as an early childhood education proponent and catalyst. She began forming coalitions among social service, education and legislative leaders to address the early childhood education gap. A major initiative in that effort was Project AID, a program she helped organize that set-up preschools at black churches in Omaha to boost impoverished children’s development. She said the success of the project helped convince state legislators to make kindergarten a legal requirement and played a role in Nebraska being selected as one of the first states to receive the federal government’s Head Start program.

Gay McTate, an Omaha social worker and close friend of Zysman’s, said, “Evie’s genius lay in her willingness to do something about problems and her capacity to bring together and inspire people who could make a difference.”

Evie immersed herself in many more efforts to improve the lives of children, including helping form the Council for Children’s Services and the Coordinated Childcare Project, clearinghouses geared to meeting at-risk children’s needs.

The welfare of children remains such a passion of hers that she still gets mad when she thinks about the “miserable salaries” early childhood educators make and how state budget cuts adversely impact kids’ programs.

“Everybody agrees today the future of our country depends on educating our children. So, what do we do about it? We cut the budgets. Don’t get me started…” she said, visibly upset at the idea.

Besides children, she has worked with such organizations as the United Way, the Urban League, the League of Women Voters, the Jewish Council of Women, Hadassah and the local social action group Omaha Together One Community.

In her nearly century of living, she’s seen America make “lots of progress” in the area of social justice, but feels “we have a long way to go. I worry about the future of this country.”

Calling herself “a good secular Jew,” she eschews attending services and instead trusts her conscience to “tell me what’s right and wrong. I don’t see how you can call yourself a good Jew and not be a social activist.” Even today, she continues working for a better community by participating in Benchmark, a National Council of Jewish Women initiative to raise awareness and discussion about court appointments and by organizing a Temple Israel Synagogue Mitzvah (Hebrew, for good deed) that staffs library summer reading programs with volunteers.

Her good deeds have won her numerous awards, most recently the D.J.’s Hero Award from the Salvation Army and Temple Israel’s Tikkun Olam (Hebrew, for repairing the world) Social Justice Award.

She’s outlived Jack and her siblings, yet her days remain rich in love and life. “I play bridge. I get my New York Times every day. I have my books (she is a regular at the Sorenson Library branch). I’ve got friends. I have my son and daughter-in-law. I have my grandchild. What else do you need? It’s been a very full life.”

As she nears a century of living Evie knows the fight for social justice is a never-ending struggle she can still shine a light on.

“How would I define social justice?” she said at an Omaha event honoring her. “You know, it’s silly to try to put a name to realizing that everybody should have the same rights as you. There is no name for it. It’s just being human…it’s being Jewish. There’s no name for it. Give a name to my mother who couldn’t read or write but thought that you should do for each other.”

Related Articles
Categories: Aging, Education, Evie Zysman, History, Jewish Culture, Omaha, Social Justice, Social Work, Writing, Youth Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

John Sorensen and His Abbott Sisters Project: One Man’s Magnificent Obsession Shines Light on Extraordinary Nebraska Women

April 26, 2010 1 comment

John Sorensen with bronze bust of Grace Abbott

 

 

This is a story that attracted me as soon as I learned about the lengths to which its subject, John Sorensen, was going to in order to promote the legacy of two long dead women he never knew.  I am drawn to stories of passion and obsession, and I dare say John is someone consumed by a mission he’s on with his Abbott Sisters Project to honor the work of early 20th century social workers and educators Grace and Edith Abbott of Nebraska.

The following story was published in the June 2009 New Horizons newspaper.  The layout and photographs and article all worked harmoniously together to create a great spread.  I post the story here because I think it makes a good read and it introduces you to an interesting personality in the figure of Sorensen and to the remarkable accomplishments of two women I certainly never heard of before working on this story. I think you’ll find, as I did, that Sorensen and the Abbotts make a fitting troika of unbridled passion.

