Hi all. Please share with others. Feel free to friend me on facebook for updates and like our page at https://www.facebook.com/#!/athirdplace.
What is shown below is a context for all I write and all we do; just a few of the
abandoned, burned out, and health hazard buildings and properties right here in
the most public visible and accessible places in our immediate area, on North
Peoria Ave and along the Osage Prairie Trail and the road going to our park and
orchard, and on one of the busiest residential avenues; some are new and some
have been here for months and years; it just scratches the surface of the blight
that contributes to isolation, crime and poor health outcomes. People ask if
there was one external-oriented thing that I would like to see happen in order
to aid community renewal, and removal of such structures is number one on my
list, and consistently rates tops in the community forums we host. The very
first project we did with an intern from OU Graduate Social Work was an
abandoned properties project. Many of them remain and these now add to it. Come
to our monthly planning and community townhalls as we seek to address these
continuing roadblocks to renewal.
Also, we are educating ourselves about many of the
occupied houses, or potentially occupied houses in the far north subdivisions
with possible partnership to promote community renewal through locating
residents into low-rent housing here, and connecting them to a supporting
sponsor nonprofit such as a church or civic group or school that would act as
mentor. If you have experience, or interest, in affordable housing coupled with
family mentoring or know someone who might study this with us, please let me
know as we research this possibility. More in the meetings.
A Quick Look ahead:
Friday, Oct. 19:
9:30 am to Noon: Food Pantry and Community Center;
1 pm Project Tour for you and all who are interested
in knowing more and possible partnering with us in buying and repurposing
Cherokee School, 6001 N. Peoria Ave. into a one-stop shop of services and more
right here in the heart of the 74126 that links both far north Tulsa and
unincorporated Turley communities; see more from our recent interview on local
news at http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/local_news/turley-residents-trying-to-find-new-use-for-closed-elementary-school; Please share with other nonprofits and companies who might be
interested in a coalition too.
3-9 pm, Community Art Day at the Center, making more
free tyedye and Halloween masks and more. Free, facilitated by graduate art
therapy student.
Saturday, Oct. 20:
Noon-4 pm Food/GloriousFood Day, for national Local
Food Week, at the new North Regional Wellness Center, Tulsa Health Dept. close
by at 56th St. N. and Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd (formerly Cincinnati Ave.)
5-7 pm Benefit Dinner to help raise funds for us and our partners and projects,
Super Spud Spectacular, at the Odd Fellows Lodge, 6227 N. Quincy Ave., $5 all
you care to eat, kids ten and under for free. Please support our work; we go month to month putting it all into mission. If you can't make the dinner, be with us in "a virtual dinner" by contributing here on this page through the donate button; you don't have to have paypal to use it.
Monday, Oct. 22, 6:30 pm. A Third Place Board meeting,
at the Community Center, dinner provided.
Tuesday, Oct. 30, 6-8 pm Biggest event of the year:
7th Annual Free Old Fashioned Halloween Party at the community center. The
Turley townhall is also that evening at 7 pm at O'Brien Park Center.
More events and news below but We have had a great past few weeks in October with
many anti poverty and community growing events; from www.thelinemovie.com discussion
to the Far North Community Renewal Conference this past weekend here and the
Taste of North Tulsa at McLain, along with a presentation to Tulsa Librarians
about our community gardening and health initiatives, and a service learning
class here with OU Graduate Social Work students following up on presentations
on their campus. In between the daily helping of families continues, and so does
the macro-planning for growing partneships that will help us grow leaders from
our community to give back to it. We have finished our campaigning for the
online grant from Tom's of Maine and hope to hear by mid-November if we won one
of the grants for our kitchengardenpark and orchard here.
Then Sat. Nov. 10, 7 pm at the Hyatt Regency Hotel downtown Tulsa, come to the gala fund raising dinner for the newly-formed "Friends of Anita Hill Awards" supporting northside nonprofits and honoring community leaders. Professor Hill began helping north side nonprofits years ago when she taught law at Oral Roberts University and is committed to doing so still; she is at Brandeis University currently. She will give the keynote address. Community leaders and nonprofits to be honored at the event include Dr. G. Calvin McCutcheon of Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Marvin Blades, Sr. of 100 Black Men of Tulsa, State Sen. Judy Eason-McIntyre, Neighbor For Neighbor, and also yours truly for A Third Place Community Foundation. More info coming but please set aside that date to come and support this new and significant way to support nonprofits supporting the north side. It is truly an honor to be included in this group of awardees of people who have worked here far longer than I have, and for our foundation and its mission which is the new kid on the block. I see it as yet another way to begin bridging leaders and groups and histories across generational and ethnic lines, and in that way it deeply captures the spirit and the promise of the north side.
Wednesday, Nov. 14 we are switching Food Pantry Days
to be midweek, from Noon to 4 pm every Wednesday. People are also invited to
come at 9:30 am for Morning Prayer with The Welcome Table, followed by 10 am
"Life Skills 201: Fables For Living" as I facilitate a class on self-growth and
relationships based on Rabbi Edwin Friedman's famous Fables. Then common meal at
11 am before the Pantry service begins at noon.
Thursday, Nov. 15 10 am to Noon, Mobile Food Van Day,
help us give out several tons of food in one hour from 11 am to Noon, this time
here at the Community Center. Vouchers are being given away at the Food Pantry
now. Volunteers are needed to come set up at 10 am and help us load food in cars
and carts and bikes and bags and the many ways people come to get their food
beginning at 11 am.
We continue to harvest and build more and grow more at
The Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park and Orchard. We are setting up a new
clothing room, expanding the food pantry, continuing to improve the new Earth,
Garden, Spirit Artspace at the community center, and are pleased to be
organizing with local residents a new Sewing Coop Circle. We still have many
items left to sale from our Auction.
In the missional community worship gathering on
Sundays, this Sunday Oct. 21 we will continue our exploration and discussion of
the book "Jesus For President: politics for ordinary radicals" by Shane
Claiborne and Chris Haws at 9:30 am followed by communion and common meal. This
Sunday's topic will be "When The Empire Got Baptized: what is a Jesus follower
to do?"
One of the things we can do here as followers of Jesus is to be persistent advocates for those who suffer the most, those invisible, those overwhelmed, and those most vulnerable; and one way to do that is to keep bringing to the table issues like the abandoned buildings that sit there and seep into the consciousness of despair of those who must live near them, ever fearful that the house abandoned on the other side of them will be the next to be burned and left.
And while we seek to transform Cherokee School, now
the biggest empty building in our area, and to take on other macro-level
projects and events and move into new phases with our GardenPark and with our
Community Center, we continue to remember that it is people and not projects
that carry the seeds of real renewal, and so our deepest calling is to be a
simple healthy life-affirming diversity-embracing presence with each one we are
privileged to be with here.
Thank you, and blessing, and definitely more soon, and
hope to see you too soon, Ron Robinson
918-430-1150, 918-691-3223,
918-794-4637
ps I will be in Boston next week on retreat with the
Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship Board. Prayers asked for our work,
travels, and for your week ahead too.
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