NOTE: John has worked closely over the years with Ann Coyne from the University of Nebraska at Omaha‘s School of Social Work, which was recently renamed the Grace Abbott School of Social Work.   Coyne’s a great champion of the work of the Abbott sisters, particularly Grace Abbott, and drew on Sorensen’s work to make the case  to university officials to rededicate the school in honor of Grace Abbott.  John is also nearing completion on a documentary film that ties together the legacy of the Abbotts and their concern for immigrant women, children, and families and a story quilt project he organized that involved Sudanese girls living in Grand Island telling the stories of their families’ homeland and their new home in America through quilting.

My new story about John Sorensen and his magnificent obsession with the Abbotts is now posted, and in it you can learn more about his now completed documentary, which is being screened this fall.

 

 

File:Grace Abbott 1929.jpg

Grace Abbott

 

 

John Sorensen and His Abbott Sisters Project: One Man’s Magnificent Obsession Shines Light on Extraordinary Nebraska Women

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in the New Horizons

Grace and Edith Abbott may be the most extraordinary Nebraskans you’ve never heard of. John Sorensen aims to change that.

Born and reared on Grand Island’s prairie outskirts in the last quarter of the 19th century, when Indians still roamed the land, the Abbott sisters graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. After teaching in Grand Island they felt called to a secular ministry — the then emerging field of social work in Chicago. They earned advanced degrees at the University of Chicago, where they later taught.

No ivory tower dwellers, the sisters worked with Hull House founder Jane Addams at her famous social settlement. There, amid miserable, overcrowded tenement slums, they set a progressive course for the fair treatment of immigrants, women and children that still has traction today. The sisters’ trailblazing paths followed the lead of their abolitionist father, an early Nebraska politico, and Quaker mother, whose family worked the Underground Railroad. The parents were avid suffragists.

The sisters exerted wide influence: Grace as a federal administrator charged with children and family affairs; Edith as a university educator. They were outspoken advocates-muckrakers-reformers-advisers who helped to set rigorous protocols for social work and to craft public policies and laws protecting marginalized groups. Each attained many firsts for women. Both valued their Nebraska roots.

They were feted in their lifetimes but never gained the fame of Nobel Prize-winner colleague Jane Addams. Working in a neglected arena so long ago resulted in the Abbotts receding to the fringes of history. Grace died in 1939. Edith in 1957. Neither married nor bore children, so no descendent was left to carry the torch.

Enter John Sorensen. While it’s true few outside social work circles know the Abbotts, more will if Sorensen, a Grand Island native, has his way. For 17 years the New York-based writer-director has spearheaded the Abbott Sisters Living Legacy Project. The multi-media effort is the vehicle for his magnificent obsession with shining a light on the women and their significant achievements. Why an expatriate Nebraskan living in Greenwich Village is drawn to a pair of largely forgotten Great Plains women can be answered by the affection and affinity he feels for them.

“I simply love the sisters and this love somehow leads to the work I do,” said Sorensen. “I also admire their work for children and women and immigrants, and I feel a family-like connection and perhaps responsibility to them from sharing a hometown. I could no more turn my back on them, their legacy and their story than I could my own family. That love, that sense of faith is unconquerable.”

 

Edith Abbott

 

 

Just as the Abbotts were mavericks Sorensen goes against the grain. In an era when women were denied the right to vote, excluded from most jobs and treated as chattel, the Abbotts defied convention as working women and social activists who protested injustice. Sorensen’s not an activist per se but a liberal humanist whose  youthful interests in film, music and art made him a misfit in rough-hewn Grand Island. His dogged commitment to perpetuate the Abbott story, often in the face of indifference, underscores a determination to do his own thing.

“I do have a high degree of identification with them,” he said. “I empathize with them. In the same way I choose a play to direct or a script to write I look for a character I identify with or something in their story, like in Grace’s story, that is me. There is some part of her that is me.

“The one term that maybe comes up most frequently in Edith Abbott’s memoir about her sister and her family is this word ‘different.’ She said people just looked at the Abbotts as being different — ‘We weren’t like the people in town.’”

Sorensen’s own family stands apart because his parents, who still live in town, are pillars of the community. He feels keenly the expectations that come with that.

Then there’s the whole sibling parallel. “In Grace’s relationship with Edith, two years her elder, I found many things in common with my relationship with my brother (Jeff), who’s four years older,” said Sorensen. “There’s things the younger sibling learned from the older one, felt challenged by, felt threatened by, but all of those things made them develop in very positive ways.”

 

 

File:Jane Addams in a car.jpg

Jane Addams

 

 

The parental factor strikes home, too. “The way Grace and Edith’s parents nurtured and encouraged and challenged them as kids I certainly felt growing up through my mother,” said Sorensen, whose mom worked for Northwestern Bell and served on the board of G.I.’s Edith Abbott Memorial Library.

“So there were a lot of things I could identify with,” he said, “but I would say the deeper I dug into the Abbott story, into their childhoods, I felt a particular attraction to Grace. I found Grace was a very clever, very kind, but very naughty little girl basically. Edith writes that Grace was constantly in trouble at school. She remembered a moment where the teacher stopped Grace and said, ‘I’m going to have to call your mother, I don’t know what to do with you,’ and Grace immediately responded, ‘But Mother doesn’t know what to do with me either. Sometimes I don’t know what to do with myself.’ It’s funny but also very moving.”

That disconnection resonates with Sorensen, who said he had trouble fitting in because he was “strange.” “Being interested in the arts only made my weirdness seem more weird in that town in that time. School didn’t make any sense to me. I just didn’t like it.” He dropped out of college, never earning a degree. “Me and school don’t get along too well,” he said.

Just as it took Grace awhile to figure out where she belonged, it took Sorensen a long time to find his way.

“Like Grace, I stayed in town well after my high school graduation,” he said. “She stayed until she was 29, and I stayed until I was 26. Those challenging, waiting, searching years are something else that I feel I share with her.”

Then there’s the mission work the Abbotts felt compelled to do and “a kind of destiny” that’s led Sorensen to the Abbott story. The more he invests himself in their tale the more duty-bound he feels to be true to it.

“Again, that is where the love and the faith comes into things,” he said.

With great love comes great responsibility to get it right.

“This becomes the obligation. If you don’t know what you’re talking about and if you’re not willing to pay the price in terms of the study, the research, the heavy lifting,” he said, “it’s not enough that you care about it deeply.”

Despite his lack of formal training Sorensen’s assembled an Abbott Sisters project that cuts across academic disciplines and partners with scholars and educators. An outgrowth is a recently published book he edited with historian Judith Selander, The Grace Abbott Reader (University of Nebraska Press). This anthology of writings by and about Grace is the first in a series of planned Abbott books.

He’s nearing completion of a video documentary, The Quilted Conscience, that explores how the sisters’ concern for immigrants resonates today in places like Grand Island. Sorensen and his cameras followed a group of Sudanese refugee girls there who worked with renowned quilt artist Peggie Hartwell in making a mural story-quilt with images representing the girls’ memories of their homeland and the dreams they hold for their future in America.

“For many of the girls it has been a life changing experience,” said Tracy Morrow, a Grand Island teacher who works with the newcomers. “They feel better about themselves. They have the ability to stand in front of a group and tell their stories. It was very emotional for the girls. They put so much work into it. I feel like John’s doing what the Abbott sisters did by educating the Grand Island community about the Sudanese and educating the Sudanese about Grand Island and America.”

University of Nebraska at Omaha School of Social Work professor Ann Coyne said the sisters “really are a living legacy because we’re now dealing with some of the same problems related to children, maternal health and immigrants they dealt with” in the early 20th century. She said most striking is the parallel between the 1910s through Great Depression period with today, two eras marked by war, economic crisis, immigration debates and childhood-maternal issues. Coyne said reading the sisters’ words today reveals how “very contemporary” their philosophies remain.

Coyne said the Abbotts’ focus on immigrants echoes the yearly trip UNO social work students make to Nicaragua to live in family homes, visit orphanages and clinics and the biyearly trip students make to China. Students also work with refugee families in Nebraska. She said UNO social work graduate student Amy Panning “is living the legacy of Nebraska’s most famous social worker, Grace Abbott,” as the new head of international adoptions for Adoption Links Worldwide.

The storyteller in Sorensen knows a good tale when he sees one. In the Abbotts he’s hit upon a saga of women with backbone, compassion and vision engaged in social action. These early independent feminists from pioneer stock were part of the progressive wave that sought to reform the Industrial Age’s myriad social ills. He tells facets of their story in film, video, radio, stage and print. He makes presentations. He organizes special programs that pay tribute to their rich legacy.

He’s not alone in seeing the Abbotts as historic do-gooders whose work deserves more attention and greater appreciation. Coyne holds Grace Abbott in the highest regard. “She is the outstanding social worker in American history, so the fact she came from Nebraska just makes it better,” said Coyne, who’s convinced Abbott would he a household name today if she’d been a man.. “What I admire her for is that she knew how to work the political system in Washington to make sure laws got passed to ensure children really were protected and weren’t just left to the whims of individuals. She was savvy. She got things done. Children were guaranteed a number of things for their care and concern that weren’t in place before.”

 

 

Edith and Grace Abbott

 

 

Though Sorensen shares the same hometown as the Abbotts it took years before he learned anything about them. His first inkling came not at home but back East. Growing up he was aware a G.I. park and library bore the Abbott name, but he didn’t know the stories of the women behind these monuments and inscriptions.

His work has helped the town and state rediscover two of their greatest gifts to the world. Working with Grand Island public officials, Sorensen promotes community-school events that celebrate the sisters. All part of a pilgrimage he makes to this place where the sisters were born and are buried. Call it fate or karma, but this less than stellar former student now gives Abbott talks before G.I. schoolchildren, making sure they know what he didn’t at their age.

Morrow said, “We really didn’t know the Abbott sisters before John.”

“What started as an idea to call attention to the Abbotts has really morphed into something much larger and much more powerful and that’s a tribute to John,” said Grand Island Public Schools superintendent Steve Joel. “He’s got people working on this thing that I think are stretched far and wide — not only in Nebraska but New York and other parts of the country.”

None of this was on Sorensen’s mind 23 years ago. Ironically, the young man who “never felt at home in Grand Island” often now returns to share his passion for the Abbotts. He left home in ‘86 to study cinema at the California Institute of the Arts, where he ended up a protege of British director Alexander MacKendrick (The Sweet Smell of Success). By the early ‘90s Sorensen did film and theater work in New York. He assisted producer Lewis Allen and his wife, playwright/screenwriter Jay Presson Allen, on Broadway (Tru) and TV (Hothouse) projects.

Sorensen founded a theater troupe in Manhattan and began making short films. The very first book he wrote, Our Show Houses, got published. It explores the unusual history of Grand Island’s Golden Age movie theaters and proprietors, including an “in” the town’s leading theater owner enjoyed with Hollywood royalty that brought unexpected aspects of Tinsel Town glamour there.

S.N. Wolbach, a prominent G. I. businessman in the Roaring Twenties, was a friend of Universal Pictures head Carl Laemmle from their days as New York merchants. The association led Laemmle to send Universal contract stars such as Barbara Stanwyck to appear in the small Midwest town at Wolbach’s Grand Theatre and a studio crew to shoot a silent newsreel of the town. Laemmle also convinced top movie palace architect John Eberson, who designed the Roxy in New York, to design Wolbach’s Capital Theatre, where Lillian Gish and Louis Calhern performed live on-stage in The Student Prince and Sig Romburg led his orchestra.

When in the course of research Sorensen discovered the Universal footage of G.I. he recut it with snippets from other vintage moving pictures of the town for a new film he entitled Hometown Movies. It’s shown on Nebraska Educational Television.

In doing these projects Sorensen was following an edict from his mentor. “MacKendrick was very big on writing things that you knew about or that were unique to your experience,” he said.

“Around ‘91 or ‘92 I started looking for other things connected to Grand Island. About that time I was working on a project for the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in New York,” said Sorensen. “I was editing an anthology of speeches that Bobby Kennedy had given. While doing that I came across a copy of the book A Nation of Immigrants that President (John F.) Kennedy had written and that Bobby Kennedy had written the preface to, and the first name in the bibliography was Edith Abbott. It just kind of threw me. I knew the name, my mother had been on the Edith Abbott library board when I was growing up here.But I had no idea who she was or what she’d done.

“I kind of thought, ‘Oh, that’s interesting, I’ll look up something about those women.’ I went to a library in New York, looked in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and there was no entry for Edith but a very interesting article about Grace, and I thought, ‘Oh, maybe there’s a story here.’ It’s something I do — always keeping my eye out for something unique that hasn’t been covered before.”

His interest peaked, Sorensen continued his quest for Abbott information.

“So I guess the next trip out here to Nebraska I went to the Stuhr Museum (Grand Island) to go through their files on the family. They don’t have a lot but they have some interesting things and among them was a copy of a letter that President Franklin Roosevelt had written to Grace. It was so impressive.”

Sorensen used the letter as a preface to a chapter in The Grace Abbott Reader. Here’s an excerpt from FDR’s 1934 note to Grace Abbott:

“My dear Miss Abbott you have rendered service of inestimable value to the children and mothers and fathers of the country, as well as to the federal and state governments…I have long followed your work and been in hearty accord with  the policies and plans which you have developed.”

Coming upon JFK’s reference to one sister and FDR’s adulatory letter to the other proved an “Aha” moment for Sorensen, who also discovered Eleanor Roosevelt was an admirer of Grace Abbott. “At that moment I’m thinking, ‘There’s got to be some story here,’ and at that point I did just enough sniffing around to be certain in my heart there was something worth telling.”

Aptly, Sorensen’s search took him home — to the Abbott library. He later expanded his hunt to searching archives and conducting interviews in his roles as scholar, journalist, detective, documentarian, writer.

“So I was beginning to educate myself. At that point I raised just enough to have like a three-month research project. I went to the University of Chicago.”

He recorded interviews with Chicagoans who worked with or studied under the Abbotts. The more data he gathered the bigger the story grew.

 

 

.
John Sorensen working with Grand Island elementary school students as part of Abbott Sisters lesson

 

 

What Sorensen’s discovered about Grace Abbott alone comprises a wealth of achievements that seem too vast for any one person to have completed, especially in such a short lifetime. She died at age 60.

A select list of Grace’s early feats:

•Directed Immigrants Protective League in Chicago

•Wrote “Within the City Gates” weekly articles for the Chicago Evening Post

•Worked with the Women’s Trade Union LeagueTraveled to Central Europe to study emigrant working-living conditions

•Testified before Congress

•Served on Mayor’s Commission on Unemployment in Chicago

•Chaired national Special Committee on Penal and Correctional Institutions

•Served as delegate to Women’s Peace Conference at the Hague

•Organized and chaired Conference of Oppressed Nationalities in nation’s capital

•Named director of Child Labor Division with the U.S. Children’s Bureau in D.C.

•Authored book, The Immigrant and the Community

•At President Woodrow Wilson’s behest served as secretary to the White House Conference on Child Welfare

•Served as consultant to War Labor Policies Board

•Represented Children’s Bureau at conferences in Europe

All this by 1919. Amazingly, she’d only begun her social work career in 1908. Others saw her potential early on and put her in key leadership positions she excelled in. Her phenomenal rise was partly being in the right place at the right time but clearly she was a highly capable doer who impressed those around her.

In 1921 President Warren G. Harding named her Children’s Bureau chief. In her 13- year reign she helped ensure the health, safety, education of the most vulnerable among us. Using every tool at her disposal Abbott spread the word about the pressing needs for child labor reform, improved maternal and childcare, et cetera.

 

Peggie Hartwell

 

 

 

A sample of what Grace did the last 18 years of her life:

•Hosted NBC radio series, produced films, published literature on children’s issues

•Worked for U.S. Constitutional “Children’s Amendment” to regulate child labor

•Administered Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act, the first system of federal aid for social welfare in U.S. history.

•Named president of National Conference of Social Workers

•Helped pen League of Nations Committee “Declaration of the Rights of the Child”

•First woman in U.S. history nominated to Presidential cabinet post

•Awarded National Institute of Social Sciences Gold Medal

•Good Housekeeping named her one of America’s 12 “Most Distinguished Women”

•Appointed adviser to U.S. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins

•Served as managing editor of the Social Service Review

•Contributed to drafting and passage of the Social Security Act

•Served on FDR’s Council on Economic Security

•Chaired U.S. delegation to International Labor Organization Conference in Geneva

•Chaired U.S. delegation to Pan American Conference in Mexico City

•Authored book, The Child and the State

Her noteworthy credits would be longer had ill health not forced her to decline opportunities, such as succeeding Jane Addams as Hull House director. A case of tuberculosis slowed Abbott in the 1920s. After rebounding, her health declined again in the 1930s, by which time she’d resigned from the Children’s Bureau and returned to teach at the University of Chicago, where she rejoined her sister.

Edith Abbott’s accomplishments were numerous, too. After Hull House she studied in London and upon returning to the U.S. helped establish the country’s first university-based school of social work at the University of Chicago in 1920. In 1924 she became dean, making her the first woman dean of a graduate school in an American university. The field work and training she mandated for social workers set professional standards. She launched the journal Social Service Review, serving as managing editor. She advised the U.S. government on federal aid relief during the Depression and the International Office of the League of Nations on problems of women in industry, child labor, immigration, legislation, et cetera.

The sisters remained close siblings and colleagues, often consulting each other.

“I think from an early age, the sisters recognized they were each somehow mysteriously ‘made whole’ by the other — that together they could learn things and experience things and do things impossible for either on her own,” said Sorensen.

An indication of how dear their roots remained was a habit of referring to themselves in interviews as “the Abbott sisters of Nebraska.” Grace was the star but instead of envy Edith expressed admiration for her younger sister. Their shared experience on the prairie, in academia, at Hull House and on the front lines of social work gave each a deep understanding of the other. If anyone could appreciate the mounting challenges Grace faced inside the Beltway it was Edith. No doubt Grace’s many run-ins with political foes, including President Wilson, and her tireless work around the world weakened her already compromised health.

Grace described public service as “the strenuous life” and dismissed critics with, “It is impossible for them to understand that to have had a part in the struggle, to have done what one could, is in itself the reward of effort and the comfort in defeat.” Her militant campaigning for human rights criticized America for neglecting its children and demanded the state care for its homeless, orphaned, sick, poor. Her strong stances elicited strong responses. She was called a socialist. She was an ardent humanitarian, a watchdog for the dispossessed, a voice for the voiceless.

 

 

Sudanese student participants in the story quilt project

 

 

Edith fought the same battles. Early social work was a perilous job not for the faint of heart. Sorensen said Edith writes about how “’sometimes you didn’t know if your next step was going to plunge you off the edge of a cliff or come down on a bridge to take you across the gap’. Many people literally or figuratively died in that process but what distinguished that generation is that they were like pioneers — they were willing to go and a lot of them were willing to die for it.”

Sorensen’s struck by how Grace used the wartime idiom of the day to describe the hard, uphill road of social work as “battle front service” fraught with “casualties.” She equated social workers with “shock troops.” Apt language for this warrior-protector of the underclass. She came by her fierce convictions via nature and nurture. As Sorensen put it in a recent Omaha address he gave about the Abbotts:

“The combative way was nothing new to Grace. It was the life into which she had been born…she had met and kept company with her family’s many unusual house guests, including suffragist heroines Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone. Before she had started school Grace had already given several years of childhood service to the new women’s suffrage movement of the Midwest, working alongside her remarkable mother and father, who were leading activists…”

Standing up for what’s right can take a heavy toll. By the end of her life, said Sorensen, “Grace was so physically debilitated by her work, it was so physically exhausting and she was so vilified, her body was falling apart.”

He’s mined insights about Grace from extensive notes Edith left behind for an intended but never finished biography of her sister. His first attempt at synthesizing Grace’s story was a three-hour radio series he wrote, My Sister and Comrade, that drew on Edith’s recollections. The series aired on Nebraska Public Radio in the mid-’90s. He then adapted the script for a short performance piece.

He always wanted to do a book and film about the Abbotts but found scant interest for projects whose subjects were obscure figures from the past. To build support he spoke about the Abbotts at schools, libraries and anywhere that would have him. His fledgling Abbott project became whatever he could cobble together.

“I just did whatever I could to keep transforming it and keeping it in people’s faces,” he said. “I could see I was having success in raising awareness — that people were slowly getting to know around the state who these women were. I shifted the focus of the project to what I call the living legacy work — to say, ‘Look, this is not just the study of people from a hundred years ago, this is the study about things that can help us to live better today, especially women, children, immigrants.’

“We started a series of projects, including restoration of the Grace Abbott Park. We raised the money to have properly cleaned up a bronze memorial plaque to Grace that was never completed. We also raised funds to have bronze busts of the sisters cast and placed in the Edith Abbott Library. Very beautiful.

“Around that time, too, through a series of lucky accidents I made a connection to the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation.”

Since 2003, the Lincoln-based Foundation has presented the annual Grace Abbott Award in recognition, said executive director Meg Johnson, of “those who have made a difference” in strengthening the lives of children and families “in the courageous spirit of Grace Abbott.” This year’s recipient is Doug Christensen, emeritus commissioner, Nebraska Department of Education.

The Foundation helped get then-Gov. Mike Johanns to proclaim an annual Abbott Sisters Day. Momentum for the Abbott Sisters Project gained steam. “I think it just legitimized things for people,” Sorensen said. “It got the word out more.”

Along the way Sorensen’s project has garnered funding from the Nebraska Humanities Council and other public and private supporters. Some Grand Islanders hope to capitalize on the Abbott name the way Red Cloud has with Willa Cather.

Sudanese-American story quilt with Sudanese-American quilters
Detail of story quilt (element contributed by Chol Thiyang)

 

 

Like a Johnny Appleseed, Sorensen’s planted the kernels, tilled the ground, and now all things Abbott are sprouting. The Dreams and Memories story-quilt is touring the state until a permanent home is found. Sorensen hopes The Quilted Conscience documentary airs statewide, even nationally, on public television. The University of Nebraska Press is planning a sequel to the Abbott Reader with the 2010 publication of Edith Abbott’s memoir, A Sister’s Memories. Children of the Old Frontier, a book about the Abbott sisters with input from G.I. 4th graders, is part of the new Great Peoples of Nebraska children’s book series by the Press.

“One of the most thrilling aspects of this work for me is that over the years we’ve had children from all over the country, all girls by the way, develop Abbott projects for History Day competitions,” said Sorensen.

The Abbott sprouts don’t end there.

The Grand Island Independent has begun an Abbott scholarship for Hall county high school grads to study social work at UNO. Ann Coyne’s lobbying for the School of Social Work to be renamed for Grace Abbott. She said it’s “kind of like losing our heritage if we don’t keep her legacy alive and visible,” adding that if Nebraska doesn’t claim Abbott, Chicago will. An Omaha World-Herald editorial stated, “Society should remember and appreciate this remarkable, courageous Nebraskan.”

All of it is music to Sorensen’s ears. Affirmation that the odyssey of his magnificent obsession has been worth the wait now that the Abbotts’ story is getting out.

“There had been things written about the Abbotts before, very important things, but they were I think read by a very small scholarly audience,” he said.

That’s all changing thanks to Sorensen.

Steve Joel said anyone meeting Sorensen is struck by his “commitment and passion. He’s a hard person to say no to.” Tracy Morrow noted, “The Abbotts wanted a positive change in the world and I think that’s what John wants, too.”

Sorensen’s simply grateful his dream’s coming to fruition after 17 years.

“I started this as a project and it became a life choice. I mean, it’s become clear in the last three or four years that it has no end for me. It’s become so embedded in my existence that I can’t stop — also because now it’s actually starting to unfold.”

Related Articles
Categories: Grace Abbott, History, John Sorensen, Media, Quilts//Quilting, Social Justice, Social Work, University of Nebraska, UNO (University of Nebraska at Omaha), Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 441 other followers